iTunes Puts Me Off Buying a Mac
Saturday, March 31st, 2007I have been considering buying a Mac for sometime now - I have been put off by the seemly annoying way in which the user interface works. My Mac loving friends and colleagues ensure me that once I have been using one for a while I will never want to go back. This I can buy, I had the same experience when I moved from Mac to Windows (c 1995) and from Windows to Linux (c 1998).
The only Apple based software that I use regularly is iTunes (on my work Laptop or within VMWare on my Linux desktop at home). I assume that iTunes is representative of the standard of other Apple Mac based software and quite frankly it is rubbish. These are the things I hate about iTunes.
- I have to give up my credit card details to Apple in order to get album art work
- There is no good user story around using multiple computers with one iPod or multiple iPods with one computer. If I set my iPod to sync my music collection and I connect it to my work laptop all my music is erased. I don’t have my music collection on my work laptop and don’t want to have to. If I don’t set it up to sync then it doesn’t store my play statistics and I lose a bunch of functionality.
- My subscribed podcasts are stored on the computer and not the iPod or online and so I have to manually sync my subscribed podcasts (this is the RSS feeds in the Library podcast view as opposed to the actual audio files)
- iTunes and the iPod firmware are a closed proprietary pieces of software
- iTunes and the iPod do not support ogg vorbis or flac or any other open standard
I just need to find a laptop that is as good value for money as the Mac Book Pro or buy one and install Linux on it… or just procrastinate a bit longer and save some money.