September 17, 2009

iTunes9

Okay, AlexC is a Mac and I am a PC...

I find the Apple commercials lack verisimilitude when iTunes -- Apple's flagship software product -- sucks so completely. This enables their popular iPod, manages music on the iTouch and iPhone, and is used by millions of customers on non-Apple platforms. If they cannot or will not bother to get this right, I'm less wowed by a cord that's hard to trip over.

We had this argument years ago. But I bring it up because I have just installed iTunes 9. Nine! The Microsoft plan is that version 1 barely works, version 2 is clunky but mostly functional, and then version 3 is the one you want to buy. These guys are on 9.x and it is still hopeless!

I am glad they finally discovered that computers are networked -- that was a big failing in versions 1-8. I cannot say I have got the home shares to work yet -- but I am just a 15 year+ Unix and Java programmer. I'm sure the Astrophysics PhDs got it going right away.

So I gave up and played some locally stored songs. It got through three before crashing.

I'm JK and I will remain a PC until Apple can fix iTunes.

Apple - Reality Distortion Field Posted by John Kranz at September 17, 2009 2:33 PM

ROFLMAO

(Rolling On Floor Laughing My _ss Off, for those of you not up on your texting shorthand.)

Oh, and Brother JK... take my word for it: You are a "hip" PC.

Posted by: johngalt at September 17, 2009 3:43 PM

The Refugee will second JK's well-crafted opinion. The Refugee's original experience with an iPod Mini was atrocious and didn't improve with a device several generations later. Even his kids hate it. We've moved to low-cost MP3 players that work flawlessly.

Posted by: Boulder Refugee at September 17, 2009 4:27 PM

Blog friend sc has complained of multiple failures.

For mysekf, I think the iPod hardware is the apogee of great design. I have had a bunch and I love them. My gripe is purely with the iTunes software that manages your mp3 files and moves them onto the iPod.

Posted by: jk at September 17, 2009 5:05 PM

But you're running iTunes on hardware that is foreign to Apple, are you not? And BR and SC too, PC's?

Posted by: johngalt at September 18, 2009 12:31 PM

I'm going to be the contrarian here, and I do this fully respecting everyone, regardless of their gender, age, ethnic origin, and choice of operating system. I'm all about inclusiveness on this issue.

(ahem) Rhythmbox. That's all I'm sayin'.

Posted by: Keith at September 18, 2009 2:42 PM

Zoinks.... you just add your songs to the libraries, and it takes care of the rest... Kind of like money and our government.

You could always play songs amongst computers on a network (we do it at work all the time)... but you can't physically move the files between computers via iTunes... the 9 version supports that, but i haven't messed around with it.

Posted by: AlexC at September 18, 2009 4:42 PM

I wanted to keep my library on a network drive and mount it from multiple machines, but the performance was so bad you can't really do that. Man, what are they doing? Over 100Gb Ethernet, I haven't seen network drives bother other apps at all. I am thinking that the home shares in V9 will give me another way to accomplish this.

Yeah, I guess it works as you say, but it so painfully slow I don't know if it has crashed, or working, or if my click did not register. It's called a "thread" guys you can acknowledge response even when you're busy.

Sorry, man, nine tries and it is still clunky, unintuitive and slow. The WSJ says how important this product is (in a very factorable interview, I must confess).

Posted by: jk at September 18, 2009 5:05 PM | What do you think? [7]