Rwa2play: NateAsbestos: Just got a SanDisk Zip to replace my old iPod. It's great because it just shows up in Windows as an external device, drag your music over [in M4A or FLAC or Vorbis or MP3] and it's done. No software installs, no fuss. It also supports ReplayGain, which is great for those of us who don't want to scramble at the volume knob every time the song changes.

That's the kind of shiat that irks me about iTunes: Why do they refuse to support even OGG playback? Or ReplayGain? It's just absurd.

And as far as playing on the computer goes, foobar2000 is the bee's knees. Plays every format known to man and uses very few resources.

Boy I really...REALLY wanted to like foobar2000 but the GUI turned me off.

It's not pretty, no, but it's perfectly functional. I like it precisely BECAUSE I don't spend a lot of time looking at my music player. I don't need it to be eyecandy, I just need it to make noise and get out of the way [screen-wise]

mamoru: TheManWho: The problem I'm having is for some reason the sound suddenly drops in volume, and only a restart of iTunes fixes it.

Is this on Windows 7? Because I notice this happening in VLC whenever I connect or disconnect my iPhone. If so, you may also be able to fix the problem by right-clicking volume in your task bar and opening the mixer. In that, there should be a volume control for each application you have open, and so you should be able to turn the volume back up for any affected programs.

Assuming this is the same thing happening to you, yeah, it is annoying.

I'm using Windows 8, but now you point it out, I didn't think of looking at the mixer. I normally have my system volume set at 50%, so just cranked it up to 100% to compensate.

Millennium: Friskya: [www.atpm.com image 307x302]

It tries to do too much now. It's predecessor was much better, IMHO.

Agreed, but Audion was even better than that.

GOD YES!


Can't find the exact skin I used, but it was close to this. Ahh....

I can't open my playlists in a separate window anymore. I've got over 500 podcasts to listen to still, and now I have to drop nee ones on the list, then scroll to the bottom of the list and drag them ALL THEY WAY to the top.

Fark Apple!

whistleridge:
Buggy, hogs resources, doesn't always play nicely if you jailbreak, and insists that you install that POS Quicktime when all I'll ever use is VLC.

Even on my Mac I still install VLC, because as you rightly put it, Quicktime is a POS.

error 303: Rahsa Naba Doe-ah Gola Wookiee Nipple Pinchy: Generation_D: They all suck.

I want an mp3 / media player, not a open hole on my platform through which is being shoved unwanted marketing and sales information.

I paid for media, its mine, eff off. And quit suggesting sh*t you think I like, it isn't wanted. If I want your opinion I'll ask for it.

Try a Walkman. It plays MP3s, video, has an FM receiver, and digital recorder. No software needed to copy music and video to it (at least as far as Windows is concerned). Just plug it in and copy/paste via Widows Explorer.

I feel dirty saying it, but I got a Sony phone and I really love the Walkman app. It's the easiest, slickest music player on a phone I've seen.

What are you guys talking about , exactly? I'm not sure I'm finding what y'all are talking about.

boozehat: moothemagiccow: that EULA will get you though

From the Apple EULA: "You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons."

WTF??

If I can't make nuclear weapons with iTunes, apple can eat a bag of D's.

Source: http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/appstore/dev/stdeula/

Hmmm, now I know why our IT guys worked so hard to make sure no PC had iTunes on it.

/seriously, when I was at an Space Command base, it was a big deal.
//prob not due to the EULA vs security

Yes. Yes it does.

ITunes is an iTurd. A big stinky one, at that.

saturn badger: imfallen_angel: eltejon: iTunes may ne the main reason I don't have anything Apple.

This... and the fact that I find Apple stuff barely average in quality, nor believe in the companies practices, and the fact that it turns people into douchebags to moment anything about electronics are mentioned, and the other fact that they'll find a way to bring up that they have Apple stuff no matter what the topic of conversation is.

Pot, meet kettle.

Too funny, you've just "outed" yourself.

Thank you.

Fano: My Creative Zen player back in the day had great interface, and I enjoy drag 'n drop.

If have have multiple ipods, ranging from 2gig to 16 gig, how do i synch appropriately?

Apple stole the Creative Lab's interface, and decided to settle out of court when they knew they were whipped.

Sadly, CL took the deal instead of wiping the floor with them.

iTunes is the biggest POS "series" of software releases ever. Back a few years ago when iPods were first getting popular, I ended up having to install/screw with iTunes for a few relatives and a buddy. I remember my first "WTF is this shiat?" on the first failed plug-n-play, dicking with drivers to see whats wrong, troubleshooting 5 things to see if this one instance of POS software will work. Apple had like what, barely 10% or less of PC market share, yet saw fit that the rest of the world should have to jump through flaming hoops to put a gotdamn album on their $300 MP3 player.

Apple had some kind of hipster prestige attached to it in those first couple years. Now, even the little Mexican kids my daughter goes to school with have iPhones. Their insufferable trademark bullshiat, and the way they dragged their feet on improving worker conditions last year, shows just how shiatty this company has devolved. "Apple profits exceed those of mega oil corp. Exxon Mobil" headlines were on the same page as the "Suicide nets installed at Foxconn factory after continuing threats of mass suicide by employees"

/"We own the rounded rectangle!"
//No, you own a fanbase renowned for douchebaggery, charging a premium for it at that, that are fashionable for Mexican immigrants nowadays

bingethinker: Is this where the people who haven't used iTunes in five years tell us how crappy the new version is? Don't forget to prattle on about DRM, even though that's been gone for years.

Is this the thread where Apple zealots accept any piece of iCrap software that their Corporate Savior tells them to like?

roflmaonow: Had to revert back to 10.7 after 11 stopped detecting my Bluray drive. Plus I really love cover flow. As corny as it sounds.

I didn't think I cared one way or another about Cover Flow until I downloaded iTunes 11. Now I sorely miss it when looking at playlists. Having that visual reference at the top of the screen was extremely helpful, and the new Artist List doesn't cut it because that view doesn't preserve the ORDER of your playlist.

I never used Cover Flow to NAVIGATE, but it absolutely sucks not having it as a visual reference for otherwise plain-text lists.

But don't worry - Apple will never bring it back. Users just shouldn't worry their little heads. Apple knows best what you need, whether you agree or not. Don't question Apple.

Generation_D: RexTalionis: iTunes 11 is terrible. Holy moley, is that thing laggy. It would also freeze while syncing. Whoever designed it decided that beta-testing and QC isn't necessary for something that comes out of Apple, I guess.

Is it just me, or is 2012 the year of Apple high water mark and start of eventual decline?

1) Maps fiasco; executives carnage; leadership in question
2) IOS 6 pulls support for youtube
3) iTunes issues
4) iPad release follies: the "new" ipad came out 2 weeks before the next new ipad, prompting mass returns at stores. Releases out of sync.

Add that to the obvious elephant in the room, the Galaxy / S3 / HTC platforms are all superior and iPhone isnt claiming that title back any time soon.

I just wonder if we're seeing the peak of Apple and inevitable long slide into RIM like irrelevancy.

There were bound to be some hiccups once Jobs let go of the wheel. Not because Jobs was Jesus, but because he had a death grip on that wheel, and there's bound to be some course-correction.

Whether or not Apple is doomed, semi-doomed, or has just hit a bump in the road remains to be seen.

/I'm gonna sing the doom song now

delsydsoftware: iTunes is still a dog on Windows, though I understand that it's much better on MacOS. If it wasn't for my iPhone, I wouldn't have it installed.

It is, but it has a major issue that gets on my tits that I discovered when my father picked up an iphone 3GS on the cheap. It needed activation, and the activation over wifi didn't work.

Which meant activating through itunes. No problem, I plugged it into his Mac. Except it would only activate with the latest itunes, and that would only work with a newer version of OSX then the one on his Mac.

So, rather than buy an OS upgrade from Apple in order to activate his Apple device on his Apple computer, I put itunes on a PC. No problems at all getting the latest itunes to work with the decade-old Windows XP.

I haven't updated to 11 and don't think I will based on the problems I've read people are having. I have 350 movies, 20k songs and a ton of tv shows in there and I've heard 11 doesn't work well with large libraries and that the search function sucks and I would really miss cover flow while browsing through my movies for what to watch. I have zero problems with 10.whatever version I'm using now and love being able to use home sharing to have all my media show up on my iPhone or iPad or the old G5 upstairs without having to store anything on any of the devices.

A good deal of my music is rare and very old stuff which definitely doesn't exist on iTunes Match and I'm mistrustful of clouds in general so would never use that service. And I've never used iTunes on a windows machine so have no idea why so many of you had such terrible experiences with it, but it works fine for me on the OS is was designed for. The wildly vituperative tone of the Apple despisers makes you sound like comic book villains or people at the apex of a manic cycle.

I use VLC only to get thorough information about a media file or if the file is so corrupt it won't play in anything else. And I use Quicktime to make quick trims of video or audio files which might have junk at the head or tail as well as to check aspect ratios on some oddly sized stuff I might be tossing into Handbrake and to quickly split off and save the audio tracks from video files.

Someone gave me a 50 buck gift card for the iTunes store a few years ago which I still haven't used up, but while it was sitting there as available credit someone hacked a bunch of iTunes accounts and stole everybody's money. Some of those would be customers had their checking account/debit cards listed and really got farked. Apple closed some people's accounts who got hacked which meant they lost access to everything they'd bought. Don't store your credit or debit cards with them. If I buy mp3, it's almost always from Amazon because the prices are better, but usually neither iTunes or Amazon have what I'm looking for so I either get it directly from the artist or by other means.

Generation_D: I want an mp3 / media player, not a open hole on my platform through which is being shoved unwanted marketing and sales information.

Then don't click the button to access the store?

Or better yet, go into the Parental Preferences and turn off the store completely so there won't even be a button for the store you could click?

delsydsoftware: iTunes is still a dog on Windows

I installed it on a decade old Compaq laptop running XP with a single core mobile Athlon and one Gig of RAM.

It consumed 40 Megs of RAM while playing songs in the normal interface. If I paused the track and walked away for a while, it dropped down to 11 Megs, but popped back up to 40 Megs the instant I resumed playing the track.

Opening the music store caused it to jump up and consume 80 Megs of RAM.

While playing tracks, it only consumed between one percent and three percent of the ancient single core CPU's processing cycles.

If that's a dog, you have a seriously underpowered computer.

croesius: Millennium: Friskya: [www.atpm.com image 307x302]

It tries to do too much now. It's predecessor was much better, IMHO.

Agreed, but Audion was even better than that.

GOD YES!
[cerebraldump.com image 243x201]

Can't find the exact skin I used, but it was close to this. Ahh....

That interface caused my eyeballs to burst into flame and my face to melt. And not in the good way.

All you people whinging about iTunes or having difficulty sychronising your iPods just aren't using it properly. User error is the biggest fault in software...

I used Winamp for years, resisting iTunes. For four or so years now I've had iTunes on PC and an iPod mini. Both work fine, doesn't seem to affect my performance negatively, organises my files nicely and generally behaves well.

I "accidentally" drop my iphone every chance I get..hoping to break it, just so I'll have a valid excuse (that I tell the wife) to buy an android phone

/that's an ugly sentence I just wrote

magores: I "accidentally" drop my iphone every chance I get..hoping to break it, just so I'll have a valid excuse (that I tell the wife) to buy an android phone

/that's an ugly sentence I just wrote

oops.. forgot the whole point....

then I'd be able to remove itunes/phone from my life

//ps.. I like media monkey as a media player on the desktop

magores: I "accidentally" drop my iphone every chance I get..hoping to break it, just so I'll have a valid excuse (that I tell the wife) to buy an android phone

/that's an ugly sentence I just wrote

Surely it would be simpler to sell your iphone instead of destroying it.

Before upgrading my computer to a Sandy Bridge CPU etc.. My old dual core computer would take forever to load itunes and when gapless playback first came on, any album added would take ages to load and freeze the whole OS.

Even now on my supercomputer, itunes takes 8-10 secs to load when programs like Photoshop and After Effects load almost instantly.

It's still so farked up on my computer I wouldn't know. I can't upgrade it, I can't uninstall it, and I don't feel like editing my registry if I delete it.

BullBearMS: Generation_D: I want an mp3 / media player, not a open hole on my platform through which is being shoved unwanted marketing and sales information.

Then don't click the button to access the store?

Or better yet, go into the Parental Preferences and turn off the store completely so there won't even be a button for the store you could click?

You are aware necrophilia is a mental disorder, right?

NateAsbestos: Rwa2play: NateAsbestos: Just got a SanDisk Zip to replace my old iPod. It's great because it just shows up in Windows as an external device, drag your music over [in M4A or FLAC or Vorbis or MP3] and it's done. No software installs, no fuss. It also supports ReplayGain, which is great for those of us who don't want to scramble at the volume knob every time the song changes.

That's the kind of shiat that irks me about iTunes: Why do they refuse to support even OGG playback? Or ReplayGain? It's just absurd.

And as far as playing on the computer goes, foobar2000 is the bee's knees. Plays every format known to man and uses very few resources.

Boy I really...REALLY wanted to like foobar2000 but the GUI turned me off.

It's not pretty, no, but it's perfectly functional. I like it precisely BECAUSE I don't spend a lot of time looking at my music player. I don't need it to be eyecandy, I just need it to make noise and get out of the way [screen-wise]



Foobar is very skinnable. That's part of why I like it so much: everything is customizable.

I'm stuck with an old 3GS for the time being, and I hate iTunes. So I used a virtual machine of Windows XP for the iTunes installation. Now it doesn't foul up my pc with all its bloatware, and I can just delete that vm when I no longer use the phone.