Fred 30 Nov 05

He’s got that right. Got a question about your Mac? Get a PC! Got a question about iTunes? iTunes sucks! Just get the torrent!

Joe Martinez 30 Nov 05

ohhh the irony…

Anonymous Coward 30 Nov 05

iTunes sucks!

But iTunes does suck. The interface is nonsensical at best. It’s always a constant battle to get it to play the right song. It does a lot of things right, but it also does a lot of things wrong.

Historically those who are quick to say something has jumped the shark are usually correct. It just takes a long time for everyone else to realize it.

I don’t see it as hostile, I see it as if you start to see the downfall of something you once enjoyed, the internet is the perfect place to voice your concerns to try and get it back on track before it is too late.

Michael Tyznik 30 Nov 05

Erm… Okay? What’s wrong with the iTunes interface? I never seem to have a problem getting it to play the right song, and the interface makes a lot of sense to me.

Anonymous Coward 30 Nov 05

Why do you watch movies in iTunes?

Anonymous Coward 30 Nov 05

“Historically those who are quick to say something has jumped the shark are usually correct. It just takes a long time for everyone else to realize it.”

Congratulations. You just described the effects of entropy.

Consider, however, that even if everything is *probably* doomed to suck eventually, it may not actually suck at the moment.

John John the Leprechaun 30 Nov 05

Um, who cares what anyone else thinks? Just cause someone thinks iTunes sucks, if it works for someone else then it is still an effective product.

Look at Amazon reviews for example. Some of the best books I have ever read were slammed by reveiws. We are talking 1 and 2 star books. Several of the 5 star books sucked beyond comprehension.

Just cause some first to have said it or first one to hear the band says its lame, or “jumped the shark” does not mean it is bad.

America is famous for making stars one week, and then slamming them down to the ground the next week.

Fred 30 Nov 05

iTunes sucks so much they’ve sold 100+ million songs.

niblettes 30 Nov 05

Perhaps most things actually do suck. Most of the web is increasingly in perpetual alpha (forget about beta). Companies everywhere are trying to give you less and charge you more for it. The economics of entertainment blockbusters enforces drab homogenization of books, movies, television, music. The news media is one iant sales pitch. People who have the option of going to a great locally owned coffee house still go to the Starbucks accross the street. And on and on.

Sure not every thing sucks (have you ever had a vietnamese sub?). But a lot stuff does. And recognizing it is the first step to doing something about it.

JF 30 Nov 05

Companies everywhere are trying to give you less and charge you more for it.

I don’t agree with this at all. Look at computers, for example. Prices are going down as technology continues to get better. Same with cars. Same with almost any consumer electronic device. Cell phone service too. You get a lot MORE for your money these days.

People who have the option of going to a great locally owned coffee house still go to the Starbucks accross the street.

Maybe they like Starbucks better.

And recognizing it is the first step to doing something about it.

What are you doing about it?

Fred 30 Nov 05

Hmmmmm, Filter or Starbucks? Tough choice;)

And where do I get a vietnamese sub? I’m intrigued.

Jesper 30 Nov 05

What I think “niblettes” meant by “give you less and charge you more” is basically the whole charge of DRM and needless subscriptions.

A DVD costs more than a VHS, and oftentimes it’s hard to buy it without the extra behind-the-scenes clips. For all I as a customer care, I’m being given ‘the same’ (since I don’t care about the extras), but charged more. And BluRay and HD-DVD will have safeguards built in, stopping me from playing certain discs. I can make a copy of a DVD and play it on a DVD player today, and I can insert what Sony might consider a bootleg (even if it’s just my fair use copy) and my DVD player stays intact. Are you willing to bet money that you’ll be able to do that on BluRay and HD-DVD? That’ll effectively be giving me ‘less’ and charging me more.

Obviously this is far from the truth in a lot of segments, but when it comes to media such as movies and music, a lot of customers perceive that they’re being given less. And if customer perception isn’t indicative of a trend, what is? The perception of the companies?

Brian 30 Nov 05

Bill Simmons is the best writer on ESPN. He hasn’t jumped.

Anonymous Coward 30 Nov 05

Jumping the shark has jumped the shark

FriedGeek 01 Dec 05

This is so true. Spend five minutes on digg.com and you’ll see a pack of people who seem to just circle waiting to post “OLD NEWS” or “[Insert Web Technology Here] SUCKS!!”. It just feeds into people’s sense of self-importance, that people care what software they use to manage their digital music. I’ve found that those who are so quick to share their view on something rarely have taken the time to look at things from a broad enough point of view.

Take the iTunes haters for example, let’s look at an alternate history where Apple doesn’t create an iPod. What? We were talking about iTunes, you say. Ah, but they are connected. Apple wouldn’t have made one without the other. So if Apple had not given us the iPod/iTunes combo what would we be looking at? Programs like MusicMatch Jukebox, Real’s Jukebox, Winamp, and Microsoft Mediaplayer would be some of the dominate players and we’d have more RIO and Nomad players. I’m sure all of these still have their die-hard fans but the fact that if you introduce the iTunes/iPod back into the equation and see how much ‘gravity’ it has produced in the space even with these other compeditors… someone is doing something right. At least right enough for iTunes to break into the top 10 music retailers along side brick and morter stores.

To the Microsoft haters, OS2 anyone?

iguessimahater 08 Jan 06

Trust me iTunes does suck. I manage a network of over 500 machines, all of which are to sync with ipods. We have spend 100+ hours including 3 days with Apple tech people on-site and the best they can do for us is to say, “well, it usually works.” The fact is, it doesn’t. Library mismanagement (mulitple libraries?, not in apple’s wet dreams), rinky-dink database, spotty file conversion performance, reliance on limited number of CD/DVD drives, poor portability. Mere popularity says nothing about quality. Newbies who get iPods for Christmas have no idea how bad it sucks because it’s all they know. MediaMonkey and Anapod Explorer (though very different) absolutly destroy iTunes in just about all areas.

Nate 07 May 06

iTunes’ management of files alone makes it an absolutely deplorable MP for anyone who keeps files in more than one place. (This includes an iPod and a computer, which iTunes attempts to manage the only way it knows how: on its own terms.)

Anonymous Coward’s crack about entropy is hilarious. It’s true: everything’s going to go sometime, so if there are people the whole way crying “it’s done, it sucks!” it’s going to always look as if someone was right. But one forgets all those losers who were saying it when it wasn’t.

iTunes has built a remarkable success on the things it does well. But it’s time for people to demand something a hell of a lot better.

Kemp 22 May 06

iTunes is so wasteful of music and video storage that you’d have to have a huge HDD not to care.

cam_toews3 21 Jun 06

Itunes is the worst piece of software ever. If i ever want to organise my currently playing list, you cant! I have a ROKR E1 Phone with itunes, half the time it doesn’t even work! It has got to be the slowest encoder of music too, i cant believe how long it takes to put a 100 songs into 128kbs aac. The look is brutal, and there are very few features. Why the hell would anyone want to create a new playlist for everything they do. The only reason ppl don’t use anything else and they say it rules is because they don’t know what to expect from a piece of software. Windows media player 10+ blows itunes out of the water.

cam_toews3 21 Jun 06

Itunes is the worst piece of software ever. If i ever want to organise my currently playing list, you cant! I have a ROKR E1 Phone with itunes, half the time it doesn’t even work! It has got to be the slowest encoder of music too, i cant believe how long it takes to put a 100 songs into 128kbs aac. The look is brutal, and there are very few features. Why the hell would anyone want to create a new playlist for everything they do. The only reason ppl don’t use anything else and they say it rules is because they don’t know what to expect from a piece of software. Windows media player 10+ blows itunes out of the water.

itunes user 08 Aug 06

ok ok, I have been using itunes for some years now, on a PC I might add. Its been the only software I have needed to play and ORGINIZE all my music. If I change a file in itunes it changes the file as well to reflect my changes and I can update the ID3 tags. . For someone that is anal about their files it�s good. BUT the damn POS has gotten bloated with crap, now it takes forever to load and crashes most of the time. ALSO the darn file that saves your music is static, I can�t move the thing. I have two PCs that have two different music libraries BUT the PCs share the same home directory. So that file is always messed up because the two PCs fight to update it with a different music library. I am moving on, but have no clue to what. In a nutshell itunes now SUCKS