iTunes as an application is by far the worst UX present on a Mac or a PC, which is especially surprising considering how nice the vast majority of OS X apps are to use. You can go down the list of the recommendations Apple gives out to developers on how make what they consider great apps for OS X and iTunes breaks every single one almost as if it were intended as a use case for terrible UX.<p>The navigation and structure changes with every movement, there are occasionally two seperate back buttons present that can either do the same thing or completely different things, the "background activity" or as I like to call it, "What you need to know is happening to your iPhone" is constantly buried beneath the currently playing track, and is not readily accessible unless you click a 8pt square down arrow, on and on...<p>Not to mention, as an owner of multiple machines I prefer to use ownCloud to sync my various libraries. Windows and Linux this is absolutely not an issue. Because iTunes insists on owning the directory and file structure though, I can't just point it at the folder or it will literally ruin it, I have to instead keep two copies of my library on my Macbook, and occasionally use an rsync alias to move over new stuff. Thankfully I usually do all my purchasing (on Amazon MP3) on the Macbook anyway so it's of little consequence, but it's just one more irritating thing to add to the list.<p>I'm an Apple fan, I admit, but iTunes is a fucking train wreck.
iTunes is a tire fire. But purely in terms of content, Apple Music is probably the best streaming service, and their recommendation system is getting better. Apple also has the benefit of iTunes/Apple Music being closer to a first-class citizen on things like car bluetooth audio systems.<p>I would be thrilled to hear that Apple is totally revamping iTunes; I swear at it at least a couple times a week. But I'm probably not going to be able to stop using it any time soon.<p>I'm not sure I really understand the people who use alternate music player software on OS X; huge collections of downloaded music files accessed through file player software doesn't seem like where digital music is headed. I had a gigantic collection of purchased music on my computer, and it's more an annoyance now than anything else.<p>Hating iTunes so much you can't use it makes sense to me. But then, why not just use Spotify?<p>Anyways: predicting where this thread is inevitably heading, here's a list off the top of my head of shit that drives me nuts about iTunes:<p>* Purchased tracks randomly grey out and become non-playable.<p>* I'm a "Match" customer, and iTunes/iCloud/whatever doggedly insists on retaining the file-based metadata from my old MP3s, despite me not having had those MP3s in years.<p>* Ridiculous incoherent "Playlists / For You / New / Radio / Connect / iTunes Store" menu. "For You"?<p>* Playlists that contain both Apple Music tracks and purchased tracks flake out and vanish, which means that if you have a large collection of purchased music, playlists just don't work.<p>* Sometimes you can link to a playlist to share it and sometimes you can't.
Here's my dilemma with iTunes: I have about 50GB of music on my computer, an early 2007 iMac. If I want to upgrade my iPhone to iOS9, I need to update iTunes to the latest version. But the latest version doesn't run on Mac OSX 10.6... and my computer is too old to upgrade to 10.7 or higher. So if I want to have ios9 and sync music to my phone, I need to buy a new computer? Pretty upset about that.
Is iTunes responsible for this trend I'm seeing more of where the Seek Forward/Backward (Fast-Forward/Rewind) symbol is being used in place of 'Next Track' and 'Previous Track?'<p>All other complaints aside, this, to me, is iTunes' worst offense. I don't know if there was some official standard ever, but it was at a very minimum an unofficial standard for DECADES. Now some asshole designer has decided to muddle and confuse everyone by redefining the symbol. This idea has infected PowerAmp on Android now, too.<p>I have not seen anyone discussing this before (but I haven't looked very hard). I refuse to buy into this new definition. Am I the only one bothered by this? I can't take a music application seriously if it can't get the symbols right.
I am writing an iTunes replacement ( the music and library management part ). Any feature requests from HN ?<p>Current alpha features:<p>* Playlist resume - if you interrupt a playlist 3278 entries in, you can resume at 3278<p>* Music diary - track what tunes played when & where ( occasional GPS polling optional )<p>* Powerful music list filters<p>* Keep track of recently played items and do not replay them for a while<p>* Works with Spotify thanks to Spotify API for premium users<p>* mobile app on iOS and Android<p>Suggestions beyond this ?
I made the switch to iTunes on OS X after finding out that some of the international artists I was looking for actually had a decent catalog on iTunes.
Nowadays it's more of a balance act between the features I like and the annoyances it throws at me.<p>The most recent issue, which appears to be the result of one of the last updates, is that iTunes keeps on connecting to the store in the background for some reason, even when you're just on the normal Music view and not doing anything with the store. This wouldn't really be an issue, if it wouldn't complain every 1 to 2 hours with a popup message that it's unable to fulfill the store request.<p>However, iTunes on OS X is still only mildly annoying for me compared to the disaster that is the redesigned Music app on iOS. It took me a while just trying to figure out how to navigate it and then its features no longer match the iTunes on OS X behaviour, making it even more difficult trying to figure out how to use it. The search feature is the one I've been fighting the most with, as it no longer allows you to play the listed results like in the desktop version, so that you have to resort to custom playlists, if you are trying to play music that is not from the same artist or from the same album.
I use itunes daily. I really like it, they made it better recently with the miniplayer up next and such. I"m able to queue up music into a list easily anytime. Maybe its my usecase, but I find it pretty sweet.<p>That being said, itunes match, which I pay for and is supposed to sync all of my music between machines/ iphones somehow forgot a bunch of my songs. It might be part of iCloud now. I never could figure it out, but it just worked for the longest time. I turned on iCloud match and it seems to have brought most of them back. (Come to think of it maybe it was only cloud streaming songs I bought from itunes before...)<p>Itunes on the iphone turned into Apple Music nagware till you dig into settings and turn it off. searhing for a song would show you the Apple Music version. It was odd and jarring when your itunes match wasn't working right, but for some money you can play the song you thought you had...<p>Actually mac osx reminds me to "upgrade my keynote by upgrading my os" every time I open it. I've been using macs a long time and this new sell to me is getting grating.
Match. Match activated itself I don't know how many times. Removed all music from my phone so I was streaming everything. I honestly didn't notice at first except some of my music was missing (because it wasn't available on Match), and my music would inexplicably stop playing in certain areas. It screwed up all my tag edits/album art (on ~7K songs!) and because of some duplicate problem, which I have yet to resolve, my music doesn't sync properly onto my iPhone. (Among many, many other complaints about iTunes.)<p>My only question is, if I switch to something like Swinsian (which looks nice), how do I get the music and playlists onto my iPhone? (I've also been thinking about switching to Android since iOS 9 and its updates have turned my very expensive iPhone 6 into a slow, buggy POS.)
Them and everyone else. I suspect iTunes' major problem is that it encapsulates all (most?) of the code for communicating with iOS devices, hence XCode upgrades requiring it to be shut down and vice versa. Hence the amazing feature bloat. This plus its age probably make it a scary ball of mud.<p>Not sure that's enough to explain some of the UX choices - a few updates back I had to turn to google to find out they hadn't actually removed the mini player and then again to find out how to get back to the full window.<p>Maybe it makes sense to keep all the media management functions in one place, but then there's iPhoto/Photos, iBooks and the MAS, and then the Windows version.<p>It's like the app level equivalent of a god class.
Its casual users too. I suppose there's no point in me explaining why, since it's such a common thing.<p>This morning I clicked a downloaded MP3 file expecting it to simply play, but nooooh...
iTunes generally works great for me for maintaining my collection and playback, especially when combined with my home entertainment system. Where it falls apart is Apple Music, iTunes Match and iTunes Store.<p>- iTunes Match is too unreliable when it comes to actually matching songs. The syncing is unreliable. I have songs in my collection now that were manipulated by iTunes Match and now have incorrect artist/title entries for some reason. I routinely have an issue where a song will be purchased in iTunes Store but never shows up on other computers without me having to go through a whole process of checking for available downloads (never works), signing in, signing out, etc. which often doesn't work until a week later when the song magically shows up or just doesn't show up at all.<p>- iTunes Store is fine for buying music, if you know what you want to buy. Apple Match and iTunes are both terrible (in my opinion) for discovering new music that actually matches my own tastes.<p>Right now I am using both Spotify and iTunes. I use Spotify to discover new music which I then buy through the iTunes Store so that I can have it in my official iTunes-based collection. I know people who have started using Spotify as their main source of music but I have an existing collection of about 4000 songs made up of MP3's/purchased files which I wish to maintain as a single collection. Using Spotify doesn't allow me to do that. Adding songs from Apple Music to my music collection seems unpleasant because then it creates a mix of existing transportable MP3's that I can move around and Apple Music files that I have no control over.<p>It would be great to have a "single solution" that allowed me to discover new music, purchase it and maintain/listen to my collection but I've accepted that I will probably never find that solution.
I've been looking for a better alternative to iTunes for years, like Google Music. But nothing I've used has the same features like powerful smart playlists, ratings system, and the ability to change the start and stop times of songs. But iTunes is just a mess that's getting worse and worse. I might just have to suck it up and start over.
I find itunes to be just fine for dealing with a decade-old library with 20k+ songs that's been transferred between a half-dozen different computers, and it's certainly better than the terrible mp3 players I tried on linux in the last 18 months or so (banshee was the least horrible but it's random album shuffle was incredibly broken).
I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that I am one of a very small number of people on the planet that has literally no issues with iTunes' day to day functionality.<p>This despite abusing the hell out of it:<p>* My library is on an NFS volume,<p>* ..accessed with two different copies of iTunes on two different OSes<p>* ..with north of 20k songs<p>* ..and a library that's been backed up, restored, migrated, multiple times<p>*..all the way since ~2002 when I got the HP branded iPod and started using it to manage my music<p>The only conclusion I can come to, computers being deterministic machines, is that a lot of people have broken computers. Perhaps iTunes needs to be more error tolerant?<p>There's not a whole lot of ways to say "it works for me, and I don't know what you're on about" without being straight up dismissive but.. it Just Works, at least for me. Just another data point I suppose.
I’m willing to bet that iTunes (as we know it) will get phased out in OS X 10.12.<p>Apple has a clear pattern now where they debut big ecosystem-wide changes in iOS first, and Mac about a year later. Apple Photos, the “Flat” aesthetic, Maps, etc.<p>A proper Apple Music app for iOS replaced the old iPod app last summer; Apple Music support was wedged into iTunes because Apple couldn’t afford to punt that feature all the way out to next year. But it seems in keeping with the pattern that an iOS-style Apple Music app for OS X, which would lack iOS syncing (works against the cloud strategy), iTunes University (deserves its own app), Podcasting (ditto, and one exists on iOS), etc.
iTunes isn't designed for the type of users this article discusses. The real issue the author should have focused on is there is no ecosystem as progressive or stable which is still focused on users who need/want to listen to their specific copy of a song rather than a generic hosted one.<p>I have a feeling this type of user will slowly fade out, and eventually looking at a HD filled with music (on a laptop less!) will provoke a reaction similar to the anachronistic feeling one has looking at a wall of CD's or DVD's.
A decade ago, I loved iTunes. I agree with other people here that it seemed to get a little less good over time, but it is still nice.<p>About 5 years ago I switched to Amazon Music because the songs were a little less expensive and I could also play my music on my Android phone.<p>Recently I started using Google's $10/month no advertisements on Youtube option. I then started using Google Play Music Premium and I find it good enough so I am making yet another switch in managing my music.<p>Fortunately, changing music hosting is not that time consuming.
Of course iTunes is bad, each version since 6-7 years adding layer and layer of half baked functionalities and a list of new bugs on previously working features. Unfortunately all the other music software are nowhere as good! That's really the sorry state of the music playing/managing software industry, if such thing exists.
Still a happy Zune 30GB user. One nice thing about using a discontinued device is that the manufacturer doesn't keep bloating up the software. (Also you can get refurbished replacement units cheap.) I guess at some point it won't run on the latest OS, but as of Windows 10, it still works fine.
It's 2015, and I can only load MP3s from a single Mac/PC into the music app on my iPhone. If I load MP3s from one of my other Macs/PCs, it wipes out the prior MP3s from my iPhone. Not user-friendly.
I tried iTunes back in 2004 or so and promptly killed the process and uninstalled when it started converting my MP3s to some Apple-only format. What's with that?
I am one of those alienated users, and I eagerly pressed the link to discover the alternatives. To no avail.<p>Are there viable alternative music players that can sync to iPhone?
Using Ember.js as a front-end for their Music services as massive downer.
Slow on a Macbook Pro 2014.<p>React or native would have been a better choice.