iTunes in general

conor.hogan.2

iTunes on a 2ghz core 2 duo plastic macbook takes ten seconds to load and once open there is no lag with 12000 odd songs and 20-30 podcasts and some playlists etc.

But......

I always hear that iTunes is terrible and bloated etc

How?

I hear about this on the mac too not just windows although it didn't seem laggy when I used it last on iTunes.

Thomas_S_Hunterson

The first clue is that it's a 90MB or so download!

Sad Professor

In my experience, most of the iTunes complaints come from Windows users, or Windows users who have switched to the Mac recently and brought their distaste for iTunes with them. Most long-term Mac users don't seem to have any major issue with it.

But even on Windows, unless you are running it on crappy hardware, I don't think it's that bad. I think the main issue is that often people's introduction to iTunes is when they get their first iPhone/iPod/whatever. All they want to do is upload their music but are faced with an application which can seem a quite complicated at first. I suppose having to import all your mp3s, etc, can be a lot of hassle for someone who just got an iPhone and wants to play around with it.

Personally, I've never had any major complaint about iTunes on the Mac, but I still think it's getting a bit bloated and is in need of streamlining. It started out as a pretty excellent mp3 player and music library, but Apple keep adding stuff to it. I'm also growing tired of all the UI changes. And with the release of v10, it would appear that a major upgrade isn't likely to happen any time soon.

conor.hogan.2

90MB?

I have songs (mixes) in my iTunes that are 96MB and normal songs that are 20MB, but even the average of say 5MB means the whole app is less than 20 songs big....



iTunes10 was more a 9.something release so I see what you are saying there.

Yeah I suppose I didn't really use iTunes before I bought my macbook but I have used iTunes on and off on Windows (not mainly) and it isn't bloated compared to a base version of Firefox for example.

aidan_walsh

The iTunes application doesn't count the size of your library. It's just the program itself.

conor.hogan.2

yep of course^?

But I was saying that once the app loads all those songs are there with no delay, so the load time of the app is the complete load time.


Oh no wait I see what you are talking about.

I was saying that 90MB is not that big - comparing it to song file sizes (coincidental it could be any file size like pdfs that I have that are 5-45MB).

hidinginthebush

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

90MB?

I have songs (mixes) in my iTunes that are 96MB and normal songs that are 20MB, but even the average of say 5MB means the whole app is less than 20 songs big....



iTunes10 was more a 9.something release so I see what you are saying there.

Yeah I suppose I didn't really use iTunes before I bought my macbook but I have used iTunes on and off on Windows (not mainly) and it isn't bloated compared to a base version of Firefox for example.

i think the poster's trying to imply how bloated the software is when you consider windows media player 11 is a hair over 25MB, and WMP 10 is 11.6MB. Compare to itunes being 90MB when it essentially does the same thing.

source: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/alldownloads.aspx

conor.hogan.2

Yep but 90MB is not large - it may be double WMP and in that sense it is large.

But the size does not make it slower than WMP and it does a lot more than WMP.

hidinginthebush

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Yep but 90MB is not large - it may be double WMP and in that sense it is large.

But the size does not make it slower than WMP and it does a lot more than WMP.

well it's nearly 4 times bigger than WMP, but no, what I was referring to, and I think Sean_K meant this too, was in relation to WMP (for argument's sake), itunes it a hell of a lot bigger, when most people would be using it to do essentially the same thing. I'm sure there are things itunes can do that WMP can't (I can't say what they are, since I don't use itunes [flameshield ]), but if people are using it to do the same thing, why is it so much bigger? Because it has become bloated by extra features.

conor.hogan.2

OK there is numerous things iTunes does that WMP doesn't but lets say they do the same thing.


Does the fact it is four times the size mean it loads slower? No of course it loads at pretty much as fast, definitely not four times slower.

ethernet

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

yep of course^?

But I was saying that once the app loads all those songs are there with no delay, so the load time of the app is the complete load time.


Oh no wait I see what you are talking about.

I was saying that 90MB is not that big - comparing it to song file sizes (coincidental it could be any file size like pdfs that I have that are 5-45MB).

Well once it's in RAM, there should be any delay of any sort. It would appear iTunes 10 creates load more threads and, overall, has higher CPU usage but at least I've noticed iPod syncing performance has improve slightly - i.e. the entire app only locks up for a few seconds instead of minutes. Getting there. Now to wait for a full Cocoa rewrite of the app.

conor.hogan.2

If only software did that - sonys connect is an example of software that does have delay when loaded.

What hardware are you running it on? I have never had iTunes be unresponsive.

lots of threads? don't ever look at Chrome and bloated don't ever use Firefox then .

Thomas_S_Hunterson

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

lots of threads? don't ever look at Chrome a

This is slightly different, Chrome starts tabs as separate instances so that if a website causes one tab to crash, the rest of the tabs will be unscathed.

ethernet

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

If only software did that - sonys connect is an example of software that does have delay when loaded.

What hardware are you running it on? I have never had iTunes be unresponsive.

lots of threads? don't ever look at Chrome and bloated don't ever use Firefox then .

Haven't had the pleasure of using Sony Connect!

Running it on a fairly fresh install of Snow Leopard, 2.5 GHz C2D, 4 GB RAM - not exactly something from the last decade.

Must say, have no problems with Firefox on OS X or other platforms.