How is it possible that iTunes is such poor software?

Sleepy

Seriously. Apple are a multi-billion dollar company. Why can't they get iTunes right? The latest version has now bricked my iPhone 3GS *twice* when updating it. Restoring to factory settings was a nightmare - took 4/5 attempts each time receiving varying error messages and three days after the second restore I still haven't managed to get my phone fully synced with iTunes yet.

I suppose I should be grateful that it's only my mobile phone they're making a balls of and not software running medical devices...

TBH, I think at this stage, my next phone will be an Android of some form. I like the iPhone, just can't take any more of Apple's abuse of their customers with shoddy software.

BBMcQ

If you can't stand crashing, bugs and glitches, i'd reccommend the trust Nokia 3310i. Smartphones are fraught with glitches, however most of my Androided friends have switched to the iPhone recently because of it's ease of use, integration with apps/software, and reliability/battery life.

jester77

What do people do with their iTunes that they are having so many problems?

I've only ever once had a problem when iTunes crashed during a Movie I rented and it would not allow me to watch it again. Apart from that I've never had a single problem. But I have my Music meticulously setup and cataloged, maybe that is why.

Oafley Jones

I had the misfortune of having to restore two iphones yesterday. On the iphone 4 the process had to be restarted three times as itunes hung. Eventually I had to break the process down to chunks of apps and music. This was the latest pc version on pretty decent hardware. It's terrible terrible software.

Fat_Fingers

Its way of the world..

ITunes on Windows machine is absolute dog, bloated and slow junk..
Then when i use it on my wife’s Macbook its really good, i mean it. No crashes , not waiting forever to load up and no random issues with it.
I would say Apple doesn’t know or won’t do proper port to windows.

But coin also flips the other way.. I tried using Ms Office on Macbook and its pure junk, looks and behaves like some sort of demo or crappy shareware.. Yet run in on windows machine and its real joy to use it.

super_furry

The thing is that as far as Apple are concerned, they do have it right. It's restrictive, locks down your iPhone and prevents you from doing anything Apple don't want you to do.

Tallon

Apple well know what they are doing...

It's not the most imposible thing in the world to port it to Windows, but it makes sense to appear that Macs are better at running it.

It's the same reason they will not release an app to lock your iPhone if your power button is broke (Like mine) because they would rather you got it fixed through themselves.

iTunes is not the worst tbh, I like the way it organises all the albums and the layout

Oafley Jones

super_furry wrote: »

The thing is that as far as Apple are concerned, they do have it right. It's restrictive, locks down your iPhone and prevents you from doing anything Apple don't want you to do.

I dont think thats the issue. If it did the above smoothly then fine. The problem lies in that its a bloated resource hog thats prone to crashing. Talking to friends who are/were software engineers in apple they believe its just a lack of resources within apple rather than a sinister ploy to convert people to macs. Just look at the pace of conversion to 64bit for some of their stuff on OSX.

Zapho

jester77 wrote: »

What do people do with their iTunes that they are having so many problems?

I've only ever once had a problem when iTunes crashed during a Movie I rented and it would not allow me to watch it again. Apart from that I've never had a single problem. But I have my Music meticulously setup and cataloged, maybe that is why.

iTunes should work without crashing regardless of how well you've organised your music. Its not as if it goes "oh wait, this mp3 is missing some tag information. What do I do? Umm...ummm CRASH!!!".

The fact of the matter is that iTunes was first released in 2001. Its been in development for nearly 11 years and it's just a freaking media player. Its not unreasonable to expect it to be far better than it is.

vinnycoyne

Zapho wrote: »

it's just a freaking media player.

That's the problem - it's not. It's a storefront, backup system, sync system, social network (ping, home sharing), music player, catalogue organiser, etc. No wonder there are so many issues with it.

That said, the Mac version has been very reliable for me. A bit sluggish at times perhaps. I'd love to see some of it's components broken out into separate apps however.

Sad Professor

How is it that some people have nothing but problems with the Windows version of iTunes and some people have none? I know several Windows users who have been using iTunes for years and never had any problems. One of them had even been using it since before getting an iPod. Does it have a problem with certain hardware or versions of Windows?

As for the Mac version, it's probably getting a bit bloated, but I've been using it since it was released and have never had any issues with it.

Propane Nightmare

I have over 150gb of music, podcasts, films/tv shows, apps on my itunes and it very rarely crashes, and im using a laptop with 3gb ram and a pentium dual core processer.

Tallon

Just to point out, my iTunes never crashed on windows... I'm running everything from it

Solair

iTunes is the best of a bad bunch really. I haven't had many problems with iTunes other than the occasional refusal to burn a CD-ROM when you really really need it and that kind of thing and it is locked down tighter than anything else on the market.

Android : Cloud-based stuff is excellent and undoubtedly will develop rapidly, but a lot of the manufacturer software for syncing with your PC/Mac is shockingly poor. E.g. Samsung Kies :eek:
But, you can do everything through Gmail/Google apps, including syncing contacts/calendars, etc over the air without going near that junk.

Nokia : PC Suite's horrible and Windows-only. Rest of support e.g. for Mac and Linux is mostly by dodgy 3rd party software. Sony-Ericsson software's also horrendous.

Windows phones : OK-ish but not great doesn't hold a candle to iTunes.

All-in-all I would say that iTunes is still a good package, it's starting to bloat into the Music player / phone syncing version of MS Office

The things I would change:

1) Stop bloating it - they keep adding unnecessary junk to it which is not helping the user experience. It originally was successful because it had such a clean / simple interface

2) Stop trying to make the windows version look like Mac OS X. It really confuses end users as the widgets don't look like a windows app at all. I like the Mac GUI, but I don't like a little bit of Mac GUI stuck in the middle of my Windows desktop. It just doesn't work out of context.

old_aussie

http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/255093,itunes-1022-tightens-security-fixes-bugs.aspx?eid=19&edate=20110420&utm_source=20110420&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=daily_newsletter&eaddr=machine@exemail.com.au

If there is no problems why do apple keep releasing fixes?

Sad Professor

Software always needs fixes. I'd be more worried if they weren't releasing them.

Tallon

old_aussie wrote: »

http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/255093,itunes-1022-tightens-security-fixes-bugs.aspx?eid=19&edate=20110420&utm_source=20110420&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=daily_newsletter&eaddr=machine@exemail.com.au

If there is no problems why do apple keep releasing fixes?

Same with every single application out there tbf

mikemac

Itunes working fine on the mac but one issue

When downloading a lot of podcasts it freezes. Any music or whatever you've got playing will play for a minute or two then stop
By now everything has frozen, can't use Safari or any program

Have to power off and switch on again

Been happening for years

Solair

feelingstressed wrote: »

Itunes working fine on the mac but one issue

When downloading a lot of podcasts it freezes. Any music or whatever you've got playing will play for a minute or two then stop
By now everything has frozen, can't use Safari or any program

Have to power off and switch on again

Been happening for years

That does not sound like a problem with an application. Rather, it sounds like you're having some kind of system-wide problem that iTunes is triggering the symptoms of. E.g. you may have some kind of problem with CoreAudio or Quicktime or you might have some kind of underlying hardware problem that is causing crashes.

Mac OS X has a pretty rock-solid multitasking system built on BSD UNIX and has protected memory and a microkernel so there is no way that an application should be able to cause a system-wide failure like that without something serious going on behind the scenes.

You should *always* be able to kill / force quit a misbehaving app in Mac OS X by either clicking and holding on its dock icon and selecting FORCE QUIT or by holding down Option+Command+Escape and selecting the app you want to kill.

What you are describing is like someone having a heart attack because they stubbed their toe. There has to be some kind of deeper problem as the two events are not linked directly.


Back-up all your files (i.e. typically your home folder) to a DVD or external USB/firewire hard drive.
Then run software update and ensure that Mac OS X and all essential services are up-to-date.
Next run disk utility (in the /applications/utilities folder) and let it check and repair the permissions on your main drive typically called Macintosh HD
Reset the machine's PRAM : http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379 (See article). This often takes care of weird unexplainable glitches.

If all that fails, I would then try setting up a new user account and working out of that for a while. If the problem continues, then perhaps consider a fresh install of OS X.

If that fails, you have a hardware problem and need to get your Mac sent off for repair / repaired in an authorised repair centre.

Sad Professor

Good advice above. It's very unusual for OS X to lock up like that so it does suggest a deeper problem. Checking the logs in Console after the crash might give some hint as to the cause as well.

Oafley Jones

Sad Professor wrote: »

Good advice above. It's very unusual for OS X to lock up like that so it does suggest a deeper problem. Checking the logs in Console after the crash might give some hint as to the cause as well.

You'd be surprised what can upset osx. I remember having constant kernel panics on panther. Turned out to be the antivirus ucc insisted on installing. The security guy who was using the previous rev ibook hadn't any issues.

Solair

Oafley Jones wrote: »

You'd be surprised what can upset osx. I remember having constant kernel panics on panther. Turned out to be the antivirus ucc insisted on installing. The security guy who was using the previous rev ibook hadn't any issues.

Ah yes, UCC and their ridiculous paranoid WiFi rules!

I never understood why they couldn't just provide wireless internet access to students on WiFi on campus. There was no need to provide full deep network access via the public WiFi network. It would have saved them a lot of paranoia and a lot of headaches.

I found the whole process of setting up a Mac or PC for UCC WiFi access such a pain in the rear end that it was far easier to just buy a Meteor dongle!

Sad Professor

Oafley Jones wrote: »

You'd be surprised what can upset osx. I remember having constant kernel panics on panther. Turned out to be the antivirus ucc insisted on installing. The security guy who was using the previous rev ibook hadn't any issues.

Yeah, but that's just bad third party software. Anything that is running continuously in the background, like an AV application, is in a pretty good position to upset the OS. Especially if (as is usually the case with Mac AV) the software is garbage and was hastily ported from Windows and hasn't been updated in several years.

BBMcQ

I sync 3 iPhones and a iPad with the most basic of Samsung netbooks and have never had a problem ever with sync/backing up/updating software etc - think it has to do with some people being impatient with software (clicking during the "please wait" time). I'm not saying it's perfect and i'm not saying that it's always the user, but its definately the best of the bad bunch, and sure one of the most popular pieces of software in the world?

shoxter

I have a problem where I close itunes and graphically its gone, icon is gone from the taskbar, appears for all the world to be closed.Open task manager and there it is still running and using shedloads of cpu. Seriously annoying.

Solair

shoxter wrote: »

I have a problem where I close itunes and graphically its gone, icon is gone from the taskbar, appears for all the world to be closed.Open task manager and there it is still running and using shedloads of cpu. Seriously annoying.

Try using _File >Exit rather than just closing the app window. I think it's designed to run in the background.