[dcortex]

iTunes is the only program that will manage music correctly, sorry to say.

All these other choices miss..especially in regard to SEACHABILITY.

There is no other application, Mac or Pc that will locate one out of 50,000 songs instantly!

So keep telling what we don't like about it and maybe apple will fix it.

[ReclaimerCube]

TRY WINAMP.
YOU CAN LOCATE WHATEVER YOU WANT OUT OF A MILLION SONGS.

[michaelkpate]

What I hate is that I always have to dig down through the options to find "Have iTunes organize my Music Folders." I have forgotten a couple of times and had to spend hours correcting/deleting broken links. With a 500GB harddrive, I really don't mind having multiple copies of music. I usually delete the ones outside the iTunes folder after a time, anyway.
I realize some people might feel exactly the opposite about it, but choosing from the setup wizard makes all the sense in the world to me.

[rkinne01]

I hate that I-Tunes feels so cluttered, others are right when they say that Itunes needs a mjor face lift.

I also hate that everytime I connect my Ipod Touch to I-Tunes that it automatically backs it up without asking.

I-Tunes has terrible album art tagging, I have dozens of Albums that I -Tunes sells but for some reason won't download the album art for them. Windows Media Player does this much, much better.

[SlotcarBob]

LOL. Yeah, Windows XP. That's what we all need. A "real" OS.

Remarking on the article, it was great, and right on. He didn't miss a single point. FYI, many of those issues are not there on a Mac, but then, ever try to use anything MS creates for the Mac. Pure crap. This is payback. LOL.

A couple things:
1. Quicktime has no security issues on a Mac. It's that world class OS you people run that is the problem (I am sympathetic, and think beheading should be the punishment for making and spreading bad software).
2. Mac's, and Apple software, have always been proprietary, and minimalist. That's why we buy it. No third party crap all over the place to cause problems with our hardware and software. I am deeply sorry that you have these security issues. People should be in jail for that, instead of getting hired. And Windows is quite impressive for the fact that it can run about any piece of hardware on the planet. That is truly phenomenal. But the safer route is not to do that. Apple, and it's customers choose that.

In closing, iTunes is a bit better on the Mac, but if they chose to incorporate most of the ideas from this article, it would improve the product on both platforms.

[bear90039]

As for your hate # 3, have you tried the "Get Album Artwork" selection under the "Advanced" menu? Just asking. If you had you would know that that adds album artwork for every track in your library. (As long as it's something the iTunes store sells.) Nomatter where you purchased (or stole) your copy.

For tracks it doesn't carry, you need only to find the pic somewhere on the net. Click it and drag it in the art window at the bottom of the iTunes window. It's been there for years in the Mac version. I'm sure it exists in the Windows version as well. If not. sorry MS fanboys.

Knowlege is power. Try to Hate a little less.

[Wukoki]

I like iTunes well enough, but I'd like to see an ability to sort for broken links, and also an ability for recently played items (especially podcasts). These are simple changes that would greatly enhance usability.

[xone]

removed complete misinformation.....


You could try these for Mac:


Audion 3
Songbird (yep its multiplatform)


There'll be more but Ive wasted enough time on this.


As for locked-down "ecosystem" , thats firmly in the Microsoft domain.




Edited by MPHEnterprises - No Personal Attacks

[cogwac]

no great way to find new music I might like . . . other than a direct search in iTunes Music store. no recommendations.
there's a plugin - nuTsie sideTunes - that plays new music based on the music in my itunes.

[philipashlock]

In response to:
I've had this gripe since iTunes 1st hit the scene and can't believe no one else does: Start playing an album (not playlist) in iTunes. Then browse anywhere else in your library (say, for instance, to do some ID3 housekeeping or to create a few playlists) - BrotherJ
I too have always felt this is the most fatal flaw in the design of iTunes. This makes itunes useless for on-the-fly playlist creation and modification. If you ever want to create or edit a playlist while the music is playing at a party, the party will suffer constant interruptions of deafening silence if you happen to be browsing the Library for more tracks when the current track ends. I think I could excuse this thoughtless UX mishap if you could at least enqueue the next track or if it only happened when you played directly from the library. Unfortunately, it plagues the behavior of tracks playing from a playlist as well if you want to navigate the playlist in browse view (in an effort to work around the flaw, you might try to make the library into one big playlist). If you have a playlist playing and browse within it, the playlist is interrupted. Furthermore, the currently playing track should be the currently playing track wherever you view it. If you start a track by clicking it from within the Library and then decide you want to queue tracks to follow it, you might think you can just make a playlist and add the current track, but if you do that the playlist view will not show that the current track is playing, meaning you can't seamlessly transition from a track playing from your Library to having that track play within the context of a playlist. The best apps I've seen that get this model right are Winamp and Rhythmbox (an iTunes clone for linux that fixes lame limitations like this). Both winamp and rhythmbox have a separate playlist or queue panel. In Winamp playing a track that you view within the Library view of an album will place all of the tracks of the album into the playlist pane and the clicked track will be the one playing. You are then free to reorder, remove, or add to that playlist on-the-fly. Rhythmbox works a similar way, there's an added Queue pane available on the left sidebar of the cloned itunes UI. In both cases, you don't need to create or name this playlist, it's just always there for you to modify, but you can save it for later if you want to. Fortunately these two apps also support portable music devices like ipods in a really straightforward manner, not to mention being compatible with stuff like iTunes DAAP music library sharing over the network. Now if only they'd make these apps for OSX; Songbird seems promising. Also, Picasa trumps iPhoto

[davebarnes]

Why iTunes Music Store when there is MP3Sparks.com ?
Why iTunes Music Store when there is eMusic.com ?
Why iTunes Music Store when there is AmieStreet.com ?
Three excellent sources of DRM-free music.

[dcortex]

"If you ever want to create or edit a playlist while the music is playing at a party, the party will suffer constant interruptions of deafening silence if you happen to be browsing the Library for more tracks when the current track ends."






You must have a slower computer, as I've done this in professional situations with no ill effects. Its easy to manipulate muliple playlists while playing offa one.



Or adding tracks later in the MIX currently playing. Just don't double click anywhere and no probs..







What I call for in iTunes is



1.a real metod of eliminating doubles...(not that weak show duplicates routine)



2. A method of managing playlists..or at least saving or exporting more than one at a time..jeez...



3. A method of sychronizing iTunes across networks (never gonna be permitted till loss of drm issue)



4. Crossfade without dimming the outgoing (like a real DJ would segue..cmon Apple)


all these functions would be in the program..but thanks for the plugins that do these functions now folks, thanks a lot for posting!

[dtla1730]

Apple is Microsoft 2.0 in beta. Very soon they'll be banking out of control based on the control freak principles they apply in product development.

Microsoft only wishes they'd thought of it sooner.

[philipashlock]

I think you misunderstood me, but I also didn't correctly describe the problem. The deafening silence is the result of tracks initiated from media Library and then nothing continuing when the track ends if you're not still viewing the track in the media library. There's no way to transition a track played from the library to be within a playlist. At parties it's common for people to want to "put on an album" instead of using a playlist as a necessary conduit for manipulating the night's playlist. If something is played directly from the library it screws up the possibility of a seamless flow to something from another album. Furthermore, there's no simple option to just enqueue a track other than dragging/adding it to an actively playing playlist and manually placing it after the current track, even this can be a cumbersome and time consuming process. How about a button or a context menu? I can't believe that you can "add as next track for party shuffle" and nothing else. You get control over queueing the one playlist that you have no control over.

[dcortex]

You're right there's no way to use iTunes as a pro dj program..And now I understand what you were trying to do


Use Ceratto if you want to DJ on Mac or another program on PC like Mix Meister.. These programs truly overlap tunes.


When I need to do what you are trying to do (transition from single tune to playlist) I open another program for the single play


(VLC or such) and transition to the iTunes playlist..



And if you have to use iTunes, just open a second window, make another playist with the selection currently playing at the top..add your new tunes.

Now instanly transition to the new list without dipping the level. You should be in the same spot in the song. If you're good..it woun't even sound as bad as the needle jumping on a real record.

[jschaffe]

There are usually 2 or 3 free songs per week on iTunes, as well as a selection of videos. Click on the words "FREE ON iTunes" or "See All" in the header of the "Free" box at the bottom of the iTunes Store home page for a complette listing. Typically one of the free songs is in the Latin genre, but free nonetheless.

Admitting that I'm probably a "culture vulture", I've also found that Amazon offers several free mp3's every week or two. Start at the mp3 main page, click on "Special MP3 Deals", then look at the bottom of that page for "Featured Free Songs."

[cortelle]

iPods are almost completely useless to anyone in the population that is blind or visually impaired.

[philipashlock]

dcortex said:

>

Quote

Now instanly transition to the new list without dipping the level. You should be in the same spot in the song. If you're good..it woun't even sound as bad > as the needle jumping on a real record.

>
>





I'm not sure if you're saying that tongue-in-cheek or if you're suggesting that there's actually a method to have itunes do this transition. It sounds like you're suggesting that you queue the same song in another itunes window and hit play in that window to move from playing via the library to playing via a playlist. I don't see how you could do this other than transitioning at the beginning of another track, there's no way to start a track from the middle without hitting play first - which begs the question: why even open another itunes window? I'm not sure I understand your suggestion.




Also, I'm not a dj, I'm not looking to use itunes to dj, I just like to be able to navigate my music library without having to worry about the music stopping. This is true for personal listening, but obviously more annoying when other people are enjoying the music and if other people want to take control and play stuff from the library. Another thing that's nice about Rhythmbox is a "Party Mode" view that makes the app full screen so that it's sort of like a music-only kiosk.






You seem pretty complacent with the way iTunes works and I'm surprised that you're not annoyed to have to use another app like VLC to do something so simple. Don't you think it'd be helpful if iTunes didn't behave this way? So many people act like Apple always gets design and UX decisions right. I'm still annoyed that you can't cut and paste files in Finder. Apple thinks that's a power-user feature or something and assumes that people should just be happy with drag-and-drop-and-delete or copy-and-paste-and-delete. Sometimes simplicity of features or UI models means that the user-experience suffers, it gets more complicated or involves a longer process.

[dcortex]

now you hit the nail on the head!
by design iTunes has one more flaw I'll crow about

1. Why does every new tune you drag to Itunes (or double click) add itself to the library?

this should be a seperate function..don't know how many hours I've spent removing the single (or several) songs I never want to ADD

tophillipashock---As for the seamless transition to the new PLAYLIST,....open that new window and after starting play, instantly, -- just position your cursor in the exact spot where the same song was playing from the other list ...... (It would be better if you could play from the middle to start)

[philipashlock]

I'm sorry I still don't understand your directions. Don't you still have to explicity hit play on that playlist in the other window? there's no way for it to know that you want the other playlist to be playing next is there? What do you mean by "position your cursor in the exact spot where the same song was playing"? You mean highlight the track in the playlist?



Also, in case you didn't know, you can set your preferences so that iTunes doesn't copy files into your Library (it'll still add the metadata, but it won't move the file).