Is it me or does iTunes really, really suck

I am fed up with this butt ugly piece of excrement. Once I've got stuff on my iPhone/iPad it works great, but I'd rather use Fortran than iTunes.

More than one computer? Heh, heh, iTunes will wipe out all your music when you sync from one to the other! Oh, and don't forget to deauthorize/reauthorize all your machines every stinking time you get a new computer.

And get a new device? Well that's an opportunity to wipe out all your data in your apps!

Playlists, Libraries, WTF?

Gee, maybe I should just iCloud everything so Anonymous has a chance to use all my information for cyber terrorism.

Sheesh. Sorry, rant over.

And people call me Luddite for buying CD's.

It works very well, if you use it with one device, on one computer. I rarely use my iPod, so its NBD for me.

I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said. And just to reiterate: iTunes sucks.

Use MediaMonkey. iTunes is an shiny happy person.

I-anything is designed as a complete, SIMPLE, one person user experience.

It is specifically designed for the average r-tard (for lack of a better word) who buys a computer once every 5 years when theirs get's stuffed full of viruses and never does anything besides use it for it's intended purposes.

It's not meant for people like us.

iTunes works fine with multiple devices on the same computer also. It does however get really funny when you try to sync multiple computers. I don't think it's designed for that and I'm not surprised it doesn't do a good job. After all, it wants full control over your devices...

And yeah, I also mostly buy CDs.

Gawd forbid I just want to cherry pick a few albums to put on my daughters iPod. Nope! Either wipe the sucker clean or load all 8000 songs on it

I reluctantly went from buying vinyl LP's to buying CD's, as the former became almost impossible to find. I'm not aware of any newer format, unless you count that silly "pay to download a copy" goofiness, which I fail to recognize as an actual product, and therefore will never purchase.

Cone_Junky wrote: Gawd forbid I just want to cherry pick a few albums to put on my daughters iPod. Nope! Either wipe the sucker clean or load all 8000 songs on it

That's actually incorrect. You can turn manual mode on which allows you to upload only whatever you want onto your ipood and also gives you the ability to only update your iphone software when you want to (the newest IOS that works on the 3GS iphone apparently kills it's speed, I've never updated, my phone works awesome still).

I have a file folder labeled "itunez" any song I want on my iphone, I put in there. Two clicks, and it syncs ONLY that folder to the phone. Perfect.

Yeah, I just make playlists and have it sync whichever ones I want. I'd have to fill my entire 64GB iPhone to get all my music on there otherwise, and 90% of it is crap I haven't listened to in years anyway haha.

The key is to turn off sync. Manually manage everything & you won't have problems.

In reply to Basil Exposition:

Yeah, it sucks.

As someone who still listens to cassettes and AM radio on the way to work, I've been pretty happy with iTunes. So basically, I am the aforementioned luddite (or "retard" for the lay-person,) who is amazed by the ease of use. Happy to be unhelpful.

I love my iPhone, but hate ITunes as well. I just want to hook up my phone, and click and drag whatever music I want and be done with it.

My friend made a good point. iTunes works great for people who buy music from the iTunes store. People with 500GB of downloaded/ripped music do not have a good time with iTunes.

My biggest gripe isnt iTunes, its that no one supports a "drag and drop" media player that also syncs well with a car stereo. Its either iPod or nothing.

Sure I can use a USB stick to load tunes into my car radio, but thats somewhat tough to carry with me and the USB stick accepting media players do not have a great interface. The bonus to the iDevice is that when I unplug it from my car, its charged.

Spoolpigeon wrote: I love my iPhone, but hate ITunes as well. I just want to hook up my phone, and click and drag whatever music I want and be done with it.

you mean you want to use it like any other generic USB based mp3 player?

BLASPHEMY!!!!

iTunes, like all Apple products, is designed with the assumption that you will use it in the One True Steve Jobs-approved fashion. Trying to do it any other way is just asking for pain.

So -- don't try to sync one device to multiple computers, and remember to select the playlists that you want it to sync onto the device. One advantage to the "sync" model over the manual-drag-and-drop one is with podcasts, because you just plug it in and it figures out what to copy over and what to remove now that you're done listening to it (assuming you ran the podcast all the way to the end).

It also works fine with big piles of ripped music, although it does seem to be a bit happier if you ripped it with iTunes vs doing it with some other tools that write the id tags differently.

CD's, lets make a comeback! haha

MA$$hole wrote: The key is to turn off sync. Manually manage everything & you won't have problems.

This pretty much sums everything up......I learned it years ago and it hasn't changed much. I've never bought music over itunes either. Always either ripped, transferred or downloaded. Never had any issues......I still rock the 512mb ipood shuffle though.

MA$$hole wrote: The key is to turn off sync. Manually manage everything & you won't have problems.

I'll third that.

Also, I have gotten it to play nice on multiple computers, at least for my nano.

Yea, it really seems more to be an auto-sync problem than an iTunes problem, and it affects PC's and android devices too.

I do mine manually and have no problem synching my playlists and songs I want to my Android phone (to play my playlists in my car using the bluetooth connection. No wires). You CAN make it do what you want. It's not that hard.

When I used an iPod (I gave it to my mom), I only used iTunes to update the it. Then I would uninstall it. Then go to WinAmp and use that to move music around how I wanted it.

With all the updates to iTunes, my way of doing things took less time to reintall it once a year then to keep it updated.

I certainly don't let it manage my music collection. iTunes gets it's own folder of music to play with, separate from the rest of the pile.