Is it me or does iTunes really, really suck

is it really that important to have USB connectivity in your head unit? I use a simple 3.5 aux jack soldered onto my stock head units control board, and run from the headphone jack in my android to my stereo...control the track etc from the phone, rather than the stereo...its approx 11 inches in a different place, so NBD to me...drag and drop capability of the device is waaaaay more important to me than which interface I use to change tracks...

The free iPad the wife won as a prize is likely the only Crapple product that will ever grace our home. Looking to replace it with a Fire as soon as possible, maaaaybe a new Windows surface. But I will never purchase an apple product, ever, solely because of how I cant stand the communist like dominance they maintain over every aspect of the control of their devices.

4cylndrfury wrote: ...I will never purchase an apple product, ever, solely because of how I cant stand the communist like dominance they maintain over every aspect of the control of their devices.

I'm not looking for an argument or anything, but I would suggest that it is far more "communist" to allow users of your product to use, develop, and modify your product free of charge. The term "open source" comes to mind. Very "communist" idea there.

On the other hand, developing unique and desirable products and then vigorously fighting to maintain a competitive advantage is pretty much the very essence of capitalism.

I own only one type of Apple product. I was about $200 when I bought it, so I bought three, and now it's close to $600 (it's dropped in value recently, but I expect it to be roughly $700 at the end of the year).

Any guesses?

Nothing else they sell interests me.

Suggestions on good iTunes alternatives? I'd like something I can organize my music and build playlists on my PC and then transfer playlists directly to my Android phone.

Does Winamp allow for that?

tuna55 wrote: I own only one type of Apple product. I was about $200 when I bought it, so I bought three, and now it's close to $600 (it's dropped in value recently, but I expect it to be roughly $700 at the end of the year). Any guesses? Nothing else they sell interests me.

That would be AAPL--Apple stock. Well bought, sir!

Beer Baron wrote: Suggestions on good iTunes alternatives? I'd like something I can organize my music and build playlists on my PC and then transfer playlists directly to my Android phone. Does Winamp allow for that?

In the recent past, I've had some success with rhythmbox in Ubuntu. Not sure if there's a newer product out now or not.

1988RedT2 wrote:

tuna55 wrote: I own only one type of Apple product. I was about $200 when I bought it, so I bought three, and now it's close to $600 (it's dropped in value recently, but I expect it to be roughly $700 at the end of the year). Any guesses? Nothing else they sell interests me.

That would be AAPL--Apple stock. Well bought, sir!

You got it, it went straight into my Kids ESA fund for college.

1988RedT2 wrote:

4cylndrfury wrote: ...I will never purchase an apple product, ever, solely because of how I cant stand the communist like dominance they maintain over every aspect of the control of their devices.

I'm not looking for an argument or anything, but I would suggest that it is far more "communist" to allow users of your product to use, develop, and modify your product free of charge. The term "open source" comes to mind. Very "communist" idea there. On the other hand, developing unique and desirable products and then vigorously fighting to maintain a competitive advantage is pretty much the very essence of capitalism.

errmmm...Im not really talking about modding their software to get some profit out of it...not sure where youre going there....but being able to email myself an MP3 I already own directly from my iPhone, or use a standard printer for the documents I have in my iPad, or any of the zillions of other ways a regular PC is able to easily interact across platforms...Wanna watch the video stored in your iPad on the TV? Gotta have an apple tv....wanna listen to music off your NEW iPhone on the 2 year old stereo dock you used for your OLD iPhone? Too bad, you lose, do not pass go, do not collect $100 - please buy our newer more improved-ier dock. Forget using that old cable - heres our new cable, only $39.99 (a deal at twice the price) :eyes roll:

Say whatever you want about "the essence of capitalism", I vote with my wallet. Thanks for floundering up YET another thread though...the lack of political hullabaloo of late was really bringing me down.

I have been using Media Monkey for almost the entire 4-5 years that I've had my iPod Classic 80gb model. It works a lot better and easier to deal with than iTunes. Keep in mind that I've never bought music on iTunes, so YMMV.

If you have an Android phone, then Google Music is really, really cool. It allows you to upload up to 20,000 songs from your collection into a cloud service that you can access from a PC or your phone. It works great! You can cache music and playlists to the phone and you don't use your data.

SilverFleet wrote: I have been using Media Monkey for almost the entire 4-5 years that I've had my iPod Classic 80gb model. It works a lot better and easier to deal with than iTunes. Keep in mind that I've never bought music on iTunes, so YMMV. If you have an Android phone, then Google Music is really, really cool. It allows you to upload up to 20,000 songs from your collection into a cloud service that you can access from a PC or your phone. It works great! You can cache music and playlists to the phone and you don't use your data.

i've used media monkey at one point... liked it as I recall...

I don't add music very often to my computer, I use windows media player and still like it over itunes...

my phone acts as my mp3 player and has drag and drop...

all that being said I am going to be looking for an old used iphone or itouch (ya i know you iwennies hate that name ;-) as our sound system at church allows you to control personal monitor levels via IOS devices... unfortuantly the company has no intention of building for android :-/... so a $50 old iphone should do the trick... and not get used for anything else... ever... lol

as for the google play thing... haven't used it, and cell service sucks bad around here for att... think it may get a workout when my contract is up in the spring though :)

4cylndrfury wrote: Thanks for floundering up YET another thread though...the lack of political hullabaloo of late was really bringing me down.

Thank you for the kind words. Happy to oblige!

iTunes has recently been stealing my files. Seriously. The album is there on my iPhone and on my iPad and the iPod, but not on my macbook. Can I re-download it from the almighty "cloud"? Nope. I have already downloaded it (as evidenced by the fact that it is on my other devices) so I cannot do it again. Can I copy it from my device back to my MacBook? Nope. We just don't allow that. Can I get permission to get another copy of something that I have already paid for and can prove it with a receipt? Well, some guy named Steve was the only one who could grant that permission, and he is dead. So I am SOL. Have a nice day!

What better way to make money than by selling people a bunch of intangible ones and zeros and then making them go "poof" and forcing them to buy again? People think I'm a nut because I insist on buying music in "solid form." I ask you, who's the nut now?

1988RedT2 wrote: What better way to make money than by selling people a bunch of intangible ones and zeros and then making them go "poof" and forcing them to buy again? People think I'm a nut because I insist on buying music in "solid form." I ask you, who's the nut now?

I just buy the solid form and put the music on it. I can get CDs a hell of a lot cheaper when they're blank.

Other than that, I tried using Itunes when I made the mistake of trying to replace my broken Zune with an Ipod. berkeleying garbage and it promptly got deleted and I'm back to using the Zune software to play stuff on my laptop even though my MP3 player is still broken.

It constantly amazes me how people have problems with iTunes and iPods. I'll admit that iTunes is a bit of a resource hog, but it works so well with ripped CDs and organizing music, and then playing music on said iPod. And as I said, with an app (EZTunes Plus), I now put my songs and playlists on my android phone, so I can rip my CDs to an iTunes library and put them on the phone, and play them in the car. I had an iPod nano and I don't see how it was garbage, when it did exactly as asked to do (I replaced the Nano with the phone because 1: the phone has double the memory, and 2: the phone has bluetooth connectivity to the car stereo).

I share my library with my wife on her computer and she has an iPod Touch that works flawlessly, as well. We only sync up the songs we want on each device, and can load what we want off of CD or purchased music (though I did have to DL a converter to convert older protected songs to unprotected status to put on my Android phone).

I dunno, I guess I've just never found it that hard to manage my music with it.

In reply to Chris_V: Wasn't calling the Ipod garbage, I was calling Itunes garbage. Which it was, when it decided it wanted to work in between crashing constantly, corrupting the memory of a freshly bought Ipod Classic and slowing my computer down to the point of being unusable.

pinchvalve wrote: iTunes has recently been stealing my files. Seriously. The album is there on my iPhone and on my iPad and the iPod, but not on my macbook. Can I re-download it from the almighty "cloud"? Nope. I have already downloaded it (as evidenced by the fact that it is on my other devices) so I cannot do it again. Can I copy it from my device back to my MacBook? Nope. We just don't allow that. Can I get permission to get another copy of something that I have already paid for and can prove it with a receipt? Well, some guy named Steve was the only one who could grant that permission, and he is dead. So I am SOL. Have a nice day!

How is this for irony? My wife bought the Steve Jobs biography audible book. She listened to it and enjoyed it. There is NO WAY to move that book from her device to mine. And in the process of trying it disappeared and there is no way to recover it, even though we paid for it.

Grizz wrote: In reply to Chris_V: Wasn't calling the Ipod garbage, I was calling Itunes garbage. Which it was, when it decided it wanted to work in between crashing constantly, corrupting the memory of a freshly bought Ipod Classic and slowing my computer down to the point of being unusable.

I guess my wife and I just have better computers. As I said, I admit it's a resource hog, but I've never had problems with it on multiple machines. And it's not hogging resources if it's not turned on.

In reply to Chris_V:

Probably, I paid 439 for mine. But it has no problem with holding all of my music and playing it through the Zune software, so I'm guessing my computer being cheap isn't the fault there. Added bonus, I listen to music pretty much all the time, since my ears ring without some noise going to cancel that out.

SilverFleet wrote: If you have an Android phone, then Google Music is really, really cool. It allows you to upload up to 20,000 songs from your collection into a cloud service that you can access from a PC or your phone. It works great! You can cache music and playlists to the phone and you don't use your data.

Tried that. The playlists don't work quite right. They get saved to the cloud, not locally on the phone. So they only work when I have a reliable enough service to stream HQ music. Which is not while I'm driving my car around.

I'll have you know that when I tried to update the OS on my wife's iPad, it KILLED my computer. As in DEAD. Motherboard or CPU, I'm not sure which. No beep codes, no video. Nothing. True story, although in the spirit of disclosure, I will note that it was an older machine, but it was used regularly and worked fine right up until the time that iTunes killed it.

I can't wait to see how Xbox Music turns out. The so to be dead Zune software was great.

poopshovel wrote: 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'm an R-tard too. I don't care how computers work. I just want them to work. And my apple generally does that. (generally). And the music storage/management seems to work for me, but I'm not sophisticated enough to have two computers with music on them. I don't buy from the itunes store generally- can save a coupe bucks on amazone and it'll shoot them right into itunes. WHich I like.

What I dislike most about iTunes is not being able to modify playlists on the fly. Say a song inspires you to listen to another specific song. Instead of being able to insert another song next in line, you have to go back to the playlist, and perform a million swipes/edits to modify the list. Winamp has had this capability for years.

I purchased my first Apple product was purchased earlier this year, an iPod Nano. I use it almost exclusively for running. Honestly, it's less intuitive than the $30 clip-on MP3 player that it replaced. Hard keys are about 100x easier to use with sweaty fingers while running than a touch screen.