People go on about iPod + iTunes + Store being this all time great combination. I'll admit that I love my iPod, and if/when one comes out with similar capabilities to the iPhone player I'll be buying it. However, I don't think I'm being controversial here when I say that iTunes on Windows really sucks.
It's not just the fact that the interface is alien to the OS in which it is running, or the fact that the much vaunted coverflow is much less "scrolling like butter" more "scrolls like screeching fingernails on a chalkboard". It's not even the fact that it is a highly intrusive install, requiring QuickTime and making it take over more default file types than it should. It's just the fact that it is really buggy, has a habit of totally crashing (especially when I am trying to access the iTunes store), occasionally trashes it's own library xml file that it requires for some reason and is a complete resource hog. The software sucks.
What is worse is that the initial release of an iTunes version *always* sucks. This is a universal given. Recently 7.3 was pushed out the door to enable the iPhone on June 29th. On July 11th they released a new version 7.3.1 - the release notes? iTunes 7.3.1 fixes a minor problem with accessing the iTune library. Well, at least they've hopefully fixed that one then. But seriously - every time a new version of iTunes is released, a bug fix release follows shortly after for some pretty easy to spot regression.
I'm not just ranting because I'm hacked off at having to go through another install and then clean up (to fix all the defaults that QuickTime has taken over), or the fact that they repeated exhibit the same quality mistakes when releasing software. It is the fact that you'd think the quality of iTunes on Windows would be really important to their overall business model. You'd think that iTunes should be one huge billboard for them on their switching campaign?
I'm guessing that the iTunes team is a pretty small one at Apple. I'm guessing the Windows team is possibly the poorer cousins of the rest of the development. I wish they would spend a little bit more effort on their Windows releases.
Rant over. I'm about to head over to Teamprise HQ this weekend involving plenty of flying time, hence why was so annoyed this morning when I found all my podcast subscriptions had been lost. Sigh.
I agree with you on everything you say.
I recently switched to SongBird for my music. Already at version 0.6 and 0.7beta is much better than iTunes.
I had several Issues on the past with iTunes.
Here are some examples:
- Removing iTunes from a Windows machine after restarting my cd-rom disappear.
I resolved removing GEARAspiWDM from the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{bunch of numbers} (look for the one that show CD-ROM on the right pannel.
- I also had the same problem you had on one of your post about been unable to close it so I had to disable the Bonjour service.
- Is slow like hell when you have a lot of music.
- And the last one was that I tried to share the same external hard drive with Windows and Mac and use iTunes in both with the same library.
After a few test my pc crash.
After rebooting it say "Verifying DMI pool data" and then it hang.
I had to re-install everything.
I hate it.