{"id":2453,"date":"2011-06-07T19:48:49","date_gmt":"2011-06-07T23:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adam-jackson.net\/blog\/?p=2453"},"modified":"2011-06-07T19:48:49","modified_gmt":"2011-06-07T23:48:49","slug":"itunes-has-become-a-little-like-windows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/06\/07\/itunes-has-become-a-little-like-windows\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2605 iTunes has Become a little like Windows"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Itunes<\/a><\/p>\n

Him: “Hey, can you help me with an iTunes problem?”<\/em><\/p>\n

Me: “Dial 1-800-275-2273” [The AppleCare # I know by heart]<\/em><\/p>\n

Him: “It’ll be really quick”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…and so begins 2 hours of work to resolve a single iTunes issue. I think iTunes is in desperate need of a re-working and I hope it happens this year.<\/p>\n

iTunes was a simple application for managing music. Rip, Mix, Burn was the slogan where the only real purpose of it was to rip CDs, mix them up and burn them back to CDs because that was the most logical and most common thing people were doing with sound management applications in 1999. The iPod came in 2001 and it was logical that iTunes was the place that you loaded up the iPod and the slogan became Rip, Mix, Send to iPod. The iTunes Music Store wasn’t released until 2003 and most people assumed iTMS would not actually be iTunes but be a website or separate application. It wasn’t and was built right into iTunes. That’s fine and the integration worked well.<\/p>\n

When Apple released Music Videos, TV Shows, Movies, Apps and Books and now Magazines via the iTunes [music] Store, <\/em>the feeling is that iTunes is simply being taxed to the limits. iTunes manages nearly everything digital in my life and iCloud isn’t going to make my life any easier when it comes to simplifying what part iTunes plays in my life. iTunes needs to be split into 10 applications or re-written from the ground up to expand beyond music. Most of us old timers realize that iTunes has remained unchanged since its initial release when you look at the basic organization of your content. It worked for music but if you try to organize something that is a .mov but is actually a music video and is part of a compliation and you want to show up as a music video on your iPod how much work that is in the Get Info area of that file. Also, most of those classifications don’t go into the files ID3 tag so if the iTunes Library DB files go, so does the majority of what you’ve done manually in iTunes. Playlists, categories, sound check, equalizer settings, sync properties, where you are in a book and what podcasts you’ve listened to and their ratings…that’s all gone. Poof. iCloud won’t be fixing that. That’s a Time Machine role to keep the iTunes Library functional in the event of corruption or failure but not everyone backs up their iTunes Library.<\/p>\n

It takes an expert to manage a large iTunes Library.<\/p>\n