back to article Underdone iTunes put back in oven for another month

Back on September 12, during Apple's iPhone 5 rollout soirée, the company also previewed a "completely redesigned" iTunes software, promising that it would appear this month. It won't. In an email widely circulated on Tuesday, Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said that the new version – presumably iTunes 11, seeing as how we're …

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  1. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    Going MTV

    You can sum up what the iTunes universe should do in just two lines.

    iTunes - Gather a big list of media and play it.

    iTunes Store - Figure out what you like and sell you more.

    Neither does a good job at those simple core requirements. Shoveling more iCloud at it isn't the fix.

  2. Esskay
    Meh

    Nice that they're finishing it -

    But without the maps fiasco, would they still care? Or would this be getting shovelled out the door in the knowledge that iFans will say how magical it is anyway?

    Considering what a massive part of the "walled garden" iTunes constitutes, it's amazing that it remains one of the worst things they're produced.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nice that they're finishing it -

      "...Considering what a massive part of the "walled garden" iTunes constitutes, it's amazing that it remains one of the worst things they're produced..."

      The more so, when you also consider that the monstrosity iTunes became was originally a very slick MP3 player called Soundjam from the now defunct Casady and Greene, which Apple bought about a decade ago —and then proceeded to spend the intervening years encrusting it in ever-thicker layers of shit

    2. the-it-slayer
      Facepalm

      Re: Nice that they're finishing it -

      Glad you had hours of fun fathoming out other crap media software (apart from Winamp). One of the worst things Apple has ever produced? It's no iOS6 Maps at all and does what it says on the tin.

  3. cd

    iFail

    In general the database-driven iApps are frustrating to anyone above a novice, or anyone who wants to put media files on something besides an iPod. I'm using all 3rd-party apps, why spend for another Mac? Do some reviews on better Linux lappies, Reg.

  4. Neoc

    I gave up.

    I begrudgingly bought an iPad (first gen) back when it was the only kid on the block and was pleasantly surprised. I am *not* an Apple fan, but this was something I could use.

    Until I tried to install and use iTunes on my PC. Good lord, talk about trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. Try as I might, I could never get the media listings to work properly (sometimes it'd add a new directory of files, sometimes it wouldn't) and it took forever to transfer files to specific apps.

    I finally gave up with iTunes10 when trying to sync my iPad now took my entire computer into la-la land and I had to kill the iTunes process to get control back. I now have an Android tablet - it's not as shiny and (to be fair) a little less responsive - but if I want to add files to the damn thing I just hook it up as a USB drive and dump the files in the media directory.

    iTunes - the reason Apple lost an iPad user.

  5. Peter 39

    No surprise

    I think Apple has been hearing for some time that iTunes needs major work, especially on Windows. I guess that some have not been listening.

    Having now seen what happens when you ship an un-ready product, folks have decided to take the time to do it better.

    A good plan indeed.

    1. ThomH

      Re: No surprise

      People have been criticising the Windows port of iTunes with good justification for nearly a decade, so many have definitely not been listening. What surprises me is that the push back against Safari had a very quick effect — it speedily switched from Apple's custom font and window rendering to fitting in properly via Windows' native controls and text — but iTunes has clung on.

      I'm going to imagine, despite having no real evidence, that the current iTunes is the last resting place of Carbon, which is probably less distantly descended from QuickTime for Windows than you'd hope. In my fantasy world the new release will sweep that aside, preferring whatever technological basis seems to work for Safari and dumping the heft. I'm happy in my world.

    2. Velv

      Re: No surprise

      I admire you're optimism. I really do hope they fix iTunes and make it work.

      Sadly I seem to remember the hype before iTunes 10 said pretty much the same things that are being said now.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    iTunes 11.0.00 eh?

    Thanks for the warning.

    I'll wait until 11.1.03 or greater.

  7. JeevesMkII

    It's about time they pruned iTunes.

    iTunes really is suffering from the never ending feature creep. It would be really nice if they ripped everything that had nothing to do with playing music out of it and put it some different apps. I suspect that's not what they're going to do though.

    Doesn't it ever strike the people that work on this software that iTunes is a daft name for an app that sells people Angry Birds for their phone?

    1. dotdavid

      Re: It's about time they pruned iTunes.

      "a daft name for an app that sells people Angry Birds for their phone"

      How about iToons?

  8. The Alpha Klutz

    how long does it take to knock up a shit music player?

    why are all the main music players so shit? the crack smokers at apple should learn their fucking place and study how to implement MediaMonkey on Mac so that people dont have to use iTunes....

    1. The Alpha Klutz

      Re: how long does it take to knock up a shit music player?

      i literally boot a second Windows XP machine w/ mediamonkey to listen to the codecs apple dont like because apparently a top of the line thousand pound computer from apple cant play most audio formats go figure. and they wanna cram their dick down your throat about being good at media.

      1. The Alpha Klutz

        Re: how long does it take to knock up a shit music player?

        I guess in Apple world everyone has an iPod so it doesnt really matter what format the music ends up in it would probably sound better through a tin can and string than it would through an iPod. but the facts are too painful for iPod owning masses

  9. IHateWearingATie
    WTF?

    Just how bad must iTunes 11 be...

    ... given they've been perfectly happy with the truly hateful Windows implementation for so many previous versions?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Please make it better

    - Please don't be slow and be a big memory hog.

    - Please play FLAC files.

    - Please be able to find the bloody songs that you lost. When I tell you that track 1 of an album is *there*, please assume that the rest of the album is in the same folder and NOT force me to go through the slow process of pointing you at each track individually.

    - Please implement a better browser in iTunes Store. I don't want to wait for you to refresh just because I've left you for 30 minutes.

  11. Confuciousmobil
    Meh

    Cloud

    Having all my music in the cloud is great - I hope they can do the same or video.

    But I think people hoping the next version will be slimmer, faster and capable of playing more formats are p!ssing in the wind. It is likely to be more bloated and they haven't cared about Windows in the first 10 versions, I can't see that changing any time soon.

    I would be happy with a way of removing duplicates, but I have a feeling I am getting caught in the wind as well.

  12. groovyf

    Since either the last IOS 6 upgrade or iTunes update Home Sharing has completely stuffed up foreme (and many others) on both iPad and iPhone. When selecting the Shared library via the Music app, it sticks at a grey half-moon of death when loading the library. Sometimes it *might* work but you'll only see a small amount of albums, artists, songs. Sometimes it'll work but mostly not.

  13. Dexter
    Black Helicopters

    iTunes is fine in the Mac, and always has been.

    I have to wonder; is the crappy performance on Windows a deliberate Apple policy to sell more Macs?

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge
      WTF?

      My iTunes library has disappeared up its own wazoo more than once and that's on a Mac. Thankfully I store my music how I want in my own music folder so all it's got to do is read/set MP3 tags but it's not even very good at that.

      Apple just aren't that good at in-house software. Looks nice though.

      1. Lallabalalla
        Angel

        "Thankfully I store my music how I want in my own music folder"

        That's your problem right there. Stick to The Apple Way young Padawan.

  14. KroSha
    Stop

    I've been using iTunes on Mac OS since the very beginning, and it's slowly become more and more unwieldy. I honestly believe that it's time to give the whole thing a serious redesign, preferably breaking it in to three separate apps.

    1. Apple Media Store. The front end app store for buying all the stuff Apple so desperately wants to sell us.

    2. iDevice Manager. Where we can load any media from the database(s) into the iDevice of your preference. This could also hook in to iPhoto and whatever other repositories exist in your file system.

    3. iTunes. The database manager app that (shock!) just plays stuff, but does it very well and with minimum overheads.

    The resources that iTunes currently needs for just playing a song is, quite frankly, daft. Apple has a perfectly adequate media player in Quicktime, but it never gets opened, just because iTunes wants to be the front end for everything.

    1. Esskay

      ^This is exactly what needs to happen

      but unfortunately, it won't.

      Having the whole iTunes store in your face when you want to listen to music is more or less how they want it, I believe - sadly I don't think it'll change without user backlash (and since everyone *has* to use iTunes for absolutely everything, backlash can't happen in any meaningful way).

      It's completely daft (like having to go down to the supermarket and having your dinner in the meat section so they can sell you crap while you're enjoying the stuff you've already bought).

      Personally VLC has been the best thing I've encountered when it comes to ease of playing pretty much anything. I honestly think that if archaeologists discovered some unidentified language written on 10,000 year old stone slabs, they could digitise it and VLC player would find a way of making sense of it.

  15. Lallabalalla
    Angel

    With so many people knowing exactly what's wrong with Apple software in general and iTunes in particular, you'd think getting it right would be a shoo-in for Actual Apple Engineers.

    I humbly count myself, as a developer, among the first group....

    Hey, Cook: I can fix your rapidly deteriorating public image AND your crumbling software for a full 50% less salary than all your CTOs combined. How about it?

  16. Malcolm Weir Silver badge
    FAIL

    How big does it need to be?

    Totally coincidentally,. my token MacOS box decided to download an update for iTunes yesterday. This is a MacOS 10.6 box, so not exactly leading edge, but also not an antique: it's about the same age as stock Windows 7.

    The download, just for iTunes, was 179MB.

    Which says it all, really.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: How big does it need to be?

      its not quite done yet, needs moar megabytes

    2. bazza Silver badge

      Re: How big does it need to be?

      179MB is a ridiculous size, way too large for functionality it has. I've noticed that with safari patches too, they're unbelievably large. Apple must be doing something very bloaty; the whole of Firefox, Chrome or even IE is around about 20MB or less. Why can't Apple match that?

  17. toadwarrior

    Itunes is a bit shit but quite frankly all media players suck in some way. VLC does the job best. I just wish I could find a decent mutiple tag editor / renamer for linux. Everything seems to lack something. It should be one of the easiest things to create just blatantly copy everything in tag & rename on windows.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Zero bits

    Does it still try and scratch every iDevice that gets connected, as the default first action?

    iTunes is usable, barely, on the Mac.The Windoze version must be abominable.

  19. bep

    aaargh!!

    I had the misfortune to have to use it just this morning to load a couple of movies on to my patner's iPad. This should be breathtakingly simple, no? It's a media device after all. Well, what can you say, what a piece of crap.

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