Engadget Editorial: Hey Apple, why does it take an hour to put an album on my iPod?

[pm]

Frankly I'd be more than happy with wmp if it embedded the album art in the file rather than as a separate file.

I used a couple of programs to beat my collection into shape. Media monkey being one of them.
I'll probably go back to wmp after as it supports use storage and you don't have to use playlists to sync.

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk

Windows Media Player stores cover art as a separate file rather than embedding them...? That sounds so 20th century.... Ok, maybe I'm starting to like iTunes slightly better...

 

[QueBert]

True. There was an application that would do it for you, which I used and got most of the album art that I was missing. But I can't remember. Anyone remember?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkT3PLCbZTY

While I haven't used it so I can't comment on how well it works. The fact they have Biz Markie in the commerical makes me believe this is probably an outstanding program. Biz claims it fixes your music automagically.

 

[WelshBloke]

Windows Media Player stores cover art as a separate file rather than embedding them...? That sounds so 20th century.... Ok, maybe I'm starting to like iTunes slightly better...

Yeah, its happy to sort out all the other tags and finds and downloads the art nicely but then saves it as a separate file.

Apart from that its great, its non intrusive, you don't need to log in. You can get it to play most files and it'll sync to anything with a usb storage option.

It's the only thing that pisses me off about it.


Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk

 

[zerocool84]

So the casual user, which is who buys all products, is going to experience longer syncing times on iTunes because they don't turn off all the syncing options and don't sync every day like people on here do it seems.

 

[Raduque]

I'd rather click on a single button and have my contacts, calendar, photos, bookmarks and apps all sync in a minute.

Contacts, calenders, bookmarks and apps sync without needing a program on my PC.

The software is neither slow, monolithic, nor bullshit. So it just comes down to you not liking Apple.

If I had to manually drag and drop into a file system, I'd shoot myself first. It means the songs are then managed on the device itself, which can not even come close to 5% of the abilities of managing them in iTunes.

iTunes IS sluggish, it's over a hundred twenty mb on disk, and it's full of bullshit.

I never said I didn't like Apple - I simply don't like their hardware prices. The iPhone, iPod and iPad are all very nice devices, but I prefer the functionality of Android.

I also don't need or want iTunes jacking up my library by "managing" it. The only managing I do with my library is loading new tracks into the "All Song" library in Winamp.

if you have thousands of songs how do you track unplayed music?

Not an issue for me. I don't need to track anything about my music, I just listen to it on random.

 

[akugami]

iTunes store is slower than web browsers, but it has everything under the sun in one location. I don't know why they don't improve performance considering how much revenue they get from it.

Also, buying things in the iTunes store is the worst idea in the world. Amazon Mp3 is so far ahead (digital locker, for one), and Amazon's Mp3s are much higher quality.

Slowdowns in App selection (deleting or adding) never happens here, I'll have to check it on a Windows 7 machine later.

Actually I haven't purchased any music from Apple. I predominantly listen to music from Hong Kong and China. There is some Chinese music on the iTunes store, especially popular artists like Jacky Cheung but it's not my preferred place to purchase music. My music is mostly ripped from CD's I own.

The iTunes store is still for all intents and purposes a store based similarly to other web stores, just highly customized. There should be no reason why it shouldn't be as quick as Amazon's normal web store considering that iTunes does not have to worry about loading web pages in general, just the XML, graphics, and other files pertaining to their iTunes store.

The iTunes store component should be different from the music/app management for speed purposes. That doesn't mean they can't be highly integrated. Just look at how Nero does things where they integrate many different functions and have a common front end to call up the different functions. Relatively speaking, speed is not sacrificed. Think of MS's Office Suite. It's a suite of programs that does different tasks and relatively speaking is fast at what it does. Apple can just as easily go that route and still present a front end that makes it look like one application. IMHO, they should scrap iTunes as it is currently. Have a fast front end/wizard that will "jump" you to the proper application but also allow you to "jump" back to the front end/wizard or to a different part of the suite.

 

[Capt Caveman]

So the casual user, which is who buys all products, is going to experience longer syncing times on iTunes because they don't turn off all the syncing options and don't sync every day like people on here do it seems.

Incorrect.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Contacts, calenders, bookmarks and apps sync without needing a program on my PC.

And music with one click of the mouse? Yeah, that's what I thought.

 

[Anubis]

if you have thousands of songs how do you track unplayed music?

i don't

why would i want to?

 

[zerocool84]

Incorrect.

Well people are saying that if you sync all the time then it won't be long and the casual person won't sync all the time.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Well people are saying that if you sync all the time then it won't be long and the casual person won't sync all the time.

It's possible if you don't sync for a long while. But I don't turn off any of my sync options and only sync when there's an app update, so a couple of times a week. Personally, it would be too much effort(I'm lazy) to pick and choose what to sync every time I do it, so I just let it sync everything every time.

Seriously, iTunes was slow and laggy but over the last year or so, any lag is minimal and doesn't bother me. And unless I had to do a full restore would it ever it take a hour to fully sync.

 

[Kaido]

iTunes needs a complete rewrite.

If all you're doing is buying a song or app and then syncing it, iTunes is fine. For some managing of files, such as MP3's you ripped off CD's, iTunes is also fine.

Occasionally when I need to do something off of the beaten path like manually manage my apps on a device from iTunes performance takes a huge huge nosedive. One such case is when I am connecting a new mobile device and I want to manually select what apps gets synced from iTunes to the mobile device. Performance is not just bad, it's unacceptable.

Not to mention the occasional times when iTunes becomes unresponsive while browsing the app store or music store and I have to manually kill the app. This used to happen on a weekly basis. Browsing the app store could also be quicker. I mean, in many ways the iTune is just a glorified customized web browser. Considering that, the performance really should be a lot quicker.

iTunes is functional. I actually think the overall design is very good. There's certainly nothing inherently wrong with how it syncs and manages your apps and music to a device. Though it could use a few upgrades here and there. It does need a complete rewrite for speed and stability reasons.

I actually like iTunes, but it has definitely become bloated - especially on Windows. Totally agree with your post here. They need to do a complete revamp, like Adobe did with Acrobat. Acrobat got feature creep and turned uber bloated and I ended up using Foxit Reader for a long time, unless the last rev or two of the reader came out and it's back to zippy again. iTunes is really a database viewer for your music, so why the bloat, Apple?

If Apple jumps into the cloud, that may be the ideal method for everything - music, movies, apps, and so on, with local caching. I've been demoing Mog for the past week and have REALLY been enjoying it - streaming songs with local caching so I don't have to be 3G-connected to listen to songs in my car or inside a building, the entire library is there, and just ten bucks a month. Between that and Netflix, I have all of my movie/music needs covered for under $20/mo.

 

[Patranus]

iTunes is a great program.

The only issue I have with it pertains to metadata.

 

[QueBert]

i don't

why would i want to?

I've ripped about 500 cd's, a lot of which I've never listened to fully. I set up a smart playlist in iTunes that syncs 1 song every time I sync that has 0 plays. That way every day I get to listen to a song I've either never heard, or haven't heard since I ripped my CD's (close to a decade ago)

People with huge mp3 collections who want to use explorer to drag and drop songs to their Sandisk remind me of people who use Wordpad to code a good sized web site. To each his own I guess.

 

[Capt Caveman]

I've ripped about 500 cd's, a lot of which I've never listened to fully. I set up a smart playlist in iTunes that syncs 1 song every time I sync that has 0 plays. That way every day I get to listen to a song I've either never heard, or haven't heard since I ripped my CD's (close to a decade ago)

People with huge mp3 collections who want to use explorer to drag and drop songs to their Sandisk remind me of people who use Wordpad to code a good sized web site. To each his own I guess.

Yeah, I don't get this need to organize music in folder/etc. I have no clue how my music is organized but I know I can play whatever I want by genre, artist, rating, album and create whatever smartlist I want.