I hate, HATE iTunes
 

iTunes has gotten so bad it's almost funny - it's certainly ridiculous.
When I got my first iPhone I tried to sync it with the contacts on my computer. For some idiotic reason you had to use iTunes. I used the default settings (my mistake) and the stupid thing tried to put all my music and half a terabyte of images on my phone. Lesson learned, Apple's total integration/complete f-up of your devices scheme can't be trusted.
Then I got an Apple TV and every time I turn on the Apple TV iTunes wakes up my computer and starts playing my music collection. iTunes is making me sorry I even HAVE a music collection.
Yesterday I installed a new Chamberlain garage door opener and when I used the external keypad to open it music started playing out of my phone! Yeah, iTunes has even invaded my garage door opener. The thing is, I deleted iTunes radio from my phone, or so I thought. The icon isn't there, but if I open my garage door the app launches and starts playing music. Without the app icon I can't intentionally play music on the phone, but it's a comfort to know that if I have a need to rock out to Aqualung through a squeaky little iPhone speaker all I need to do is open my garage door.
Apple - WTF??

I'm no I-tunes fan either - their store seems to push stuff other than what you may be interested in.

Cheers JB

television - iTunes starts playing music automatically when watching Apple TV - Ask Different

Your problem may be the one described above: related to the remotes. Otherwise, how about asking your local Apple store?

I dumped iTunes long ago…mostly for their predatory marketing practices. I hated walking away from a couple $k in music, but daily updates, all resulting in harder to get to music and easier ways of dumping you in the Store?

Now I have Spotify and Pandora. Cost a little, but I don't feel like an Apple prisoner.

ITunes for sure sucks as a program. I use it ONLY to back my iPhone and iPads up to the computer.

The photo album part of it is stupid complex. Why in the world can't I see the photos I want to organize right in iTunes and delete or change the photos.

It is for sure the worst part about Apple. I like my phone but hate iTunes.

Wow. I never considered this particular aspect of how DRM is evil.

I bought an iPhone for my manager to use at work yesterday. She had to back up using the iCloud, not iTunes.

Having said that, I avoid iTunes like a rabid dog. I buy music only through Amazon, and iTunes on the iPod doesn't like to play nice with my music. But once I buy on Amazon, those songs are mine to copy, play on multiple devices, and do whatever I want with them.

Yea, I am all Apple, but iTunes, especially the latest version with iTunes radio sux Kong balls. I dont know why they can totally nail the hardware and drop the ball on software. They can hire the best on the planet for cripes sake. However, I must say I love the iTunes radio. Just great songs over and over again.

I don't care for the latest music interface update on the iPhone but otherwise I have no problem with iTunes.

This. One of the more painful things about my own experience breaking away from the Apple ecosystem a few years ago was having to abandon a sizeable library of music that, by design, is essentially locked to Apple. You bought it, but it's not yours. In the meantime there are numerous places where you can get the same music, often for the same or even lesser cost, and it's yours. Tough lesson about DRM.

I have never known anyone who didn't HATE iTunes. Why can't they straighten it out? It's really the only thing that keeps me with Apple, as I use the music every day for band and gym work. Someday I will have had it and they'll lose me.

I agree iTunes is a pretty terrible program. However, I don't really understand why anyone uses it.

Between work and personal, I have had 4 iPhones and 2 iPads, and I haven't opened iTunes in 3+ years.

Absolutely horrendous. Windows 8 bad. They took the simple, everyday features of the music player and buried them. Instead the UI is dominated by their recommendations, Apple radio, and social features. I have a large music collection that I just want to put on shuffle dammit.

Unfortunately each new software update seems this way. Apple is slowly abandoning their simple, intuitive UI and forcing more mandatory features (i.e. bloat) down their users' throats. I have an entire folder of mandatory, can't delete them Apple provided Apps that I could care less about. The only reason I stick with them is the fact that Android seems no better.

At last report, iTunes accounts for 63% of all digital music sales. But the trend has been for people to stop buying music and just 'stream' it. Hence the Beats purchase.

I have no issues with iTunes and buy an occasional song. But I have started streaming Apple Radio and I'm impressed with the song selection.

iTunes would have to improve to suck. I have seen better-designed malware.

^^^I'll take this one for a $100. I have completely abandoned it. Got lots of purchases that I eventually need to move. Its been so long, I'd have to reset my password to get back in.

How can I easily move my iTunes library, both purchased songs and the ones I loaded from my CDs, to some other platform?

iTunes seems to be an integral part of the OS. I tried to delete it from my iPhone 5 and got rid of the icon, but it launches now and again, seemingly on it's own. The world went bananas when Microsoft made Explorer and integral part of windows, but no one seems to care (or care enough to hire a lawyer) that Apple saddles every Apple OS user with iTunes.

Oh, there's nothing idiotic about that. Quite deliberate.

I just use Spotify or Youtube for music.

Yep. If I'm not spinning vinyl (time consuming), I'm streaming music. Also use Pandora quite a bit.

^^
I'm kind of like that. Listening to music is a special experience for me. I put time into listening what I want to hear. I have a few thousand pieces of music on my computer, and that's the only place I want it. If I can't sit down, undistracted, and enjoy it, I don't want to hear my music. In those situations I'll listen to Pandora or Spotify.

Agreed but one step further. Unless I am actually listening to my music, I don't even want it in the background. I certainly can't work with it on & I have zero music on my phone. I have quit buying since I just build playlists of new music on Tidal. I have even started to demo with Tidal - online & off since it is CD quality.

And yes, iTunes is a joke. Both the new interface & the fact that Apple are still selling & streaming compressed music.

Ian

I don't really find it all that bad honestly. I like being able to have content at my fingertips on the iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple TV. The iTunes library / store does make things easy to avoid blowing through data / bandwidth by transferring new songs, movies, etc. when I want to while connected only to my LAN (not over the Internet). You certainly can stream over the net if you want but why would you? It kills battery life and you'll rip through monthly data awfully fast.

Sorry but while I find iTunes to be a little bit clunky I don't have the intense disdain for it most here seem to. Maybe I'm just more tolerant - dunno. There doesn't appear to be any alternative out there that does anything close to what it'll do either...

"Hate" is such a strong word to use, describing one's reaction to consumer software.

It fits.

Okay, I'm going to "swim against the stream" on this one and say that I have no problems or issues with iTunes, it seems to work fine for me. I load iPods with music and set them on shuffle at my office and in both my cars and have never had an issue. I buy from their library and upload CDs.

^^
I think it's great that some people like and use iTunes. I just wish it was optional. If you've got an Apple device, you've got iTunes running around in it waiting to rear its ugly head.

The thing I don't get is that if it's so bad and so universally disliked why nobody else has bothered to write a new piece of software to do what it does only better...

Have they? Am I just ignorant of it? I don't want to stream as stated before, I want to have seamless integration between devices and be able to upload content to my devices so I don't have to stream it and kill my data plan and battery.

So is there an alternative? iTunes works for me but I'm willing to entertain an alternative if there is one.

I have no interest in streaming. I can't do it in an airplane and I don't want to kill my data allowance when elsewhere and not on wi-fi.

With spotify you can save music locally in addition to streaming. I keep a few gigs of playlists sync'ed to my phone for the times I don't have/ don't want to use data.

Put me on the ITUNES SUCKS list as well.

In fact the comment that it would have to improve to suck is right on.

I'm one of those who have no issues with iTunes.

First and foremost, iTunes is a media management tool. There are people with 100,000 songs, movies, TV shows, apps, podcasts, books, iTunes U courses, etc, etc, some stored locally, some on external drives, and it manages all of this quite well. You can have multiple iDevices, and it will sync what you want to whatever device you want, down to the individual song, if you want to do that.

The flip side of this is that any tool capable of all that will necessarily be complicated. There's a learning curve, to be sure, but I've been through it and now I'm good.

I buy music from sources other than Apple (which I think is the most expensive source out there). I have to download zip files, get the music into my library, and then sync my library to my phone. I have no issue with this.

For those with DRM music, Apple abandoned DRM in 2009 and provided a method to replace your DRM music with DRM free music. I never had the issue so I don't know the steps, but I'm sure if you search you can find it.

I don't do a lot of streaming myself, I'm often someplace where there is no signal. Plus, it uses data from my plan. I also find it skips, like say when I drive through a dead zone. It buffers some, but often not enough.

As long as you have DRM free music, this shouldn't be much of an issue. The music should all be stored locally on your computer as M4A or MP3 files. Just copy it to the new location and add it to your new platform.

If by some chance your other platform can't handle M4A files, iTunes can convert them to MP3 for you.

A quick Google search produced this. This is the first hit, there are many, many more.

Kill the DRM in Your Old iTunes Music Purchases | WIRED

I like iTunes. For me it's great. I agree tho it Should be optional.

I'm no fan of Apple (my kids own a few of their devices; I don't), but I fail to see people's overt hatred of iTunes. I've been using it as my primary media player since it came out, and I've never had an issue with it. I do like Matt says he wants to...dump all my music onto iTunes (that was mostly purchased on Amazon, or downloaded through CD's and various other programs...), hit shuffle, and can listen for weeks. My default opening window is my library; I've never even seen an ad...

My most recent issue with iTunes - and it may be my car system, I don't know, is when I plug my iPhone into the car's USB port it turns the radio off and starts playing the music on my phone. It doesn't even ask what song I want to listen to, it just starts playing something. All I want to do is charge my phone. Why does it assume I want to turn the radio off and listen to some random song on iTunes? Why doesn't it at least ask what I want it to do?

That's not a function of your iTunes or iPhone; it's a function of your car stereo. Anytime you plug in a device to the media port, the stereo assumes you want to play the music you have stored on that device (USB drive, phone, whatever). It starts up with whatever song was last playing on your device--or at least it should. ALL car stereos are like this.

Itune's bad because it does way too much. I've lived in Apple's ecosystem for years and sometimes I can't tell if I'm looking at my music on my connected Ipad, on my mac, or on their store... And they change the "purchased" playlist every release too... It's a hot mess... The interface is awful, does too much and nothing well, kinda like a swiss knife...

I wish they'd separate Iphone/Ipad management and music player completely. I'm currently looking for apps that replace itunes altogether but deal with its library. There's a market for these, as several exist on the Mac that upsample too, and I'm leaning towards Stezza for the Ipad I use as a stereo - nicer simpler interface. $1.99 ! Kinda sucks you have to buy something to fix their mess but it's the price of 1.5 song...

If anyone has other recommendations, I'm all ears... I just had to buy another utility to export entire catalogs to formats that play in my wife's car, too. Itunes couldn't do it quickly but that utility scripted it and automated the process... It's got power but that interface is an embarassment !

We're an all Apple house too - have been from the start, and I've got to agree the latest version of iTunes blows. So does the newest version of Photos (used to be iPHoto). They're trying to force you to buy all their subscription services like iCloud and whatever the latest music streaming crap they've got is... There's supposed to be a new OSX coming out soon, so we'll see if it gets better or worse...

Every new version has been worse... in the sense that they try to make the mac more like an ipad.
Bad idea... I'm sticking with Apple because they don't crash, and they don't get patched as often... and because Windows is going the same direction... but really I wish they'd let us use a mac like the computer it is, circa 3 or 4 OS releases ago.. Enough with the big icons, tiles, and tabletification of computers...