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iTunes Sucks

It's as simple as that. The single worst aspect of owning an iPad is iTunes. It's miserable software, something Apple should be embarrassed about. Most any other music manager kicks iTunes all around the block; Zune crushes it. The only thing iTunes has going for it is the size and variety of its music library. Actual using the software, especially for getting content on and off an iPad (and, presumably, an iPod, iPhone, etc.), is a horrible user experience.

I have a substantial music library (280GB and growing). My first complaint with iTunes is that it doesn't recognize the entire library. Gigabytes are missing, and due to the size of my library it's near impossible to tell what wasn't imported. Fortunately, because of the size of the library it may be years before I stumble upon what's "missing."

In order to add content to that library, I either have to purchase it through iTunes (generally the most expensive way to go, but I'll admit it's worth it if the song is Mastered for iTunes), or drop the new songs into the "Add to iTunes" folder. How clunky! Every other music manager on the planet simply rescans its music folders to find newly added content. iTunes remains aloof from such proletarian activities.

The worst thing, though, is putting content onto my iPad. This is atrocious. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but if so then the software is far from the intuitive standard that Apple strives for.

If I drag and drop a playlist onto my iPad, it will, indeed, copy the playlist and music over. But it won't keep up with any changes I make to that playlist. To apply changes, I have to drag and drop the playlist again. Since I can't just copy everything (inexplicably the default setting) I have to set things up manually. But that presents me with several text lists that I have to scroll through.

I generally use the one labelled "Album," only it's not. It's "Artist - Album." A minor thing, to be sure, but why is it arranged that way? There's already a box called "Artist." So now if I want to sync "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2" I have to look for "Alexandre Desplat - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow Part 2."

And I can't! Why, because the text box is too narrow and Alexandre's name takes up too much space. The result is that I see two entries of "Alexandre Desplat - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hal". The same thing happens with Howard Shore's assorted The Lord of the Rings soundtracks.

It's stupid, it's annoying, it's terrible software. With Zune, I just drag and drop the album or playlist onto the player icon. Or I can right-click and from the menu that appears click "Sync with..." And if I edit a synced playlist, the changes get synced, too. It's simple, utterly instinctive, and works perfectly. Oh, and Zune also happily updates files if I purchase content from other providers and mere drop them into the directories Zune monitors.

But Zune is dead (or undead like a zombie if you count Windows Phone; or reborn into whatever with the forthcoming music service in Windows 8). For my iPad, I have to suffer with iTunes. I'm not the only one complaining. Rumor of improvement persist, but have through the last several revisions to the software.

Maybe when Apple officially rolls out iOS 6 iTunes 12 will be reborn.

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