Is it an improvement?  Well you can probably guess from the title of this post that it isn’t.  I think it is a definite step backwards.  Rather than sort out all of the stupid and annoying things that this program does, they have just added on some bells and whistles to make it more pretty.

Lets start off with this Genius thing.  I don’t care what it is, if a media playing program simply stops you from using a it until you have enabled some silly little music advertisement component, then it has failed.  I found that the only way to get rid of it was to attempt to create another play list.  However, it does this every time you open the bloody program!  I had to sign up to it just to get it to stop!

What is the point of this Genius program?  When I’m listening to a song from my extensive Black Sabbath collection, I don’t want to be sold a live recording of Iron Man.  I am really not interested!  Not only that, but the thing doesn’t work with any other media, so when looking through videos or podcasts it just sticks a big bar at the side that says “Genius sidebar only works with music.”  I can’t get rid of it now!

As for the bells and whistles let me give this analogy.  Take something, anything really, and jump up and down on it for around 20 minutes, if you don’t weight much then carry something heavy whilst doing this.  Put the resulting bits and pieces of rubbish into the best looking box that money can buy.  I’m talking jewell encrusted, made of gold and silver, literally the best box you can get your hands on.  You now have the new iTunes interface.  It is like trying to paint miniature models, whilst wearing boxing gloves.  Every time you try to do anything it is kept back from you by a level of unnecessary uselessness.  The thing I hate most about using podcasts on this pile of poo is that little grey arrow to the left of the podcast title.  Well the worst bit of usability I have ever seen is still there, you just have to dig through the fluffy pillows with pretty pictures on them to get to it.  What is the point?  If isn’t broken, then don’t try to fix it.  More importantly, if it is broken, fix it, don’t put a ribbon on it and pretend that it wasn’t broken in the first place.

iTunes, pretty on the outside, unusable on the inside.

I have noticed one thing about the new interface as well.  When I have iTunes open my CPU usage goes up to 100% and my computer starts to wheeze like an anorexic hamster on a lead weighted wheel.  My computer is not particularly old or slow, but iTunes just seems to kill it off.  This makes it a little difficult to watch videos with it as it just displays a frame, waits for a few seconds and then displays another frame.  It is like going to the cinema and it consisting of some guy holding up pictures of what is going on, which he shows you one at a time.  Much like Bob Dylan in Subterranean Homesick Blues.

Starting today I’m looking for alternatives.  The only requirements I have is that it syncs my iPod (although I’m shopping for something else) and that can manage my podcasts.  If you have any suggestions then please put them in the comments.

1) When you rip music to your computer it helps if you can find it again. This is why you would expect your media ripper to create a folder structure of Artist->Album and put all of the songs in there. This just isn’t good enough for iTunes and it had totally ruined my music collection by putting files all over the place. For some reason, if the album has ANY (and I mean ANY!) other person contributing to a song in addition to the artist who has written the song it puts the entire album into a folder called “compilations”.  It doesn’t do this all of the time however and will also create literally hundreds of folders called Artist feat. Another Artist.  What the difference is I can’t figure out, and it has utterly ruined by Cypress Hill collection by creating literally 30 folders.  I wish Apple(spit!) wouldn’t do this.  Why is this even a good idea?  Who in the world would want it this way?  The gauling thing is that there isn’t even a way (that I can find) to stop it doing this.  Why not categorise the music by Artist and then Ablum?  Why bother even looking at the composing meta data?

2) If this wasn’t bad enough, when I try to sort out the terrible state my music collection has got into iTunes will come along and put it back the way it was before.  Not only that.  (Oh no, that would be too simple!)  It also leaves in all of the broken back references to the music which it has just moved.

3) For some odd reason when ripping my vast CD collection using iTunes it not only puts random beeps and jumps in some tracks but will also stop ripping 30 seconds from the end of the CD.  So when you are listening to the last track on the album you are treated to it simply stopping.  This doesn’t happen when I use Windows Media Player, and I can get the same effect when I use different computers so it is clear that this is not just my machine playing about.  Why, oh why would you ever want this to happen?

4) I have been using iTunes for about 3 months to listen to podcasts and it was only LAST WEEK that I found out how to play any track I wanted from a particular podcast. For weeks I have been messing around with settings, pushing buttons, right clicking and generally having a hard time trying to listen to the back catalogue from some of my favourite podcasts.  All utterly futile.  When you have a podcast downloaded you will see a little grey arrow (triangle really) to the left hand side.  I ACCIDENTALLY clicked on this arrow one day and the podcast title expanded and revealed the entirety of the episodes of the podcast I had clicked on.  I was astonished!  This arrow looks more like a decoration than a button!  Why didn’t they just create the NORMAL sort of plus and minus system that everyone else on the entire planet uses?  No.  They have to mess about with the stupid interface and confuse everyone.

5) Lets say you just downloaded a podcast that has 100 episodes, which isn’t all that rare.  Want to listen to episode 53 on the way to work?  Tough!  iTunes will only let you listen to lots of stupid combinations of “Most recent 10 unlistened” or “Least recent 5 unlistened” from any podcasts that you select.  You can select them all to be uploaded, but this tends to fill anyone who doesn’t have a 16GB iPod.  You can create a playlist and use this, but this just breaks the way that an iPod plays podcasts and is totally wothless.

I will stick with Windows Media Player (which is a vastly better program – with a vastly better name!) to listen, rip and watch my media.  I will only use iTunes to sync my iPod and download podcasts.  I am seriously thinking about buying a Creative Zen simply so that I don’t have to use this broken bile of monkey poo.

Finally, there is another thing that really annoy me. Podcasts. This makes it seem like it can only be listened to on an iPod. WRONG! When you subscribe to a podcast you are just downloading a syndication feed that links to some audio or video files. Lots of different software is available to download and manage podcasts, not just the broken rubbish from Apple(spit!). However, the name seems to have stuck with people in the industry, and I can’t think of a better one than blogcasts. Which is kind of different really…

If anyone else has had trouble with iTunes then let me know by commenting on this article.