iTunes - Worst Software Ever Written?

Is iTunes the worst software ever written? I tried using it on Windows, heres what I found and some tips on how to get the most from iTunes.

iPod Unboxing

Upon arrival, the small, neat packaging presented a shiny new iPod in a well-made perspex display case with everything packed in tidy and efficient - the sign of things to come? The first thing I did was to turn the iPod on. Having never used an iPod before, I was a little uncertain about the location of the on/off switch, but when I pressed the menu button, the screen lit up with a welcome sign prompting me to select my language. With that done, I set about navigating the menus using the touch wheel - it took some getting used to! It is too sensitive and often moves off the intended item while pressing enter.

Is iTunes the Worst Software Ever Made?

I needed some music on my iPod, so I headed to Apple.com to download the latest iTunes software (my iPod Nano did not come with any). So when that finally downloaded (~60 MB), I installed it and started it running, choosing a folder for my existing mp3s and letting it go away and locate everything.

At this point, I must say that I was expecting it to search through the folders, finding mp3 and cataloguing them in the same manner as Windows Media Center (WMC), that is, it reads the MP3 tags for album/artist/genre and shows the album art.

Boy, was I mistaken! I don't know what it did, but after half an hour of disk thrashing, I had over 2500 "albums", each with 2-5 tracks, some duplicates, most of the cover art was missing, and everything filled under the "Other" genre. Most tracks had the wrong titles, and albums were split into multiple sections. The whole thing was a mess, and then the program crashed.

After a bit of scouring on the web, I found that iTunes is very finicky about the tags in the mp3s and that it isn't intelligent enough to spot an extra space in an album title, for example (unlike WMC), so I set about going through every mp3 with Windows Explorer and verifying the tags. After that, I returned to iTunes, cleared the library and started again. It processed most of the items correctly this time, but around 800 songs were not assigned to an album or artist, so I went through and re-assigned everyone from within iTunes.

Feeling good, now that I had sorted this out (after two days of playing with files), I started copying the files onto the iPod, but I noticed that a few albums were missing, and I only got to 'C'. The stats showed 2453 tracks listed - a little short of the 6825 mp3 files reported by Windows Explorer.

I set about manually adding these files into iTunes without luck. Apple has a policy of graceful erroring, so if an error does occur, you don't know about it. At least Windows tells you that there was a problem importing a file!

After more net browsing, I found a tip about stripping all tags from a mp3 and then importing it, which works, but I now have to retag nearly 4500 files! And worse still - WMC is now totally screwed up because iTunes has changed the tags!

iTunes has just crashed again, and it takes around 3 minutes to load up after clicking on the icon.

Four days of editing tags, assigning albums/artists/cover art and I still have not put anything on my iPod! Worst software ever!

So, after all of this work, was it worth it? Well, my new iPod Nano now has over 100 albums (1300 tracks), and I can now listen to my favourite music wherever I am.

Tips for Using iTunes for Windows

While tagging, converting and generally taking a long time to use a horrible piece of software to perform what should be an easy task, I learned quite a bit, including how to solve some very annoying problems.

iTunes will not import an MP3 track(s) - Firstly, make sure you can play the track(s) using Quicktime player; if you can, then iTunes does not like the MP3 header or tags. I used a MP3 Repair Tool and removed the first frame and everything after the last frame. iTunes would then import the file, and you can set the tags manually.

iTunes will not import an album - As above, MP3 Repair Tool can work in batch mode. You can then use Windows Explorer to batch tag the files with album/artist by selecting the files, right-clicking and selecting properties. On the Summary tab, select Advanced and provide the files, album, and artist. This will group the files in iTunes, where you can add names and tags.

Adding Album Art in iTunes - Not as intuitive as Windows Media Player; it took me a while to find out how to do this. Select and right-click on the files to have art associated with them. Click on Get Details, and drag a jpeg image onto the artwork box. When you click OK, iTunes will add the artwork to the files. Don't use a high-resolution (I found 100x100 a good size) image, as it will be added to each file. Large images will a) take ages to process and b) increase file and album size, meaning fewer can be stored on iPods.

iTunes splits albums into separate albums of the same artist/title - You need to ensure that the artist and album are EXACTLY the same for all tracks. Select all the tracks on the same album, right-click and select Get Info. Ensure the album/album artist/artist is correct and tick the checkboxes next to them. This will tell iTunes to apply these settings to all selected files. If that still does not group them, select them all, Get Info, change Compilation to Yes and apply the changes. They should now be together on one album.

iTunes takes ages to load - Still waiting to find a fix for this one. Each time I load iTunes, it takes around 5 minutes for the program to show, even though I only have around 5000 tracks. I know people with twice this in iTunes, which loads instantly.

iTunes Update in 2013

With a new radio in my Defender and running out of options to make the thing work, I contemplate dusting off my iPod and using iTunes again. Let's see how things compare to my last experience with it and if anything has changed.

I've got a new Pioneer DEH-8400BT stereo in my Defender for listening to music whilst driving. This new stereo supports USB Memory Sticks, SD Cards, Android, USB Mass Storage Devices, Bluetooth, and iPod/iPhone. Well, their claims of support are only valid for very limited circumstances.

USB Memory Sticks
I could only get a USB stick formatted as FAT16 and a maximum of 2GB to be recognised. The device would be unknown using anything over 2GB, as would anything formatted as FAT32 or exFAT. Now have a 32GB USB Stick going spare.

SD Cards
Again, similar problems with size and formatting. I could, however, get a 4GB SD card working formatted with FAT16, despite the manual stating that SDHC cards up to 32GB are supported. Also, there is no sequence to the tracks; even putting a number in the file name and adding the "sequence" meta tag have no effect. It seems to be permanently stuck on "random". People have encountered a common problem with various devices - it takes the files in the order they were written to the device. Is it difficult to sort a list?

Android
One of the reasons I got this unit was to use my phone as a media device; however, as it turns out, Android is only supported when using a special cable, retailing at circa £200. Why is iPod/iPhone support bundled as standard while Android support is overlooked or at a premium?

USB Mass Storage
Removable hard drives and so on. Older Android smartphones have the option to enable USB Mass Storage for quick file transfer, but Google decided to remove this feature in favour of some horrible, slow and convoluted Media Transfer Protocol (MTP), which does not work. At all. Various apps and hacks to re-enable this option do not work, and my phone reports an "unrecognised device". Why, why, why? Please, Google, let us have USB Mass Storage back!

Bluetooth
The only method I could reliably get any music from, but the interface for the media players on the Android App Market is pretty useless, making even pausing a track difficult when driving. Rather annoyingly, if running a media player and satnav at the same time, each time the satnav voice pipes in the music player stops, forcing you to relaunch the application, load up the playlist and carry on, at which point the next set of instructions are spoken, and the phone nearly gets thrown out the window.

iPod

I thought I'd brush the dust off my old iPod Nano and see if the "Worst software ever written" has improved in the past five years since I last used it. Surprise surprise...

iTunes is still the worst pile of c*** ever made

Starting with the download page on the iTunes site... When I click the download now button - nothing happens! Things haven't changed much. After reloading the page and trying again a few times, I eventually got the 96.3MB installer downloaded.

Ran the install through to the end, but no desktop shortcuts or start menu items were created. Odd, so I re-ran the installer and only had the option to uninstall it as iTunes is already installed. Fine, I'll create the shortcut myself. Now, where have you hidden it?

After I have tracked down the executable and accepted countless T&Cs, I've got to the main page, which asks me to go to the store or scan for media, so I click on scan for media, expecting to have to tell it where I store my music. Nope, the button does absolutely nothing. OK, I'll try the good old Drag'n'Drop technique. Guess what? Nothing again. Seriously?

I eventually track down the setting for the location of media files (press the Alt Key, then click on the Edit menu, followed by Preferences, and now click on the Advanced tab). I updated the value for my media server and then tried scanning again. Now we're cooking with gas!

Now I've imported my music, connected my iPod and done a factory reset; it's time to copy my music to it. Clicking on Sync does sweet diddly-squat. Drag and drop, nope. Common Apple, don't make me think about this; it should be intuitive. In the old version, I could select the files and drag them to the item on the left that says My iPod. After a few minutes of aimlessly clicking buttons with no effect, I take a break to get a drink, but when I return, it starts syncing.

Leaving it for a bit to do its thing, I notice that the free space on my iPod is down to 2.56GB, then up to 2.7GB, then down to 2.6, then 5.53, then back up to 2.7. What is it doing? Best to leave it alone. Eventually, it finishes syncing, and I can disconnect my iPod and start decontaminating my PC and uninstall all the Apple rubbish (Bonjour, MDNSResponder, Quicktime to name a few...)

Conclusion... Overall, iTunes is better than it used to be, but it's still pretty awful.

Do you have any iTunes or iPod tips to share? Please share by leaving a comment on this post. Thanks!