Yesterday, to my excited glee, Apple released iTunes for Windows. I was looking forward to this, since I’ve heard iTunes is so great, and I’m not too pleased with Winamp (2.91 was great for it’s time, but it’s a bit dated, and 3.0 is definitely not the future). I downloaded it, and eagerly installed it. And…
It sucked.
I could spend an hour typing about the numerous user interface flaws, but I won’t because nobody else cares. However, the following things leap out at me as instantly giving it a big fat F:
1. No iTunes music store for Canada? What the hell? WHY? That was one of the things I was so excited about.
2. The internal browser (used for the iTunes site) is slow and bloated. Drawing the OS X style widgets must waste a lot of CPU cycles.
3. The window flickers when you resize it. I’m using a decent computer here, that shouldn’t happen!
4. The visualizer (apparently) has only one effect, and it only gets 12-15 fps on my system. Yeah, that’s reasonable.
5. No context menus. Anywhere. I realize that Macs don’t use them as much, but this is Windows. You have to adapt to the system you’re on.
6. No iTunes music store for Canada? WHY WHY WHY WHY DIE DIE WHY. To think I might have actually paid for music. Apple has made me bitter. The RIAA better blame them when the time comes.
Anyway, I must go learn about the Radix Sort, which also iSucks.
Comments
Taylor from another Planet
mother fucking itunes.
janet from another planet
hi taylor
keddy@home
This is the school of rock….
arhhhhhhhhhhhhhggggg??
Dan
Too bad, I thought you’d like it.
iTunes Music Store will hopefully be released in Canada once Apple gets the legal stuff worked out with the labels they’re dealing with. Things work a lil’ differently here in Canada when it comes to music, apparently, so we’ll have to wait and see! You could also download some Windows Media Audio from PressPlay in the mean time. ;p
T’is too bad to hear that the store browser is slow and bloated. Odd, however, that I have no problems just browsing the iTMS myself on both my Mac and brother’s P3 800 running XP, both at 56k.
As for the window flicker, well, does that have to do with iTunes or your OS? You said yourself that Longhorn should (hopefully) fix that redrawing problem I compain about so much when using Windows, and it sound more like the problem you’re experiencing. During my times at iStudio tons of programs interfaces redrew disgustingly, even on a P4 1Ghz with 512 megs of RAM (a half decent computer). (Of course, I’m comparing apps like Dreamweaver and Photoshop, but they run beautifully on my Mac which is 1.5 years older than the P4 1Ghz I speak of.)
And finally, context menus appear in iTunes, in the source list (edit playlists, burn ‘em, eject a disk, etc.), song list (edit ID3 tags, etc.) and when right-clicking the song list column titles.
Overall, I’m quite happy with the Windows port. Sharing music couldn’t be easier, buying the music I’ll be playing using the same app I’ll be using to listen to it means I can quickly switch between my library and music store to compare info, and I can finally dump WinAmp.
iTunes is, of course, much nicer for those of us who’ve tagged our songs nicely
(I had to throw a shot in here ~somewhere~ 
Mark
My files *are* tagged nicely, thanks to my autotagging program.
Context menus aren’t working for me. Maybe I’m pressing the wrong button? Nah.
Regarding flicker, it’s an OS limitation that most applications avoid with careful coding. iTunes definitely wasn’t ready for release, as the massive Windows 2000 bugs have shown. Plus, they really should have studied the Windows interface a bit more. Or used it for a nanosecond. Because (1) pressing the maximize button should maximize the window, and (2) when pressed, the maximize button’s icon should toggle — not always show the ‘unmaximize’ (aka restore) icon.
Nyah.
Taylor from another Planet
mother fucking itunes.
ps. hi janet <3
Steve
When a Windows program is ported to Mac it looks like a Mac program, why not reverse the process. And I like how Adobe and Avid or going pro PC thats nice, Avid is powerful. And as far as the G5’s and their stupid new PCI format FUCK that pisses me off now my time is being wasted because they change the configuration and no one has cards that fit yet. And when I say no one I mean the "ones" that actually matter i.e. Media100 to which I work on everyday I can use a Mac but they’re moving closer to a grave with me.
PS I’ve never had anything flicker on me ever in Windows.
Taylor from another Planet
Mark, I need your help. I hate unix.
Tony
why would you hate me? and talk to MEEEE about unix. not mark =P
Taylor from another Planet
whats your screen name ‘nixmonkey?
Tony
screen name eh? It says Xtreme Professional Display. So its made by Xtreme maybe? I dont know what its name is. I havnt done that yet.
Chris
Mark, In response to your post on my site (http://www.macinstyle.com) I have been able to utilize the iTunes Music Link Maker on Mozilla, Firebird, and IE6 on a Windows 2000 machine.. What about this feature are you not able to use ?
Taylor from another Planet
Ugh. I audioblogged about iTunes
http://gtmcknight.com/aud/a...
Taylor from another Planet
Why does it truncate my link when i link my name?
Mark@Work
Chris: iTunes never started when I clicked those links. I had to reboot for something unrelated later and I tried again — it worked. iTunes must’ve hung in the background.
Tony
heheheh. The "lost smurfs episode" is funny. It breaks into funky town =P
Taylor from another Planet
haha way to go mark, chris from macinstyle took linkpool down.
Mark@Work
So he did. Weird.
Steve
Meh.
YerCompStnx
Dude, sounds like a problem with your PC. Just because other programs work fine doesn’t mean a thing. iTunes works great on my Dell PC with Windows XP. I use it for all my audio stuff - I hate Windows Media and the crap that it is. Winamp was an interface joke.
No flicker, totally responsive, store links work, everything functions as advertised. Oh, and I live in the USA so I can buy songs! Yay for me!