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Apple iTunes for Windows

Started by Chandler, December 26, 2008, 17:18 hrs

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Chandler

Do Apple intentionally set out to make their Windows software so infuriatingly poor that people migrate from Windows PCs to Macs?

I have nothing against Apple products per se - in fact I think the iPod Touch (and iPhone) is quite possibility the most innovative portable music player on the market right now.  What I do have a big problem with is the atrocious software that they expect us to use with our iPods.  I have never known such buggy, bloated, sluggish software ever.

Case in point.  Surely iTunes should be capable of interfacing with an iPod or iPhone without the need for additional programs, but instead I must have the iPod Server, iTunes Helper, Apple Mobile Device running.  If I want to share my iTunes library or access shared libraries I must also have Apple's Bonjour service installed and running.  To be fair, I haven't had any issues with these, but they have been known to cause blue screens of death on Windows Vista on some systems.

Next thing.  The iTunes UI is probably the slowest application I have ever used, and it shouldn't be.  Resizing takes forever, loading a CPU core to 100%.  Scrolling is equally as bad.  Now, is it acceptable for an application to be loading 1 core of a 2.1GHz Athlon X2 BE-2350 JUST for scrolling a list of songs?  I know that if it had the chance it would use both cores, but since it's not multi-threaded, it doesn't.  I'm willing to bet that iTunes on MacOSX is multi-threaded though, so that we can see comparisons of iTunes for Mac compressing CDs at 200% the speed of iTunes for Windows on the same hardware, ergo Windows sucks.  I'm a PC, I'm boring, I wear tweed jackets etc etc.  I can understand Apple being a little slow off the mark in multi-threading iTunes, but dual-core CPUs have been commonplace since at least iTunes 6 era, and they're now on iTunes 8.  Surely there is time to have included a little bit of optimization along the way?

Right now Apple are running this "12 days of Christmas" promotion where every day from 26th December they're giving away a free song, music video or TV show episode.  That's great, except I've just spent about 30 minutes whilst it downloads a 46MB video and now it's been sat for another 30 minutes doing absolutely nothing.  I guess the server dealing with activating songs isn't working.  Maybe, except yesterday I spent about 5 hours re-downloading the iPod Touch 2.1 firmware update, which is a 245MB download and would always stall part way through.  Sure, it's got to be my internet connection, yet it's funny how no other applications have issues downloading, just iTunes.

Mark H

I have never had a problem with itunes, but maybe it is because I am using it on an XP system. I haven't installed it on my Vista system.

Mark H; software can be frustrating at times
Enjoy the nature that is around you rather than destroying it.

Buffalo2102

I haven't had a problem with it either but I do agree with Chandler about the additional bits that I neither need nor want.  The Bonjour service is a case in point - it is not actually needed for iTunes to work, only to find shared music on a network (and it's not essential for that).  Why can't the installation of Bonjour be an optional extra?  Most users won't even have a home network, let alone share music across one.

On top of that, every time the iTunes updater runs it tells me that Safari and something else is available - I'm not interested so I uncheck the boxes and it goes away.  Until the next time.

I have read that Bonjour is also installed with certain Adobe products too so the situation may get worse.
Vista x64 Home Premium. Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Abit IP35, 4 Gig Kingston HyperX PC8500C5 DDR2, GTX260, Creative X-Fi Extreme Gamer, Antec 900 Gaming Case.

Mark H

Now that I have used itunes extensively while importing 584 CDs (some double CD sets), I have a new opinion.

On my XP machine, it crashes every 10 to 30 CDs imported. It is a function of the PC over itunes though since I am having lockup problems with it when not using itunes. Itunes does increase the frequency greatly, because it is such a hog. With a new power supply and new RAM that test out perfect, I am suspecting the motherboard.

On my Vista 64 machine, it is a joy to use. It never crashes the computer. Occasionally windows shuts it down while invoking the "DATA Execution Prevention" rule, which can't be disabled in the 64 bit version of Vista. Overall, my opinion is that it works much better on Vista than XP. This opinion is based on doing around 300 CDs on each PC. I got frustrated with the XP machine half way through and switched to the Vista machine.

The opinion is skewed in that the Vista machine is running a 64 bit OS and has a dual core Intel processor with 4 GB of RAM. The XP machine is 32 bit with a single core 64 bit AMD processor and it has 2 GB of RAM. If the hardware is more of the reason than windows, then it shows what a hog itunes is in reality. Of course, I think it is the operating system more than anything in that Vista just does not crash with it.

I wish Apple would fix the problem that causes Windows to invoke the "DATA Execution Prevention" rule against it since itunes is doing something to cause it. It isn't frequent as it only happens about 5 times in 300 CDs.

Mark H
Enjoy the nature that is around you rather than destroying it.

Mark H

Your test is adequate. It would have crashed by now if it wasn't going to work in my opinion.

Mark H
Enjoy the nature that is around you rather than destroying it.