Ask HN: Do you hate iTunes?

YESSS!!! I hate iTunes, as well as the general idea of hiding the filesystem on mobile device from the user.

Well, I just get annoyed because it keeps saying there isn't enough space to sync when there's plenty, and I have to spend 3 hours wiping and rebuilding the entire contents of the device every time I want to sync.

I always hated how stupid it makes adding a few songs to an existing device. Half the time it wants to re-sync everything and wipe the device while doing it.

Avoid iTunes with extreme prejudice.

I hate it.

Yes. I have to do a thing on OS X on every new Mac to stop iTunes loading when I do random things. And 'syncing' is a little 2007.

On my iPad I have to go into 'iTunes Store' to buy books for iBooks. Which is bizarre.

My favorite part is how it skips at random to arbitrary points of other episodes when playing Podcasts.

Tbh, when I bought my iPad and you didn't need to register it via iTunes I was relieved. For 3 years I didn't connect it to the computer so it never touched iTunes - this is how much I hate iTunes.

+ I am always afraid that if you sync with iTunes (yeah, soooo 2007) that I am going to lose something somewhere, a file, a tune, image or - for sure - a PDF in iBooks.

I've had so many things "lost" that way. Without warning, or a summary or an opportunity to make my decision.

iTunes sucks, big time.

No. I don't hate iTunes.

It could certainly be better but I wouldn't say I hate it. If they improved the loading speed of iTunes and the App Store it would be fine. It's very similar to the Steam Apps in some regards (store and library in one).

I do hate the fact that ONLY iTunes can be used to move stuff onto an iPhone though. That's the part I hate.

If they broke it up into small parts I'd be so happy though...

tl;dr iTunes is a little worse than meh. I hate the fact that it's the only think we can use.

I only use iTunes to play mp3s on my machine and manually sync mp3s on my phone. It also does backups of the phone.

With that use case in mind, I'm very satisfied.

However, I stay away from videos, apps, sync or whatever else they shoved into this app. I don't have a compelling reason to use these features because they're either accessible through the iOS devices directly or iCloud (when it works).

Yes.

On Windows at least there are some iTunes alternatives for loading stuff onto iDevices. You'll have to google around for them, but the couple I tried on my niece's iPhone worked fine.

I don't iDevice on my rMBP, and I think I accidentally launched iTunes once before I remembered to install VLC. Other than that, I simply pretend like it doesn't exist.

(being Android all around makes life super easy)

I feel like the odd one out. I am happy with iTunes. I like the way it presents my library and the store. I find it reliable and easy to use.

Yes, I clicked on iTunes store today and could not find the 'App Store' anywhere.

I don't hate the concept or utility of iTunes. I just hate the business model of not being able to port/copy/relocate my downloaded files that I bought to other devices. So my personal preference is to stick to DRM free platforms like Amazon and Google.

I really like it. Easy sync with iOS. Not only music, but also contacts, calendar, all that jazz. Even though I use Firefox for browsing on OS X, I still find it handy to use safari for browsing where I left from iOS. Transcoding from FLAC to ALAC is easy and fast with XLD[1]. There's the nice visualizer from SoundSpectrum called WhiteCap[2] (free version is included). Organization is simple.

[1]http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23430/x-lossless-decoder [2]https://www.soundspectrum.com/whitecap/

Nope. Every piece of software has its limitations. I learned to use it, accept its limitations, and moved on with my life. I have better things to do than wrestle with a software application or expend time and energy actively disliking it. It will not change, but is necessary for daily use. I got over it.

I don't hate it, but I don't like it enough to use it. Any apps I download I do from the App Store from my iPhone, and for music I use Spotify almost exclusively.

Yes. Lately, as a replacement, I've been using VOX[0] and it's a pretty sleek player.

[0] : http://coppertino.com

Yes, I hate it so much. I have had many discussions about how great other Apple products are and how frustrating iTunes is. It's like they are made by different companies.

No. No linux support. I got an ipad as a gift and to use it is a mess. Spotify can work, but the fact that you need Itunes to pass items to the ipad annoys me as hell.

Maybe if it didn't run like it had two broken legs I wouldn't hate it.

Using itunes makes me sad. I wouldn't say it was a terrible product but it has way too many features all of them at a mediocre level, which amounts to a poor user experience

Yes, I dislike the whole iTunes thing all together. I'd like to be able to just plug it in and move files around like it's a drive. (like my android phone) I also really dislike iTunes a media player on my MacBook. Love my mackbook over all, but iTunes as a media player sucks. Main complaints is that I can't just point it to a folder and have it load into a library without it copying files around, so now I have music in two places wasting space. Maybe there is a way I can change that in the settings, but that shouldn't be the default behavior.

The whole interface is incredible unintuitive. Especially if you come from Windows.

Hate it with a passion since 2001.

The UI is really, really bad. Every time I sync one of my devices I have to search for the widget that gets me to the place where I can search for my content. The software makes arbitrary decisions on what type of content goes where, and honestly this shouldn't matter.

Music is music, a book is a book, an app is an app. Just provide a default structure and have the device figure out what's what -- we've been doing this with file systems for decades.

iTunes doesn't scale. A linear list of all of my music? Those books? Doesn't scale. Ordering a list by title / artist is clumsy after fifty entries, and unworkable past a few hundred.

I'm really surprised that Jobs didn't rip the iTunes team a new one. Or maybe he did, and this is the best they could do.