I appreciate the ease with which it [iTunes] allows the average user to enjoy music
I'm likely just revealing my ignorance here, but...
< rant on >
Ease? Ease would be simply dragging & dropping my music files onto the iDevice using a file manager of some kind. Instead, in order to put music onto my gf's new iSomethingorother, I had to:
- Install iTunes in the first place.
- Populate the iTunes library.
- Create a custom playlist in the correct place (apparently, after selecting the specific iSomethingorother onto which I wish to install the files). Why do I need a playlist simply to transfer files? A playlist is simply a list of music I want to listen to, why is it also a mechanism for copying files? Maybe they should call it a PlayOrCopyList.
- Populate the playlist.
- Jump through several hoops I don't recall to get the playlist to sync (i.e. to actually copy the files onto the iDevice without doing anything else I didn't want iTunes to do.
Ugh.
< rant off >
I personally think managing playlists is a pain in the ass, that's why I love iTunes. I meet people who say they prefer drag and drop, and perhaps they do. I walk them through a few minutes of what iTunes can do, and their opinion changes rapidly. Granted, I run iTunes on a Mac. I hear the experience on a PC is not as good.
What I love about iTunes is the centralized repository for everything I have in terms of media. When is comes to playlists, the real power is in smart playlists. These are a set of criteria that automatically update based on changes to your library. Those changes might include adding new music, changing meta-data such as star rating, recently played, never played, etc. With proper tagging, which is a breeze these days, you can, in just a couple of clicks, find and create a playlist that is comprised of, for example, all of my live Clapton from the 70's, rated 3 stars or higher, and not played on the last month. Done. You simply cannot do that with a manually managed playlist.
Playlists also allow me to manage individual "iSomethingorothers". So this playlist goes to my wife's iPod shuffle, these go to her iPhone, these to my iPhone, this one to my AppleTV, cause it's 24 bit, etc. I don't know how it could be more simple.
I think some people try to over think it. Get out of the way, and it is an amazing application for what it is designed to do. Do I wish it played FLAC, sure. But fact of the matter is, I'm usually playing my iOS device in a less than perfect environment anyway (car, gym, airplane), so who cares. I've got my FLACs on my hard drive, and play back 24 bit at home. Again, my playlists can sync the lossy stuff to iPods, and leave the lossless to play locally. And if you had to have them portable, you could always choose ALAC, Apple lossless compression file format.
I didn't mean to hijack the thread, I was genuinely interested in why the hatred. Perhaps it is unfounded? I don't understand how the download of 100MB is hard, installing/configuring is what, 6 clicks? What am I missing? Does Windows just make everything suck? If anyone wants further iTunes info/tricks, let me know.
keytohwy