Love my iPhone/HATE iTunes

jeff hammond

Jeff,

no, it's the app. And I have the same version as you. Maybe there are some things saved with the app and it depends how you use it.

yeah, must be.
i keep itunes super basic and pretty much only use it for cataloging and playing music + activating, syncing movies&music to the phone as well as keeping its software up to date..

EscapeArtist

Amarok and Songbird are two free music management programs that are ipod compatible.

Mike Lucey

10 Alternatives to iTunes!
http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/07/08/10-alternatives-to-itunes-for-managing-your-ipod/

Slimdog

I have heard good things about song bird I will have to check it out.

xrok1

i didn't check the app itself but the download was 80 meg.

whoa!
and i don't even have 1 song or photo or anything! ridiculous.

but hey, i imagine the mac fans will find some way to blame this on microsoft too.

xrok1

well i just hijacked (jailbreak) my iphone
much better experience (for me anyway), but they should call it un-hijacking since apple hijacked all control in the first place!
see here if interested: http://thebigboss.org/why-jailbreak-iphone/

tim

@xrok1 said:

i didn't check the app itself but the download was 80 meg.

And it includes all the executable stuff and a whole pile of resource files; menu labels and UI components in every language you can imagine and many you can't. Different languages can require altered icons because of the different lengths of words (think - English -> 'engineering', German -> 'ingenieurwissenschaften' and so on) and then you need (probably) a different layout to make it all hang together.

At some point I imagine someone will make smarter download systems that respond with a package customised to suit the language etc settings on your machine. Till then, be happy that you can download software to do all sorts of neat things.

xrok1

C'mon... pleeeeez!

remus

Tim, when you get other media players weighing in at 2.9mb (foobar) than you cant help but laugh at itunes' rather large 80mb.

tfdesign

@xrok1 said:

C'mon... pleeeeez!

Tim's got a point.

I, many years ago, used to live in Vancouver, Canada. My friend Konrad, who lived down the road, was most impressed that I, (an Englishman), had learnt to speak English so fast (two weeks), since moving to Canada (yes- that should make you laugh ).

The point is, we Brits, and you Canadians/ North American's take the English language for granted, what about all those in countries who don't speak english? Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Kein dachte ich nicht so!

If iTunes is to be a quality, leading product, which, I'm afraid to say, it is, then you need to make sure that you reach out to all. There is no reason why you can's just open the containing package and remove those languages you don't need. In fact I've just tried that, and it works........ Yes I know, it's still 29mb, but hey, it's still got all that functionality, like the excellent coverflow- unlike those competitors, right?

tim

@remus said:

Tim, when you get other media players weighing in at 2.9mb (foobar) than you cant help but laugh at itunes' rather large 80mb.

Only if those other media players include all the resources to do as much; otherwise you're not comparing like with like. iTunes is a bit more than just a player for mp3 files. It's a music, video and software store. It's a music visualisation machine. It manages my iPhone data.

If you don't want what iTunes does, don't use it. That's just fine, even sensible. If an 80Mb download is a problem for you because of net access issues, then you may have to find an alternative and you have my sympathy for being afflicted by restricted net access - it's a pain in the arse. But if you have decent net access and you want to connect your iPhone to your Mac the simple way.... it's the simple way. My life is too full of important things to worry about such matters. Just like I don't fret that the cable company 'wastes' all that bandwidth sending me Faux News along with the stuff I do want.

Large software used to annoy the hell out of me because it seemed so terribly wasteful to someone that used to write software to be delicate, efficient, effective, exciting. But it's the way the industry has gone and all my fulminating can have no effect but giving me a headache. Get over it or get high blood pressure.

xrok1

@tfdesign said:

@xrok1 said:

C'mon... pleeeeez!

Tim's got a point.

I, many years ago, used to live in Vancouver, Canada. My friend Konrad, who lived down the road, was most impressed that I, (an Englishman), had learnt to speak English so fast (two weeks), since moving to Canada (yes- that should make you laugh ).

The point is, we Brits, and you Canadians/ North American's take the English language for granted, what about all those in countries who don't speak english? Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Kein dachte ich nicht so!

If iTunes is to be a quality, leading product, which, I'm afraid to say, it is, then you need to make sure that you reach out to all. There is no reason why you can's just open the containing package and remove those languages you don't need. In fact I've just tried that, and it works........ Yes I know, it's still 29mb, but hey, it's still got all that functionality, like the excellent coverflow- unlike those competitors, right?

but look at the installed size: 107mb. now i'm sure it didn't install all those languages... why would it? every other prog gets you to select a language when installing. and as i said 107mb with not 1 song, vid... fresh install???

tfdesign

@xrok1 said:

fresh install???

I think you're right, xrok1. I didn't do a fresh install to Snow Leopard (which allows you to trash all of those extra languages). But even then iTunes is still 29mb in size. But as I said, what you get is eye-candy, and eye-candy is what appeals to youngsters (well it did when I did my degree. Others on my course wanted most things multi-coloured, glitzy and basically shite looking! )

remus

@unknownuser said:

It's a music, video and software store. It's a music visualisation machine. It manages my iPhone data.

Thats what annoys me. I dont want another program that tries to do everything. I want it to play music and put stuff on my ipod (preferably skipping the putting-stuff-on-the-ipod part, but if apple feel it necessary to make the whole lot proprietary so be it.)

I think im still in the 'how wasteful' stage of program appreciation, perhaps with time (and a hefty hard drive hooked up to unlimited internet access and a processor to match) i'll come to appreciate bulky programs that duplicate functionality of all the other bulky programs inhabiting my computer