iTunes

So I bought an iPhone, and mostly I’m enjoying the heck out of the thing. It’s a wonderfully designed device, and Apple’s hardware guys need some kinda pay rise and general public adulation. The software guys… well, they’ve done some stuff that’s pretty sweet – finally allowing native apps is a godsend, some of the stuff that’s being done is brilliant; my current favourite is an app that listens to a song being played using the iPhone’s microphone, and then tells you what song it is. Fantastic! Some stuff on there is pretty dire though, like apps that turn your screen white to act as a torch costing £0.60. Good value for money, guys.

There are some things which are considerably more retarded, like the total lack of copy & paste, or that when you’re setting up an email account, the setup wizard (for lack of better terminology) doesn’t have options for things like port numbers or SSL settings, so when the phone attempts to guess these details from what you’ve put in, it can spend a hell of a long time wildly guessing before it decides it can’t do it, allows you to save the settings, and then allow you to fiddle with the advanced settings in another menu. Another odd email-related niggle is that the error message for a mis-configured outgoing email server (SMTP) is to tell you that the email address you’re trying to send an email to is invalid. Thanks for making me have to do some psychic debugging, guys.

Never mind. What I really wanted to talk about was iTunes. I’ve finally had to install it after years of being a Windows Media Playing scumbag, and… really, what’s the fuss been about? It’s a total piece of crap! I mean, seriously, this is version 7? Version 1 must have been a car crash!

First thing that’s getting on my nerves is how the App Store has been jammed into iTunes in what looks to be about the shoddiest hatchet-job I’ve ever seen. What I especially like is if you right-click on an App and select "Get Info" the Info tab includes (albeit greyed-out) fields for such useful infomation as "Album Artist" and "Composer", the Options tab has settings for "Volume Adjustment" and the "Equalizer Preset". I wish I was making this up.

Second: Apple. I have a music folder already. You evidently know this, as you have created an "iTunes" folder inside it. And an "iTunes Music" folder inside that. You seem to have entirely missed the point of the Music folder. Here’s a tip: it’s to keep music in, not iTunes’s settings.

Third: The store. It’s dog slow, and nearly impossible to find what you’re looking for. Browsing for apps is horrific. It’s better for music, it seems, but it’s still horribly slow, and the layout just feels terribly cluttered and hard to use. It also lets me do stupid things like switch to the US store, find something I want, then try to purchase it, only to be told my account’s only good for the UK store. Great, but I was logged in all along, couldn’t you have told me before? Why even let me see the US store? Would there be any horrible DRM-related consequences to trying to create a US account? I really, really have no idea. Painful, miserable experience.

Fourth: How the hell do I drill into my library by artist, or by album?! All I have is the ability to look at a huge list of songs. Oh right, you have to click the little eye symbol by the Eject button in the lower corner. Of course! That’s incredibly obvious. How did I not think of that.

Fifth: When it imported my library, it didn’t actually ask which folders I wanted to import from – it just grabbed everything, including non-music auditory detritus lurking in my personal folders, and now I’m going to have to clean it all out of the library if I want my signal/noise ratio to not utterly suck.

Honestly, I can count on two fingers the iTunes features I actually like, which is shuffle by album, and randomly play songs by the same artist/album together in shuffle.

Are there any redeeming features? I’d really love to know.