Who uses iTunes?

[AdironRider]

If you have kids computer reliabilty goes out the window. My little sisters can destroy a computer within hours of booting it up the first time. Not sure if thats your situation.

Otherwise, Macs are vastly superior in terms of reliability. Hands down.

I would argue that Mac OS is more intuitive for most average computer users. For someone like my wife or Mom, who know nothing about computers, Macs are the greatest thing since sliced bread. Otherwise its a Unix system.

They definitely arent intuitive if you are used to a Windows system, but to say they are faulty products just because you arent comfortable with the software is going a bit far no?

Macs definitely are pricey though, no argument from me on that one. However, they are built to high quality standards (unlike any Toshiba, Lenovo, etc Ive ever encountered) and operate well IMO. Are they worth what they charge? Maybe not, but Im willing to pay for high quality equipment (with a great service program - even without Applecare those genius' at the store will fix your stuff for free most times as long as its not a hardware problem).

 

[bvibert]

If you have kids computer reliabilty goes out the window. My little sisters can destroy a computer within hours of booting it up the first time. Not sure if thats your situation.

Otherwise, Macs are vastly superior in terms of reliability. Hands down.

I would argue that Mac OS is more intuitive for most average computer users. For someone like my wife or Mom, who know nothing about computers, Macs are the greatest thing since sliced bread. Otherwise its a Unix system.

They definitely arent intuitive if you are used to a Windows system, but to say they are faulty products just because you arent comfortable with the software is going a bit far no?

Macs definitely are pricey though, no argument from me on that one. However, they are built to high quality standards (unlike any Toshiba, Lenovo, etc Ive ever encountered) and operate well IMO. Are they worth what they charge? Maybe not, but Im willing to pay for high quality equipment (with a great service program - even without Applecare those genius' at the store will fix your stuff for free most times as long as its not a hardware problem).

The motherboard on our Mac laptop died. I've owned a lot of PCs and I've never ever had a motherboard die. When I searched the internet at the time it appeared that we were far from the only ones who experienced that particular problem. That's hardly a trait that I'd attribute with "high quality equipment". There were no children involved. The computer was used primarily by my wife, and a little by me, mostly around our house.

Now that we have kids it's been relegated to something the kids can beat on and pretend they're using a computer with, something it's much better suited for.

Before the hardware died it was far from reliable, locking up and/or crashing programs regularly. So, you can keep telling me they're "vastly superior" until you're blue in the face, I know from experience that isn't true.

What they're good at is marketing and creating hype. Just because they make money does not mean they make a product that's worth what they charge.

 

[Edd]

So I spent a bunch of time organizing music in a file I can manually feed to iTunes so I can avoid duplicates, which is something Rhapsody and Windows Media seem to do with ease. It's converting the songs now to AAC. At the rate it's going it looks like this will take days.

8 hours later. Still converting...my desktop is getting a workout.

 

[bvibert]

8 hours later. Still converting...my desktop is getting a workout.

Did it finish yet?

 

[Edd]

Did it finish yet?

It was still going at midnight but was done this morning. Based on the # of songs (about 6500) I estimate it finished in 11 - 12 hours.

The organization is sort of like a musical massacre. Soundtracks and other compilations are thoroughly f****d. Other established albums are even scattered. 3 of the songs from Led Zeppelin IV are randomly separated from the rest of the album. Got some work to do...

 

[wa-loaf]

The motherboard on our Mac laptop died. I've owned a lot of PCs and I've never ever had a motherboard die. When I searched the internet at the time it appeared that we were far from the only ones who experienced that particular problem. That's hardly a trait that I'd attribute with "high quality equipment". There were no children involved. The computer was used primarily by my wife, and a little by me, mostly around our house.

Now that we have kids it's been relegated to something the kids can beat on and pretend they're using a computer with, something it's much better suited for.

Before the hardware died it was far from reliable, locking up and/or crashing programs regularly. So, you can keep telling me they're "vastly superior" until you're blue in the face, I know from experience that isn't true.

What they're good at is marketing and creating hype. Just because they make money does not mean they make a product that's worth what they charge.

I had an old macbook that had a motherboard problem that caused me a bunch of trouble. It was actually recalled and they replaced the motherboard. No issues after that. Sounds like you got one of those, but missed the recall. I've had no other major problems. You can't base your opinion on one computer you had. I've had a string of Dells at work that have all been pieces of crap.

Apple beats all the other pc makers in every customer service and reliability survey I've ever seen. That doesn't mean that they are the computer for everyone. But smearing them based on one experience is kinda weak.

 

[kickstand]

It was still going at midnight but was done this morning. Based on the # of songs (about 6500) I estimate it finished in 11 - 12 hours.

The organization is sort of like a musical massacre. Soundtracks and other compilations are thoroughly f****d. Other established albums are even scattered. 3 of the songs from Led Zeppelin IV are randomly separated from the rest of the album. Got some work to do...

Were your songs originally ripped from CD or were they downloaded from a site like Napster or some file sharing site? If they came from CD and all the metadata was there, iTunes should have organized them without issue - except for those annoying "Compilation" and "Artist feat. Other Artist" things I mentioned. If they were downloaded, then all bets are off. I have so many bootlegs and other randomly downloaded stuff I haven't bothered to import because the tags are all messed up. It would take hours just to get them organized.

 

[bvibert]

I had an old macbook that had a motherboard problem that caused me a bunch of trouble. It was actually recalled and they replaced the motherboard. No issues after that. Sounds like you got one of those, but missed the recall. I've had no other major problems. You can't base your opinion on one computer you had. I've had a string of Dells at work that have all been pieces of crap.

Apple beats all the other pc makers in every customer service and reliability survey I've ever seen. That doesn't mean that they are the computer for everyone. But smearing them based on one experience is kinda weak.

Ours was an iBook I think, I don't really remember exactly, just that it was white and had a piece of fruit on the cover.

Smearing wasn't the intention. I don't like them, and I was pointing out why. The one experience I've had is all I need, and hopefully all I'll ever have. I'm glad Apple products work for some people, they just don't for me.

Sorry for any weak sauce, I'm just calling it like I see it. I do tend to go a bit overboard on topics I'm passionate about...

 

[Nick]

I've been using itunes for a while but just recently put all my music on the cloud (Google Music)... works very well and I don't have to worry about losing everything if the house burns down.

 

[Black Phantom]

I've been using itunes for a while but just recently put all my music on the cloud (Google Music)... works very well and I don't have to worry about losing everything if the house burns down.

What will you do if the cloud goes away?

 

[Edd]

Were your songs originally ripped from CD or were they downloaded from a site like Napster or some file sharing site? If they came from CD and all the metadata was there, iTunes should have organized them without issue - except for those annoying "Compilation" and "Artist feat. Other Artist" things I mentioned. If they were downloaded, then all bets are off. I have so many bootlegs and other randomly downloaded stuff I haven't bothered to import because the tags are all messed up. It would take hours just to get them organized.

Probably 95% of the songs are ripped from CD. However, I tasked iTunes with converting thousands of MP3 and WMA files to AAC and I've heard that it has trouble doing that.

If a person starts out cold with his CD collection and devotes himself to iTunes from the get-go then he's all set. A ding-dong like me that comes to Apple with a crapload of non-Apple songs has some work to do. The dumb thing is...once I start somethng like this I have a hard time not finishing...even if I'm not going to need it. Something like this brings out my OCD to the surface.

 

[ctenidae]

We went through and burned all of our CDs to iTunes. At least, we put all of our CDs, one by one, into the drive, and watched iTunes process them.

I think approximately half of the songs then appeared in iTunes. So now, I have to go through the pile of CDs and the iTunes list and see what made it and what didn't. Not ina hurry to do that.

 

[Nick]

What will you do if the cloud goes away?

Bask in the sun

.... anyways I have them Amazon's cloud too, and also on my own RAID0 NAS device at home.

So I'm pretty well covered

 

[Edd]

We went through and burned all of our CDs to iTunes. At least, we put all of our CDs, one by one, into the drive, and watched iTunes process them.

I think approximately half of the songs then appeared in iTunes. So now, I have to go through the pile of CDs and the iTunes list and see what made it and what didn't. Not ina hurry to do that.

Jeez, I stand corrected. There's no excuse for that.

 

[kickstand]

Probably 95% of the songs are ripped from CD. However, I tasked iTunes with converting thousands of MP3 and WMA files to AAC and I've heard that it has trouble doing that.

Not positive about WMA files, but it can handle MP3. All you have to do is add the files/folder to the library. No conversions necessary, but you know that now.....

If a person starts out cold with his CD collection and devotes himself to iTunes from the get-go then he's all set. A ding-dong like me that comes to Apple with a crapload of non-Apple songs has some work to do. The dumb thing is...once I start somethng like this I have a hard time not finishing...even if I'm not going to need it. Something like this brings out my OCD to the surface.

I ripped the CDs to disk before I started using iTunes. I was trying to create backups of the music and eventually put the CDs in storage. It took my forever to start using the iTunes store. There's something about having the media in your hands, especially when your truck has a CD player and no auxiliary input for the iPod.

And the OCD is exactly why I haven't started importing all the music with bad metadata. I would be in front of the PC for days fixing all of them.

 

[Geoff]

And the OCD is exactly why I haven't started importing all the music with bad metadata. I would be in front of the PC for days fixing all of them.

I did that about 3 years ago. It helped to be unemployed. I don't have enough hours in my life to do that now.

 

[Nick]

Yeah, I burned all my CD's several years ago. Took a long time but it was really wroth it and it's nice to have a clean music collection today.

 

[kickstand]

I did that about 3 years ago. It helped to be unemployed. I don't have enough hours in my life to do that now.

I hear that. We're remodeling the basement into a play room for the kids (buh-bye, ManTown) and I'm on a deadline to get the rest of my CDs ripped before they go into storage. I think I have about a week, but I'm not unemployed.....

 

[mondeo]

Good for you on your work computer, but you cant seriously be arguing that Macs dont have a far more reliably operating system. How many windows ME's or Vistas do we have to go through before they find one that works? All I know is 2000 worked pretty well, and XP now works ok although it took them the good part of a decade to get it right. Anyone remember XP before service pack 2 came out? Total shitshow.

And you can make a Mac do plenty of things you want it to. I seriously doubt it was anything beyond user error that is giving you problems. Just because its different doesnt mean its bad, its just not what you are used to.

Meanwhile Apple keeps trading blows with Exxon for the most valuable company out there. At one point this summer they had more cash on hand than the US govt, clearly they are doing something horrifically wrong there.

Vista has a perception problem, and that's it. My desktop runs Vista, my laptop Win 7; there really isn't that much of a difference between the two. How many enterprises run mission critical systems on Macs?

Windows is rock solid, and has much better support than Macs. Business wise, they do a great job at exploiting blind loyalty from people like you, milking their customers for all their worth. No one's arguing against that.

 

[kickstand]

2. The way it seemingly randomly assigns some albums as "compilation" when it's not. If anyone has Santana's "Shaman", perfect example. It also breaks out the guest artist who is with the main artist. On my iPod, below Santana, I have about 12 additional entries of "Santana feat. XXXXX". So annoying. And when you go to disk, you don't find it under Santana - Shaman, it's under Compilations - Shaman.

Solved my own problem here....

Even though the assignment to "Compilation" still seems random, there is a check box on each song's Info page. It says "Part of compilation". Just uncheck it and it automatically moves the files around in the library folder structure for you.

However, in importing a bunch of CD's tonight, I noticed iTunes now decided to add another directory layer to my library. I have my library path defined as H:\music\iTunes, with all the artists under iTunes. Well, the damn software added a Music folder and put the new stuff under there. So, now the path is H:\music\iTunes\Music.

Super-annoying to look at and even more annoying that they add that layer and give you no control over it (as far as I can tell...)