iTunes

iTunes

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Jools
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iTunes

Post by Jools »

Just needing to rant about iTunes, sorry for all offended in advance.

It's just a pain in the *ss, I have these problems:

* Trying to connect to apple store, never finishes

* Says bonjour service is disabled even though it's running. Bonjour is needed for homeshare (music with other devices)

* All official support pages always recommend that you uninstall/reinstall all itunes related software. But even when doing so, there is always some remain in the system that makes the same problem appear again.

* It hogs a lot of system resources. I think the installer is about 100 Mb. Too bad there are no alternatives if you have an iphone.
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SpliFF
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Re: iTunes

Post by SpliFF »

Serves you right for buying into Apple's walled garden.

Anyone with any sense would run a mile from a product that is so openly anti-competitive that they ban competing software from being installed.

I used to love Apple, I've even got a working Macintosh Plus I kept for nostagia, but now Apple are just a bunch of fat cocks. Jobs was the biggest prick of all (watch Pirates of Silicon Valley if you doubt that) but thanks to his charisma and billions of dollars in marketing his fanbois never seemed to notice or care.

Proprietary connectors and cables, media format lock-in, expensive third-party addons, sabotaging open standards, suing everything that moves. You give them your money and they use it to ACTIVELY MAKE YOUR LIFE MORE EXPENSIVE!

You know, one day Apple will be so powerful they'll make you take your pants off and bend over BEFORE you enter the store. The next iPod will come with anal lube so the guys at the Apple store can shove it up your ass easily while they rape your face!

Bitch :mrgreen:
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Jools
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Re: iTunes

Post by Jools »

Dude, I agree with your criticism of Apple, but what alternatives are there?
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knorke
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Re: iTunes

Post by knorke »

google says there are many ways to use "iphone without itunes"
i only use my iphone for posting.
gajop
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Re: iTunes

Post by gajop »

Jools wrote:Dude, I agree with your criticism of Apple, but what alternatives are there?
Name one device/software that doesn't have a cheaper, technically better* or equivalent alternative.

*better - compare quantitative attributes, such as device screen size, processor speed, RAM/GPU, etc. or software features such as: lack of DRM when purchasing software, existence of office tools, variety of games, etc.
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SpliFF
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Re: iTunes

Post by SpliFF »

Jools wrote:Dude, I agree with your criticism of Apple, but what alternatives are there?
Alternatives to what? What is it you need itunes to do? If you mean put music on the phone then http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-ways-to- ... ut-itunes/

If you meant "what alternative to buying an iphone?" then I think I'll just go over to the corner and cry a little.
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smoth
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Re: iTunes

Post by smoth »

I cannot buy anything becuase itunes is asking me these security questions which I filled with bullshit because anyone can guess them.

EVEN ThoUGH I am logged in I cannot buy anything because I cannot remember my security questions. what a crock of shit.

I now have a brand new galaxy, fuck you apple.
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AF
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Re: iTunes

Post by AF »

-_- its like O2 preventing me accessing certain sites until I prove Im over 18 ( some of which are trivial and I'd eb happy to show to children ) by needing me to enter my card details in, but insisting it cannot use a debit card to do so ( which is my billing card )

iTunes one day mysteriously stopped working with the remote app on my windows machine, and I cant spend the £70 itunes balance in the Apple store using the Apple store app for some reason =s


iTunes on OS X is an order of magnitude faster and incredibly stable in comparison to its windows version.
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Jools
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Re: iTunes

Post by Jools »

SpliFF wrote:
Jools wrote:Dude, I agree with your criticism of Apple, but what alternatives are there?
Alternatives to what? What is it you need itunes to do? If you mean put music on the phone then http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-ways-to- ... ut-itunes/
I've tried many of those:

1. Media Monkey: stopped using it because you can't jump to a track in the play list like in winamp. I still use winamp as my music player because it has a lot of customisation options, like global hotkeys that I use to have it to work with speech recognition on windows. Also, if it were to replace iTunes completely it would have to do some other stuff as well, for instance be able to retrieve my Nike+ runs form my phone or iPod and send it to nike's server.

2. Winamp with the ml_ipod plugin: doesn't work on a 64-bit Windows and also doesn't work if you have multiple network adapters and the one that connects to internet is not named to be alphabetically first. http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=337302 .

Also, I've used winamp since '98 or so, and apparently aren't many of use left using it (like less than a million in the US). It also has a lot of bugs (it corrupted my iPod database and crashes randomly). See this article for an interesting tale of what happened with winamp: http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06 ... id-itself/

3. Sharepod: I think I used this many years ago on iPod (like 8 years ago mor so). It's less automatic than iTunes or winamp (which worked back then to handle the iPod).

4. CopyTransManager (Windows): haven't tried

5. PwnPlayer (any platform): requires jailbreak.

6. GtkPod (Linux): not for windows and probably hackish.
SpliFF wrote: If you meant "what alternative to buying an iphone?" then I think I'll just go over to the corner and cry a little.
I meant that too, however currently I'm waiting to see what will be the best phone to buy next. But I must say that I'm quite impressed with that extra app row they put into iPhone 5 ;)
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SpliFF
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Re: iTunes

Post by SpliFF »

when i want to put music on my phone i copy via usb mass storage which works on any computer or download over wifi from my mediatomb DLNA library using BubbleUPnP - but then i can do that because i didnt buy my phone from a music distributor that's actively working against me
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KDR_11k
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Re: iTunes

Post by KDR_11k »

smoth wrote:I cannot buy anything becuase itunes is asking me these security questions which I filled with bullshit because anyone can guess them.
It's one and one factor again authentication, the latest in snake oil security!
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rattle
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Re: iTunes

Post by rattle »

that is why I buy my 320s and flacs from sites like beatport and co.
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Neddie
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Re: iTunes

Post by Neddie »

SpliFF wrote:I used to love Apple, I've even got a working Macintosh Plus I kept for nostagia
Little did we know, SpliFF and I had so much in common.

The worst part about iTunes is that it isn't much nicer to developers of products sold through it.
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Forboding Angel
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Re: iTunes

Post by Forboding Angel »

Use Google Play Music. Problem solved.

You can now access and download your music on/to any device.

Profit???

If you want to do everything yourself (like I did for a while), you can use that free/os service that you run on your comp and you stream your music form your comp to your device (fuck me I can't remember what it's called - audiosomethingoranother... damnit, can't remember and it's right on the tip of my brain).

Long and short of it, iTunes is just plain lolz. Buy music from google play, because then you can dl the mp3 and do whatever the hell you want with it.
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Jazcash
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Re: iTunes

Post by Jazcash »

I'm about to buy a HTC One X+ to replace my iPod Touch and crappy £10 phone. So pumped because I won't ever have to touch iTunes again!
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AF
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Re: iTunes

Post by AF »

Forboding Angel wrote:Use Google Play Music. Problem solved.

You can now access and download your music on/to any device.

Profit???

If you want to do everything yourself (like I did for a while), you can use that free/os service that you run on your comp and you stream your music form your comp to your device (fuck me I can't remember what it's called - audiosomethingoranother... damnit, can't remember and it's right on the tip of my brain).

Long and short of it, iTunes is just plain lolz. Buy music from google play, because then you can dl the mp3 and do whatever the hell you want with it.
Google Play store isn't available everywhere, it's only coming out in the UK in the next month or so, most people on the planet will need to spoof a US account to use it
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Forboding Angel
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Re: iTunes

Post by Forboding Angel »

Derp, yep you're right. Well there is the program that I was using http://www.audiogalaxy.com/ AudioGalaxy. Basically you set it up and stream your music from your home computer to anywhere. It's REALLY awesome.

For quite some time I ran audiogalaxy alongside google play music so that I could just switch over to audiogalaxy is google music decided to try and bend me over the table.

I kept it that way for like 6 months, then finally I trusted google music enough to switch over completely. I think what really won me over was when i realized I could buy music and then download the mp3s.

There are a lot of services out there to stream music. Honestly I would buy the cd, rip it and then stream it myself, but there are other services you can use like audiogalaxy, plex, wifi2hifi, spotify, etc etc to stream your music.

Maybe one of those would work for you?

But above all, don't buy music that you will never own. When you "buy" music from itunes, you're basically renting it. But it's worse than that, you're renting it with the understanding that you can only then use it in one specific way on one specific set of devices.

Though, hurr hurr, you can actually rip the music from an iPod, but as a friend of mine found out the hard way, the iDevices store the drmed files in incomprehensible folder structures with equally incomprehensible file names and the tags are stripped. The result is a bunch of mp3 files with no tag data on them and nothing to indicate what they are.

He had to go through something like 1000+ mp3's and retag them (despite my pleas to just torrent them) and rename the files.

That was a few years ago. There may be a better way to rip the music from an iDevice by now.
Jazcash wrote:I'm about to buy a HTC One X+ to replace my iPod Touch and crappy £10 phone. So pumped because I won't ever have to touch iTunes again!
The One X is a great phone, but remove that security bullshit from your phone when you get it. It isn't needed.

Then head over to : http://androidforums.com/android-phones/ and start having some fun with it! :-)
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AF
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Re: iTunes

Post by AF »

Not true, all iTunes music is available DRM free. In those cases were it isn't, it's the record labels fault, not Apples. As far as I'm aware, only movies and books still have fairplay applied to them ( I don't recommend you buy movies/books on iTunes )

In iTunes right clicking on the file reveals an option to find it in explorer/finder, and those files can be played in windows media player, winamp, VLC, etc etc You can even transcode them directly into classic MP3 in itunes itself if they aren't already in that format.

Also keep in mind you're not supposed to rip your CDs and DVD and put them on your phone/tablet/laptop/etc in a lot of countries, and distributors will claim you cannot do so as terms of agreement on boxes and fineprint for many formats. Didn't stop people buying blank DVDs and VHS recorders...



The arsery of iTunes is in that it's the only officially sanctioned way of syncing an iPhone, and its the only reliable method for non-saavy users. That and the instability and slowness of iTunes on Windows. If you've got an SSH connection into the filesystem though there're plenty of tools to grab the music itself off of any iOS device
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