What is worse? Root canal without anesthesia or using the latest iTunes?

OK, several things here some of which, I agree, are frustrating.

The most obvious is the iTunes account management which most of us fall over on. You can have one iTunes with many people accessing it, but it can get very messy. Best to have different users on your Macs and set up iTunes accordingly for each user under their ident. If you do this, then your content will be viewable on different machines if you authorise them.

iTunes is NOT intuitive since v11. It is a pain in the rectal cavity (or as I prefer to use my "Sphincter Irritation Value" of 9.9 on a scale of 0 to 10). It should be intuitive, and it may be to the bunch who designed it and live with it every day, but to the rest of humanity, it took a major dump when it got upgraded to SIV 9.9.

Content is based on iTunes ID, however, the content is put in to the same folder as everyone else's ID therefore making it virtually impossible for anyone to clean out the offending apps or content which are nothing to do with you. This is why I promote using different login IDs on the Macs and setting up iTunes that way.

Finally, on the film/TV side of things, HD is a real cash-cow for Apple (and all the others) and has caught many a user out. It ALWAYS defaults to HD where this is possible. Caveat Emptor - Buyer Beware - it is so easy to think that you will be buying things for a second time, but that is where you are wrong. iTunes will tell you that you are buying something for a second time, but if you have already bought it on the ID you are using, it will recognise the purchase ONLY after you have put in your password to buy it for the second time (you will not get charged for this). HOWEVER if you bought the SD version and you then click mistakenly on Buy Now on the HD button, you WILL get charged.

A lot of people complain about the iTunes ecosystem and many have a right to do so, but it is trying to be all things and it will fall over eventually. My only hope is that Apple gets its act together before its millions of somewhat tolerant clients start abandoning ship.

I can't really help with the season pass problem, but you don't appear to be alone. It appears this is a recent problem on the server-side that a more than one person is reporting in these forums.

However, to get the iTunes sidebar back pull down the View menu and select "show sidebar." This will return iTunes 11 to the iTunes 10 view, which may be helpful to you.

Bernhard VonZastrow1 wrote:

What? My wife and I cannot have our own iTunes accounts?

Yes, you can, but with some caveats. One computer (one MAC address) can be associated with only one Apple ID for iTunes Match, automatic downloads and downloading of past purchases every 90 days. So, if your wife does any of these things on her Mac you can't just log into your Apple ID. This is just the way the system works.

In the future, if you need to download a new episode of a season pass, use your purchase history, or turn on the iTunes in the Cloud option which will show you the new episode right in the iTunes browser with a download icon, which makes it pretty easy to identify what is new.

At least with root canal you know that the job is done once it is completed!

Bernhard VonZastrow1 wrote:

I'm trying to turn on the iTunes in the cloud option, but I can't figure out where that is enabled. Could you point me to it?

In iTunes prefs > Store select the option to "show iTunes in the cloud purchases." This will show you all purchases that are currently in your purchase history that are not currently downloaded to your computer.

What is worst?

Root canal with no anesthesia for sure!