Why is iTunes so bad?

iTunes is the worst piece of software I have ever used - the search facility is infuriating. It keeps defaulting to my library when I am trying to search for apps, making everything a 4 click process to search the ****** site - so now I don't use it unless I have to. I hate it with a vengeance - it duplicates content everywhere, moves things about - I'm ending this rant now, but suffice it to say it is putting me off Apple completely.

Apple hardware is great but the software is the worst I have ever used. Logic Pro is a nightmare and I now use Adobe for image / video editing. Regarding iTunes, it is the entire reason I am thinking of boycotting iphones all together. It changes everytime I use it. I've just spent 2 whole hours trying to upload an album because everytime I did, it appeared on my phone as 12 seperate songs (this is after running it through a tag cleaning app) After deleting and re-uploading four times, I restarted my computer and phone. Tried it again and it finally uploaded as one complete album. Unfortunately there was a song missing so I uploaded that, tagged it up etc, and it showed up as a seperate song. I deleted the whole lot and tried again, and hey presto, it went back to uploading as seperate songs. I got there in the end, by doing the same thing everytime. And everytime it would turn up different results. Unstable isn't the word. If Apple ever decide to sort out itunes, I may return, but for now, I'm heading towards a better brand. And I will do a youtube video demonstrating how utterly disgraceful itunes is before I throw my 5s at a brickwall in furious anger...

"Why is iTunes so bad?"

Fundamentally, the functionality of iTunes as a music organizational tool and player (like Roon, JRiver, etc., which are excellent) is secondary to its purpose as a platform to sell music and videos. Thus it unfortunately is an extremely poor organizational tool and player, and Apple seems to have zero incentive to improve it.

hedwind:

Although it may be too late to help you (as you're going elsewhere), I will mention that the cause of songs on albums being separated is usually because whoever tagged them (and it wasn't Apple) did a rubbish job!

If an album is a compilation - which is defined as an album with tracks by different artists, then the tagging information will need to have the following fields correctly completed:

• (Once imported into iTunes, select all the songs on the album and select Edit/Get Info/Details)
• the Album Artist field needs to have "Various Artists" in it
• the Compilation flag needs to be ticked

• Note that the Artist field (different field to the "Album Artist") contains the word "mixed" because there are various artists names in it.
• And needless to say, the Album Title needs to be exactly the same for each song.

Sometimes the tagging information has not be correctly completed, for a variety of reasons. When importing from CD, I always check the Compilation flag field before importing and the Album Artist after importing to make sure they are correct:

Import CD window:

As an aside, I actually think iTunes is very good, I've been using it successfully for many years. What is rubbish is Apple's lamentable attempts to explain the frequent changes to us, the users. Perhaps the oddest thing they did a few years ago was hide the top bar menu - you know, the one with the Help on it.

As you can see, they put it back.

Ben Seput wrote:

Even just to answer this question, I had to verify my trust in my computer again, which I've done hundreds of times by now, to sign in to apple.com.

You should get to the bottom of that - why are you having to do this? I'm still on Windows 7, so my experience is not a direct comparison to yours, but if all Windows 10 users were having this issue, we'd know about it here in these discussions. I'm not aware that it's that big a problem. I suggest you start a new discussion on that topic.

Ben Seput wrote:

I'll tell you what, iTunes gets worse and worse over time.

It's certainly not improving, I'll give you that much. One of Apple's greatest failures is that features don't necessarily get removed completely, they simply get moved somewhere else - and consequently hidden, because Apple don't tell us where the feature has been moved to. It's frustrating trying to find them again.

However...

Ben Seput wrote:

Now it's this ridiculous system of playlists and limited categories that can't adapt to things being entered in different ways.

You don't have to create, have, or use any Playlists at all. None.

You can ignore the standard built-in Playlists should that be your choice.

Playlists are for your convenience. Personally I do use them, but not in the "modern way". This modern way is that many people seem to think that everything has to be in a Playlist and that a song cannot be played unless it is. (I've even come across one music programme in which, to play just one song, it has to be in a playlist, of that one song.) There is no such requirement in iTunes or on iPods and iPhones.

I'm not sure what you mean by "limited categories", iTunes doesn't use the term "categories", except as a field that the users cannot modify. Here are the 14 songs in my Library that use Category:

Out of almost twenty thousand songs. (And most of those 14 are Podcasts that I've manipulated {adapted, to use your phrase} into my Songs Library.)

There are several flexible ways to "categorise" your music:

• genre - you can change any song to a different genre and even add your own*
• grouping - you can add your own word or phrase
• comments - again, you can add whatever text you want

You can then use Playlists to further group songs together - so straight away, there's a use for Playlists.

* If you subscribe to Apple Music, that may change the genre back to the one originally allocated, but that's because the user is effectively playing someone else's music.

Back to my example; I have some songs that I would like to be allocated with a second genre, but it's not possible to allocate two genres to a song. To get round this limitation, I type the second genre into the comments field and then create a Smart Playlist that includes all of the first genre and any song with the second genre in the comments field.

For example, the song in this screenshot below:

the song is listed as genre-is-Dance. But I also want it to be in the same list of songs as the Acid Jazz genre. Using my method means that in my Smart Playlist (named Acid Jazz Plus), all Acid Jazz songs and the song Movin' On Up are listed together. But Movin' On Up also appears in the Dance genre as well.

Instead of playing the genre = Acid Jazz (which has only Acid Jazz songs), I play the Playlist = Acid Jazz Plus, which includes Movin' On Up as well.

Here's the Smart Playlist's rules:

Ben Seput wrote:

1. I don't doubt that other platforms have their problems, but perhaps they've caught up as Apple's user interface quality has dropped so dramatically.
2. All that said, can anyone suggest a music program that is still compatible with iphone?
3. Or, in lieu of that, a decent combination of phone/platform? I know a lot of people have good things to say about android.

1. You're correct, other platforms do have their own problems. I'm not convinced that anyone else has caught up.
2. No, to add music to your iPhone, you need iTunes (or directly from the iTunes Store)
3. You have answered your own question in point 1, above. (I have an Android device. My music is on my iPod, not the Android.)

I do use my Android device for all audio-only Podcast listening. Apple's Podcasts app is dreadful.

Ben Seput wrote:

Now answer me this: can you manipulate the iphone/itunes layout so you can look at the songs in a list, and see the length of each song?

On the iPhone:

it's not possible (as far as I know) to see a list of songs with their individual playing times. Perhaps, if you have radio version, remix version and boringly-long versions of songs, the answer is to rename them by adding "radio version", "remix" or "tediously long version" to the title. 😁 (This is not that easy if using Apple Music. 😟)

In iTunes:

Ben Seput wrote:

...after messing around with the view options I found that organizing by songs sorted by artist is fairly close to the old itunes layout.

There have always been many ways to look at your Library and that's still the case today. As I don't know precisely how you were viewing your Library in the past, I'll mention my preferred view, which allows me easy access to a list, with individual song times (if you open the picture in a new window, it should be much larger and easier to see):

In my view, I'm looking at the Songs View, with the Column Browser displayed (see screenshot below):

1. Songs view
2. View (top bar menu)
3. Column Browser (show)
4. Select which columns (my choice of genres, artists and albums makes easy browsing, see later on). [By grouping compilations together, I can quickly jump to those various artists compilation albums as well.]
5. The chosen columns (Albums is off-screen)

Here's a closer look at the section with the ringed column (Time) from the first screenshot:

In the shot above (note that this is quicker to do, than to read. Once you have read the following, try this view for yourself and you will see how easy it is);

• I'm in the Songs View (1st click)
• All genres are selected, which means all artists are listed in the Artists column (that is, all artists with their own album)
• (Notice the Compilations in the Artists column. Selecting Compilations would then show only compilation albums (various artist albums) in the Album column to its right. For now though...)
• By selecting the artist Abjective (2nd click), only the three albums I have by that artist are listed in the Albums list
• By selecting the album Into The Labyrinth (3rd click) the browser below the columns shows only that album
• Notice the individual track times for each song. These columns can be added and moved left and right to give the precise view I have chosen
• To add the Time column, right-click on the header bar (the column header) and choose Time from the context menu that appears

Then simply left-click/drag the Time column to the position you want

The big advantage this view has over most other all other views is that it's an easy three clicks to narrow down the selection (check the bullet points above, it really is just 3 clicks - and that includes switching to the Songs view).

As an example of the difference between views, if I look at the Artists View instead and select the artist Abjective, only one album is listed; the Into The Labyrinth. The other two albums, Fields and Waves, are compilation albums, so the they do not appear under the Artist-is-Abjective list, because each album is various artists, not just Abjective.

You should be able to create a simple and quick view for yourself by reading my suggestion and then modifying it to suit you.

Bought new iPhone 7 and will not sync all music an cannot merge libraries in I tunes. Guess they expect me to repurchase all music.Like apple but every thing is so difficult took 15 min just to come up with acceptable password to write this

Every time I think iTunes can't get any worse, it does. There is so much wrong with it, that I don't even know where to start. It's incredibly non-intuitive, and for some reason, Apple continually has to change menus and move icons around on a regular basis. I'd give anything to go back to the first version of iTunes. It was a thousand times better than what we have now.

After purchasing 5 iPhones over the years, I'm actually considering moving away from an iPhone.

I agree. iTunes is trying to do too much and badly! They should have a small programme that handles backups and retires properly, and keep everything else separate.

I had to revert back to IOS 10.3.3 after unreliability with apps in IOS11 Beta, and guess what, it would not restore properly either, even following meticulously the Apple guidance. So several hours of restoring apps and settings was no fun.

I mean who needs an animated turd that mimicks your facial expressions- really? Never mind gimmicks you will never use, let's get the basics working first please.

After using iTunes for around 5 months now, I am very confused at how a piece of software used by millions over many years, that makes A LOT of money - can be SO BAD!

It is not intuitive, it always seems to have a glitch here and there -that are never addressed and the number 1. reason why I think iTunes is so bad, is the **** user interface and navigation!

It really makes you wonder...is it on purpose?

I don't know if iTunes software differs from Windows to OS, but let me tell you. I use iTunes/Apple music on two laptops running Windows 7 pro, and two laptops running Windows 10, I also have it installed on my HTC phone and I can confirm that the software is the same!. ...terrible interface, annoying navigation and just pathetic really... it looks worse than it did 5 years ago! ...now how on earth can that be?

- I am with EE mobile here in the UK, so when my free 6 months are up... I AM OFF! ...even though EE have agreed to cover the data that I use for downloading and streaming with iTunes..so it won't effect my allowance - great deal, but I ain't sticking around with software that bad!

svissloki wrote:

After using iTunes for around 5 months now, I am very confused at how a piece of software used by millions over many years, that makes A LOT of money - can be SO BAD!

I think you have two choices.

Either -

Provide some detail of the nature of your problem (preferably by starting your own discussion, which will be less cluttered than this one), and see if anyone can offer any help

or

say goodbye to us and (if I have understood you correctly) to EE as well. Poor old EE, what have they done to you?

Your choice.

Note that I provided user hedwind advice on how to overcome the issue he (or she) had incorrectly assigned as Apple's fault. Hedwind never responded, which is unfortunate, especially as his (or her) feedback could have helped other people (such as yourself) to see that problems can be overcome.

Note also (from my previous post), that (should you be thinking otherwise), I do not think Apple is perfect. But I do know that experienced Apple users can help those who are new to Apple.

I'm also wondering why iTunes is so terrible these days. It was far more stable with a way better and simpler interface 15 years ago. Bring me back that iTunes. I had to reinstall the drivers just to get my iPhone X to connect so I could restore it.

Oh, and Apple, please stop making us pay $1000+ for phones that cost $50 to manufacture that are terribly designed and also don't have a stable operating system. It's like Apple doesn't even test anything anymore and like they're running on a team of only 5 developers. Sheesh. I'm a software engineer and your products are garbage... but I'm already in your ecosystem so I'm stuck until something comes along that can pull me out - I'd give it 5 years max, you guys aren't doing anything innovative or worthwhile anyways.

Boolad wrote:

Oh, and Apple, please stop making us pay $1000+ for phones that cost $50 to manufacture that are terribly designed and also don't have a stable operating system.

Who precisely is making you pay $1,000 for a phone? It was your choice to pay that price, no one made you.

And it appears you have paid that much since you state:

Boolad wrote:

I had to reinstall the drivers just to get my iPhone X to connect so I could restore it.

... and that must have been recently too.

Before you think I'm simply defending Apple, I too, like many of the experienced contributors here, have my own gripes with iTunes and in my case, with my iPod Touch. But the purpose of this community is to help users get the best from their product. Your post does nothing to assist that aim.