wheresrhys

As I was saying, iTunes is a mixed blessing. On the one hand it is way out in front of the media player competition (even more so with the new addition of iTunes Genius), but on the other it’s cursed with Apple’s megalomania.

Today the subject of my ire is that only iPods sync with iTunes’ completely non-standard way of handling playlists and the like. While the new iPod shuffle is pretty cool (though for the size of the thing you’d expect it to have more storage), I’ve never been a fan of the iTunes design – the scroll-wheel is over sensitive in my humble opinion. Also I don’t think I’ve heard anyone applaud the amazing battery life or good value for money iPods offer. And finally, if the battery runs out which – if the iPod is designed as well as everyone likes to think it is – should be well before the thing breaks, you have to send it back to Apple to get the new battery fitted.

Ridiculous.

So I have always stayed clear of iPods, favouring cheaper and more flexible mp3 players instead. First of all I went for the on the face of it iPod clone, but in fact much clunkier, Sandisk Sansa, which broke after little more than a year. At the time I also synced using a bit of free software I can’t remember the name of, and which wasn’t very good anyway.

In its second iteration my iPod abstention has fared better. The mp3 player I have is none other than a sony walkman. Annoyingly, like most mp3 players these days it has the ability to play videos, which I and surely many others don’t want. But minor gripes aside, the simultaneous discovery of Musicbridge, a handy piece of software which takes all your playlists etc. from iTunes and copies them over to windows media player (which, in keeping with windows tradition, is a piece of software which gives you the freedom to choose what hardware you use with it), has led to a golden age of having my iCake with some Sony-icing on top.

I’m not the world’s biggest Apple fan. I’ve written a couple of times of the annoying usability glitches in the so-called design gurus’ software, but by and large their software is very good, so it’s not this that inspires my dislike of the company.

My number one gripe has always been the control freakery; how their all-encompassing design ethic means that they seem hell-bent on making you choose 100% Apple or 100% competitor. A great example of this is that the Apple USB extension cable my friend got that had a little dimple in it, meaning it could only be used on Apple products (though this could be fixed with a pair of pliers).

But this attitude continues into their software. The only Apple software I use is iTunes, quite simply because it’s brilliant. This brilliance has just gone up a notch with the introduction of iTunes Genius, which is excellent at building a playlist of songs to go with any song you select. It’s better than Last.fm’s similar functionality, and it’s better than a number of iTunes plug-ins I’ve tried over the years. And I love it when computers/the internet manage to predict your preferences (Amazon’s recommendations is still the best ‘web2.0′ idea on the web I reckon).

For instance, I’ve just set up a genius playlist based on Rodeo Town by The Kills, who have a female singer. Probably about 75% of the songs in the genius playlist also have female vocalists. I’m not saying this is necessarily desirable in a playlist (though it’s sounding pretty good so far), but being able to identify features such as that in order to get similar tracks is quite a useful feat. I look forward to the day when you can tweak options before generating the playlist.

But I digress – I was supposed to be dissing Apple!

My gripe with the new genius feature is that you have to sign in to iTunes store – giving up your credit card details – before using it. This effectively puts it out of reach of anyone without a credit card. And all because Apple want to make as many users’ purchase of music as quick and one-clicky as possible. Yes, they provide an excellent piece of free software, but any service demanding your credit card details when not absolutely necessary is taking a liberty I feel. iTunes store should offer to save your credit card details if you want to, but they shouldn’t force you to. Coupled with the fact that Genius has a built in ability to recommend music from the iTunes store, and is therefore a surefire money spinner anyway, it just makes Apple seem like controlling, money-grabbing ghouls.

Nice new feature though.

Just a quick post to say how annoying I find it that in iTunes it will still only let you backup to DVD or CD – not external hard drive, despite these being commonplace nowadays. iTunes is, in my humble opinion, way ahead of the competition in most aspects, but this is one feature that really needs an update…

…like picassa did recently. You can back up to anywhere. And it’s not even all that important with picassa as a) it’s not a hodge podge of proprietary document management files; and b) it stores its metadta files piecemeal, alongside the files, so that as long as you move them folder by folder, you can back up your photos effectively just using ordinary copy and paste.