Why I Love/Hate iTunes

Of all the applications that come as part of the Mac OS, iTunes is without a doubt the oddest creature in the zoo. First off like the blind men describing an elephant, if you ask ten people what iTunes is, you’ll get ten different answers.
For podcasters, it’s the place to subscribe to and sync podcasts, But only if the podcast has been submitted to the podcast directory of the iTunes store. Also iTunes and Quicktime Player are the only applications that will play “enhanced” (.M4a format) Podcast.
For a DJ, iTunes is a great way to put together a playlist for a set. And it’s the only way to play songs from your iPod through your computer. I you want to play music from your ipod from a third party DJ program you are outta luck.
The other thing is that Syncing your music though i Tunes, doesn’t sync it at all. Sync would mean that you would have the same music on your computer and your iPod, but iTunes version of “sync” is a one way deal. It only moves new music from your computer to your iPod. Forget getting music to your computer from your iPod. That’s a No-No because that would make it too easy for you to steal and copy music. The Sync Process makes it WAAY too easy to wipe all your songs from your iPod that you may have put on there from an older Mac or some other source. losing music (or any other data) is never good.
It’s good that iTunes makes it easy to buy music from the iTunes store, but it’s horribly bad that most the music is AAC DRM encoded music. Screw that !I’m buying .mp3s from Amazon or E-music.
Buying TV shows is pretty cool if you don’t mind watching TV on your computer. But the movie rentals are absurd.,the 24 hour limit to watch a movie is just plain silly.
Also you can use iTunes to convert sound files import CDs and Burn CDs. But you had better be a power user to figure it out. Here’s a situation that comes up in my Music class all the time.Let’s say you have an imported .wav file on your desktop and you want to convert it to .mp3. Do you know how to do it in iTunes? It’s simple:
1. Open iTunes
2. Go to the file menu select Add to Library, navigate to the desktop and add the wave file to the Library.
3. Find the file in your music library by going to the recently added items playlist.
4. Go to the iTunes menu and select Preferences.
5. go to the advanced Tab and select Importing.
6. Select MP3 Encoder from the pull down selector and choose a sampling rate. and click on the OK button
7. Go back to your file in the recently added items playlist and highlight the file.
8.Go to the Advanced Menu (or option click on the file) and choose Convert Selection to MP3.
9. Once the file is converted to MP3 you will have 2 files with the same name in your playlist, one of them is a .wav file and the other is your converted .mp3 file. To tell which file is which, go to the View menu and select view options, Then make sure that the kind checkbox is checked.
10. In the playlist window scroll right to expose the kind column. You will see that one of the files is an .mp3.
11. Finally option Click on the .mp3 file and select Show in Finder, to find where iTunes saved your .Mp3 file. And then ypou can drag the file to where you actually want it.
See, an easy eleven step process.
There are many other reasons I love/hate iTunes. I’d love to hear a few of yours.