iTunes 7.0 is a DOG. Long live Windows Media Player 11!
As the Apple fanboyz dilligently masturbated to Steve Jobs presenting the latest underwhelming range of Apple products, I decided to visit the Apple store and download iTunes 7.0. Installation took two attempts as it failed to load after the first installation. Eventually I got it working and several things about it have really pissed me off:
- It's a memory hog. Man, is it a piece of lard. I have a 122GB music collection and iTunes takes up 122MB of my physical memory. 1MB for every 1GB of music.
- The album flick-through feature is tragically slow. It doesn't seem to cache any of the album art fast enough. I have an AMD 3600+ with 2GB RAM so it shouldn't sweat it.
- What's with the new mini-store feature? I now have a nasty piece of clutter on the bottom of my window continuously begging me to load up the apple mini-store so that it can violate my privacy. Piss off!
- It takes a long time to shut down with large collections. In previous versions you got the impression that it had shut down but it hadn't. It was still sitting in your memory after at least a minute. With 7.0 I now why. When you shut down a windows pops - 'saving itunes collection' and it just sits and sits there. Not nice.
For the last month I've been using Windows Media Player 11 as my main jukebox and it's a very, very nice piece of kit. Beta 1 had it's rough edges but Beta 2 is top-notch. What do I like about it?
- Uncluttered interface. The 'softies have done a brilliant job at trumping what Apple is supposed to be best at.
- It's blazingly fast. It loads up straight away. Album art appears quickly as your scroll through your collection
- It sounds better. I don't know what they've done. Maybe it's some EQ preset but my music just sounds better in WM11. I've played around with the EQ settings in iTunes and I can't replicate the quality.
- It shuts down quickly and doesn't linger around in your physical memory. It only takes up roughly 55MB of memory.
One slight problem though. It still doesn't support podcasting but then I'm not too worried. I don't listen to many these days due to a lack of time and sources tell me that support will be coming soon. :)
Try WM11. You'll be pleasantly surprised.
MK
in itunes, itunes 7.0
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Reader Comments (17)
Or has MS become underground with ZUNE? Yea, the DJ rocks with a Zune is it soooo NYUB.
I've just read your blog last night whlst trying to set up a new Windows XP laptop with Fruityloops (I kid you not), Guitar Rig 2 and ReBirth. Took me 8 hours from start to finish. That seems like a long time for three bits of software... I lost count of how many times the machine crashed, but becuase it was new, it booted pretty quickly (one day there will be no concept of 'boot'). I'm still angry about it though.
But we're talking about playing audio here... So I have to say, as long as my audio collection isn't corrupted, I'd much rather deal with iTunes on a Mac than any other monthly (yawn) service on a PC that comes along.
And I know a lot of people that work at Rh^(*kjsy, so I should know.... ;-)
I also know that Vista will probably be DOA; I've been involved with the XAML stuff to know where the arguments are.
This is like arguing about CDs or digital downloads. Ultimately, isn't it about the music you're listening to, not the interface? The sooner that interface is non-proprietary, the better. Music for the people, NOT Microsoft Corporation or Apple Inc.
Moreover Micro$oft sucks with non standard system like windows media audio. I don't say that Apple is perfect but at least they make an effort of usinf open systems: AAC is standardised in MPEG.
As a mac and linux user I cannot use windoze media products. Please NYUB don't make the business of crosoft.
wish I had the choice to join you and try it out, but M$ in their wisdom removed the choice from me by halting Mac support!!!
Been Mac based for 20+ years now - since pre-Windows, so why switch huh? ;)
I can play back WinMedia files with my older player, or using Flip4Mac, but they've never given the Mac much support and now none at all.
Unfortunately that means I have no choice, but luckily iTunes 7 runs like a dream on OS X, even with a 100Gb+ library. I see your point about the 'saving library' when you quit, but it usually only hangs about for around 2 or 3 seconds on an old G4 400MHz tower that I use as a media server. There's no delay at all on the 1.5GHz PowerBook, so it's obviously an Intel issue not present in PPC versions.
I say Intel and not Windows, because I do know of people with Intel-based Macs who've had issues with iTunes 7 locking up when they try to use shuffle modes or watch videos... and that's on Apple's own hardware!!! Not good enough.
Keep watching for the bug fixes because it's obviously a real problem that they'll need to address. :)
I've always had issues with iTunes' sloth and the introduction of the not-actually-particularly-usable album cover view just made matters worse. WMP, for me, is a breath of fresh air. Its simplicity is a delight and miles better than earlier versions. Even its Views trump the Finder-like filtering in iTunes.