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I was a zune user. I had my music organised meticulously and could simply drag and drop to my zune from my (parents) windows desktop. It was simple and it was f
by darg01 24d ago
I was a zune user. I had my music organised meticulously and could simply drag and drop to my zune from my (parents) windows desktop. It was simple and it was fantastic.
Then I got a iPod so I needed to download iTunes. I downloaded iTunes, it told me to import my music. I imported my meticulously organised collection. It duplicated every single file into the iTunes approved format (AAC?) - my meticulous collection was now less meticulous, messy even.
It caused me to swear off Apple products for decades. Though it also led me to some very basic programming in order to delete the duplicates. I was only partially successful.
Programming led me to use Linux, before I eventually moved over to Mac. I like to think this was their plan all along.
- senderista 24d agoiTunes for Windows was indeed awful.
- emsy 24d agoiTunes for Mac was also awful. I don’t know where the idea comes from that iTunes on Mac was good software but I remember reading that and getting a my first (then Intel) Mac and wondering why it got so much praise on Mac. It was the same software with slightly better UI but generally the same awful UX (except for drivers and performance which was never an issue on Win for me)
- paradox460 24d agoBecause back in the dawn of OS X it was legitimately a good music utility
- -0_0- 24d agoAs a hobbyist teen I built my own itunes clone for PC from scratch and remember getting so excited when Apple posted a job for someone to port iTunes officially. I remember getting so excited, then depressed when I realised a hobbyist teenager could never compete with the people Apple would have applying. Later seeing how bizarrely bloated iTunes for PC turned out, guess I probably could have.
- jsodndb 24d agoI don’t think that happened. At least not as you’re telling it. iTunes never required AAC files.
- JadeNB 24d agoI believe that, (possibly only) in the early days, it offered to add any imported music to your library, which I think it indeed did by converting to AAC and putting in a directory structure of its choosing.
- Thlom 24d agoIt probably could convert to AAC, but the biggest issue for collector nerds with carefully curated collections of mp3's organized in folders by artist and album and with perfect metadata was that iTunes would take all your hard work, shake it around, rename all the files and dump them in a single folder and fuck up your metadata. At least that's how I remember it, but it's over 20 years ago ...
- montagg 24d agoI think the core lesson of the story is knowing if your hobby is listening to music or curating a music collection. Optimize for one or the other. I went from meticulously curated MP3 collection on Linux to letting iTunes do it for me, and I realized that the meticulous curation and hunting down album art and everything was a hobby I didn't actually love. But if you do love it, great! Different tools for different jobs.
- jack1243star 23d agoiTunes is trash on both of the jobs you mentioned though. Still waiting for a worthy alternative to foobar2000 on either Mac or Linux...
- fami-com 17d agoBut foobar2000 already has an osx version (https://www.foobar2000.org/mac https://www.foobar2000.org/mac), I've been using it for years.
- emsy 24d agoCan’t reply to jsondb, but iTunes had a default option to convert to AAC afaik.
- mietek 23d agoIf only you had bothered to check the settings, you would have found the option to keep your music files where they are when adding to the iTunes library. It's been there all along, and it's still there in SoundJam's current reincarnation as Music.app.