iTunes 7 Unspeakably Slow
When did iTunes start sucking?
I rarely Blog Bileā¢ but I've been an iTunes fan since day one, and suddenly iTunes 7 is the only application that can utterly suck the life out of Windows. It's ridiculously slow. Literally simple things like moving or resizing the window are "Click...wait 2 seconds...drag" operations. I've got a lousy 7034 songs and I can't even scroll or search without pain. It's bad under Windows XP, but it's unusable under Vista. I'm also totally unable to play my protected songs under Vista RC2. I've googled, but I'm not getting a sense that this is a pervasive problem.
Is anyone else seeing this problem? What happened to cause iTunes to fall from grace?
Please, discuss.
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Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.
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Strangely 7.0 worked on my wife's machine and ipod but the newest update completely hosed her install it wouldn't see the iPOD or if it did complained it was corrupt, so she's back running the original 7.0 version which says the iPOD is fine.
As an alternative I have to say I am very impressed by Media Player 11. The syncing between my WM5 based smartphone (i use this as a music player) and my music collection is seamless. Can't speak for Podcast functionality though as I don't use it.
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/itunes605forwindows.html
Also, playing any videos with 7.0 is unusable i.e. like you can see the frames flick by. I've sort of lived with it for a while waiting for a new version to fix the problems. May well go back to 6.x since there's no sign of a fix even after the last minor version upgrade.
Before owning an ipod, I drank the Apple kool-aid and believed that Apple with UI and usability GODs. That was before I'd used iTunes on Windows. Man, it's terrible. Just terrible. And don't get me started on Quicktime.
Apple software on Windows SUCKS.
I have my music archive on a separate disk and I used to sync the iPod with that archive and then disconnect the disk. On subsequent syncs, iTunes v.Previous ignored the missing files and merrily created a local iTunes directory.... everything just worked.
Now, with iTunes 7, the programme gets itself in a terrible mess trying to find the files on a disk that isn't there - at least that's what it appears to be doing - and goes to 100%. I have about 6000 songs so I thought it might eventually come back; a poorly written loop, perhaps, but one that only had to run 6000 times. After an hour and a half, I gave up.
Roll on 7.0.2, 7.0.3, 7.0.4, 7.1........
Ciaran
Strikes me that iTunes 7 was rushed out to support the movie store and to update the UI inline with the (quick nice in comparison) new Windows media player that ships with Vista. I know that they have a small development staff and I expect it to get better over time - but for now it really sucks.
In any case, I recently went completely over to OS X for my main desktop and notebook computers and can't imagine ever looking back.
but there is an alternative, which I use for listening to mp3s: media monkey (www.mediamonkey.com). it has a guided tour for using an ipod with it: http://www.mediamonkey.com/product_ipod.htm
I love this program. It runs pretty fast and has lots of options.
but (why is there always a but ...) it doesn't support podcasting. but there's a link to another software for that, so I'll try that one, too.
Not
I have the same resizing/moving problems with iTunes. Browsing is slow. Also, the scroll wheel doesn't work ... but only when iTunes is showing on the second monitor!! (I personally think that last bit should go in the daily wtf). The new download code seems to write and flush every block, because my disk goes nuts while it's downloading (I've run filemon to confirm it's iTunes).
Also, my iPod crashes on half my podcasts ... something about mp3's being encoded in mono or with weird encoding rates breaks it, supposedly.
It's junk. I wish I could downgrade iTunes and my iPod, but I can't. The one and only item they improved with iTunes 7 is that updating 30 podcasts no longer eats 100% of my CPU for minutes on end.
OGG has nothing to do with iTunes being slow. Its the music manager, not the music encoder.
I'll chime in and mention that iTunes 7 does run perfectly fine on my iMac. Seems to be an issue with iTunes 7 running on Windows.
I can't imagine this is deliberate..
It does seem to get better over time, and I think par tof that is the gapless analysis which seems to suck up 100% CPU.
Oh, and come on - it's not Apple's fault, it's Microsoft's fault for not having a faster platform... :) (For those who don't get the joke, I'm referring to this)
I've got 42279 tracks in my library and I just never try and mess with it if at all possible.
I also use a Griffin PowerMate (http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/powermate/) which makes it easier to do basic stuff (volume, pause/play, skip) without touching the UI.
Is anyone else addicted to right click, get album artwork?
I wonder if there is a class action here in that the new ITunes completely prevents us from playing the DRMd music we paid for up in here.
I've found that it's unbearable to use when trying anything with video... which is sad as I'd happily buy 'shows' from them (instead i've had to opt for the free ones with commercials online on abc.com/etc.)
On my laptop (a slightly slower processor but twice the memory), zero problems.
FWIW, i've hated iTunes since I first looked at it. It's just all wrong, but I put up with it mainly to get my songs onto my iPod. My iPod's days are numbered though - the iPod software on the device is just flaky as heck and the whole proprietary crap of not being able to easily get music just copied over is just not going to fly anymore now that there are other alternatives for players that don't suck...
I see no reason to support Apple and their arrogant attitude...
Now I am using the combo of FeedDemon and Winamp to get my podcasts and play mp3s on my Windows machine :).
love the hardware but itunes sucks. Got 30GB of songs and Itunes
just locks up 90-100% CPU after as soon as I plug my IPOD into
the USB. It doesnt seem to come back.
I tried unchecking some of the sync options only to have itunes delete
30gb off its disk! that really sucks.
Anyway I think an earlier post may have come up with the solution
to my problem. I also think that Itunes is looking for a disk that
is not connected i.e my backup mp3 disk which was used first of all
to copy my mp3's onto the IPOD.
The currently is not connected to my system as its just a backup
disk.
Im going to copy all the mp3's I have onto my main disk and see if this
helps this sucky software sort itself out.
Cyrus.
fun fun fun
every click/scroll - long wait (i would be happy with 2 seconds)
it is so crap
also using vista with itunes, and was pretty fucked up, seeing my cpu being at 100% as soon as i start itunes, well i found a solution so speed it up. i excluded the Users/Username/Music directory from indexing, cause as soon as i startet itunes, the indexing services went to 30% (each of them, there are 3 i think.) now everything works (quite) fine, except the known speed issues from itunes7 that are also related to xp
Takes ~10s to startup
Another ~40s of high CPU
As soon as iPod plugged in hits 100% for the duration of sync
Occasionally menu bar goes strange, and app misbehaves/crashes
Occasional DEP exceptions
All in all pretty sloppy. Complete opposite to the iPods themselves.
Apple are doing them a massive diservice with the quality of this sw.
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