iTunes and Apple rant

Abe said:
Ok, so photos is sorted, why couldn't they do that with home movies? You mean to tell me that downloading an extra app and working around the system by copying the movies to the app folder is "working as intended"?
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How else do you want to get your books onto Kindle, your spreadsheets onto Numbers, etc etc? You have to copy them onto the relevant folder. Yes, that's how the system was designed to work. The native movie player is basically meant for iTunes-purchased movies. It's useless for anything else. In Android you get filesystem access which makes putting stuff on there much simpler, there's no question about it. But there's also no desktop management system with Android that can help you sort it all out and purchase it in the first place. If there was, you'd bump up against similar restrictions. So it's 6 of 1, half a dozen of the other.

I'm not sure why they didn't do it with movies. Would seem to be not that difficult to manage. I have found that the native movie player is very restricted in the filetypes it can even playback though so it could be related to that.
 
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Abe said:
My brother is an apple nut. She got the mini when she visited him. He would have disowned her if she got an android tablet.

Is that really the answer? To swap products?
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Given that iTunes has frustrated you this much, I would think so. It's a fundamental part of the Apple ecosystem.
 
cerebus said:
How else do you want to get your books onto Kindle, your spreadsheets onto Numbers, etc etc? You have to copy them onto the relevant folder. Yes, that's how the system was designed to work. The native movie player is basically meant for iTunes-purchased movies. It's useless for anything else. In Android you get filesystem access which makes putting stuff on there much simpler, there's no question about it. But there's also no desktop management system with Android that can help you sort it all out and purchase it in the first place. If there was, you'd bump up against similar restrictions. So it's 6 of 1, half a dozen of the other.
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Maybe it's just me coming from a technical background but it seems like it's a crazy restriction and people are happy to live with it. Very few people have just one PC. My mom has 3 (PC, laptop and a mini laptop for travel). Her iPad can only reasonably be used completely with one. She is anything but technical so doing these sort of workarounds will be a stretch. I just don't see any reason why iTunes is limited to this 1 PC thing. She is logged in as the same user on both iTunes and the iPad yet its still a problem. What is strange to me is that the apple users seem to be quite happy with it, in some cases they even defend it.
 
Abe said:
Maybe it's just me coming from a technical background but it seems like it's a crazy restriction and people are happy to live with it. Very few people have just one PC. My mom has 3 (PC, laptop and a mini laptop for travel). Her iPad can only reasonably be used completely with one. She is anything but technical so doing these sort of workarounds will be a stretch. I just don't see any reason why iTunes is limited to this 1 PC thing. She is logged in as the same user on both iTunes and the iPad yet its still a problem. What is strange to me is that the apple users seem to be quite happy with it, in some cases they even defend it.
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It's just a non issue for most I guess.

I've got one central repository for all of my household's music and video so having that machine serve as my iDevice machine makes sense. Or at least it used to but I do it all via the cloud now anyway. If I want something like a movie on my ipad I just copy it across via wifi. The only time I connect it to another machine is if I need to grab a photo or something and that's a snap.

FWIT I had to install software on my mac to access my nexus 7 and it buggered all sorts of things up.
 
Ah yes... This is why I love Android users. So quick to claim how superior their product is because of not having to use iTunes but then sound slightly ignorant because the reason they say so is because they don't actually know how to use iTunes, not because its actually useless.

iTunes simplifies everything by managing all your data, music, apps, photos etc in one central location and you simply create a playlist to sync or whatever and it does the rest. None of this drag and drop or only being able to do one copy process at a time etc etc.

In standard bank terms: Priceless
 
Abe said:
Maybe it's just me coming from a technical background but it seems like it's a crazy restriction and people are happy to live with it. Very few people have just one PC. My mom has 3 (PC, laptop and a mini laptop for travel). Her iPad can only reasonably be used completely with one. She is anything but technical so doing these sort of workarounds will be a stretch. I just don't see any reason why iTunes is limited to this 1 PC thing. She is logged in as the same user on both iTunes and the iPad yet its still a problem. What is strange to me is that the apple users seem to be quite happy with it, in some cases they even defend it.
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iTunes doesn't limit you to one PC...
 
Abe said:
Maybe it's just me coming from a technical background but it seems like it's a crazy restriction and people are happy to live with it. Very few people have just one PC. My mom has 3 (PC, laptop and a mini laptop for travel). Her iPad can only reasonably be used completely with one. She is anything but technical so doing these sort of workarounds will be a stretch. I just don't see any reason why iTunes is limited to this 1 PC thing. She is logged in as the same user on both iTunes and the iPad yet its still a problem. What is strange to me is that the apple users seem to be quite happy with it, in some cases they even defend it.
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It became a lot less restrictive the more iCloud and wireless syncing improved actually.

The truth is there's very very few times when I need to perform a proper sync on my iPad. I get my apps over the air, my movies by dragging to AVPlayerHD - my music I actually need to be able to manage in one version of iTunes or else it becomes a total mess, so I prefer actually not syncing with multiple devices in that case (like I'd lose all my podcast and audiobook places and folder metadata). iTunes is really quite good at managing a large library of diverse content, so there's some advantage to having it. I don't know, I see where you're coming from totally but I've just learned to work with it instead of against it.

On Android I always had to manage the folders by hand, and there was practically no metadata control, so it was a potluck how your media player read it. You'd end up with one folder of recorded music ending up scattered into 20 different 'albums' under 'unknown' Artist.
 
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bwana said:
It's not his iPad.
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This. I am not really a tablet person. I play the odd game of scrabble on our older iPad but thats about it. For the most part, I use PC's and my wifes MBP. My daughters use theirs a lot (games, netflix, internet, etc).

I actually think that iTunes works very well for the average user. It didn't take me long to get the video clips into it. My complaint is with the iPad linking to only one iTunes library. It's absurd. There is no reason for it to exist. It's not a technical limitation, it a limitation put in by Apple to control the device.
 
IceDreama said:
Ah yes... This is why I love Android users. So quick to claim how superior their product is because of not having to use iTunes but then sound slightly ignorant because the reason they say so is because they don't actually know how to use iTunes, not because its actually useless.

iTunes simplifies everything by managing all your data, music, apps, photos etc in one central location and you simply create a playlist to sync or whatever and it does the rest. None of this drag and drop or only being able to do one copy process at a time etc etc.

In standard bank terms: Priceless
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Please see my most recent post before launching your attack. I am not an android user. We have more apple devices at the house than android ones (MBP, iPhone, iPad vs 2 x nexus 7's). It seems like that's the standard response. Insult the person.
 
IceDreama said:
Ah yes... This is why I love Android users. So quick to claim how superior their product is because of not having to use iTunes but then sound slightly ignorant because the reason they say so is because they don't actually know how to use iTunes, not because its actually useless.
Click to expand...

Yet in the same statement you say this:

iTunes simplifies everything by managing all your data, music, apps, photos etc in one central location and you simply create a playlist to sync or whatever and it does the rest. None of this drag and drop or only being able to do one copy process at a time etc etc.
Click to expand...

Not everyone enjoys this method, especially when you already have your different media categorised and sorted to your preference. And clearly you don't know much about how transferring files to Android works, either...
 
Abe said:
I actually think that iTunes works very well for the average user. It didn't take me long to get the video clips into it. My complaint is with the iPad linking to only one iTunes library. It's absurd. There is no reason for it to exist. It's not a technical limitation, it a limitation put in by Apple to control the device.
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When you say one iTunes library per iDevice, do you mean linked without losing data whilst syncing across the different libraries?
 
Maverick Jester said:
Not everyone enjoys this method, especially when you already have your different media categorised and sorted to your preference. And clearly you don't know much about how transferring files to Android works, either...
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Actually iTunes does a great job categorising media, much better than I could ever do.
 
bwana said:
It's just a non issue for most I guess.

I've got one central repository for all of my household's music and video so having that machine serve as my iDevice machine makes sense. Or at least it used to but I do it all via the cloud now anyway. If I want something like a movie on my ipad I just copy it across via wifi. The only time I connect it to another machine is if I need to grab a photo or something and that's a snap.

FWIT I had to install software on my mac to access my nexus 7 and it buggered all sorts of things up.
Click to expand...

The crazy thing is that I build cloud software yet I am very nervous of it. I would never sync my photos/videos/etc into any cloud, be it drop box, iCloud or Google. I back up in the cloud but everything is encrypted.

I have had similar problems with various devices. It's really annoying when companies release products and either don't test them properly or make assumptions about what they can do in your environment.

cerebus said:
It became a lot less restrictive the more iCloud and wireless syncing improved actually.

The truth is there's very very few times when I need to perform a proper sync on my iPad. I get my apps over the air, my movies by dragging to AVPlayerHD - my music I actually need to be able to manage in one version of iTunes or else it becomes a total mess, so I prefer actually not syncing with multiple devices in that case (like I'd lose all my podcast and audiobook places and folder metadata). iTunes is really quite good at managing a large library of diverse content, so there's some advantage to having it. I don't know, I see where you're coming from totally but I've just learned to work with it instead of against it.

On Android I always had to manage the folders by hand, and there was practically no metadata control, so it was a potluck how your media player read it. You'd end up with one folder of recorded music ending up scattered into 20 different 'albums' under 'unknown' Artist.
Click to expand...

As I said above, I think that iTunes works very nicely, especially for non technical users. They think in terms of movies and photos, not folders. My peeve is with the artificial restriction they added. It's unnecessary and a draconian restriction that should not be there. My guess is that it started as part of the DRM and stayed to try and force take up of iCloud.

I am a big fan of choice. I don't like anyone telling me what I can and can't do. With my daughters nexus 7's, I just plugged them in, it was easy. I don't see why Apple can't do the same.
 
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Abe said:
An iPad can only be synced to one iTunes library unless I missed something.
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One library, which can be synced across the cloud, yes. But not one PC.

The Android model is worse IMO- multiple Google accounts can be added onto the device, but try managing the accounts that way (apps, data, photos, etc). In this instance, I support the Apple walled-off-garden approach, even if I don't really like iTunes.
 
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