I hate the way iTunes refuses to distinguish between what I'm doing with it
actively, and what I'm doing with it passively. For instance:
1. It grabs focus from whatever I'm doing (be it something else with iTunes,
or a different application such as an xterm) when I insert a CD. It
should just rip it; I have it set to automatically rip when I insert a
CD. Don't bother me about it. This is especially annoying when I'm
trying to rerip my entire collection and do some work at the same time.
2. If I am listening to song A and fixing bad metadata for song Z, why
does iTunes think that when song A finishes and song B starts, I'd
like to lose edit mode and focus for song Z and gain focus on song B?
3. In a similar vein, if I was listening to song A and need to fix some
metadata on album M, and type something in the search to limit the
display to songs in album M, why won't iTunes move on to song B when
song A finishes? Oh, it must be because song B isn't visible in my
search results...but then, shouldn't it move on to the first song in
album M (still a bad choice, but at least understandable)? Instead
it just stops playing. Interestingly enough, if you are looking at
the CD it is ripping, instead of looking at a subsection of the
Library (and it is playing from the Library), it will manage to move
on to song B.
I hate the way it creates a directory 'Music/' in my home directory, when
I've already told it to store all the music elsewhere. The directory
contains your settings. Settings belong in a dot directory, not in
a directory with a capital letter.
I hate the way that it deals with albums without metadata. If you start
adding the metadata after you've already started ripping the album, the
result will be that the CD is nicely labeled, but the ripped tracks aren't.
I hate the way the interface allows you to edit some metadata by clicking
on it twice with a pause between (but make sure you include that pause,
or you'll start playing the song you're trying to edit), but won't let you
edit other metadata without 'File/Get Info' (a rather poorly named menu
item). 'Name' and 'Artist' and 'Album' are examples of the metadata you
can just edit, and 'Track #' is an example of one which requires you to
open this special dialog.
I hate the fact that some settings are in 'iTunes/Preferences'...and
some are in 'View/View Options'.
I hate the way it lets you set which fields you want to see with
'View/View Options', but some fields don't have the same support as
the default fields. For example:
1. You cannot sort by all fields ('Sort Composer' is an interesting example
of a field you can't sort by, although the subject would lead one to
think it is, in fact, a sorting field).
2. Some fields can be edited by clicking twice with a pause between clicks
(examples are 'Name', 'Artist' and 'Album'). Others can't be edited
unless you open a dialog with 'File/Get Info' (which is also a bad
name). 'Track #' is an example of this.
I hate the way it fools you by having a 'Radio' listing, but this only
includes radio stations Apple likes. If you want to listen to a different
radio station, you need to go to 'Advanced/Open Stream' and add the URL
manually.
I hate the options it has for copying to my iPod: either copy the
entire library, or manually select the playlists to copy. My library
is too large to fit on the iPod, but I constantly make new playlists
and delete old ones. Why isn't there a 'copy all playlists' option?
I could think of more, but then I'd be listing my dislikes as well
as my hates.
- Ann
