iTunes Loses the Plot...Again.

Today I synced my iPod Touch with my Windows Vista PC...as I often do. It was the first time I had used iTunes or synced since my upgrade to iTunes v9.03 a couple of days ago. I accepted the license terms and then synced. Then I downloaded an app update from the Apple Store for an app I had already bought. (Click on the pics for full size)

At this point, the Apple Store demanded I authorise the PC or it would wipe out my songs and 45 apps. I thought this was a bit sad as I have already authorised this same PC twice...and this was to be the third time.

As usual......you have no real choice. You either do it or they screw you.

I have now used 4 of my 5 authorisations.....three of them on the same PC.

I availed my self of the iTunes Feedback option on the Help menu in iTunes. I fully expect to never hear a thing from anyone at Apple...but this is what I said:

Hi

I am now at 4 authorisations out of 5 and 3 of them are for the same computer. iTunes has - twice - after an upgrade required me to re-authorise the same computer.

There are several people on this Windows PC who own iPods and use iTunes, but my account is the only one that anyone can buy anything through. It is only ever used when I login to Windows and only for my iPod Touch.

The other two users never buy anything from Apple Store because one is a child and the other my wife and they only ever use externally-sourced mp3 ripped from CDs.

I all but stopped stopped buying music from the Apple Store when iTunes suddenly decided my $150 worth of songs was no longer mine...and wiped them off the PC and the iPod. 

This PC authorisation issue is just one annoyance. The menu on your web page here stops at iTunes v9.01....and I'm v9.03. That's the kind of thing that sees my songs wiped out...and the same PC authorised three times in two years.

I don't know what I expect you to do about it. What do you think you should do?

Your questionnaire below doesn't include the main reason I use iTunes: to backup my iPod and get files on and off it as there is not other way to do it.

Most of my music is ripped from CDs we buy. Buying online comes with too many restrictions about how I use it and too strings attached.

Anyway....that's my latest Apple Atrocity. I never have these issues with Android because Android doesn't impose these kinds of restriction on your in the first place! 

Seasoned Apple Survivors are very helpful and offer advice as to how to cope with the havoc this control-freak eco-system can wreak upon a person. I'm grateful to them. It's a big help. I was dumb enough to buy an Apple product, so I should be a big boy and live with the consequences. But I don't really have to. I do have other choices.

On a gut level, software like iTunes is telling me it's all about THEM......while Android on my phone and linux on my PCs does what I want and I make damn sure it's all about me.

Because I can. No one gets in my way the way Apple can. I'd rather thrive than survive.

UPDATE 20100503: I now use the "iSyncr" app for Android to sync my music and playlists from iTunes to my Android phone.  The good part here is that if iTunes decides to wipe out my music, I've already copied it from the sync folder on the phone to a music folder, so iTunes *can't* delete it. Again, looks like the best way to use iTunes is avoid using it with an iPhone or iPod.

Android App of the Day: iSyncr

Every app has a pre-amble - the reason I bought it. I cut to the chase below, but here is the pre-amble for iSyncr: I have an iPod Touch and I have a few songs on it that I have bought and can only listen to on my iPod Touch. That gets to be a tiresome....pulling out the iPod to listen to the handful of songs there sourced from iTunes, then pulling out my HTC Magic android phone to listen to the 100-ish songs there ripped from the CDs in my private music collection.

Why not just put them all on the iPod? Well, I guess I could, but then my iPod Touch won't let me delete any of the songs unless I go home and sync with the single PC on the planet that is allowed to host my iTunes library.

Whereas, my android phone lets me delete, on the spot, any song I don't want on the phone right now. Even better, the "AndFTP" app on my android phone let's me access (via FTP over the Intenret) my entire music collection at home. I can upload / download any song I like.

I haven't bought many songs on iTunes lately simply because they are locked in my iPod and I don't always have it with me. My phone caries the vast majority of my music.  I'm also a bit down on my iPod since iTunes blew away well over $100 worth of songs two weeks AFTER I had apparently successfully transferred my iTunes to a new PC. One day working / syncing fine....then next, I synced and all paid songs were gone. I went to download them again (worked for apps), but it wouldn't let me and told me I would have to buy them again.

No thanks. Already stung me once.  C'ain't trust dat.

Cutting to the chase:  Thanks to iSyncr, that's changed.

Now I don't have to trust iTunes because the iSyncr app let's me transfer the songs (or podcasts or videos) in any iTunes playlist  from my iTunes onto my android phone. Songs come across as *.mp4 files. Now I can safely buy more music via iTunes and be able to listen to them when I want or do something as simple as just delete them from the device (my phone) anywhere, anytime.

The iSyncr app is two things: a tutorial and a Windows program. You step through the app and  connect your phone to your Windows PC. The app places a Windows program called "iSyncr.exe" in the root of your sdcard. When your sdcard is then mounted on Windows, you run this program on your Windows PC from the sdcard. (I haven't tried copying the app to the PC. I'm thinking it won't work if I do that, but will try it.)

iSyncr.exe starts up iTunes and presents you with a window (seen, right, in the screenshot of the tutorial on the phone) allowing you to select which playlist(s) you want to copy to your phone. It also offers you the option of deleting all songs not on the playlist(s) from your phone, so you can use it exactly like iTunes if you want to. I just wanted to add the iTunes songs to the ones already there, so I didn't choose that option.

It worked as advertised. The four songs I have reluctantly bought via iTunes since iTunes ate my music were transferred to my HTC Magic (as *.mp4 files) and they play properly and sound great on my phone. The songs I sync'd over came with the artwork they picked up from iTunes, so that's another plus. You can see that in the first screenshot above of Anna Nalick's "Breathe (2a.m.)".

For anyone with an android phone who has bought music through the Apple Store, iSyncr is a must-have app. Even the smallest, cheapest iPod can now give android owners access to the iTunes music collection.....if you want to think of it that way.

I am.  This app might sell a few iPods to owners of Android phones. Win / Win. iSyncr is a paid app, but worth every penny of the $2-$3....I don't remember how little it was. :-)

The iSyncr FAQ is here.
   

I hate iTunes. Here's why.

I recently upgraded the home PC from an AMD Athlon 1.8GHz box with 512MB of RAM, to an Intel Dual Core E6300 with 2 CPU cores running at 2.8GHz, with 4GB of RAM. I had 64-bit Ubuntu Linux on it in 20 minutes......after upgrading Windows XP to 32-bit Windows Vista Home Premium took 3 days of disaster and upset...but it was finally done. Licensing was the core of the problem...and XP having trouble seeing the new 500GB drive and insisting on destroying it on sight....repeatedly.

The main reason for a "linuxluver" like me even having Windows at all is Apple's iTunes....so we can use our various iPods, which we mostly like very much. I have an iPod Touch and I have dearly loved my wee laptop-in-a-pocket from the day I got it....except for iTunes. It's far too restrictive. It's clearly all about what the vendors want....not what the customers want. Anything going on it that you can access from the iPod has to go in via iTunes. You can't just copy a file onto the iPod and use it....or copy it back off again.

iTunes and the business approach behind it (closed, proprietary, deaf.....) is THE reason why I bought an Android-based phone instead of "upgrading" to an iPhone from my iPod Touch.

Anyway, with the new PC, I upgraded to iTunes 9. I had copied the iTunes libraries for each of us from the old system to the new. In terms of responsiveness, iTunes 9 seems better than the previous versions, though they may be because this system is so much faster than the old one was. iTunes 8.2 on the old PC would ignore me for minutes on end while it downloaded a couple of podcasts....or whatever.

On the new iTunes, we were all syncing just fine.....until today.

Today, my daughter had her iPod plugged in. I swapped to my Windows user and I plugged in mine to charge up the battery. I tried to start iTunes, but it refused to go, saying it was being used by another user and I would have to stop it.

Ok, so I got my daughter to come over and switch to her Windows session, stop iTunes and logout of Windows. I then switched back to my session and started iTunes. iTunes behaved as though it had never seen my iPod Touch ever before. When i tried to sync, iTunes warned me it would wipe all the music off my iPod and replace it with music from my library.

I was mainly concerned about the $100+ worth of purchased music, but the songs I had purchased were clearly listed in the iTunes library AND on my iPod list of songs....so I thought, even if it wiped them off my iPod, they would still be in the library and be synced back onto the iPod from the library.

Wrong. iTunes wiped out my purchased songs EVERYWHERE....including in my library. It has to be a bug, but that makes no difference to me.....the result is the same.

OK...so I logged in to the iTunes store and checked my purchase history. The songs are all there with dates and prices of purchase. The store had previously let me re-download my apps when I first began syncing with the new system and it had wiped them all out. So I tried to download the songs again as I had done with the apps.

When I tried to download "One day" by Op Shop, iTunes told me I have already bought it.....do I want to buy it again? Or cancel. Fingers crossed.....I just want to download it again.....they wiped it out and I've already paid for it. But when I downloaded it again, I found they had charged me the $1.79 for the song I had already bought.

This highlights VERY clearly why paying to download music just isn't safe to do. I've lost over $100.....and no way to get it back. Have a look at Apple's "support" page sometime.....No joy there, I can tell you. Lots of FAQs that stay well away from what to do about lost purchases.

Lesson learned. I won't be buying any more music from the iTunes store. I'll be adding mp3 files to my Itunes library from external sources. If they mess it up again, I can just add it again and it won't cost me anything but time.

By comparison, "iMusic" on Android is a joy to use. I'm getting my music there....including the $100 worth of music bought over the last few months that Apple iTunes just destroyed.

On my Android phone I can just copy anything I want to or from whenever and wherever. I even have an FTP server and client on there. Maybe I'll let you download a song from my Android phone over the Internet. Because I can.

iTunes sucks. Death to iTunes and the closed, proprietary mindset that requires us to use this 'defectivebydesign' software.