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0 pointseinherjae4y ago0 comments

iTunes was awesome back when the fanciest thing it could do was audiobooks, and nobody had heard about podcasts.

I know quite a few Windows users (that did not own iPods) that converted to using iTunes to manage their music library. The alternative at that point was often Winamp, and they managed to mess up the good thing they had with Winamp 3.

Overall the library functionality, as well as the Rendezvous-based library sharing (made LAN parties into interesting ways to discover new music) made for a quite sweet deal, and the Windows version truly was good.

Stuff went downhill sometime post-iPhone, when it started to become a weird one stop shop for phone sync, backups, movies etc, but even then the odd cool thing was added, like coverflow, or the fairly nice UI where the album coverart’s edge color faded into the background of the listing.

Point being, iTunes wasn’t crap from day one, it was cool before it deteriorated into that.

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NonNefarious4y ago

EphPod was way better than iTunes. It was free, straightforward music management for the iPod, and in fact the only way for Windows users to use an iPod. To this day, iTunes (or "Music") still can't automatically keep your library in sync with the files on your computer, but EphPod automatically operated that way.

I elaborated on other iTunes problems below, many of which it suffered from on day one. People just forget, or become used to degraded standards and functionality over time.

As much as I hated (and still hate) iTunes, it was better than WinAmp. I'll give you that.

And yes, the decade of forcing people to manage all the data and applications on a handheld Unix computer with a shoddy JUKEBOX app was an embarrassment to Apple and insulting to its customers.

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