iTunes is the worst piece of software ever written (yes, worse than Windows ME).

It is slow. It is ugly. It is not fit for purpose. It makes it incomprehensibly complicated to anything other than the simplest possible action. It takes forever to start, forever to sync, forever to do anything.

I think the main problem is that iTunes was designed to be a music player. Over the years, the iTunes store, iPod syncing, iPad syncing, podcasts, books (Books?! In iTunes?!) apps, Genius, a social network (remember Ping? No, nobody else either), and various other things that should  never have existed in a media player have been bolted on and it’s become a bloated steaming pile of shit.

iTunes Sucks

If I copy a CD to my computer (as I do a lot, as I like buying CDs rather than digital downloads – but that’s another blog post entirely), to get it on my phone (Galaxy Nexus, ICS) I do the following:

• Copy CD to computer
• ???
• Music appears on phone

This is due to the wonder that is Google Music. Its uploader sits in the background on my PC, uploads it to the server, and as soon as it’s there it’s available to play on my phone straight away (or press the “Save for offline” button for use on a plane etc.).

To get it on to my iPad / iPod:

• Copy CD to computer
• Add the new folders to the library (even though I’ve told it where my music library is, because it’s not the default iTunes folder and iTunes did not rip the CD, it does not pick up new music automatically)
• Wait for it to add the files, with a popup box containing an unending progess bar, which stops me using iTunes for anything else at the time
• Dismiss all the duplicate notifications. Note there’s no skip all button if you accidentally try and replace in stuff you already have in the library – you have to click “Don’t replace” every single time.

Clicky clicky clicky....zzzzz

• Wait for it to load album artwork, which always ignores the existing downloaded album art and never seems to find the right album art.

Waiting to add files...

• Go through each album without album art. Right click to find album art. Mostly this works, when it doesn’t you have to find the art, copy it, right click on the album, hit Get Info, and then right click on the white square and paste the image in. Then press OK and wait for it to apply.

Waiting for the broken album art...

• Wait for it to analyse all of the tracks for gapless playback information, which seems to take an eternity. Pretty sure I also have that feature off.

Gapless, which should be off but takes forever

• Plug in iPad / iPod. You can’t choose what music goes on to the device until it is plugged in (WTF?). Clear warning about not having enough space. Take stuff off. Have too much space. Add stuff on.
• Try and sync. Sync fails, not enough space. A mysterious 1.5GB of “Other” has randomly appeared. Remove stuff. Sync.

This is by far the most annoying thing. Popup says not enough space, capacity bar says I've plenty.

• Punch things.

This is very very broken. Something needs to be done about it.

While I admire Apple’s hardware, their software has always been absolutely terrible. Quicktime – I need say no more. OS X is basically unusable.  iTunes isn’t fit for purpose. iOS is so slow it seems like it’s running on a steam engine.

I get confused when people say the iPad is the easiest to use computer ever made.

iPad home screen

There are a few reasons for this.

Primarily it is that actually damned hard to use. If you want to do absolutely anything other than open an app, it is difficult. The navigation, in an attempt to be simplified, has been simplified to the point where it is consistently inconsistent between apps, the system, and anything else.

It is also absolutely dog slow. Perhaps I have been spoilt by the Galaxy Nexus, which let me tell you in no uncertain terms: it never keeps you waiting. The iPad is quite the opposite. Even loading the Settings app takes forever on mine now. Perhaps Apple is hinting at me to buy a new one (not likely).

It is also virtually impossible to get support when it goes wrong. If there is a problem I usually google it. However any mention of iPad in a search term gets your results flooded with all kinds of crap blog posts about how to do simple things, when I actually want a solution to a problem. I think this is partly because the iPad seems so simple, it makes just about anyone think they can provide technical support for it. Not the case.

In that vein, a reminder to myself. If your iTunes app ever disappears from your iPad home screens again, it has most likely been disables in the Restrictions of the General settings in Settings. Good luck remembering your Restrictions pin! Image for future reference:

Look for Restrictions

The internet has been in its typical temporary outrageous uproar over Path’s uploading of user address books, as you might well expect. However it’s hardly Path’s fault.

Consider that there is no “official” way for iOS apps to get your contact data like this. There is a workaround method, which any app can do it seems, which is what Path did.

Note that on Android, Path uses an Android SDK to load in the contact data. To do so, it must request permission to do so when it’s installed. Look below, there’s the app asking to access your contacts (note I don’t have it installed and don’t intend to, mostly because I checked the permissions it wanted before I hit the “Install” button and didn’t really want it fetching stuff from my contacts).

So the lesson here is Path took the contact data because they could and there was nothing to stop them. Clearly this is a problem with iOS (and, so far as I can see, a gigantic nasty security hole that makes me wonder whether I should just totally nuke my iPad and iPod in case apps on them are retrieving other stuff I really don’t want them to) which needs to be addressed quickly.

It quite clearly asks for permissions

I was given the Jobs biography for Christmas, and while I made a start a couple of weeks ago, I haven’t really progressed beyond the first couple of chapters.

This is for a number of reasons, which are mostly not anybody’s fault.

It’s not actually the content that’s doing it. Overall it’s written pretty well and stories are told well. There have been a few bits I haven’t liked so far, but that’s not really something to complain about.

By far the biggest issue with the book is that it is a book. As in, made out of dead trees. I have the hardback and it weighs an absolute TON. It is almost impossible to read in bed it is so large. There are no highlighting capabilities (discounting vandalism) and I can’t read it in the office as well as at home without having to carry it around (which is, incidentally, entirely impractical). I can’t search it (other than page by page) and there’s no built in dictionary functionality.

This all may sound like a joke but I assure you, I have come across each of these issues in the short amount of time I have been reading the book. Quite spoilt by the Kindle, no doubt.

Thinking of books, I was sat in a lecture today and was recommended a hefty tome on Cybernetics for subject background. Now, at the end of my degree, having bought a grand total of 3 books for the entire 4.5 years so far (one of which I would be quite happy to burn, those of you in the department may know it as Software Engineering) I somehow feel compelled to start collecting these books to form some kind of small library to help me remember bits of my degree when I inevitably start work in a completely unrelated field and build robots for fun in the evenings (Robotics has always been a hobby more than a career for me). Perhaps I will buy one with my first pay packet.

We were in the Apple store the other day (the fairly new shiny one in Reading’s Oracle shopping centre, which seems to have the mystical property of being perpetually busy irrespective of whether the rest of the town is rammed or completely quiet) swapping out a busted iPad power brick – they kindly gave me a new one from their spares for free, after I convinced them I am capable of debugging electrical issues and they verified it was busted – when I decided to buy one of the new iPod Nanos.

Nano

I could claim this was an impulse decision, but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate – I’d been tempted by one of the Nanos since it was first released, but thought the software could be improved with more functionality. On 4th October Apple did just that, releasing a software update for the Nanos as well as a price drop (although the hardware was not updated), which was just about enough to tip me over the edge and grab a couple (only one for me!).