Even before I write this, I know what the response will be: “Dump iTunes, it’s bloated and evil. Instead use [INSERT DIFFERENT SOFTWARE NAME]! It’s better in a zillion different ways plus it makes kittens smile.”
Which is probably true, and I probably should switch. Except I kinda like iTunes. It’s easy to use, doesn’t require any tweaking to get it to do what I want, and it’s free. I killed the resident programs to reduce the resource hoggishness and usually it works very well for me.
Except when it doesn’t, and then my world comes crashing down. Like a few weeks ago, when I updated to a new version, started it up, and clicked right on past the message that said something like “Library not found, rebuild from scratch and guesswork? Y/N” to watch it painstakingly count all my songs all over again. Honestly I didn’t pay attention; I was heading off to bed and I’m used to seeing some sort of nonsense every time I update the thing as it re-evaluates my stuff in light of whatever new doodad the update added.
I did notice the next morning, when I synced my iPod Touch and it promptly and helpfully deleted all my apps. That wailing sound you may have heard, just over the horizon? That was me, thumbing my iTouch to life in the car on the way to work to discover my life had been reduced down to (horrors!) the default apps that ship with the thing. I had to wait 10 long hours to get back home and try to rebuild, and that did terrible things to my psyche I cannot describe. I’m still working through the trust issues.
As it turned out, all I had to do to get them back was to tell iTunes where my app folder was so it could load them back in, but I lost the information I had added to the apps — saved games, docs I was writing, my stored passwords, the data saved in various programs — plus the hours it took for me to rebuild my admittedly unnecessarily-specific desktops.I’m paranoid enough to have had most of that in other locations, but still. It shook me.
I don’t blame my iTouch. It didn’t know any better. No, it was iTunes that betrayed me, iTunes that stole my innocence, iTunes that made me distrustful forever more. Also, I lost all my supplied album covers in my music library and I’m not sure I’m up to that kind of OCD-and-caffeine-driven weekend of obsessive cover-filling-in again.
So we have an uneasy relationship now, iTunes and I. We are wary of each other, never fully trusting, never fully comfortable. Short of a new plugin that adds several additional layers of protection (“Are you SURE you want to click here and wipe out your whole library? Again? Seriously?”) we will continue in this manner until trust slowly builds again.
I’ll still probably keep using it, though.