My guess is that some of you use iTunes. Since I've seen this comment, that iTunes is bloated, in a number of forums, I want to look into this and write a Macworld article about it.

I'd appreciate if anyone who has anything to say about this would drop by my blog and post a comment saying why they think this is the case:

http://www.mcelhearn.com/2010/06/08/do- ... s-bloated/

Comments on my blog, please, would make it easier for me to collate all of this.

Thanks!

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

Yes, it's hugely bloated. Compare with, say, Winamp 2.0, which contains all the features I want in an mp3 player. It's not that iTunes has a lot of features I don't use, it's that (a) these features slow down the application (e.g. gapless playback, which if I don't disable prevents iTunes from even loading my mp3 library in less than days), (b) all of that complexity hides or removes features that I do want (e.g. have a randomly-sorted playlist, jump to a particular song quickly, play that song, then continue in the playlist. I can do that in Winamp 2.0, but I don't know how to do that in iTunes, if it's even possible), (c) the excess features require a lot of RAM, making the application slow to start up (Winamp, even on a 486, started pretty much instantly) and constantly swapping (my Mac Mini, which I use as a media center computer, has only 512mb of RAM—more than enough for a lightweight mp3 player similar to Winamp, or even mpd, which is what I actually use, but iTunes is completely unusable unless it's the only thing running).

I hate iTunes with a passion. I have very few requirements for an mp3 player, and iTunes manages to not only fail at most of them, but is also "bloated" in the ways I've described above. It is one of the most useless applications on my Mac.

Apologies in advance for responding here rather than on your blog, but I think it's an interesting enough topic to discuss here even if it's more difficult for you to collate all the responses.

Hmm, where to begin...

First, you can't "disable" gapless playback, so I don't know what you mean there.

Second, if it has features you don't want, they don't slow things down.

Your playlist question: select the playlist, type the name of a song in the Search box, double-click it, then click the X in the search box.

Application slow to start up? Now that's the first time I've heard that on a Mac. You say you have only 512 MB RAM; that must be an old Mac mini, and you have way too little RAM. So don't blame iTunes for that. I have a Mac mini with 4 GB RAM, and library of 55K tracks, and it takes maybe 10 seconds to start up and load the library. I'm guessing that what happens is your lack of RAM means that the OS has to create swap files which is slowing startup. I really think your problems are RAM-related; also, how fast is your Mac mini's processor; if it has that little RAM it must be pretty old.

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

I'm thinking here it's more a question of hardware that's too old to keep up with the software.

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

By this definition nothing can ever be bloated.

No, but if the hardware is a few generations old, given what computers have taken on in recent years, then it won't keep up. We no longer need to worry much about processor speed, but RAM can be an issue. I couldn't conceive of using a computer with 512 MB of RAM today. (OK, maybe with some Linux distributions that are designed for low RAM needs...)

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

Interesting ... I used 256M RAM on my WinXP box up until a year ago (now using 1G, which is more than I ever need, I think). I had no problems with any of my software, though I admit I tend to use small apps more than anything else, and am not a photographer or animator.

That being said, I always prefered Winamp to iTunes on that box, because it did everything I needed and was faster, not to mention less intrusive-feeling to my PC. The only reason I upgraded the RAM was because the sticks were free.

I'm running Windows 7 with 4 gig of RAM and Itunes still takes several seconds to start up. I personally feel that Itunes is the best mp3 player out there, so I can't really complain about it taking forever.

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See, for example:
http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=60679

The "disabling" bit is by "clicking the little X in the song title/status thing on top".


I specifically gave an example of how gapless playback computation slows down the application. Do you not believe me? I can take a video of it if you persist in your disbelief.


How do you randomly sort the playlist, though?


Why not blame iTunes when other programs perform so much better? Winamp could start up and load thousands of tracks in well under 10 seconds (which I consider abominally slow). I just tested mpd and it starts up in less than a second with my library of ~4k songs. Other "just-an-mp3-player" programs start up in a similar amount of time. So there's no reason why an mp3 player can't perform perfectly well on 512mb of RAM.


Obviously that's what's happening--I mentioned it specifically in my point (c). But that's pretty much the definition of bloated software--it takes a lot of RAM to run, so you may not see any issues on the newest hardware out there, but if you try to run the program on a computer that's several years old, it's constantly swapping and unusable. If programs with a similar niche or featureset are able to run in considerably less RAM (as other mp3 players are), then your software is bloated. The fact that it happens to run smoothly if you feed it enough resources is irrelevant.

Sounds like bloating to me. I've been a hater of itunes since it re-organized my music files without asking, so I removed it from my computer a few years ago, but even then I found it on the whole irritating. So irritating in fact that I'm happy years later to get the chance to diss it. I admit, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to figuring out software features, and by my scale upwards of 90% of all software is bloated, so anything that causes my 6 year old laptop pains or crankiness gets deleted. Sorry for not really contributing, but you probably know what you want to write already anyway.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Oh yeah, I forgot about iTunes' default behavior of copying your mp3s to its own Library. That's certainly another unwanted feature that slows things down as compared to other mp3 players. It may be a feature that some people want, but for me it's just bloat.

I'm going to answer all at the bottom; it's easier than inserting quotes.

For the gapless thing, that doesn't disable anything; it just stops iTunes from analyzing the files that time. If you just let it analyze them and get to the end, it won't do it again. You're just wasting time by stopping it each time. After that, it will only analyze new files as you add them. Once it's finished, it won't slow things down again.

To randomly sort a playlist, click the Shuffle button; the one with the two crossed arrows.

You're talking about Winamp, a Windows program, but you're saying you use a Mac. I have 55K tracks, and iTunes starts up for me in about ten seconds. The OS is using most of your RAM, so it's probably paging when you launch iTunes.

I don't see how your not having enough RAM for the OS means that one application is bloated. If you added more RAM, it'd probably run faster. Or you could have just not updated the program, knowing that you had little RAM and that newer versions were likely to run slowly.

But, seriously, let iTunes do the gapless analyzing once, and it won't bother you again.

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

That's an option you can turn off in the Advanced preferences. I don't see how an option like that is "bloat."

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

Again, the file organization is an option that you can turn off. If you had checked the program's help you would have found that.

I don't know what I want to write; at least, I don't know what reasons people have for saying the program is bloated. If it's simply that they don't understand it - such as the gapless thing, or the file copying thing - that has nothing to do with some mythical "bloat" but rather with users not bothering to find out what the program is doing and how to change what they don't want.

I'm not saying that it's a simple program; much of my work involves my getting paid to tell others how software works. But the help files are pretty good, and there are lots of tutorials on the web. In my research on this subject, I've been confronted with quite a few examples of things that people don't like that they could easily change, but don't, because they don't bother to look in the help.

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

I don't know what to write either. You've said, "if you don’t use certain features, why would they bother you?" and several people--including myself--have given concrete examples of why they bothered us. The fact that the features can be disabled or changed or modified doesn't alter the fact that they bother us. It seems like you're not validating our experiences.

Likewise, you've said, "if it has features you don't want, they don't slow things down." I've given you several examples of features slowing things down. The fact that you can disable those features or the fact that they only run once or the fact that if you have 4gb of RAM then the slowdown isn't noticeable doesn't change the fact that these examples directly contradict your statement.

All in all, I'd say your mind has already been made up--you're not interested in understanding why people think iTunes is bloated, you're interested in countering complaints with ad hoc explanations of why those things aren't so bad. As a software developer, I've found this sort of attitude to be endemic in the field. When users complain about some piece of software being difficult to use, even if hundreds of users have the same complaint, the developer's reaction is always, "Oh, that's in the help file," or "Oh, you're using it wrong," rather than admit their software has a flaw. That's not the way to produce quality software.

It is with great amusement I read this thread

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You're really not reading what I said. I explained about the gapless thing; you haven't replied that you understood what I said. It's not a "feature" that's slowing you down; it's the program scanning your files _once_. I am "validating" your experience; but I'm telling you that what your doing is wrong. Will you accept that, let the program scan your files once and for all, and move on?

I am very interested in why people think iTunes is bloated. As yet, I have found only one valid reason in the comments to my blog post: that on Windows, iTunes installs a lot of stuff. However, this stuff (such as QuickTime) is needed by iTunes, so calling it "bloated" doesn't really work. All the other reasons people have given are such things as "it shouldn't be called iTunes because it manages more than music" or "I want to drag and drop files on my iPhone", which have nothing to do with any mythical "bloat".

I totally understand that users may find something difficult to use; frankly, I make my living explaining things. But difficulty is not "bloat" any more than features that you don't use are "bloat".

And, once again, you've got an amount of RAM that is way too low. If you were working with a paid program, you probably would have not upgraded because you would have checked the specs. Since iTunes is free, you upgraded it, even though you don't have enough RAM to run anything more than Mac OS X. (BTW, you can't have only 512 MB RAM unless you removed some of your RAM; the Mac mini has never shipped with less than 1 GB.)

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

(bold emphasis by me)

Kirk, I've held off jumping into this thread up till now, but I can't let this "stuff" slide. The first two parts I quoted are indeed symptoms of bloated software. To insist otherwise is silly. See the very first sentence here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bloat It's notable that iTunes is the first program mentioned in the Examples section of that article.

The last thing I quoted from your post is factually incorrect. The first mac mini models shipped with only 256MB of RAM: http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/m ... _1.25.html

For the first, I don't agree that features you don't use equal bloat. If that were the case, every software program (well, anything other than the simplest ones) would be bloated. Features you don't use don't get in your way, and their code doesn't slow anything down.

For the second, thanks for the correction. I have a program called MacTracker which claims to list every Mac model and it was not clear about the RAM (I found the correct numbers just now checking under the History section of the program).

But saying that you don't have enough RAM so the program is bloated is akin to one of my favorite Samuel Beckett quotes: "There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet." Just this morning, I had to launch Windows in VMware Fusion. Man, was it slow. Is it because Windows XP is bloated? Or is it Fusion that's bloated? No, it's because I had a half-dozen other programs open, and Fusion needs a lot of RAM, and I've only got 4 GB RAM on this Mac. As I said above, if you can't run a new version of a program because of processor (not very common these days, though the difference between a PowerPC G4 processor and any Intel processor used in Macs since the beginning is quite large) or RAM, then don't upgrade. You can't blame a program from 2010 (assuming Ross is using the latest version of iTunes) for being "bloated" because it doesn't run well on a computer from 2005 (again, assuming that's the Mac mini that Ross has).

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

So, what's your definition of software bloat then since it seems to differ from the commonly understood meaning?