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Why iTunes Sucks: Reason #22

Alternative posting title - iTunes and Audible.com: Sucking in Harmony

This is in reference to of a (very dated) Mac Observer posting 21 Reasons Why iTunes Sucks . iTunes is continuing a long standing tradition of sucking!

As I mentioned in a previous posting, I have had dealings with audible.com . I gave my wife a gift certificate for audible.com, proud of myself for my having a gift that pleased to her affinity for books on CD. However, what I didn't realize was that I was really giving her a gift of PAIN.

We figured (naively) that this day and age, it would be a fairly common, and therefore simple(!) process - choose an audio book on audible.com, and burn it to CD, so she could enjoy the book in her car. Seems like a reasonable request, based on the following assumptions:
  1. Most people use audio books during their commute.
  2. Most cars, last I checked, come "standardly" equipped with CD players, unless you get some kind of "option"
  3. I haven't checked on this, but I'm pretty sure Audible.com has got to be the #1 audio book seller
  4. As a matter of survival, audible.com must have a need to provide their product to consumers with CD players, right?
Well, as it turns out they probably do, but for whatever reason (and I'm sure DRM has something to do with it), it's a ridiculous process to get this to happen.
  1. Download audible.com manager software
  2. Install audible.com manager software
  3. Download the item with audible.com's manager software
  4. Download iTunes
  5. Install iTunes
  6. EXPORT the item to iTunes from audible.com manager
  7. Open up iTunes
  8. Create a playlist containing the item
  9. Burn the playlist to CD
  10. Yes, I know this 8 hour audio file won't fit on 1 CD. Please burn to multiple CD's. (wow, iTunes makes everything so SIMPLE!)
  11. Insert new blank CD
  12. Wait for CD to burn
  13. Go to step 11 until done.
Ok, so that's the process. Great, it's ugly and ridiculous. BUT- to complicate things even further, the process was interrupted by a power failure. after burning disk 4 of the 8 disc set. Which finally brings us to

Reason #22 why iTunes sucks:

Problem
No way to "resume" a multiple-disc-burn in iTunes.

What you can do about it
-Start over from disc 1 and toss the extra discs

-(if tossing away good CD-Rs isn't your thing) burn the "done" discs onto a single CD-RW, erasing them on a different computer each time, until you get to the disc you left off at.

-Bitch.
-Whine.
-Complain.
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