Skip to main content

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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reaper, Linux, and the Behringer X-Air - Complete Studio Solution, Part 1

Introduction and Rationale This is part one of a major effort to document my experiences with recreating my home studio, entirely using Linux.  Without getting into too many of the specifics, a few months ago I decided that I was unhappy with Windows' shenanigans - to the point that I was ready to make a serious attempt to leave it behind.  For most in this situation, the obvious choice is to switch to Mac OS.  With its proven track record, support, and options for multimedia production, it is naturally the first alternative to consider if your goal is to simply use something other than Windows. For me the choice was not so simple. I despise Mac OS and, in general, the goals and philosophies put forth by Apple in an effort to ostensibly provide users with an "easy" working environment.  It does not help that I have also failed to find any aspect of the Mac OS UI intuitive, but I realize that this is a subjective matter. With my IT background and user-control* favori
Post a Comment
Read more

Timbaland rips off a Demoscene artist

I knew this day would come. The new Timbaland/Nelly Furtado song "Do It" uses a song made in 2000 by Finnish demoscene artist "Tempest" (Janne Suni). It's a 4 channel .mod (the ripoff is from a playback using the C64 SID soundchip). The song was hosted on scene.org's servers (the main repository for all everyones demos and tracked music, etc.). As you might expect, no permission or royalties were paid to Tempest. Just to clarify, we're not talking about some kind of coincidence here. There is no question that this track was used to create the song "Do It". In an interview, Timbaland tries to downplay it, saying things like "he sampled it from a video game". (This track was not written for a video game- it was actually written for the 2000 demoscene music competition, in which it won 1st place). Regardless, he basically claims he has no legal obligations because it's just like all the other pop artists that sample other m
1 comment
Read more

The Hellscape that is Google’s Web in 2023

Alternate title: "were we better off in 2015 2007?" Time now for another anti-capitalist, “get off my lawn” posting for all the folks out there who won’t see it anyway, because they don’t read real blogs for the reasons specified in this very article. The web has existed for 30 years now. One would think our ability to access information on it would keep getting better. However, I watch as web search is instead devolving every year, to the point where people are giving up and hoping for the next thing.  While this sounds dire, this kind of behavioral change has historical precedent. Remember running your own mail or web server, or better yet, having a phone that you might actually answer calls to, even if you don’t recognize the caller’s number?  Yes, those ideas are gone too. It's all thanks to the uncontrolled thirst for advertising. Let’s walk through the experience of someone doing a simple Google search for “how to control poison ivy”.  The desired outcome would be
1 comment
Read more