I’ve been a mac person for a very long time. I have always loved my macs, even when they were overpriced and didn’t run all the software I needed. I loved them through all the transformations of the 2000’s, but have begun having my doubts recently that Apple even CARES whether we long-loyal customers matter any more.
Back in the 90’s, owning a mac meant being loyal to a product that, while cool, was also quirky. We had to learn an entirely different set of commands for the macs we used at home, but they were so much more fun than the PCs we used at work. We did it because it made us happy.
For the most part, Apple’s reingeneering of its products and the introduction of OS10 more than a decade ago made its computers much easier to use, but still fun. I loved my first white iBook and its dual OS9/OS10 operating system that let me still use some of my old OS9 programs AND move into the new OS10 system, which was cool.
The introduction of iTunes and the iPod was as transformational for me as it was for the music industry. iTunes finally provided me the opportunity I had long searched for — a program that made it easy for me to upload and manage my extremely large music collection in one easy program and carry it all around in my pocket on my iPod and I can play them all over the house using an old AppleTV (v1) player and a great wireless speaker system. I could listen to anything any time. I LOVED it. I still love my iPod, but iTunes has become a real pain point.
A few years ago Apple again began tinkering with iTunes in a way that has caused me nothing but problems, particularly related to the hundreds of CDs I uploaded into my library and which I still enjoy hearing on a regular basis. Over the last few years, I’ve spent countless hours fixing problems that happened with my music library each time iTunes made a change.
I’m now at a point where I need to copy the entire library to another drive, delete it and re-import every one of the 10,000+ songs because while the songs are all there, iTunes doesn’t recognize any of them except the ones I bought FROM Apple.
So, I think I’ve reached the end of my journey with iTunes as far as my music management is concerned. I’ve been researching other programs and think I’ve found one that will work well for me so that I can keep listening to my music collection.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
