I had the most unpleasant upgrade to iOS 4 on my iPhone 3G imaginable and I think I now know the reasons why. iTunes is incapable and wasn’t designed as a management tool for Apple’s portable devices and it’s time Apple’s engineers realised this and did something about it.
iTunes started life as SoundJam which was an MP3 player and recorder originally developed by Jeff Robbin and Bill Kincaid and released by Cassidy and Greene until Apple bought it in 2000. Apple added a new interface and the ability to burn CDs, removed some features and released it as iTunes in January 2001. Originally an OS 9 application it supported OS X when version 2.0 was released and support was added for the original iPod. Since then it has seen numerous updates and considerable additions well beyond it’s original purpose as an MP3 player. I think it has got out of control and tries to do too many things and ends up doing them all badly.
Upgrading to iOS 4 was a disaster mainly because the update managed to mangle the Applications and data files. It needs to be “sandboxed”. An OS should not affect anything except the operating system and should be independent. When I upgrade a Mac OS X say from Leopard 10.5 to Snow Leopard 10.6 it doesn’t touch my applications or data. If I did there would be all hell to pay. Incompatibilities I can deal with. This shouldn’t happen on an iPhone or iPod Touch either. What Apple needs to do is have an iDevice Manager that deals with operating system and apps separately from user data. User data (music, purchases from iTunes Store, photo, videos, podcasts etc) should be handled in one or more different applications. As a result of this upgrade most of my applications were missing or in the changed positions. Music, photos and videos disappeared. It took me ages to sort out the mess. Synchronization again is another tiresome process. Everything needs to be done as separate synchs. You cannot specify in each tab what needs to be synched and then synch everything at once. You must do each type of data separately. It should be simple drag and drop. Ideally I would like to see any iDevice (iPhone, iPod and iPad) mount as a device in the Finder. Then when I download or want to add anything new I would like to drag and drop and have the device recognize and file appropriately. Same for removal. This can be very time-consuming. The hassle to view a movie on an iPhone or iPod is ridiculous. First you might need to convert and then sync with the device. That’s why I love the ease of use in an application like Air Video Server. If I’m at home and want to watch a video on my iPhone I don’t need to convert or sync with iTunes. I just find what I want to watch over my network and that’s it.
iTunes is now becoming like the old OS 9. It’s like a nice old family home with many wings and extensions added on over the years, but unfortunately has become unlivable in and needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch, much as Mac OS X replaced OS 9.
But make no mistake. I love my iPhone 3G and I’ll probably go for the iPhone 4 too. I think it’s a marvelous device and I love the range and usefulness of all the apps available for it. To replace so many gadgets and devices with one hand-held device is truly remarkable and it will surely go down in history as one of the greatest technological advances of the 21st century but it’s become an untamable beast to manage, a dinosaur in fact!
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