iTunes 8: caution is advised

[jducoeur]

Windows users should probably take a look at this article before installing iTunes 8. Summary: this innocuous-looking update to iTunes is actually 80 Meg, and does all kinds of hacking on your system -- it even installs new device drivers without telling you. And those device drivers aren't particularly stable: there are apparently a number of reports of folks getting the Blue Screen of Death when they activate. (Which is pretty hard nowadays -- the days when BSODs were common are, thankfully, past.)

It sounds like Apple released iTunes 8 under the gun (presumably it got scheduled around Jobs' speech the other day), and didn't QA it enough. And since, as has become typical of Apple, it's doing way more to your computer than it's telling you about, that's dangerous.

I'm curious about the new "Genius" features, but I think I'll wait for iTunes 8.1...

Comments

[madamruppy.livejournal.com]

uh oh, I installed yesterday.

[calygrey.livejournal.com]

Ugh, installed it 2 hours ago; guess we'll be finding out how it does.

[zachkessin.livejournal.com]

I also am running it, it seems OK so far.

[redsquirrel.livejournal.com]

I installed iTunes a few versions back and it promptly hijacked my entries and playlists from the other media player I had been using. I wouldn't have minded it just picking up the info and incorporating it, that's reasonable and useful but no, it also removed it from the other program's listings. That I considered to be extremely impertinent and it annoyed me mightily. After wresting the information back out of it - which took a bit of doing, I wasn't that sophisticated a user - I promptly deleted iTunes and have refused to have anything to do with it ever since. I disapprove of rude programs that monkey around with your other stuff without permission. Hrrmpf.

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

I'm curious about the new "Genius" features

What it does:
* Highlight a song, and it will give you links to the iTunes store for songs by that artist, other artists in the genre, and things you might want to buy.
* Click the Genius icon when a song is playing, and (if it "knows" the song) it will create a playlist for you of songs in your collection that it judges compatible -- similar genres, sounds, artists, so on.

[umbran.livejournal.com]

It sounds like Apple released iTunes 8 under the gun

iTunes has never been particularly Windows-user-friendly. Remember that Apple is used to having loads of control over the computer upon which it's apps run. They still haven't quite gotten the grasp of the community that does what it wants with their own machines, and to heck with what the OS/hardware makers say, such that they have to run under someone else's configuration, and not their own...

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

It has a number of other really annoying nitpicks, like...turning on, and removing the option for hiding, the "Click here to go to our store!" arrows. "No really! go to our store! Did we mention Amazon is eating our lunch? Please! Go to our store!"

"Luckily", you can still edit the preference manually:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-store-arrow-links -bool FALSE

Also, the Genius thing keeps trying to turn itself on on my machine, takes up permanent space in their controller, and isn't lockable (the way the Store, podcasts, etc., etc. are -- through parental controls). So much for "a clean, elegant UI" being the watch phrase.

(Did I mention I also have a problem with the bit where they're collecting everyone's music list and not giving anything to the community in return?)

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

I hadn't gotten to installing it yet... Not even sure I had gotten to installing the version before it yet. Thanks for the warning, I'll be skipping it...

[serakit.livejournal.com]

Soooooo glad you posted this, and glad that I am typically very lazy about updating my iTunes... definitely not updating at all this time, until they fix it...