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Comment by psnj | Hacker News Reader

Vigorously agree. I have no idea why I have such a hard time using iTunes, but I do consistently, even doing really simple and obvious things. It horrifies me.

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To be fair, it's a pretty complex program that does very sophisticated things behind the scenes. I used to hate it, and I still mostly do. But I notice that the only people that really hate it are powerusers. There are hundreds of millions of people out there that find it delightful and enabling. It probably says something good about your UX if you're only bothering powerusers.

I think there's a pretty compelling argument that iTunes has become a monolithic abomination trying to do a thousand things. Split it up into more programs that each do something simple and well.

I'm not sure splitting it up is the solution. But I 100% agree, it's become a bloated piece of crap. I've thought this for a long time now. Anyone have any alternatives, that aren't something like MythTV? I just want a lightweight multimedia app for my Mac (VLC doesn't have a great "library" feature, so that's a nogo for me... but something like VLC). VLC is my favorite app ever.

VLC doesn't have a great "library" feature, so that's a nogo for me

I really wish VLC had this kind of thing. I know there's an add-ons type architecture, but I've never seen anything for it to handle libraries, sadly. Does anyone know of anything like this, or anyone working on this? I'd be quite happy to donate funds to encourage its development.

As a side note, for folks looking for a lightweight Windows alternative, foobar2000 has been wonderful for me. Low memory usage, extremely customizable UI but sensible defaults, extensible, and automatically adds files with no hassle or slowdown.

I've been using Plex for Mac, and it's quite good. Not sure if it counts as 'lightweight', but it's fantastic. I load TV shows or movies into it (non-iTunes though).

I have it set up on my Mac Mini (connected via HDMI), and I can remote control it with the Apple Remote, but there's also an iPhone/iPad app that can both remote control (up, down, select, back), remote browse (tap on a movie or TV episode to watch it on the TV), and stream (tap on a movie to watch it on your iPhone/iPad).

It also has the nice feature of being able to automatically find any other Plex instances on the local network and automatically stream from them as if the media were local. That way, you can connect Plex to your media centre in the basement, but watch the data anywhere in the house (e.g. on a smaller TV in the bedroom or an iMac in the office).

It's really a great ecosystem, and if their partnership with LG[1] pans out, it might get that much better.

1. http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/03/plex-announces-paternship...

Yes. I long for the days of Winamp 2. But it's a losing battle...

Not to mention that it is coded in Carbon which I'm sure doesn't help performance. If apple isn't working on a new version then they are very shortsighted.

> But I notice that the only people that really hate it are powerusers.

This is an excellent point. If I write network clients in elisp just for yuks, I'm probably not Apple's target user for iTunes. Emacs' UI has broken my brain (and hurt my fingers.)

Powerusers don't want a UI. They think they want a scripting language. Most of them really want a butler, though.

Just make everything directories and let the power users do what they want. Just don't do that in the mainstream app. Keep stuff like that in the power user's special app.

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