Review Windows Media Player 11 vs iTunes (Windows) Part ii
Apple's iTunes
Apple manifests as absolute genius when it comes to user interfaces. Being used to the paradigm of WinAmp and often put off by the need to intervene - music is not management of things. The update install failures over years gradually accumulate and you start to think - this software is not going anywhere. My friend with a Mac - well he managed a huge music library with iTunes. He found doing fiddly things too annoying. What did iTunes have that made it easy. It seemed very confusing to me, the way it organised itself.
So I installed iTunes on Windows and promptly forgot about it. Except that Apple had mastered auto updates when WinAmp hadn't and it was yet another WinAmp update that did nothing except made it work badly in terms of being able to find and listen to one's CD collection it was just hopelessly administrative overload.
That day I started to load my CDs into iTunes library. And then I started to listen and was shocked at the sound difference. I was so used to the AM radio signal of WinAmp's comparatively flat use of the sound card and all its dimensional glory to this - a sound as hi fi as you could ever want. Now I understood the Apple way - great software written so well you love it.
And now I only use iTunes as a media player on Windows. So when Microsoft told me to upgrade its barely adequate media player to version 11, I thought in my usual curiosity driven way - OK.
How does it compare to iTunes? Or that other work of media genuis: MIRO ?
See the next post...