Apple’s iTunes 4.1.0.52 for Windows was released today. I downloaded it a few hours ago, and so here are my first impressions on the product. Screenshots included. iTunes’ package comes in a 19 MB file, and includes QuickTime Player 6.4 in it, and also some CD burning add-ons/drivers. Installation is very easy and it requires a reboot for the CD burning software to be initialized.
Upon loading the application for the first time, it scans your “My Music” folder for songs and other media files. They are automatically added to your Library in the iTunes database. Double clicking the songs will start them playing and quality and multitasking with the system is excellent (I get no drops of sound when doing other processor-intensive work).
I like the Radio collection that iTunes is fetches from the web, as I am an avid listener of Di.Fm/Eurodance and while the first time iTunes could not find any radio stations, the second try found them all and fetched their streams with no problems at all. However, I found that that iTunes “loses” the stream on the 128kbit versions and it needs to rebuffer every 4-5 minutes (setting buffer size to “high” doesn’t help). I don’t have such a problem with my WinAMP usually. The 56k streams work fine with no gaps.
The Music store is there, same as in the Mac version of iTunes. You can shop either with a shopping cart or via the “one click buy” feature.
I liked how iTunes automatically found some songs on my library, e.g. The Sound Of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel and placed it seperately on a special folder “60’s music,” presumably to demonstrate the categorization features. The Visual Effects on iTunes are also very nice, but I am not yet sure if there is a way to add new effects and plug-ins to it as you can for other media players.
Importing songs from CDs works like a charm, and you have the choice of using mp3, AAC, WAV or AIFF as the encoding format, but I can’t test burning yet as I haven’t found the time to install my new Memorex combo drive on this machine yet. You can also share music within the same network, but I saw nothing about Rendezvous (possibly requires OS support). Other features include de-authorizing computers from using your shared music, checking the status of purchased music, fetching artwork from the music you currently listen, and opening other streams.
So far, so good. I found no glitches with the application or its stability. Except one thing: its UI speed. For the life of me, I am almost unable to resize the iTunes window (with visual effects OFF no less)! Its window UI is almost unresponsive. Menus and native-windows-looking alerts are responsive and fast, however the metal interface is just unusable here. I can’t easily resize the application, and with difficulty I can scroll the scrollbars in the store or the Library! After many attempts, I managed to get the window size down to about 640×480 and then the application did become more responsive and workable. But on a normal ~1024×1000 window, it is just unusable. There are times I can’t even move the whole window across the screen! Note: I am not talking about playback (which works fine with no performance issues), or when in mini-mode: I am talking about scrolling/resizing the app when the window is in normal mode and bigger than 800×600. Resizing the window when in “Music Store” is almost impossible here! Update: Upgrading to the latest graphics drivers didn’t help.
This machine is a dual Celeron 2×533 Mhz with WinXP PRO (Apple recommends a single 500 Mhz Pentium-class CPU as minimum), and I swear, this is the slowest application I have ever run on this machine. Ever. Even some big java apps I ran in the past were not that bad. I also have here a Cube G4 450 Mhz machine, and iTunes on OSX “flies” compared to the Windows version. Well, it doesn’t actually fly either, but it is absolutely usable and responsive enough to do the job. On my WinXP PRO, the speed is just not acceptable.
I like iTunes for Windows (especially when used in the mini-windows-mode where doesn’t take much space). However, its overall UI speed needs to be worked out by Apple, because it is back to WinAMP 3 for me until speed is improved. Even users with faster machines than mine won’t be happy to burn up cpu cycles for nothing.
Maybe apple didn’t bother to port to 98/ME because those they have reached their EOL (end of life) or are very close to it. This is the same reason iTunes 4.x won’t work on OS 9. Why support and a unsupported OS?
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;%5BLN%5D;…
“Microsoft will offer paid-incident support for Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second Edition (SE) through January 16, 2004. Windows 98 and Windows 98 SE downloads for existing security issues will continue to be available through regular assisted-support channels at no charge during this time. Customers can request Windows 98 and Windows 98 SE fixes for new security issues, and these requests will be reviewed. Fixes for any new security issues can be specifically requested through regular assisted-support channels. Web-based self-help support will be available for at least one year after assisted support ends. Mainstream support for Windows 98 and Windows 98 SE ended on June 30, 2002. No-charge incident support and extended hotfix support end on June 30, 2003.”
lots of other people are having far less trouble.
you are not the barometer of success or failure.
Just in case any one else wants to hear an opinion of speed…
I have a 450MHz PIII with 288Mb RAM and an nVidia Vanta video card from around the year 2000, running XP Pro.
iTunes was snappy in changing groups, scrolling and playback etc. Very usable. Even when using a shared library from my Mac. The only thing that was sluggish but not at all unusable was the live window resizing. However on my 733MHz G4 with much later series hardware on board it was really no faster! Live window resizing IS demanding but when I moved my mouse quickly, so the system didn’t have to redraw the window during the drag, I could resize very quickly. Even if I did do it slowly it was still quick to refresh, it just redrew less frequently i.e. in bigger hops.
There is undoubtedly a type of video card and/or processor combination which may help or hinder redrawing of this kind. Those with the right combo don’t have problems.
One last thing… the screen effects are also slower, by a long way, than the G4 when configured the same way. There is a considerable difference however in video cards with the G4 sporting a Radeon 9000. In this scenario the video card will undoubtedly help.
Cheers
Todd
it uses it!!!
on a mac, it will keep as much stuff in memory as it can until some other app needs it. why have memory if you never use it?
this allows for a faster user experience, less swap (unless you have a lot of apps open, but that would be true of any machines that had a lot of apps open) and it even keeps programs that were just exeted, cached in ram incase you open it again soon.
now, it will free stuff up very quickly if the need for ram arises for another process, but having under utilised resources is just silly.
I don’t know if iTunes for windows uses this theory, but I don’t think windows uses the same philosophy as Apple, and Most Unix based OSs. I think windows is a save as much as you can and swap more if need be OS.
Installed it on my dell at work. Worked like a charm. Flawless and wonderful. Bought a song at the store. Imported a CD. Flawless. Wonderful app. Love it. No performance problem. Only problem will be if I move my music library from my home machine or import CD’s at 192 mps AAC–will run out of disk space for my work
.
– Celeron 533 was based on the .25 micron “Mendocino” P6 core with an integrated 128KB L2 cache – essentially the same as a PII (both based on Deschutes core)
– and of course it has NO SSE instructions unless you have a 3rd gen. Celeron with the Coppermine-128K core (533A Mhz at .18 micron)
However:
– Intel does NOT allow OEMS/resellers/integrators to call a Celeron a Pentium.
– It has an 66Mhz FSB (sans-overclocking) which is quite slow compared to current 866Mhz FSBs on P4P.
– The small cache and a SMP Celeron config will kill performance in certain applications.
——————
From Intels Website at http://www.intel.com/support/processors/celeron/intro.htm
All of the Intel processors utilize the Intel P6 micro architecture’s multi-transaction system bus. The Intel Celeron processors at 300A MHz and above incorporate an internal full speed L2 cache interface supporting the Dual Independent Bus architecture of the Pentium® II processor. Having two separate buses allows simultaneous access to both the L2 cache bus and the system bus.
The combination of the L2 cache bus and the processor-to-main-memory system bus increases peak overall bandwidth availability and performance over single-bus processors.
“Memory useage is obscene (more than Outlook at 40mb with no songs playing) “
Hmm…that is odd…I am playing songs and it is at 34 Mb….less than you claim. Granted it is not a huge difference, but it is different and I am apparently doing more.
Further, it is only 40 Mb of ram. Daily we use applications that require far more and most people don’t think I thing of it (Photoshop or Word as examples). Further, if you are using a Win2K or XP system (as you should), it is very likely that 40 mb is a small amount of ram to your machine.
Also, iTunes is making use of graphical widgets that are not present in Windows so it does require extra memory to load the interface.
“No Always On or System Tray Only options”
So?
“And worse of all, sutomatically stops playing when PC is locked (hence you can’t listen to music from a tamperproof PC running iTunes) “
How many people really lock there computer and then listen to music on it?
“It imported my library fairly quickly (1002 songs), but crashed on a housemate’s PC when he loaded up a network share (5809 songs).”
Yes, it grabbed my library rapidly as well. I am a little surprised by the network glitch you ran into. I wonder how much of it was Windows vs. iTunes since I have had Windows drop the ball with network shares before (some have reported system crashes with idle shares).
I’ll grant that your complaints may indicate minor annoyances, but keep in mind that it was just released today. Give them a chance to take in feedback.
I’ve kept playing with my Compaq Pentium at 500MHz with 128K RAM and XP PRO and it is working just fine. I am using the Aero GUI, shadows and cleartype front smoothing and Dragging while moving. Basically, everything that can slow down the UI is on. In addition, I checked the chipset the GPU and it is using Intel’s old graphics processor that came with the chipset, yuk.
However, the performance is good. Resizing has a minor lag, but it doesn’t get in the way. And, using the bottom right re-sizer, I can expand the window practically the full size of the LCD. I want to be fair, so I read most of the other users experiences here and on other sites and no one has reported the extent of the trouble you had. Most have initially reported high CPU usage but then they realized that iTunes was still going through the initial import.
You seem really defensive about your initial impression. I don’t understand it other than that you are embarrassed to admit, it may be unique to your setup. I included my e-mail address so you could see that I am not trolling or anything. But, really my setup is the bare bones minimum and iTunes for Windows is just great. And, it is a lot cleaner UI than Window’s Media Player. I’ve never used WinAmp so I can’t comment on that, but it seems to be everyones favorite.
“I am using the Aero GUI.”
Ummm…how is that possible?
Does anyone know if it is using MSIE, or apple-a-fied kHTML?
I have this slow UI issue too but I’m not reading all 200+ posts.
My system is a 2.4Ghz P4 with hyperthreading enabled.
1GB RAM
GF4 FX 5600 Ultra
Windows 2000 Pro SP4
DirectX 9
Last Windows update was about a month ago.
There is NO reason for this to lag on my system.
When I try to resize the screen, it takes quite some time for the screen to catch up with my pointer. Since they use a non-standard widget set, I thought at first I had missed the widget or didn’t know how it worked.
The scrolling is bad too. Until I read posts from a few more users I was thinking what a nightmare this would be to run on a <1Ghz CPU.
Has anyone figured out why it is lagging?
Is it just Eugenia and I?
Mutiny
“Apple has introduced a malware app for the PC. Apple changed my files and folders without my permission. Without even telling me.
Time for a nice letter to Apple Legal. ”
Oh please!
You are obviously too intellectually challenged to be attempting to use this product, even though it is designed so a 5 year old can install and use it without an owners manual.
If you would have bothered to read the prompts during the initial start-up you would have seen that you DID GIVE PERMISSION for iTUNES to do what it did.
Apple Legal?
Give me a break!
Arrogant, self important bozos like yourself should bag the whole idea of using anything from Apple. Their products are designed for people with a brain, not just a big mouth.
Yeah, while even suggesting legal action is rediculous, iTunes really screwed up my mp3 album folder. I’m probably gonna end up reripping the whole thing because it changed album names and rendered my m3u playlists usless. Its a good app and im glad they ported it, but so far it’s caused me more annoyance and enjoyance.
It just goes to show who is reviewing/previewing products on web sites. Eugenia, Aero is code name for UI of upcoming Windows version codename Longhorn! What you probably ment to say is Luna
Heh
HHmmmm maybe it runs on the mac osx better because all their software and hardware meets certain industry standards..
I have a 2500, with 512MB and Ti4200 AGP8X. At 2048×1536 resizing is choppy and so is scrolling. At normal resolutions though, I dont see too many problems.
I installed iTunes for win 2000 and XP on my powerbook 687 running VPC 6. It is comparable for the most part to all the application I run including Office in emulation. It minimizes & maxes with relatively quick speed given this is emulation on a notebook with modest hardware specs. I would describe the performance as very usable. The statement ” Summary: if your application GUI works slower then Swing and Mozilla, blame your crappy coding skills.” is not credible. This software, will, without a doubt will run well on a 667 Celeron class machine with at least 128 RAM.
While it’s true that the drag resizing can be slow on some systems the other aspects of the software are not. iTunes is a marvelous piece of software. Just enjoy yourself, that’s what music is about.
Just before I get to the replies, does anyone know if Apple has finally fixed up Quicktime so that it doesn’t constantly flicker when resizing it on Windows? I can’t work it out, it is DirectX accelerated yet it acts as if I had 1000 applications running in the background. Have they fixed this “flicker feature” in Quicktime 6.4?
As for the performance issue, it would be interested how “optimised” iTunes is for Windows? is it borderline optimised or basically a “here is iTunes, we’ll fix the ideosycracies later”. I have a feeling that it the later. In a few releases Quicktime 6.4/iTunes and the codec will be properly optimised using every bell ‘n whistle available at its disposal.
I’ll see if I can test it on my old PIII 550Mhz and see what the netresult is.
As for the review, good work ELQ. It is good to see a review willing to should the horns ‘n helo’s/walts and all. Too many times I see reviews, both from the Mac and PC camps get all giddy like a school girl at an Aerosmith concert.
Oh, and I can’t help myself:
“IN SOVIET RUSSIA APPLE iTUNES YOU!”
Anonymous (IP: —.mn.client2.attbi.com) – Posted on 2003-10-16 20:40:55
“UPGRADE PEOPLE. You waste money on everything else so why is this a problem?”
It’s a problem because there IS NO GOOD REASON TO UPGRATE for many people. Anyone who upgrades simply for the sake of having the latest operating system is just stupid.
How is this any different to those same people whinge and whine about “instability” and “security issues” then they refuse to upgrade? There is a path to a better “future”, you can buy a copy of Windows XP and you’ll find most of these problems will disappear.
Also, you fail to realise that Apple isn’t the only decision maker at iTunes. They need to get the record labels onside. If the record labels decide that Windows 9x series is too much of a security risk in the respects of lax copyrights controls then they can easily tell Apple that will only allow them to sell to Windows users as so long as iTunes only runs on Windows 2000/XP, which has those copyright controls in place.
So in actual fact, for all we know, the people pulling the “compatibility” strings could be the recording labels not Apple.
Anonymous (IP: —.mn.client2.attbi.com) – Posted on 2003-10-16 20:39:31
So tell me. Do you actually program for Windows? If so, please explain to me why Apple could not make this software compatible with Win 98 and ME? I manage to make my software backwards compatible with Windows 98 with no problems.[i]
Maybe they didn’t support it because it lacks the security features that iTunes needs for DRM to ensure that files aren’t shared willy-nilly.
[i]In a nutshell, it is still far to early to obsolete Win 98 and ME. Millions of people are still running Win 98 and ME (in fact, more people are still running Windows 98 than people who use Macs).
And these are the same people who plague this forum whining about instability and security issues. It reminds me of the person who gets a botched house renovation job yet the person decides to go back to the same rennovator for more work to be done on their house.
People don’t learn until they’re on their death bed and they get a sparkling revelation via devine intevetion, and no, it isn’t Bill Gates saying, “Upgrade my son, UPGRADE!”.
The search field is fabulous at the top of the window. It’s insanely fast too. I’ve got over 10 gigs of MP3’s and when I type in a song title, it’s usually found the song before I can finish typing.
I miss my favorite feature of WinAmp3, however: the “enqueue” setting to queue up the next few songs you want to hear in a playlist. That’s very cool, and Apple should have included it.
As far as speed is concerned, I think whoever wrote this article did some exaggerating. This app is perfectly fast on my Athlon 1.6Ghz. In fact, it’s one of the faster apps I’ve seen.
Since my iBook died I’ve been missing iTUnes. Now I have it on my PC. Yes, its a tad slow, but sure beats any other player i’ve used! Go Apple, now to port it to Linux
Athlon 2100 and Win2k, didnt notice any speed problems at all. What was the early comment about the store? Downloaded the client early afternoon, and have already purchased a few songs, burned them to CD, etc…
I checked out your dance station, Eugenia. Holy, you must be on crack to listen to that stuff!
I don’t know if anybody posted this before (I’m not going to read more than 200 messages to know) but if you don’t have an iPod, then it’s a good idea to disable the iPodservice from the computer management program. It’s set to manual by default, and a quick check of the task manager showed me the stupid thing was taking up 2 Mb of my memory for nothing because I don’t have an iPod, and even though 2 MB is not much, I don’t want to waste a single MB of memory on useless things. So those of you who don’t have an iPod, you can set the iPodservice to disabled.
Sebastian
Not a bad program. Only complaint I had is that I had to disable my Norton Firewall (version 2004) to use it. It was complaining that it didn’t have enough memory (even though I use 256MB). Speed is not that bad and I run it on a Pentium III 850 with a Nvidia GeForce 4 card.
Error statement;
We could not complete your Music Store request. There is not enough memory availible.
There was an error with the music store. Please try again later.
I’m having the same problem except I have 512mb RAM 2.4ghz, p4, Geforce 4 4200 WinXP w/ windowblinds 4.1. I disabled my Norton firewall but still can’t get into iTunes online store(I had already setup an apple account).
Other than that I have had no other major problems except some wierdness with thunderbird and itunes going at the same time. The radio stations are working fine, No redraw issues, and itunes didn’t mess up my mp3 library(mainly because I chose not to store my tunes in My Music).
One thing is missing is a easier favorites feature for radio stations. The way iTunes does this is not user friendly, You should be able to right click on a radio station and save as a favorite.
I’ve been using iTunes on the Mac since the beginning and thinking through the comments people have made in the preceeding entries. It took a leap of faith way back but I decided to let iTunes manage my files and I haven’t looked back. Once you get accustomed to editing tags within the iTunes application, you will get nice nests of artist folders with album folders within. I drag files into a ••New•• or ••Probation•• playlist and toss the original files. I use smart playlists aggressively – and they make life very sweet. I have done careful listening tests with speakers and headphones and import everything as 192k AAC files. You can go nuts worrying about actual genres or you can use genres, as I do, more arbitrarily to define smart playlists. I don’t know whether G-Force, a super visual plug-in on the Mac side is available yet for the Windows version, but it probably will be soon. Finally, you can assume that iTunes will get better. Whatever you think of Apple hardware – and there’s quite a bit of bile in some comments – they are RUTHLESS software developers. There is a great deal of substance to the widespread belief that Macs are easier to use. iTunes/iTunes Music Store make a killer combination on which you can pass your own judgment.
I’ve found that the interaction of iTunes with the rest of the GUI is fine. No problems there. However I too am seeing the sluggish behaviour internally. Scrolling and resizing are dogs. Yet I can drag the window (sized to 2048×768 dual monitor desktop) around without any slowdown. My system is an XP1800/512MB/Ti4200.
Apart from that resizing issue it is very nice to use generally. I copied a folder of MP3s (didn’t want to risk it barfing them up… and see I was wise given some other comments) and added them. Then did a volume match across 2000 files. No problem. Created a playlist and threw a bunch of tracks into it then right click BURN and created a CD.
Yep, a nice package with some rough edges (on Windows at least). I doubt I’ll use it as a playback tool, however as a management and roll-my-own-compilation tool yeah I’ll give it a fair go.
ps: Of course no music download/purchase available in Australia with it. Blah.
According to my maths. The floating point performace is about 20% down on what is required and you don’t get anthing like the full performace out of the 2nd CPU plus I doubt very much that iTunes for Windows is optimized for dual CPU.
..but how many *average* *normal* home users have SMP systems? And no Eugenia you’re not an average/normal home user.
I’m a fun of oggs and xmms nor winamp have ever had an issue with them by iTunes… well I should say Quicktime… the support blows.
There’s a free plugin but while using the plugin every access to an ogg file uses 100% CPU for about 10secs.
My box is a 1.5Ghz P4 with a 1G of ram I don’t see why it could take 10 secs to do any music file operation.
The other issue is that iTunes doesn’t understand ogg-tags, but this is probably more to do with the plugin than iTunes.
So why doesn’t apple have a ogg codec? they support other minor codecs yet no Ogg support. decent ogg support would make me switch to iTunes any old day.
Felt adventurous this morning and installed iTunes on my PII -300 box running Windows 2000 box with 128MB ram (i.e. well below minimum requirements). While the interface wasn’t very snappy, it was certainly usable. Sorting a 2000 song strong library in the search box up the top took about a second after each keypress to refresh the list, and playing music (no vis) only took up 10-20% of the CPU. Still much slower than on my iBook, but now I’ve got a neat way to stream music into the living room from the iBook in the bedroom.
it’s a common feature between quicktime/iTunes. the rendering library for the brushed metal look really chugs along… quicktime is flickery, at least iTunes doesn’t seem to suffer from that problem, but OUCH. no app should be that sluggish to draw iutself! luckily it doesn’t extend to the performance of the program – does seem to be purely a rendering issue…
left it indexing my library at home while i head into work. looked like it was going to take a long time to parse 5000 tracks!
Well, I look at it this way regarding some of these bugs regarding iTunes for Windows. This is a first software release for the Windows platform. Considering that, I think this product is quite good. Plus, from what I’ve been told, Apple does continue to update their software so perhaps these bugs will be quashed soon.
I’m running it on a P4 2.53 Ghz, 1 Gig Ram, and it feels very snappy. I even bought some MP3’s already; one of the celebrity playlists. (Great idea! Hope they get more.) LOL!. Downloaded them and already burned it to a CD.
So, for a first release, kudos for Apple for finally letting Windows users take advantage of iTunes and iTMS.
I love this app,Apple should make more of their software available for Windows.
P4 2400, 512meg ram.
works like a dream – window resizing no problem, but then, I don’t have “show window contents when dragging” selected.
As for CPU – it climbs up to 80% when doing something such as opening a radio station category, but as soon as it’s playing a song, CPU drops to next to nothing.
It does use a hefty amount of ram tho – 22meg
I like it.
230+ comments? Is that a record?
Anyway, I’ve also used it for a couple of hours now, and I must say it’s a pretty nice app, might even replace my Ashampoo media player!
I wish someone had warned me that it was going to totally re-organise my mp3 collection. I am not happy with the way it has shoved files about and cocked up my whole directory listing.
I don’t have any slowdown blabla either
resizing, scrolling, all fine. while playing it’s always under 1-2% cpu.
It does uses thoses 22 megs of ram, though.
Oh btw, I guess all the people with a slowdown are running with sound normalization on or something =PPPPPPPPPPPPP (let’s say 50% chance
)
it even lags less than winamp3 for that matter (this buggy winamp3…)
i don’t like wmp9, and probably because it’s ms ui style which i don’t appreciate much so… itunes main player, yeah
XP Pro, Barton 2500, raptor, 9600 pro. When I drag the window around my cpu utilization skyrockets. So I dragged a Mozilla window around for comparison, and yes, itunes does consume more resources. Scrolling the pages on the music store aint too smooth.
Adding my music folder was fairly quick. I have no 60’s music on my drive so the category is empty. I toasted it.
Radio feature is nice.
My CD Drive keeps getting probed. Inexplicable spin up noises. There’s nothing in the drive.
The prism colored eyeball in the corner is foul looking. Actually I never have liked the brushed metal look of Quicktime player. The colors are a lil too pastel. XP’s no beauty queen but there’s just this lack of harmony. Maximize/minimize doesn’t work in a way native to the OS. To paraphrase Jobs, it sucks.
The store: Took me a while to figure out how to get a listing for PJ. There’s no form box to search in, only a drop down menu for genre. Then I noticed “power search” in what looks like the embedded web page, and I click it and am rewarded by….
Some blank paper.
Trying to scroll, not working hmm click on empty space inside the window WOAH HOLY SHIT it stopped responding for a few seconds. And then – I am inexpicably viewing a ladytron album. Must have clicked the mouse in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hey, I like ladytron.
This is convenient. I’ll look here for album information and then leech the complete album off kazaa. I have medical bills. My transmission is fucked and it’s registration time, which means insurance and smog and no money for Apple.
Sure is a bunch of old boomer geezer yuppie music on the front page though. ROD STEWART. Their “staff picks” are pretty funny. Annie Lennox, Suzanne Vega, U2, Seal, REM, what year is this?
Seems to run fine on my machine, 1Ghz Athlon but a 533 celery is the on bottom end of the advised setup
that’s it is dual doesn’t make much difference
with windows anyway.
For a fine player on slower machines try foobar2000
that works even on 266MHz PII with winXP.
There are a slew of Apple docs of iTunes for Windows out. Some are simplistic, others may be helpful:
iTunes 4: About Music Store Authorization and Deauthorization
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93014
Music Store purchases can be authorized in iTunes 4 to play on up to
three computers. Deauthorizing a computer allows you to manage which
computers can play purchased music.
iTunes: Music Store – How to Use the Shopping Cart
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93017
iTunes: Music Store – How to Purchase Songs With 1-Click
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93024
Tunes 4: How to Contact Music Store Billing Support
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93027
iTunes 4: How to Back Up Purchased Songs
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93033
iTunes 4: How to Create Playlists of Your Favorite Songs
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93045
Tunes 4: What’s New
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93141
iTunes for Windows: Additional Troubleshooting for Burning Issues
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93286
iTunes for Windows: “You must purchase a new QuickTime Pro key to regain QuickTime Pro functionality” Message
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93351
iTunes for Windows: How to Burn an Audio CD
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93353
iTunes: How to Add Artwork to Songs
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93354
iTunes: How to Share Your Music
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93355
If your computer is connected to a local network, you can share your
music with up to five other computers.
iTunes for Windows: Installing Additional Plug-ins
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93357
In addition to the iTunes Visualizer, you can install and use non-Apple
Visualizer plug-ins.
iTunes for Windows: About Where iTunes Audio Files Are Stored
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93358
You can find the song files in the iTunes Music folder using Windows
Explorer or by choosing the Get Info command in iTunes.
iTunes for Windows: How to Tell If You Have a Drive That Can Burn a CD
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93359
iTunes for Windows: Unable to Burn a CD
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93360
Find out what to do if you can’t burn an audio CD using iTunes for Windows.
iTunes for Windows: System Requirements
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93361
iTunes for Windows works with Windows XP or Windows 2000, and a QuickTime compatible audio card.
iTunes: How to Find and Listen to Shared Music Libraries
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93365
iTunes for Windows: How to Copy Music Between Authorized Computers
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93366
iTunes for Windows: How to Copy Songs Over a Network
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93367
iTunes for Windows: Trouble Burning a CD or DVD
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93379
iTunes for Windows: How to Move MUSICMATCH Songs into Your iTunes Library
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93390
iTunes for Windows: About Fast User Switching With Windows XP
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93395
Windows XP allows you to quickly change accounts using Fast User
Switching. However, if you want to use iTunes with a different account,
you must first quit iTunes before switching users.
iTunes for Windows: Music Sharing with Windows Internet Connection Firewall
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93396
iTunes for Windows: Music Does Not Play
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93400
Learn some steps to take if you are unable to play songs in iTunes for
Windows.
Tunes for Windows: “Unable to Install InstallShield Scripting Runtime”
Message
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93411
A !=1607 error message appears when you try to install iTunes for Windows.
mmm, it crashed while importing my mp3 collection…
I don’t know what could be causing the problems stated in the article, I have a P4 2.4 Ghz processor and am running iTunes with only 2.1% processor usage. And I can resize the window with no problems at all. There must be something else wrong with your test setup.
I have 2 Macs at work and installed the Windows version at home yesterday. I burned all the tracks on my Mac to DVD-R and loaded them into my Windows machine at home and now can listen to everything on it perfectly since it is now authorized onto my iTunes account.
Radio stations play perfectly, no dropouts or rebuffering on my cable modem connection.
iTunes is much more than “a simple playback app”.
Windows XP Tip of the Day
By default, when you grab a Window by the title bar and move it around, the contents of the window will move with it. You can change this behavior so that only the outline of the window moves when dragging it, until you drop the window. This can be beneficial for slower computers, as it will take less processing power to draw the screen changes. To make this change, right-click the Desktop and choose Properties. In the Display Properties window that appears, click the Appearance tab, and the Effects button. Clear the check box (click) next to “Show window contents while dragging.” Click OK and OK to make the change take effect. Now when you drag a window to another part of the screen, only the outline will move until you drop it.
PIII 550 and PIV 2.5Ghz – rock solid and fast. The PIII serves the network (gives my old iBook 600 a break…ahhhh). On the PIV, except for starting the app (when it blips up to 50%, mostly disk IO) the darn thing never goes over 7% of CPU.
I’m using a four-year-old Dell laptop with a 400 MHz Celeron slugging away inside it, and iTunes seems to be running totally fine. (Personally, I don’t understand what about iTunes even _requires_ a 500 MHz Pentium, but whatever.) Yes, resizing the main window is a little slow. It’s A LITTLE SLOW on my 400 MHZ SYSTEM. There are no problems whatsoever on my brother’s computer, a 1.6 GHz P4.
Eugenia, did you try testing this on any other computer besides your own before posting your review? Nobody’s expecting you to be Apple PR, but it’s not the most journalistically responsible thing in the world to post such a blistering review based on one experience on one computer.
Sure, that can be the MAIN THING you say in the review, but I’d have wanted to see if your problems were an incompatibility w/ your system (which, granted, would be insanely not great) or the result of Apple screwing up. Which, contrary to some Mac cultists’ opinions, does happen some times, and I say that as an avid Mac user. (One word: iPhoto 1.0.)
She concludes that the UI problems she is experiencing must be caused by Apple, leaving no room for the possibility that it may perhaps be just an isolated incident.
Such results call for further testing, and at least should have included another machine.
Secondly, Eugenia. Such hostility will surely turn off readers. This is my first visit to your site (linked from macrumors.com), and I surely didn’t get a very good impression from the way you have handled the followup questions to your impressions.
Blistering review? How is this a blistering review? She said the overall experience was good! Maybe in the Mac world that means “it sucks” though, I don’t know.
So from your report, “A LITTLE SLOW” means it’s blazing fast? And “no problems whatsoever” means it crashed all the time, right? This is, of course, using your logic.
I am sorry, but reviewing an application is not about getting exact details about the system, and testing it on all known platforms. It’s about a running software on a platform that meets the required specs. And her machine meets the required specs. She gave them to you up front!
And then she reports on what the experience was like. And that’s what she did. If people experience other results, it doesn’t invalidate her review.
She said the application was good. It had a few minor problems. You can even find evidence of this problem here: http://discussions.info.apple.com/WebX?14@13.xArhalejiZP.0@.599ac9b…
That is what’s called a problem. Eugenia reported it.
I guess to you “the most journalistically responsible thing” to do would have been to have lied and rather than tell the truth, and give the app an overall good review, she should have said “It sucked” a few hundred times.
Next time read the article.
“Secondly, Eugenia. Such hostility will surely turn off readers. This is my first visit to your site (linked from macrumors.com), and I surely didn’t get a very good impression from the way you have handled the followup questions to your impressions.”
So let me get this straight. She reports honestly what happened. The application IS slow when the machine meets the minimum requirements (even more). Again, she reports this in her review. Finally, she gives the application an overall good review.
Then she is jumped by people 1) can’t read the entire article, 2) are morons, and 3) put words in her mouth. And you expect her to just take it all lying down? Would you rather have lied? I haven’t seen her go off on anyone that didn’t give it to her first.
Her review was a good, honest review. It wasn’t marketing text. If your miles vary, and the app runs faster, great!
I enjoy these personal reviews. If you prefer boiler plate PR reviews paid for buy the company, this ain’t the place for it. If you are looking for an open discussion, and an honest review, this is the place.
Eugenia, you’re wrong about a great many things. It’s as simple as that.
A) If a Celeron was a Pentium-Class processor, it would bear the Pentium name. It doesn’t, therefore it’s not. Less cache on the CPU is most definitely a factor. If it was Pentium-class, it would have Pentium-class specs. That includes cache size.
B) Face it. Your machine is old. You’re running a low-end processor BARELY above the minimum requirements for iTunes. You can say dual however many times you want, and bold it as much as you want, but it’s irrelevant. Your machine runs no faster than 533 MHz. Period. Now you’re running this processor along with a video card made by a company that, despite what you believe, has a history of shitty drivers. Granted, not as bad as ATI, but bad. Your card in particular has known problems with some AGP chipsets (VIA in particular), and Matrox OpenGL drivers suck all around. Another thing of note is that your card is AGP 4x, yet your system is a dual Celeron 533 which probably means it’s quite old – older than AGP 4x. AGP speed stepdowns are ALSO known to have problems.
In your reply RE: Why not possible?, you say “You are assuming stuff here.” So wait… you’re not? Every comment you’ve ever made says that the problem is most definitely with iTunes and not with your hardware, as that would be impossible. That’s a bomb of an assumption, and (considering the hardware you’re running) is most likely incorrect. People running the same software on other machines have no trouble. Personally, iTunes runs like ASS on the Windows box I tried. However, I’m not above being able to say that since it’s a Pentium III 533 with a shit video card, it’s definitely the hardware and NOT iTunes. It seems to me you’re in denial about the performance of your hardware. iTunes is a brand new application. your machine is how old?
So in response to all of your statements to others to “Get a clue”, perhaps you should jump on that train first.
“Then she is jumped by people 1) can’t read the entire article, 2) are morons, and 3) put words in her mouth. And you expect her to just take it all lying down? Would you rather have lied? I haven’t seen her go off on anyone that didn’t give it to her first.”
Other than a few obvious exceptions, I really don’t see people attacking her personally, but questioning the results of her experience and claims.
“Her review was a good, honest review. It wasn’t marketing text. If your miles vary, and the app runs faster, great!”
It was a good proclamation of her first impression, which she appropriately titles the piece. My problem is with the conclusion that is drawn which is based on assumptions made with no further study or inquiry (However, its overall UI speed needs to be worked out by Apple).
She makes no room for the possibility that the UI issues she is experiencing is not due to the application itself, but rather an isolated experience.
I have no doubts that she has experienced poor UI performance. However, the testing procedure could be called incomplete at best.
Case in point:
RE:Just finished installing iTunes………
By Eugenia (IP: —.client.attbi.com) – Posted on 2003-10-16 20:57:28
> Ok Eugenia, that machine of yours has a problem. This thing runs fine.
I am sorry, but this is not an acceptable explanation. Every zealot will just give this exact explanation everytime I spot problems. There is nothing wrong with my machine, the problem is with iTunes’ UI: it’s slow on a SMP machines. Better testing and optimization should have being done by Apple.
Any chance SoundCheck is on by default?
It scans every file imported into the Library and makes volume adjusts so that all songs are the same general volume level.
This would be a CPU intensive task, and could very well cause the initial CPU usage issues people here have described.
As far as the redraw problem, I doubt its Apple’s software. If it works on most, with a few exceptions having trouble, I say they did a fine job.
That’s the whole point of Macs to begin with – an alternative to the hodge-podge of custom built garbage that PCs are. It’s rather difficult for any real custom software developer to make a truly compatible app that would work on every machine out there. Give Apple a break, they did a superb job porting a Mac-only Carbon app to Windows. Not just to make money, but to give you Kazaa using Windows bums a music download alternative. Most music piracy occurs on PCs.
Does anybody know when the BeOS version comes out?
Does anybody know when the BeOS version comes out?
Yes, never.
Yep, the UI is slow, even unresponsive. Fast on my Dual 1.25, but on my 2.4 GHz P4 with XP, sometimes the UI just doesn’t respond. The music keeps playing, just the window doesn’t show up. It’s a bit like dreamWeaver in that respect (click on tab and waaaaaaiiiiiittttttt).
Apart from that, it’s GREAT to have iTunes on Windoze. Work is just a little funner now.
Papblo, Eugenia does OS News for fun and has to deal with an endless stream of idiotic comments. Be nice to her
I have a multimedia keyboard, i.e., play/pause, stop buttons. Usually, the player does not have to be in the foreground for the it to catch the button presses, but iTunes only catches those if it is in the foreground. Had gotten quite used to using these. Bugger that.
i mean really, not bad at all
http://www.wma-mp3.com/
Excuse me if I repeat myself, but your music requires freedom from Microsoft for use on the iPods. Also Podworks (versiontracker.com) will upload from iPod to computers.
I was hoping to read some insightful anecdotes from Windows fans and users alike regarding iTunes 4.1 for Windows, and more specifically, the iTunes Music Store. Not only about its speed, but initial impressions in different facets of the software and service. Instead, it seems that Eugenia’s initial impressions have set the scene for all-out war amongst OSNews readers.
As the owner of an iMac running the latest Mac OS X, and a user of iTunes since its earliest days, I can state that what makes iTunes is the philosophy around which it is built; that is, that you don’t really want to use iTunes any more than is necessary. The key to this is staving off feature creep, and making all functions of the application accessible within about two clicks. iTunes implements this philosophy well, and it feels clean and thought-out to use.
The only ‘fun’ part of using iTunes, realistically, is using the iTunes Music Store. That buzz of finding a track you want, purchasing it inexpensively, and then listening to it for a time. I’m told a good job has been done with this, too… but being thankfully outside the RIAA’s sphere of control, I have yet to experience it myself.
If you like playing with your music player software, iTunes will probably disappoint when put next to the likes of WinAMP. If you don’t, then iTunes will put a smile on your face, even ahead of MusicMatch Jukebox or Windows Media Player.
Windows users: Welcome to the party. Stay awhile and enjoy.
Dude, get a faster computer, complain about the speed of the app, but your CPU is sooooo slow, do you know how cheap hardware is nowadays…
Better yet, use OGG. It’s patent-free and better.
http://faceprint.com/code
http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis
I wouldn’t recommend iTunes to anyone. It doesn’t solve any freedom problem at all. None, nada. At ”best” it would mean a ”legal” alternative to the illegal P2P usage. If this so-called illegal usage is less popular, the users become more vulnerable. If it stays used by the masses, nothing will happen except FUD. Stand strong.
Or, which i’d recommend, try ftp://ftp.scene.org for legal, free music -for example. Supporting big record labels is no good, let them become rotten to death in their traditions.
Here are my initial impressions:
1-1) 1.8GHz P4, resizing the iTunes window is lagged, badly. It’s not unresponsive, but it is definitely lagged compared to any other program on the system, even those running concurrently.
1-2-1) Apple: this isn’t a Mac application, you’re in Windows now. I shouldn’t have to click on the bottom-right corner to resize my window. I shouldn’t need a steady hand to only adjust either the height or the width of the window.
1-2-2) Clicking the maximize button should not cause the window to get smaller. Second glance made me realize there is no maximize button. The initial window size of iTunes is about 20x what I need from my music programs, but if I’m going to go that big, why not full-screen? I’d probably want full-screen if I was going to use the music store features.
1-2-3) Trying to resize the smaller version of the window (after clicking the maximize button) yields no ability to resize, despite the resizing grip, but instead makes the window become even smaller.
1-2-4) Double-clicking the title bar (another way to maximize windows in Windows) yields some preset-sized window rather than a maximized window. Needless to say, it’s much smaller than a maximized window, and still not consistent with expected behavior.
2-1) Importing files… right-click on the ‘Library’ entry in the left-hand pane, and get… ZERO options to import files. File menu has all I really need, though.
2-2) On the positive side, adding the MP3 folder on my hard drive seemed to work fine, despite the fact that the MP3 files themselves are a few folders deep. Some programs have problems with this, but overall this is expected behavior from iTunes.
3-1) The smaller mode for iTunes is nice, like most other playback apps, but is a little bigger than I would like it to be.
3-2) There’s a lot of wasted space, and the buttons to close, minimize, and resize are in the wrong place (despite there being enough room for them in the right place).
3-3) On the positive: mouse wheel controls volume as expected.
3-4) Left-click and Right-click perform the same function over the panel that shows the title/etc. I would prefer that right-click brought up a set of options for this panel, or a context-menu to change tracks or something.
4-1) Most of the interface elements in the larger window are actually fairly good, except for the inconsistencies already mentioned.
4-2) iTunes didn’t seem to be able to find artwork for any of the albums in my playlist. Ill have to check the settings a bit more to see if there’s something that may be stopping this.
4-3) I can’t find a way to edit the genre/title/etc information without leaving iTunes and doing it in Explorer, then retrieving the file. At this point iTunes promptly ignored the changes. Yeah, I really want such descriptive genres as ‘Rock’, which describes 99.9% of my playlist according to iTunes. (Note: just figured out that I had most of my MP3 files set to read-only, so of course it couldn’t edit this stuff, though it would’ve been nice if iTunes had told me this was the case rather than just making everything greyed out).
Ill have to try it at home, later, to see how it handles larger playlists. I only have about 80 files that it can read on this computer. I had to go into the preferences to disable the crossfade playback, which was driving me nuts (wtf is it cutting off the last 5 seconds of every song? Oh, here it is: fuck up my music enabled). Had to go through the horrid QuickTime options to disable it’s status tray icon (also disabled the status tray icon for iTunes). Despite choosing ‘Do not put icons on my desktop’, it put icons in my QuickLaunch bar (which it didn’t give me an option not to do), so I deleted the QT icon but left the iTunes icon for the moment.
Overall, playback is good, management is ok, with good filtering.
The big thing on my home system (where I’ll try it next) is that Windows Media Player has a mode where it docks itself to the task bar in Windows XP. I’m not sure that iTunes could ever replace it unless it could do something similar, and equally well.
With millions of CPU/Mobo/Video Card/Sound Card/Hard drive, including driver software, combinations that exist on the Win side I am amazed that anything even works! And Win iTunes being v 1, I have to say that Apple did do a great job porting it.
While resizing does lag for a brief moment on my AMD 2000/ATI Radeon 7000, everything else is just as smooth as on my Quicksilver. iTunes will get better with each successive release.
Microsoft astroturfers should probably consider another forum to troll in.
I’ve installed iTunes on two systems now–Win2K and XP, both on Celerons just under 2GHz–and it works just fine on both. CPU usage on the XP hovers between 25% and 40%, and that’s with a browser and MS Word open and running. Window redraw is no better and no worse than any other apps I use, and the GUI works just fine.
As for the complaints–this is a first version of the app on this OS, people! When was the last time Microsoft released a first version of an app that didn’t totally suck? And this app doesn’t suck, it is far better than average.
Eugenia,
No offense but a dual Celeron is a non-standard hardware configuration to begin with and I very much doubt that Apple would code Windows iTunes for MP configurations.
All I have to say is that I use a WinXP machine for work, and finally I can have something that makes it feel more familiar to my Mac at home, except I have no Terminal, no Unix commands, blah, blah, blah.
I installed iTunes for Windows, and it works great! Now maybe it is time for me to consider getting a doc connector for my 3G iPod.
<RANT>
To all those who are complaining about the operating system issue: please stop complaining. Apple made a business decision. Not so surprisingly, Windows 98, and 2000 are very different. Sure, you could compile the program to run on both, but the performance tweaks for one would not work on the other, and perhaps break the product. Think of it as supporting two DIFFERENT operating systems, however similar. Plus, they’re giving it away for FREE! There is a profit motive though, but I guess Apple figures that those who are most likely to use the music store are also the ones who want to upgrade their computers because they like to CONSUME, and PURCHASE. If you feel that Apple is being mean to you, get over it, because you are the square peg in their round hole. If we support win98, the win95 users will complain, and if we support win95, the win 3.1 users will moan. Apple had to draw a line in the sand somewhere, and that line was at delivering a superior product for their target audience, rather than wasting development time and resources on developing a version for people who (in a market sense) would run it on older machines, complain about the speed, and not be likely to purchase any music. This is not an attack on anyone, I’m simply stating my opinion that you guys are not the target audience.
</RANT>
On another note, I have noted that itunes consumes a lot of CPU, on both Mac, and (supposedly) windows. At least it does on my iBook. There are a lot of mp3 players (winamp, winmp for windows et al.) that consume less than 2% of a ~1GHz CPU. I run iTunes at about minimum 7% CPU on my iBook 600. CPU usage spikes when you interact with itunes, but if you let it play the music without screwing with the GUI, it’s tolerable. I put linux on my iBook to try it out, and must say that I was very impressed with xmms. It consumes 0% of my CPU playing ogg vorbis files. Plus, ogg sounds great.
>Bizarrely, It seems to use the same amount of CPU utilisation even when it?s doing nothing at all!
Hold it! It seems to be doing something…. it is going through all the songs and determining song volume, what ever that means. Hume….all very strange.
ROTFL!!!
you’re so cute!…relax its just a (great) aac/mp3/wav/aiff/lame/ogg player. Once you become accustom to how things work maybe you’ll begin to enjoy it
Not so surprisingly, Windows 98, and 2000 are very different. Sure, you could compile the program to run on both, but the performance tweaks for one would not work on the other, and perhaps break the product. Think of it as supporting two DIFFERENT operating systems, however similar.
Having written a lot of software with my development systems on either Windows 98 or 2000 and my target platforms on Windows 95, 98, and 2000, I have to disagree. The only time it becomes an issue to support 9x and 2k is when you develop on 98 and completely ignore portability issues, or absolutely require SMP and full multi-threading capabilities. It is fairly easy to write software with 2k as a target and have it work fine in 98, as long as you pay attention to specific areas that have compatibility problems (again, mostly SMP and multi-threading support, the first of which is unsupported in 98 and the second of which is slightly different between the two).
Supporting Windows 98 is not a hard thing to do, and most developers have found it a bit easier when dealing with certain areas that iTunes also deals with (drivers for things like CD burning, audio effects/editing and codecs), which tend to be a pain in the ass on 2k/XP.
That being said, the poor GUI performance of the application combined with the excellent playback performance leads me to believe that they did quite a bit of work on the threading of the application (otherwise the poor GUI performance would lead to bad playback), meaning that it probably would have taken some work (though fairly minor, and with most likely a moderate-to-minimal performance hit on 9x only) to make it work in both. 98 is still a very dominant part of the Windows family of operating systems, and is likely to remain so for a couple more years.
Of course, when it all comes down to it, I haven’t used 98 personally in 3 years, and have no reason to go back to it. I usually don’t even test my software on 98, because the target platform is always 2000, but I’m lucky in that my software is on a defined platform with no variance in the OS.
Eugenia does *not* own this site and is the editor for free and for fun. Comments modded down do not follow the guidelines of the forum. And she is not the only one of the staff that mods down comments.
P3 700MHz, no problems with scrolling, resizing. Though not having the maximize button MAXIMIZE was retarded. And not being able to manually maximize is strange also. Leaves like three or four pixels to the edge of the screen. Odd
Saw someone post earlier about it comparing song volume and that making the ap run slow, to them I say this. iTunes can make all your song volumes the same, so that in playback when Motzart is done, you don’t have to run over to turn the volume back down so that Tool doesn’t blow your speakers out.
Nice to see Apple putting the effort in to include us.
Eugenia, post some snapshots of from the Performance tab in your Task Manager. Show us the CPU utilization of Processors 0 and 1 while iTunes is loaded and you are dragging/resizing the UI. I just did it on my single CPU box and the CPU utilization *does* go up. I’m interested to see if it is spread evenly across both processors on a dual system, though. My guess is that it isn’t, and your second processor doesn’t matter one whit towards the performance of the app.
I just resized iTunes while watching the performance monitor on my dual 2.4GHz XEON box.
CPU 1 went from ~4% utilization up to ~30% utilization during the time I was resizing the window (accomplishied by grabbing the lower right corner and moving the mouse around randomly for a few seconds). CPU 2 showed no discernable increase in utilization.
I’d have to say that you’re correct. A dual system isn’t going to help for the UI speed (as I also assumed it wouldn’t) and Eugenia’s dual 533 is no better than a single 533 for iTunes. Therefore her machine is just above minimum system specs and probably isn’t expected to run iTunes much better than it is. The issue is not the software, it’s the hardware it’s being run on.
Saw someone post earlier about it comparing song volume and that making the ap run slow, to them I say this. iTunes can make all your song volumes the same, so that in playback when Motzart is done, you don’t have to run over to turn the volume back down so that Tool doesn’t blow your speakers out.
One thing I noticed is that a lot of people were using this feature to excuse the responsive-ness issues, yet it’s not enabled by default (I found it in the same preferences panel as the crossfade playback option). Personally, if my speakers blow out when my music changes drastically, it’s time for better speakers
If I wanted a compressor, i’d put one in the line (I have 3 or 4 of them built into the rest of my effects hardware).
I didn’t notice any problems with scrolling, either, and with the resizing it actually follows along in a rather responsive manner, just about a full second behind my cursor (and when I let go it catches up and sizes to where my cursor was when I let go).
I’m thinking the brush metal crap is going to clash even more with the silver-themed XP I use at home, but I’ll give it a run anyway just to see how it handles a few thousand MP3 files.
A dual system isn’t going to help for the UI speed (as I also assumed it wouldn’t) and Eugenia’s dual 533 is no better than a single 533 for iTunes. Therefore her machine is just above minimum system specs and probably isn’t expected to run iTunes much better than it is. The issue is not the software, it’s the hardware it’s being run on.
It’s a celeron to boot, which not only wasn’t meant to run in SMP in the first place, but isn’t equivalent to (or better than) a 500MHz P3, either.
That being said, I see some resizing issues on a 1.7GHz P4, so I’m not so sure that the hardware is entirely to blame.
Its an issue with the hardware, but also an issue with the software, it SHOULD have been written with better threading in mind, however as it doesn’t use threads for the UI particularly well, the hardware is barely at minimum spec. I am sure ITunes will improve on windows, better threading, etc. But in the end, this product is what a lot of people have been clamouring for on Windows since it appeared on the Mac, and for a first release, its pretty spectacular.
I installed iTunes for Windows last night on my AMD Athlon XP 2000+, 1 gigabyte of DDR RAM, and Windows 2000 Professional machine. It looked nice, but it was not a Windows application. Trying to maximize it resulted in its “crunching” itself. Right click did nothing. Plus it was generally slow. So after a few hours, I uninstalled it. Perhaps I’ll try it again in a half year or so, but until then, Windows Media Player 9 it is.
Ronald, everyone knows that Metallica is the poster child of the “Say No to Online Music” movement.
Well in Eugenia’s defense, somthing this simple should not cause her the problems she is having. It really is absurd to have terrible lag and utilization when simply resizing a window. Apple’s whole platform now revolves around OpenGl, and they have seemed to forgotten that Windows isnt. I personally think they should have created a real windows version for iTunes and not an OSX port.
On the other hand I will say that P2 core or not, celerons suck…..BAD. Also, Matrox cards….terrible terrible cards. Even if youre strapped for cash, just about any budget card will do better than a Matrox card. There are good and bad configs out there. You want the best compatibility, reliability and performance, use an AMD or Intel chip and an ATI or Nvidia video card period. Id equate using a Matrox card to using a Cyrix cpu. ick.
Got a P4 2.4 533 FSB, iTunes is at 2 % most of the time. Why do ppl complain, just get a new mobo and a new cpu. Man people running 500Mhz are crazy, i mean com’on, who agress with me here, 500 mhz is slower than my grandma… You can get ex govt. computers for like $50 running at 500mhz, even my uni is running faster than that, infact my uni is running P4 2.6…
iTunes is not CPU hungry, it is just designed for better hardware…
Argue this, i don’t think you can…
I totally agree. If you use your computer for more than typing word documents, there is no excuse. Especially when you can pick AthlonXPs in the 2000 range and GF4 MX cards for pocket change.
Apple did this to make M$ happy. Now, users of Win 98 will have to upgrade to XP in order to use iTMS. More money for Bill makes him happy, maybe he’ll continue to support Office for OSX.
I’ve been using iTunes since it first came out. In fact, I used SoundJam MP for a couple of years before that – before Apple bought SoundJam from Casady & Greene and hired their MP programmers to turn it into iTunes. Anyway, iTunes has come a long way. It plays on my old G3 350 Mhz Mac nonstop all day streaming radio and playing MP3s. It never freezes or crashes. It’s really solid. Expect that shortly with the Windows version after one or two updates.
Regarding, music selection in the store… I agree that selection if far from great. But you should have seen it a month or two ago. The volume of selection has come a long way. You have to realize that the content selection is very much dependent on the record labels and artists. Initially, they’ve been selective pushing their stuff onto the iTunes Music Store. Dipping their toes in the water, sort of speak. The uploading of content into the store is accelerating quickly. I see that when I check the “Just Added” section. They update that every Tuesday. You can see the last four weeks’ of additions. With the independent record labels jumping on now, the music selection is starting to get really tasty.
Cheers.
i am on a notebook… 1.3GHz P-M CPU (faster than it sounds), radeon 9000 graphix… and iTunes is just fast and cool.
faster than on my powerbook G4/667 for sure.
the only performance thing i noticed is that it uses more CPU than WinAmp when playing mp3s – 15% CPU vs 7% in Winamp. That’s still ok though – don’t notice it when i work.
moving windows is as fast as i can move the mouse, and uses 100% CPU, but so does moving any other windows window with the mouse.
What the heck is wrong with you to say that not supporting windows 98 is a major flaw?!
It’s almost _2004_ for craps sake.
Yeah, that’s only 6 year old software. Gee. I wonder why they decided it wasn’t worth it to support it. Maybe because they didn’t want to back-port all their drivers for CD burning to win 9x. My guess is that the Win9x networking stack would crap itself silly if someone tried to implement ZeroConf on it.
Think about it for more than two seconds people. This application isn’t just a userland application, there’s a lot of drivers and other dependencies going on behind the scenes. I applaud Apple for dropping win9x support.
Now where’s my linux port?
If I remember, Eugenia was also lambasting Mozilla about slow graphics on the exact same system.
Ever stop to think it might be your hardware configuration E? Because the problems sound very similar and / or related. And from my expirence with mozilla (after your total hissy-fit) I’m willing to bet you’re pretty off the mark on this one as well when compared to how things run on my box.
So how well does it work when you boot to single-processor mode?
lightnin, the iTunes Music Store requires no subscription.
“…now if apple would release a version for the rest of us
heck i might not mind getting a subscription to their store thing.”
I’m still trying to figure out just WHAT the problem is for people on this app.
I’m running it on a Dell Latitude C400. This thing has a PIII Mobile at 1.2GHz, a BUILT in Intel Video (830M) with shared video memory, and 1Gb of RAM.
iTunes for windows FLYS. Definately better than the same thing on my G4/500 with 10.2.
Windows resizing, screen redraw, visualizations, everything. Snappy.
As to resources, the Task Manager was using more when I opened it to check, and Internet Explorer was using more RAM, so again, not sure what people are seeing here. Remember that iTunes isn’t just a program, it also is KIND OF a web services program as well.
Anyhow, just wanted to chime in.
CharlesJR
I’m still trying to figure out just WHAT the problem is for people on this app.
I’m running it on a Dell Latitude C400. This thing has a PIII Mobile at 1.2GHz, a BUILT in Intel Video (830M) with shared video memory, and 1Gb of RAM. Running WinXP PRO, SP1.
iTunes for windows FLYS. Definately better than the same thing on my G4/500 with 10.2.
Windows resizing, screen redraw, visualizations, everything. Snappy.
As to resources, the Task Manager was using more when I opened it to check, and Internet Explorer was using more RAM, so again, not sure what people are seeing here. Remember that iTunes isn’t just a program, it also is KIND OF a web services program as well.
Anyhow, just wanted to chime in.
CharlesJR
This is a big minus for me. Everytime I start up this thing it registers itself as the default mp3 player. You cannot change the file associations in the preferences. Sucks big time.
after reading the article and the first 30 or so comments, I almost have to wonder if some of these problems are just peoples individual systems.
running iTunes on my Win2K machine with a Duron 1.2GHz and 256MB ram on a nforce 220 chipset…CPU utilization is only at 2-3%, resizing the window is snappy(no 1+ second delays or any drawing artifacts) and this is with the visuals/eye-candy ON.
NO problems whatsoever other than it didnt find my audio files at first search(it only looks in the “my music” folder the first search)
I installed itunes onto my win2k Shuttle SN41g2 (Athlon XP2500 + 1GB RAM) and it’s been just fine. CPU Usage is just 10% but thats only just listening to music via the radio though.
Harjtt
: o )>
On my system running a 2.08GHz AMD Athlon XP processor and 512MB PC2700 KingstonHyperX memory iTunes performs rather slow. Audio playback is fine, browsing the Music Store is fast and I like previewing tracks. But resizing the window is choppy, as if it isn’t using my graphics card and iTunes is taking up almost 40MB of memory! That is unacceptable.
Conrad
skips to previous/next song! hehehe
“Funny. It didn’t change anything on “My Music” folder. WMP9 used to do that (ie Broke my AC/DC folder in half, AC and DC!!!)”
Wow I didn’t think it was possible to have a folder with “/” or “” in the name in windows. At least every time I’ve tried I get a helpful dialog box pointing out the few characters that cannot be included in file or folder names!
Running on Win2k SP3, 850 Athlon, Matrox g400 dual head with 384 MB RAM – works great. Streaming 56kb right now, with PC Anywhere standing by & Filemaker Pro open, TM shows CPU average at 10%, peaking at 18%. Now, turning the visuals on brings it up to 86-90%, but no big surprise there.
I see the lag in window resizing, but it’s far from unusable. I notice too, that the resize is alot faster if you release the mouse button right away than if you click, drag, & wait for the window to catch up.
Not bad at all for their first Windows release. Remember, timeliness to market is very important for this app, too. They needed to get it out in time to compete with the multiple Windows music-buying apps. If they waited too long, chances are that one of the competing apps would get entrenched, and no matter how bitchin’ the app was it would be a big “so what?”.
I suspect that Apple will keep to form as with OSX releases – look for speed & stability improvements in the next release.
Both for Mac and Windows
If it seems bloated to old or even new crap Wintel/Amd ‘puters that’s because the computers probably use some weird graphics, mainboard, etc. stuff…
iTunes simply rocks! It is simply the best digital Jukebox
uncheck Edit –> Preferences –> General –> Use iTunes as the default player for audio files