Hmm, now I consider that to be just bad UI, not bloat. Sure, they both have tons of features, so by some people's criteria they're bloated, but the UI is what makes it hard to find them - or even to know they exist. I wrote an ebook about customizing Office apps - with toolbars, keyboard shortcuts, etc. - and most of the people who wrote me after buying it had absolutely no idea they could do such things. And I don't even think you can blame that on documentation: when software had thick manuals, people didn't read them; when it has help files, people don't read them (and Office's help is actually quite good). I think people simply don't want to look any further than what they see; hence the many toolbars in Word because MS knows people won't find things if they put them elsewhere.

_________________
My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

Bloat isn't evaluated in a vacuum though. You need to compare your program with respect to other programs with similar functions. If your program offers relatively few (or useful) features for the majority of users for much greater complexity and resource usage, then it can be considered to be bloated.

Providing features "just in case" is known as feature-creep, and is one the main causes of bloat. It is a trade-off indeed. Almost all "user friendlyness" comes at a price



Yes, in those days the internet was more of a single thing. Netscape provided a single program that dealt with this internet "thing". When Mozilla later followed the same philosophy, that philosophy was outdated, as can be easily seen by the success of separating out the browser, Firefox.



More feature-creep

Feature creep is very often the result of "Now that we have X, it's easy to add Y". Now that we have an audio player, it's easy to make it a media player, because movie files are video plus audio, and we've already done the audio part anyway. Now that we have a calendar, it's easy to add a project manager, because project management requires a lot of calendar scheduling, and we've already got that part.

Well, I understand the logic in both cases. For iTunes, once they started allowing videos and photos on the iPod, they wanted a way to get those files there, and it does make sense to be able to view videos, at least, in iTunes. When they added movie rentals, for example, that added to this usefulness. You can, of course, say they didn't really need these things, and could have made different apps, but I still feel the ease of use is enhanced by having one single program to sync the wide variety of content you can put on iPods (and iPads).

With Entourage, there was some sense as well, especially because I think it connects with Exchange Server, which offers those tools.

So the broader question is really one of what choices are there - add things to one app, or make separate apps. In my opinion, combining makes a lot more sense, but you'll always end up with users who don't use a lot of the features.

Let's not forget that as computers mature, users are more familiar with the process of computing, and with working with applications. So I think a lot of negative opinions about "fully-featured apps" come from people with memories of the old days, when such programs did slow things down a lot.

_________________
My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

The logic is usually there, but the thing is that features often just keep creeping

Now that we have video, we might as well add image viewing, because a lot of the same compression principles are involved.
Now that we can view video and images, and play music, we might as well ad a web browser, because a lot of the web today is images and video.
Now that we have a web browser, why don't we expend it to allow access to ftp sites as well, we have the networking code after all.
Now that we can show FTP directory listings, how about we make it a full fledged file management application as well.
With file management in place, lets expand it to be an operating system



Personally, I prefer the plugin approach, where you can expand the same program to do what you need. Firefox takes that approach, where the browser does a basic thing and there's a million plugins that you can use to tweak it to your preference.

iTunes could have taken that approach: "Have an iPod? Install the sync plugin!". It would mean less bloat, but more user action, less "just works out of the box". Apple, I think, has always been a fan of "Just works out of the box". Apple is almost synonymous with user friendliness, and I think they felt that for iTunes, the monolithic approach was the right way to go.

I'm often hesitant about plug-ins, and how they affect the operation of a program. I've seen how they can be detrimental with web browsers (perhaps not Firefox, but others), and I'm not convinced that they don't slow things down. Apple just introduced extensions for Safari, and I'm not sure it's going to be a good way to go, regarding performance.

For iTunes, I think the logic is more that of not burdening the user with deciding what to install. You could, of course, have the program download the necessary plug-in for, say, a specific iPod (which OS X does, quite well, for printer drivers), but I'm not sure that would change a whole lot.

_________________
My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

Bad UI is just a symptom, and bloated software might be the cause.

Of course there are different reasons that have nothing to do with UI. For example, I don't really understand why Visual Studio needs 2 GB of my hard drive, while Eclipse needs only 200 MB. Or why MS Office needs a full 700 MB CD, while the download of Open Office has only about 150 MB for roughly the same (perceived) feature set.

That's all reasons why software is considered bloated by some people. Saying a software is "bloated" basically boils down to saying it is "too big". That may refer to feature complexity, or to resource usage, speed, download size, whatever. A bad UI might be a symptom of the software being bloated. Or it might just be a symptom of the UI designers not doing their work well. But in general, simpler software will have simpler UI. Of course, a good UI designer might be able to make the UI simpler without removing features. But on the other hand, wouldn't the UI be still simpler when removing the "unnecessary" features *and* employing the good UI designer?

It's clear that this is highly subjective. Who decides what features are unnecessary?

Of course, if a user wants nothing than copying music to the iPod, then this user would consider iTunes extremely bloated, because every single feature of it is unnecessary when you compare it to the simple "Thumb Drive" approach used by other MP3 players. Compared to that, even having to install a special software might be enough to tick this user off, because with other products you just have to plug it in and copy the files over. (Disclaimer: That's just speculation on my part from what I've heard about iTunes, I have never actually used it myself so I couldn't tell if it's really that bad).

But in my opinion, that doesn't tell anything about iTunes being bloated or not. The underlying problem is the inability to copy music to the iPod without using iTunes, which is clearly overkill if you don't want to use the other features of the program. That would be like having to install Photoshop just to take some screenshots. Photoshop is a great software, but if someone would just use it to make screenshots, this user would probably call it bloated too. Fortunately, we have simpler drawing programs to choose from, so the issue doesn't arise

So there you have the reason why people think iTunes is bloated: (Actually what I think why people think ... I think you get the idea )
They are actually using the wrong software!
It's not that iTunes is bad. iTunes is a great piece of software. It might just be that it's the wrong tool for the job for some people. There are people that need iTunes, and there are people that don't need it. The people that don't need it consider it bloated.
So why are these people using iTunes? Because they have to. If you want to copy music to your iPod, you are forced to use iTunes, with all the other features that you don't need.
The people complaining about iTunes are not really saying iTunes is bad. They actually don't want a better iTunes, they want something entirely different.

That doesn't really say much about the quality of iTunes, which is great at the job it was designed for. Contrary to the popular opinion, I don't think it's bloated in itself. But it's often misused for something that isn't it's primary function, because there is no other tool available. However, that fact does say something about the quality of the iPod

I assume you're talking about the Mac here? But even then, I find that hard to believe. Anyway, on Windows, I use my preferred media tool, MediaMonkey, to do my ipod synching.

I wish this forum had an option to dislike posts. That would not be bloat.

flOvermind, valid points all.

While one can criticize Apple for not allowing other programs to access the iPod, I understand their reasoning: it's the "we're not beige box makers" logic. Apple doesn't want to have to deal with support for people who are using different software, which could muck up the way the iPod works. If you provide both the hardware and the software, you don't become like Dell who has to provide support for things out of their control. Apple is more able to tell what causes a problem because it's both their software and hardware.

It's a trade-off: if you don't like that idea, don't buy an iPod (or iPhone, or iPad). If you do want to buy an iPod, then you accept that you'll use the software that goes with it. And if you really want an iPod but not iTunes, you can always use Rockbox (if that's still being developed).

_________________
My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

Various hackery has gone into making other software work with the various ipod generations. I'm not sure about the current status, but I think Apple has always done its best to prevent this (legal threats etc., as well as generally making it hard to reverse engineer). I'm not sure how reliable this currently is for all the different ipod/iphone versions, but last time I checked it was not possible to sync properly to all versions.

EDIT: It looks like ipod syncing probably works for all models at the moment, but it remains true that itunes is the only truly reliable, 'correct' way to do it.

So basically, you go from asking people to provide feedback about a piece of Apple-made software, to informing that their negative feedback is incorrect, and to finally telling them that if they don't like said software they can go #$!& themselves.

I respect the tone you have taken in some of your other posts in this thread. You are sometimes able to debate in a civil manner and I appreciate that ... but I was extremely put off at this particular sentence.

I find this particular statement both appalling and insulting. This thread has convinced me that you have very little understanding for end users with needs that differ from what you accept as normal. You expect all us "more technically inclined people" to bend to what YOU consider to be reasonable statements ... yet you often seem to be actively opposed to accepting reasonable statements from us.

I have made two very reasonable posts in this thread. The first you did acknowledge, I admit ... however you seemed to miss my point. The focus of that post was that you do indeed have a valid standpoint for your argument, but it is not the only valid point of view. You're treating your question of whether iTunes is bloated as if it has a clean "yes" or "no" answer. You are wrong to look at it that way (in my opinion), because it completely ignores the human factor involved.

My second post, which must have been missed in the slew of other responses happening at the time, attempted to go into more detail about the aspect of this issue you were completely ignoring. To re-iterate, when discussing software bloat, you have to consider end user perception as a major factor in the social perception of a piece of software.

In that second post, I responded to your comment about gamers who upgrade their PCs to stay on top of the latest requirements for games ... and how they rarely complain that a game is bloated. I'm going to quote a part of that response:



Do you understand the implications? Users don't care if a program is well written, or takes x amount of resources, or takes x amount of time to perform a function. Users care that a program runs smoothly, that it takes less space than application z and that it runs "faster" than application z. If this is true in any way, then application z is bloated. That's how users think.

You are trying to apply a purely technical mindset to an issue of social perception. You will lose that battle. Statements indicating that your opposition is not being reasonable is insulting. Additionally, you make backhanded insults with off-hand remarks about how you get "more reasonable" responses from other forums. It is truly offensive behaviour. Regardless of whether you yourself feel offended by some of the attacks made towards you in this thread (which I also believe are a poor way to treat ANY member), it's not worth making yourself look like an arse by responding in kind.

Dude, chill. The discussion right above is about whether people want to accept to use iTunes, and the only answer is what I said: if you don't want to use it, don't buy it. Same for the iPhone and Flash: if you want Flash, don't buy an iPhone. Simple question of voting with your feet.

_________________
My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

Isn't that the way all products work? Buy it if you like it, don't buy it if you don't like it.
Not even all open source projects are that open, except that you have the additional option of forking it and fixing it yourself.

Ah, the problems of Internet communication...

The comment to which you object was simply that I was trying to find out if people's subjective impressions could be altered by their understanding underlying technical explanations (ie, the question of whether memory usage is a valid problem, or simply one that users don't quite grasp). You even say:



You say users will ignore functionality they don't need, yet that's not what I see; I see people criticizing software (and not only iTunes; Word, Photoshop and other examples have been cited) because of the existence of functions they don't need.

But then you say:



That's exactly the opposite of what I've been reading here. Criticisms of memory usage and program speed are the main ones made in this thread (unlike in other forums, where people have discussed functions, and their presence or absence; mostly because the people posted here are more technically inclined than the others I've been discussing this with).

The thing is, there are two types of people I've seen making this type of criticism ("iTunes is bloated"). The first is the tech blogger, who may need to write link-bait, and who propagates a meme without necessarily providing reasons for it. (An article on Wired about a month or two ago was of this type.) These people should have the technical knowledge to back up their statements, but they often don't, and don't really back up anything. The second type of people are what I would called technically-un-savvy end users, who make this sort of statement (and, again, I could be talking about other software that is criticized for the same thing) simply because there are too many functions. As I said elsewhere, this is what came up mostly in an audiobook forum, where most of the people only wanted the program to load audibooks on iPods.

But in between the two, there's the irksome question of human perception, which is mitigated by many factors. And that's the point I'm trying to get to. Shouldn't the techies understand the arguments that can be disproved (ie, the memory issue, or the program running slowly on a computer that doesn't mean the system requirements?). Shouldn't the non-techies be able to accept that the fact that they don't need features really doesn't affect the way a program runs (unless, of course, it does)?

I remain convinced that the biggest issue in this type of question - this exact question, but others that I've investigated regarding user impressions of both software and hardware - are heavily influenced by past experience. If you're a Mac user, and have been using Word for a long time, you may recall that version 6.1 was so pathetically bad that Microsoft took out ads in the computer press apologizing for it. Other programs have been released that have been real dogs; for example, again in the Mac world, Norton Utilities is infamous for slowing down Macs, and the company has a real problem shaking that reputation. I think people who have been using computers a long time are unable to slough off the bad experiences they've had, and accept that computing has changed a lot. They tend to think that things are the same as they were, say, ten years ago, back when megahertz mattered, and when not many people really had enough RAM for their computers to run at optimal performance.

No matter what, I remain amazed that so many people can take such things personally; almost as if they are arguing about their favorite sports team or something. But, well, that's just the way the world is.

_________________
My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

Yes, of course. It doesn't matter if you can change the code if you don't know how to program. That's why there are companies that actually make a lot of money off open source software, by providing that service to businesses. But for the vast majority of individuals, such changes are out of the question. And anyway, as can be seen in the marketplace, most people don't really care about code being open and available.

_________________
My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

You're jumping ahead of yourself; I guess I need to write an article of my own to get the full concept across. I agree internet communication is a difficult beast.

Let's add some emphasis to my first statement:

"Because of this, end users will ignore functionality in iTunes that they do not need when comparing it to software that does only what they do need."

I'm not saying that end users are not aware that the functionality is there (even if some of them only know that iTunes "can do a lot of other stuff") ... the point is they will compare the software to other solutions that do only what they care about.

This brings us to my next statement:

"Users don't care if a program is well written, or takes x amount of resources, or takes x amount of time to perform a function."

Read this sentence again, but forget about "software bloat" for just a moment. This statement is true, taken for itself. The first part: a program could be written using design patterns, using OO methodoogies, or using horrible programming hacks. Doesn't matter to the end user unless it affects what THEY see ... the programming is irrelevant to them, so long as it works. The second part: a user needs a frame of reference in order to judge how much resources is "too much". An application, without an external reference point, takes up as much resources as it needs. If this does not affect the user in an adverse way, there's no reason for the end user to know or even care if it's "too much". The final part is similar. Without a frame of reference ("this functionality takes longer than it would if I used application z") the software is simply doing the job and the end user accepts that so long as the application has a consistent timing for whatever functionality is being looked at.

This entire statement was supposed to be used as a reference point for my next statement:

"Users care that a program runs smoothly, that it takes less space than application z and that it runs "faster" than application z."

The first point: If a program runs smoothly (or smoother than the alternative product), the internals of how it works won't matter to the end user. The second point: if a user can SEE the difference in resources needed for similar functionality (or THINK they can see; as you have pointed out, exact numbers on resources are not easy to grasp), it doesn't matter if the application that needs more resources uses them effectively ... to the end user, it's a bigger resource drain for the same gain. To the end user, this is "bloat". The last point needs to be expanded upon a bit ... it should read: "runs faster and(or?) with more consistent timing than application z". A user won't always understand why the "same operation" in an application takes "different amounts of time" each time they do it. If one product performs with consistent timing versus a product that can have timing variations, many users will NOT look into the details and will attribute the inconsistency to "poor performance" and, indirectly, to "bloat".

The point of these statements was to indicate what I felt was the incorrect angle from which I believe you to be looking at this phenomenon from ... I believe you cannot look at the end user statement that "iTunes is bloated" without accepting that this perception is not a technical perception. You will not convince someone that iTunes is not bloated by showing how well the internal specifications of iTunes is designed for the functionality it provides. That's not the point. What you're missing is the OTHER aspect of design ... the one that iTunes (and most other major software) is not so great at handling: End User Information Presentation.

What is this, and why do so many big pieces of software become labeled as "bloated" because of it? Here's my take:

Vendor Software that is targeted at the general population is not tailored to present its overall functionality to specific user groups. Instead, what large scale software products attempt to do is provide an intuitive interface for both customization and functionality, one that gives the end user a certain amount of control over what they see and what they use. The most successful software (like iTunes) does this very well, and it is easy to navigate and use for the various different end user use cases that make up the whole of the user community for that software product. However, it is because these products are delivered to such a broad range of end users, who have many different (and sometimes disjoint) needs that you get the perception of "bloat" from different communities. This is not the only factor, of course. The availability of multiple smaller products, by their nature more focused, plays about as major a role in that perception.

This leads to the question that seems to be somewhat hinted at throughout a number of your posts, Kirk: In general, iTunes doesn't suffer from any deficiency that other general-purpose software products (like MS Word) doesn't; why is it a common point of focus for the label "Software Bloat"?

My answer to this is the large disparity between the functional needs of some of the different user groups, and more specifically the market penetration of the iPod. A good percentage of the population in North America's urban communities has at least one iPod (I'm sure I could be more general, but I feel more comfortable with this, more specific statement). A good majority of those need iTunes for two things ... syncing their iPod and buying more tunes. iTunes does a lot more than that, and the additional functionality DOES come with a price in resources, regardless of how well those resources are managed.

This alone accounts for at least some of the grumbling about "bloat" in iTunes. What makes it more poignant is how the iPod tends to tie a good number of end users to iTunes. As an mp3 player, the iPod is a device that people want, and they appreciate its functionality over what alternatives exist. The weak point from an end user perspective is having to install a large utility like iTunes to load the iPod. All they want to do is put their mp3s on their iPod. Alternative software that works with competing devices does ONLY this. Being more focused, these software solutions can perform the same function that iPod users want from iTunes, but are a smaller impact on the computer system they are run from. It is this point that I'm trying to put forward for your consideration. For a good number of iPod users, iTunes is "too big" compared to the alternative product's utility program. It doesn't matter that they bought an iPod ... they consider the iPod to be a separate concern from the utility program that loads it.

If Apple wanted to combat this perception, perhaps they should create a stripped-down version of iTunes (iTunes Light) that simply interfaced with the iPod and the iTunes store and nothing more. No cataloging mp3s automatically, no playing music, no functionality except loading the iPod (or other iDevice, I suppose). People who want the full iTunes functionality can download the full version of they'd like. With one relatively simple solution, iTunes Light becomes a great and "non-bloated" solution for a good number of users. The trick is to decide what the minimum functionality for iTunes Light should be.



Software Bloat is not entirely about how a program runs in a vacuum. What really defines Software Bloat is the comparison between alternative products. Your argument seems to be that alternative products do not perform all the same functions that iTunes does. My argument is that alternative products do not perform all the same functions that iTunes does, and that doesn't matter.



Past experience is always a factor in assessing and addressing user concerns, but it's not really the key factor for what we're talking about here. You're saying "iTunes works great! I can do all this stuff and everything runs smoothly and quickly, using the resources it needs". The community here is saying "iTunes isn't as fast as Product XYZ when I do this, and Product ABC takes up less space and does what I used to use iTunes for anyways." The community is displaying the comparison they used to identify the bloat. This is how software bloat has always been identified by end users: through direct user comparison of alternative products.

You see the same types of debates in Open Source versus Vendor Product debates. A great example of this is OpenOffice Calc versus Microsoft Excel. As someone who has used (and still uses) a good chunk of Excel's functionality, I can't make the switch over to OpenOffice Calc. It just doesn't do enough. However, you will find that a number of people who need a spreadsheet product can use OpenOffice Calc for everything and see no reason for the "bloat" in MS Excel. Is Excel, from a technical standpoint, "bloated"? You seem to think it should not be categorized as such, yet the opinion is out there, and I find it hard to argue with the reasoning given by the end users (I find it to be sound reasoning, a good chunk of the time).

Excellent explanation of virtual memory, fl0vermind. One slight addition (and maybe not even an addition--you kind of hinted at it, but I'm not sure if you meant exactly the same thing):

Applications are free to allocate as much memory as they want, even if they never use it. For example, iTunes might really only need 10 MB of memory to operate normally, but it allocates 300 MB just for kicks. If you look at something like ps or Activity Monitor, you'll see 300 MB for its "Virtual" size, but probably 10 MB or less in the "Real" memory column. In fact, if it never uses that memory even once, it's not even written to swap.

But there's no easy way of distinguishing this scenario from the case where it's really using 300 MB on a regular basis, and the operating system just happened to swap to disk 290 MB of it. The former will have reasonable performance, whereas the latter will have iTunes performing miserably. I personally have an application on my MacBook that always allocates exactly 4 GB, despite the fact that I only have 2 GB of physical memory, and the application never swaps. I suspect it's using more like 100 MB most of the time, but it's got that 4 GB of never-used virtual memory allocated "just in case".

Determining how much memory an application actually needs and uses is notoriously difficult. It's much easier to identify memory hogs like iTunes by anecdotally recognizing heavy swap usage from the poor performance and hard drive noise.

The amount of VM an application allocates is _totally fictitious_, and I've never found a good explanation why some apps do that.

This said, you're still complaining about an app running slowly on a machine which is way under spec: Mac OS X calls for a minimum of 1 GB RAM.

_________________
My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville