Do you think iTunes is bloated?

[amnal]

I think the problem with iTunes itself is not so much whether it's bloated or not, but that there is no alternative. If there were an alternative method to download files to the iPod, people wouldn't complain about iTunes.

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.

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.

[Aphelion]

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).

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.

[Marcus]

... I was thinking that the more technically inclined people here might be willing to consider that some of their reasons could be mitigated by, well, reason. I guess I was wrong. ...

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:

There's a difference between an application like iTunes and a Major Release Title. A Major Release Title is meant to be a fully immersive experience. Gamers expect the best games to use every resource available to deliver the most awe-inspiring experience their system can muster. It is for that experience, and not for the software itself, that they upgrade their system.

For most people, iTunes is a utility program. It's not supposed to take your full attention, so in the minds of many users it should take the minimum of necessary resources to function. The problem that a program like iTunes runs into is the other software options that it gets compared to by those users. Because iTunes does so much more than a simpler program can, it will inherently require more resources. You know that, and I know that, and so does the end user, usually. But software is easy to install, and end users are used to piling multiple programs onto their PCs regularly. 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. This is a very important aspect of understanding the end user. If you provide functionality in a software program that the user does not need or use that functionality does not exist for that user.

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.

[kirkmc]

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).

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.

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.

[flOvermind]

... and to finally telling them that if they don't like said software they can go #$!& themselves.

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.

[kirkmc]

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.

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:

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. This is a very important aspect of understanding the end user. If you provide functionality in a software program that the user does not need or use that functionality does not exist for that user.

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:

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.

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.

[kirkmc]

... and to finally telling them that if they don't like said software they can go #$!& themselves.

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.

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.

[Marcus]

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. This is a very important aspect of understanding the end user. If you provide functionality in a software program that the user does not need or use that functionality does not exist for that user.

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:

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.

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).

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.

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)?

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.

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.

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).

[ross]

So if an application uses 300 MB memory according to the task manager, it actually needs it. It may be that some of this memory is only used infrequently, and there is not much harm in swapping it, but it still means the application needs the memory, at least as far as the operating system is concerned.

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.

[kirkmc]

So if an application uses 300 MB memory according to the task manager, it actually needs it. It may be that some of this memory is only used infrequently, and there is not much harm in swapping it, but it still means the application needs the memory, at least as far as the operating system is concerned.

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.

[CarlJung]

And the other point about the OS basically using what's available also can explain why, for one poster, iTunes is using 300 MB, or why, for me, it uses twice as much memory on one of my Macs as another.

Buffers can't explain that, because they are not counted towards individual app memory usage.

Hmm.. this contradicts my previous posts about IO caches. Now that I reread the article I see that I misread some parts.

That said. One could allocate a % of the physical memory available (at least on Winows). Some databases do this. That might explain why the memory usage is different on different spec'd machines.

[flOvermind]

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.

Actually, that's easy: When the application allocates 300 MB and never touches it, the task manager will not show this in the real memory column. When the application uses 300 MB, it will be shown in the real memory column, regardless of swap.

[flOvermind]

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

Because it's simpler, and it doesn't do any harm.

To be precise, it's usually not the application itself that requests memory it doesn't need. It's the memory manager of the application. That way, the memory manager can be implemented much more efficiently.

Take for example the Java VM (I know you don't like Java, but in terms of memory management, you can't get much more efficient than Java). It will always request the whole heap as virtual memory from the operating system, and rely on the fact that the physical memory is allocated on first use. That's because Java uses several optimizations that make memory management in general faster, but resizing the heap extremely slow. Because of that, virtual memory is allocated optimistically in order to reduce the chance that the heap has to be resized afterwards.

[kirkmc]

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

Because it's simpler, and it doesn't do any harm.

To be precise, it's usually not the application itself that requests memory it doesn't need. It's the memory manager of the application. That way, the memory manager can be implemented much more efficiently.

Take for example the Java VM (I know you don't like Java, but in terms of memory management, you can't get much more efficient than Java). It will always request the whole heap as virtual memory from the operating system, and rely on the fact that the physical memory is allocated on first use. That's because Java uses several optimizations that make memory management in general faster, but resizing the heap extremely slow. Because of that, virtual memory is allocated optimistically in order to reduce the chance that the heap has to be resized afterwards.

Hmm, that's interesting...

First, talk about bloated - when I run CGoban for a while (not right away on startup) it can take up to 300 MB of memory.

But I just launched it now, and it's "only" using 119 MB. VM is shown as 371 MB. So if I understand correctly, this doesn't match what you've said. Did you mean that the real memory and VM figures should match?

[daal]

Bad news Kirk, you've been scooped. The good news however is that the author appears to share at least some of your views.

Itoons – Bloatware? Who the f*** do they think they are?

Lately there has been some talk among a fringe group of itoons users, some of whom don't even own an i- anything, that the highly esteemed and universally loved itoons is bloated. What do they mean by bloated? Hard to say. They just blather on and on about functions they don't understand and then try to complicate the issue by going off on irrelevant technical tangents. Although some of them are software developers who proclaim to know more about the inner workings of a computer than a journalist such as myself who uses one every day, they fail to understand the basic fact of the matter: no matter what they say, I can argue with them until their lips are numb.

My research has shown that this stubborn and grumbling minority of 9 out of every 10, or a mere 9% of all computer users, typically own old black "laptops" that someone like you or I wouldn't be seen with in a junkyard. Goodness knows what they do with them and whether in fact they have a lifestyle at all. Probably they spend their evenings listening to "audiobooks" or playing "go." Don't they know that itoons can do that?

Apparently it is impossible to get it into some people's heads that a music player can and should do so much more than just play music, and that the good folks in Cupertino know how we like to do things better than we do ourselves. Although I have asked for people's honest opinions, some people just won't change their minds. If you are one of those sorry few who has sadly chosen a competitor's product, don't feel too bad - perfection is not the fare of the common curmudgeon. As to the rest of you, have no fear: we know what you think!