Why is itunes such a pain in the bum?

srichards

srichards

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Suz
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Why? All my devices have the same apple id but my iphone won't show up new play lists fully. They're missing most of the tracks. Clearly there is some authorisation or sync failure going on which I do not understand as it works perfectly via the remote app on the appletv. That shows up the complete playlist. Immediately.

Any new playlist I create is limited to 300 odd songs showing up. The main playlist I created ages ago is complete. Why? It shows up correctly on the imac (where it was created) and on the apple tv but the iphone just truncates it to 300. Again no reason offered. No error messages. Nothing to suggest why it's being an arse. It is a smart playlist as they can be made on an imac as the ios playlists features are poor so I don't use them.

I have tried the wifi sync and it's only showing apps and tones to sync. Music isn't an option.

No error messages or anything to try and work out what error apple have introduced.

Itunes is the source of 95% of my unfettered rage with apple. There is literally no other part of the ecosystem that is so bad.

I have deleted all the music off the phone. It's still showing the new play list to be wrong and missing 90% of the content.

It's also correct on the ipad. 3477 songs listed not 314!!!!!

I do not understand why it's being so inconsistent. Normally playlists work fine. Why is it being persistently wrong on an iphone? Is there some buried setting somewhere that says 'make playlists inconsistent' It was only showing downloaded music before for some reason which is partly why I just deleted it but it still just shows the same 300 songs as a subset of the correct play list. I have changed the library settings to make sure all music is visible. Made sure the add song to library thing is checked and it's still just insisting on missing out 90% of a play list. Settings seem identical to the ipad which does work.

I don't know what is wrong with it or why it is wrong or how to make it work.

Any bright ideas?
 
Finally fixed it. For some reason which is clearly moronic an iphone cannot sync a smart play list. My ipad can but an iphone that is about double the cost is too useless to do the same.

I had to copy the smart play list wholesale to a new dumb playlist to make it do what I wanted.

Even dumber still is that some smart playlists work. Just not ones I have created recently.
 
iTunes has always been a pain now and then. Works fine for ages then it will take offence to one device. I binned an iPod shuffle last time as it just wouldn't update it. It continually disappeared offf the desktop so you couldn't copy music to it. Tried every trick possible and it just wouldn't work. Happened before a few times but I always got it to work eventually.
 
Suz,

Put you iPod in your ear and not up your ***. :)
 
Nothing like a good iTunes rant.

Just had to re-install Windows. Copied everything back from my backup and everything worked - even LR with all my custom print settings & templates, and Photoshop with actions.

iTunes though - had a "!" next to every song in the library. Is there a way to tell iTunes that the library is "here". No. You have to repoint every individual song. /facepalm. Re-add the music? Bye Bye playlists - hello duplicates. Sort by "!" so you can delete them? Nope.

srichards said:
Itunes is the source of 95% of my unfettered rage with apple. There is literally no other part of the ecosystem that is so bad.
Click to expand...
:agree:
 
There is a setting in the advanced preferences tab on the mac itunes to tell it where the itunes library is. There is also a delete itunes cache button which might make it go and look and see what is there and re-index it.
 
I've never got on with iTunes. It just seems to try and be awkward for the sake of being awkward. In fact, every time I boot my windows PC up, it tries to download a new version. It doesn't even realise it has already got the same version installed. I can't just add stuff when I want, syncing normally leads to the loss of something I don't want to lose. It's just rubbish.
 
itunes, a big part of the reason why the iphone 3G was and will be the only apple phone I've ever owned and why my mac mini runs Windows.
 
neil_g said:
never really found itunes a problem, even used it until recently to sync music onto my Android device..
Click to expand...
Same here I really don't get these issues listed; I used it on a Mac and equally as well on a PC. I've transferred my library many a time between systems and platforms. I used it with iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, Palm WebOS. All just works fine and easy to sync.

But I agree smart playlists don't always work well. I've normally put it down to not the whole library being available on the device like it is on the computer. And with Apple Music it also doesn't automatically download them to the phone unless you request so. It's fine for me with 36GB of data as I just download and stream on the go.
 
It's been a total pain periodically in the same way. I do wonder whether there are hardware faults with some macs and that's why some people have endless issues and others have none at all? I had the entire insides of this one replaced outside of warranty as the screen got streaks on it and the USB ports didn't work properly half the time. Superdrive also packed up on it but I didn't notice soon enough so it wasn't replaced along with most of the insides.
 
Harlequin565 said:
Nothing like a good iTunes rant.

Just had to re-install Windows. Copied everything back from my backup and everything worked - even LR with all my custom print settings & templates, and Photoshop with actions.

iTunes though - had a "!" next to every song in the library. Is there a way to tell iTunes that the library is "here". No. You have to repoint every individual song. /facepalm. Re-add the music? Bye Bye playlists - hello duplicates. Sort by "!" so you can delete them? Nope.


:agree:
Click to expand...

You can export your library's as xml, do a text find and replace on the filepaths to get them pointing to the right location and then import the xml as a new library. I had to something similar a few years ago.
 
I have a few friends who hate iTunes with a passion but I have never found it to be a problem at all and has always worked for me. If it ever did go wrong I would have no idea how to sort it out or put a backup in place to sort it out. I have thousands of albums on there as well....

Chris
 
Ah the eternal question. Apple can do many beautiful and amazing things. They keep iTunes as a reminder that nobody is perfect. Like the mosques where they have deliberate imperfections. Or the Laughing Gnome.
 
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