Is iTunes Apple's Achilles Heel?

Food for thought, fanboys.

Sep 26 2010, 5:20pm CDT | by Robert Evans

iTunes is the most successful piece of media consumption software in the world. It forms the core of Apple's ecosystem. Your iPhone, iPod, MacBook and iPad all use iTunes to sync with your media library and much more. iTunes works for burning and ripping CDs, it forms the gateway to a huge media store, acts as a social network and basically coordinates the entertainment lives of its customers.

As John Naughton points out, this is not a good thing. iTunes was originally built to allow people to rip all of their music to one source. Nearly a decade of additions and growth has turned iTunes into a bloated, cobbled-together monstrosity that is increasingly difficult to add onto.

This makes Apple less nimble, less able to alter their strategies to align with the wildly shifting winds of the tech and entertainment industries. Apple thrives because they provide the best user experience, and ease-of-use is a big part of that. The iTunes interface is poorly designed and awkward, filled with rows of folders and tabs and options. It does many things, but all of those things could be done so much better if Apple would roll out a new, modern media hub(s).

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Robert Evans
The excitement about new smartphones, tablets and anything mobile drive Robert to unearth the latest rumors and developments in this fast moving space. He adopted 4G as soon as it become available and knows where the mobile market is going.
Robert can be contacted directly at robert@i4u.com.