As someone who generally hates Apple, I actually enjoyed iTunes on Windows in the ~2007-2012 era when I had to use it to manage my iPod Touch (and second one a friend gave me, since I ran out of space on the first, spreading the MLPMusicArchive across both). Performed fine on my somewhat-potato laptops, had a nice interface and search function, got the job done syncing the iPods. I never got the big deal about iTunes in particular.
Huh, that's exactly when I had to interface with iTunes and remember disliking it. It was horribly non native to the point that both it and Safari (which had a windows port in those days) ported the Apple font rendering which stuck out like a sore thumb.
Performance was also bad compared to Windows Media Player, never mind Foobar2000 etc.
And for syncing, the non apple devices just let you copy the files onto them as USB Mass Storage devices, only the iPod needed special software.
> And for syncing, the non apple devices just let you copy the files onto them as USB Mass Storage devices, only the iPod needed special software.
Loved me some Creative Zen MICRO. I'm sure there were better competitors but it's what I had. There was a tiny 1" mechanical HDD in it with a compact flash interface. The drive is now part of my office desk flare. A real conversation starter.
As someone who generally loves apple iTunes on any platform has always been a usability nightmare. In previous generations and mostly on windows it's attempt to both 'be my winamp, vlc and ebook manager AS WELL AS manage my phone more generally' was just a usability clusterfuck of epic proportions.
