It seems the whole world was shivering in their pants on Friday when Apple unveiled iTunes for Windows. Steve Jobs even said it was ”...probably the best Windows application ever written.”
Needless to say, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to try it out. My housemate Steve (not Jobs) raves about his Powerbook and iTunes and his iPod at every opportunity, so I figured all that fuss must be based on something. I downloaded iTunes and fired it up. The first thing I saw was Apple’s standard brushed metal UI with greyed out (but still functional!) buttons everywhere and the occasional splash of aqua blue here and there. Meh. The second thing I saw, when I attempted to add my music folder to the library, was a lovely hard crash halfway through the operation (I even took a screenshot for you). The crash happens every time I try to add the folder, but always on a different song each time, so I’m fairly certain it’s not a corrupt file or something. The only thing I can think of is that my MP3 library is on another machine and I’m accessing it over SMB, but that should really be transparent to iTunes.
To be fair, I was impressed with the program’s features and the convenience it brings to the process of buying music, but I’m afraid I’d have to say iTunes is nowhere even close to being the “best Windows application ever written.” Sorry Mr. Jobs.