iTunes (and it's 64bit support)

I've avoided iTunes on Windows for many many years. Initially (as far as I can remember) there were 4 main reasons for this:

• I didn't like the fact that iTunes installed a whole load of silly memory resident services. I still don't, but with a quad core and 4gb of RAM I need to get over that right? Back then of course 512mb was considered an insane amount of memory, so 40-50mb for iTunes when Winamp 2.7 consumed a svelte 10mb or so seemed a bit excessive. Aah the good old days.
• I hated the way iTunes insisted on reorganising my music collection. Yes I know there's an option to turn it off, but no matter what I've done it's always messed with my directories and filenames. On multiple computers. On multiple occasions. In fact I suspect it's doing that to my music right now.
• Until recently, iTunes didn't have an option to 'minimize to tasktray'. This was a big deal for me! I know my music player is running – that's why there's sound coming out of my speakers. Having it sitting there in  my Taskbar instead of my Tasktray drove me crazy. It's the little things.
• I do not like green eggs and ham.

I've used  Winamp through good times and bad – lately, mostly bad. I've stuck with Winamp through it's dodgy portable device plugins required to sync my iPods, and endured them corrupting my device playlists on a semi regular basis, through their assimilation into AOL, through bloated updates (ironic, that one), through it's attempted evolution into a video player, and so on and so on.

But after getting my Mac and seeing iTunes as it was supposed to be, I've decided to give it a go on my Windows box as well. Winamp has never handled large playlists too well, and it's concept of a Media Library is just too awkward compared to iTunes, so it was time to investigate making the switch.

Which unfortunately isn't that easy if you're using Windows XP 64bit, because the 32bit installer recommends you use the 64bit version, which only supports Vista64 out of the box.

If you're having this problem too, then a range of MSI hacking options remain open to you. They'll work, but it's pretty tedious. I'm not sure how much longer I can put up with needing to edit MSIs every time I want to install something, but I'm putting off moving my main rig to Vista for as long as possible. Ironically enough, I currently have Vista installed on the bootcamp partition of my Mac, which is my best Vista experience to date. Go figure.

And so begins my iTunes trial, yet again. We'll see how long this lasts (and it wont be very long if I can't work out a way to add semi decent global hotkey support).

 Print | Posted on Saturday, December 06, 2008 7:26 PM |