# iTunes - why does it take so long to load?



## bagpipe (Sep 19, 2006)

From the time I double click the iTunes icon on my desktop, its gotta take at least 45 seconds before the iTunes program is available to play music. What the hell are they doing back there? I know that 45 seconds isn't that much in the grand scheme of things, but every other program takes a few seconds at most.

iTunes: thinking its all that!


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## bluzfish (Mar 12, 2011)

I hate iTunes. Winamp pro is my music program. Hell, Windows Media player is more useful than iTunes. Maybe I am biased...


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## Lincoln (Jun 2, 2008)

I think iTunes loads/samples every song in your directory. The more music you have, the longer it takes to load.


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## bw66 (Dec 17, 2009)

Lincoln said:


> I think iTunes loads/samples every song in your directory. The more music you have, the longer it takes to load.


I also suspect that it uploads most of your hard drive to Apple headquarters...

"When everyone is out to get you, paranoia is just good sense." -- Dr. Johnny Fever​


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## Guest (Nov 3, 2013)

~10 seconds on my exceptionally old and underpowered iMac.

It does load an SQLite DB of your entire library on startup which contains all the meta data for the content in the library. But I've got 12146 music tracks in my library, which seems like a fair bit of content, and it's not too bad.

I suspect you're on Windows. Apple gives little love to the Windows version of iTunes. It's a necessary evil, not a primary focus.


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## elliottmoose (Aug 20, 2012)

Lincoln said:


> I think iTunes loads/samples every song in your directory. The more music you have, the longer it takes to load.


This explains everything. Currently approaching... 400gb of music on my bloated PC. Makes me reconsider my life choices: probably could've bought a second car by now. But hey, I'm supporting a habit I love and musicians everywhere. At least that's what I tell my 'sponsor'...




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

bluzfish said:


> I hate iTunes. Winamp pro is my music program. Hell, Windows Media player is more useful than iTunes. Maybe I am biased...


this is the correct answer. shortened, it would read, itunes is teh suck, and only for hipsters and apple fanboys.


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## hardasmum (Apr 23, 2008)

cheezyridr said:


> bluzfish said:
> 
> 
> > I hate iTunes. Winamp pro is my music program. Hell, Windows Media player is more useful than iTunes. Maybe I am biased...
> ...


PCs are for bankers and old ladies.


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## Chito (Feb 17, 2006)

The main issue is, the format of the file that is downloaded from iTunes is AAC. AAC files can only be played using iTunes which you have to download if you are not using a Mac. In order to play AAC files in Windows Media Player or Winamp or any other digital music player, you will have to convert it to either wma or mp3. It's been mentioned that Apple doesn't really care if it works in a windows machine or not. So they don't support it as well as they should. 

Also are you aware that AAC files purchased from iTunes can only be authorized to play on a maximum of 5 computers which will include your ipads, phones etc. Although, computers can be authorized and deauthorized regularly, depending on your needs. We have at least 6 computers in this house so in essence I cannot play music from iTunes in one of the machines unless I do the authorize and deauthorize thing.

Everything with Apple is proprietary. One of the reasons why I never liked apple products. It's the same issue it had before when they went under in the 80's until they hired back the marketing genius, Steve Jobs. When he was alive, his marketing strategy makes it possible for people to ignore the fact that every thing you use on an apple product will only work on an apple machine. Now that he is gone, if you haven't noticed lately, Apple has not produced a new product (except for new versions of iphone and ipad) since his death. Since the introduction of the iPad three years ago before he passed away, none of the breakthrough products, a television or smartwatch the company is rumoured to be working on have materialized. 

Does this all matter in the grand scheme of things? Probably not, but imagine and I'm just saying this with no proof that it will ever happen, if apple suddenly goes bankrupt which was what happened when Jobs left the company before, what the heck are you going to do with all that proprietary products that only work with their machines?


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

I used to use Winamp exclusively for playback and only would use iTunes to manage my pods/phones, but I've been going with just iTunes for the last couple of years. 

As a music player, it's pretty crap. It's gotten a lot better than it used to be, but it's still not as seamless and elegant as winamp's simplicity, but that's mostly because iTunes if full of code you don't need to do things you don't want. 

My iTunes library is currently 27,640 tracks and to have to check that library every time does take quite a bit of time (2-3 minutes). I normally leave iTunes running all the time, so it's not an issue that pops up daily, but even still, it's mildly annoying that it has to do that when other players exist out there that don't require their architecture to do this (winamp, foobar, vlc).


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

hardasmum said:


> PCs are for bankers and old ladies.


hey don't forget gamers!


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## Guest (Nov 3, 2013)

Chito said:


> Also are you aware that AAC files purchased from iTunes can only be authorized to play on a maximum of 5 computers which will include your ipads, phones etc. Although, computers can be authorized and deauthorized regularly, depending on your needs. We have at least 6 computers in this house so in essence I cannot play music from iTunes in one of the machines unless I do the authorize and deauthorize thing.


This used to be true. It has not been true since iTunes switched to their iTunes Plus track format. This format is twice the VBR and has no DRM on it. You can play these tracks on an unlimited number of machines and devices. Reference: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1420 -- specifically:



> iTunes Plus music refers to songs and music videos available in 256 kbps AAC encoding (twice the current bit rate of 128 kbps), and without digital rights management (DRM). There are no burn limits and iTunes Plus music will play on all iPods, Mac or Windows computers, Apple TVs, and many other digital music players.





> Everything with Apple is proprietary.


AAC is an ISO standard, not an Apple technology. iTunes Plus tracks have no DRM. So the above statement really doesn't hold under scrutiny, does it?



> his marketing strategy makes it possible for people to ignore the fact that every thing you use on an apple product will only work on an apple machine.


Except for all the people running iTunes and Safari on their Windows-based machines -- right? Forgot about those, eh?



> Now that he is gone, if you haven't noticed lately, Apple has not produced a new product (except for new versions of iphone and ipad) since his death.


The MacPro: http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/
The redesigned iMac: http://www.apple.com/imac/

The latest iPad Air and retina iPad Mini are remarkable achievements of miniaturization. As are the retina MacBook Pros. There's little else out there in the mobile computing arena that can touch those products for quality, durability and power.



> if apple suddenly goes bankrupt which was what happened when Jobs left the company before, what the heck are you going to do with all that proprietary products that only work with their machines?


As of October, Apple's current cash reserves amount to 10% of ALL the cash reserves of US corporations. They've got plenty of burn time should they fail to turn a profit for a few quarters. Source: http://bgr.com/2013/10/02/apple-cash-reserves-147-billion-dollars/

Look, I'm far from a fan boy, but I do use and enjoy Apple computers and their other computing products. I get that they're not for everyone and I am well aware of their downsides, which are far from zero. But I try to be at least a little up on things before I go ripping on a company like this. You don't find people trashing Windows or Lenovo (both produce products I use in my day to day work life) with these sort of made up "facts" like this, but everyone seems to think it's aces to do it to Apple. Never quite figured out why...

For what it's worth: I think iTunes is a bit of a dog, but I get why it is what it is. It runs a lot better on OS X than it does on Windows, that's for certain.


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## traynor_garnet (Feb 22, 2006)

Itunes on my PC is basically unusable. It takes FOREVER and constantly wants to "sync" Half the time, files don't transfer properly and the new lay out has be completely lost. Why can't I just copy music to a folder on my ipod or ipad? Why do I need to use itunes to copy files? ARGH still syncing . . . .


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

iaresee said:


> You don't find people trashing Windows or Lenovo (both produce products I use in my day to day work life) with these sort of made up "facts" like this, but everyone seems to think it's aces to do it to Apple. Never quite figured out why...



people slag on widows all the time, and justifiably so. but i think the reason people slag on apple (or at least why i slag on them) is because they are triple the price of a pc even though the parts inside aren't any different. that, and i dont like brands that promote exclusivity and that smug attitude.


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## hardasmum (Apr 23, 2008)

cheezyridr said:


> iaresee said:
> 
> 
> > You don't find people trashing Windows or Lenovo (both produce products I use in my day to day work life) with these sort of made up "facts" like this, but everyone seems to think it's aces to do it to Apple. Never quite figured out why...
> ...


At my work any "office" related workflow is done on PCs (Scheduling, Billing etc.) whereas our "creative" departments are on Macs (Audio, Video, Graphics). We even have two separate I.T. departments, one for Macs and one for PCs.

I think this divide was created a decade ago. Macs were known to be more stable for running audio, photography and video editing software while Microsoft dominated the office world with Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

Today even though both platforms are capable of doing all these tasks there's still this historical segregation.


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## Chito (Feb 17, 2006)

> This used to be true. It has not been true since iTunes switched to their iTunes Plus track format. This format is twice the VBR and has no DRM on it. You can play these tracks on an unlimited number of machines and devices. Reference: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1420 -- specifically:



Well I'm not up to speed on things that have changed but I didn't make up this fact as you stated. Maybe its not true now but that was what it was. Also it doesn't change the fact that you still need itunes to play it. Why didn't they use the mp3 format which can be played in almost anything that plays music. Is there anyone else using this AAC format to deliver music? 




> Except for all the people running iTunes and Safari on their Windows-based machines -- right? Forgot about those, eh?



My point was you still need to use itunes to play itunes music or at least convert it.






> The MacPro: http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/
> The redesigned iMac: http://www.apple.com/imac/



Improvement on a new product does not necessarily count as a new product. I was referring to the idea of coming with something innovative like when they came out with the ipad. Which I already mentioned in my post:


"Now that he is gone, if you haven't noticed lately, Apple has not produced a new product (except for new versions of iphone and ipad) since his death. Since the introduction of the iPad three years ago before he passed away, none of the breakthrough products, a television or smartwatch the company is rumoured to be working on have materialized."






> The latest iPad Air and retina iPad Mini are remarkable achievements of miniaturization. As are the retina MacBook Pros. There's little else out there in the mobile computing arena that can touch those products for quality, durability and power.



Except for the MacBooks which I honestly don't know much about, your statement for quality, durability and power is not entirely true. 


"The Galaxy Note 10.1 ships with 16GB of onboard storage, but has a microSD slot for storage expandability up to 64GB, which bucks Apple's simplistic trend of non-expandable storage. Apple's claim of up to 10 hours of battery life on the iPad Air is a bold one; in our last battery test of the fourth-generation iPad it only lasted 5 hours, 36 minutes at full brightness. With brightness halved it lasted 11 hours. Samsung's Galaxy Note 10.1 trudged on for 7 hours, 31 minutes at full brightness. "




> if apple suddenly goes bankrupt which was what happened when Jobs left the company before, what the heck are you going to do with all that proprietary products that only work with their machines?


You seem to ignore the rest of my post, I said:


"Does this all matter in the grand scheme of things? Probably not, but imagine and I'm just saying this with no proof that it will ever happen, if apple suddenly goes bankrupt which was what happened when Jobs left the company before, what the heck are you going to do with all that proprietary products that only work with their machines?"


And finally please don't accuse me of making up facts. You only take certain things out of my post and then put it out of context. 


I'm done with this.


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