Ads have invaded iTunes 8 and I hate it. Suddenly, on the right side of iTunes, the Genius Sidebar now displays at least 23 one-click buy links for me to spend my hard-earned cash through. What Apple calls a friendly recommendation is more like impulsive music buying.
Back in iTunes 4.x, the software was a music jukebox. It correlated and organized all of your tunes in a nice, light package. Overtime though, Apple added the iTunes Store, the TV shows, followed by movies, audiobooks, and thanks to the iPhone, ringtones. My light music organizer is now a bloated, resource whore.
But, just like any true Apple fanboy, I downloaded the latest iTunes right out of the gate only to discover that this latest flavor is the slowest of them all. It took over an hour to generate all the Genius data and that’s when the horror sunk in.
To the right of the music, sits a recovering compulsive buyer’s nightmare: a bunch of $.99 one-click buttons. Stevie claims that these are here to help us, but we all know they are there to help him; to help pad the deep coffers that is the iTunes Store. He claims they are there to recommend new music and I am stating that they are there to help pay 1 Infinity Loop’s energy bill.
Thankfully, the sidebar can be turned off. I can only imagine the amount of impromptu purchases that these ads are going to create. Unknowing ‘rents are going to leave their account signed in, only to have their kids purchase more Hanson – or whatever crap kids listen to.
Prediction for iTunes 9: subscriptions service paid for in pancreas donations.
One button. Click one button and that sidebar is closed. Stop polluting my feed reader with whining please.
Stop polluting the site with you whining comments then.
If telling someone that they’re whining qualifies as whining, where does it end? It’s just one small step from here to a flag pole through the very top nostril of a mountain of skulls.
And I agree with Justin. One button turns it off.
This only can mean one thing…
WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!
Or you could, you know, complain more about something free on the internet.
Ha ha. Nice Justin. And I do agree. Click the button to close and you will never see it again. This is similar to the last iTunes release (v. 7) which included the “mini store”. People hated it. You close it to never hear from it again. Have we gotten that lazy?
Seriously. If you don’t like the service, don’t use it. It took me a second to realize that it sucks, close the sidebar and never use it again.
Why is everyone hating on CG today?
Did you read the article? It’s dumb.
I like the genius bar. helps me find new artists that I might not have known about.
Yeah I was initially concerned that this was what the whole genius thing was.
Just to add more things on the side to try to get you to buy more.
was my comment too long?
it’s clear that the article is not about the inconvenience of closing the sidebar. it’s about how a piece of software that was once a media player is now an ad platform. that’s the complaint. the fact that you don’t click the ads doesn’t change that the function of the software has been altered, become bloated, is a resource whore, etc.
personally, i hate itunes, and i only use it to update my iphone (which i love). the fact that it sucks worse than before is no biggie to me, but i absolutely understand someone who has used it for its original purpose being frustrated by the fact that it’s slower and more resource intensive, regardless of whether or not they use the functionality that causes the new problems.
Props for identifying the correct argument. It doesn’t matter if you can turn it off… its the reasoning behind turning it on. If ads are part of a software feature, it becomes bloatware.
I still wonder why iTunes forces their mobile service to run in the background of my computer, eating ever more resources. I do not own an iPhone, nor do I ever plan to. Their should be a nice convenient way to disable that service without crippling the program.
I work at an online firm and I’ll tell you that this is a very sneaky way to run up someones cc bill. The writer is right in that kids of unsuspecting parents will run up quite a tab in no time without the parents knowing. One click up-sells are dirty and make companies a lot of money. I really don’t think this is the way apple wants to treat it’s customers. I buy a lot of music, none digital mind you, but I’d never use this. I think if they really want to recommend music to their customers then they should offer streaming for free like myspace or any of the other networking sites out there that are trying to you turn people on to new music. Buying before hearing is really stupid these days when everything is at your finger tips when on the web.
This I think shows that apple is falling behind and turning into a revenue generating business and forgetting that they are known mostly for making good user friendly products. I suspect this feature will be gone within a month or two. Visa and MC are not going to be fans of the amount of charge backs this service will generate. They will be well above the 1% threshold I would suspect. If that happens this will be a pretty huge and costly learning curve for Apple.
On a side note, I agree you can easily turn the feature off. But then again we are obviously people who know how to use a computer so what we think does not necessarily translate to the masses. And I think that is a point many of the other posters on this subject seem to forget.
I think SOMEONE forgot his Red Bull in the freezer . . .
But, seriously, that pancreas crack was in poor taste.
(However, as a diabetic, I may be biased.)
It should be noted that Winamp is free, offers the same media library features AND has had a ‘Genius’ feature for over a year.
And it doesn’t have ads. Cause it’s free.
Well, duh … Apple is no different than any other company that tries to take over your computer experience. Apple is second only to Realplayer in terms of crap they try to pull over on you. Just look at Quicktime and how they used to force you to install iTunes. They can go choke on it.
iTunes has gone from being an awesome music library to being a bloated, heavy thing which takes well over a minute to start up and be usable (at least on my old computer). There should really be a lite version like there is for winamp. On which is without the store, videos and stuff. One simple version which lets me manage my music and put it on my iPod. Let the people who actually need it, download the full version.
Shocking!
You mean Apple had an ulterior motive when giving away useful software? They made it, its free, they can bring it anyway they want.
This reinforces the fact that Apple does do a disservice with the cheap/free iLife package (as well as iTunes). Free apps with this level of polish decimate the rest of the industry, take it from me, a indie developer thats struggling to compete with iPhoto.
Does anyone think this is annoying enough that someone will develop a rival music player app? Are you annoyed enough to pay for a rival music player app? If not then you shouldn’t be complaining, as a non paying customer you have little to stand on.
Itunes has always been thinly veiled adware, but now at least Apple is being completely open about it.
A funny thing happened to me today. I walked into a Best but today and to my total astonishment they actually had products on the shelf!!!! The thing is I didn’t have to walk into the store unless I wanted to. I could look at products & not buy anything unless I wanted to & this pissed me off to no end. The iTunes store is there (like the Best Buy) if you want to buy something. This is not Adware as someone pointed out. You don’t even have to turn the Genius function on & can turn it off anytime you like. Genius>Turn Off Genius. Simple.
Your bitching, quit it.
Funny that no one complains about Google adware. Is this any different whatsoever? Oh yeh, Google doesn’t let you turn off the sidebar.
And the annoying ads on my Window’s live messenger…
Use Songbird (www.getsongbird.com)and there are tons of plugins to give you music recommendations… pulling data from Last.fm which IMO is a much better source.. the recommendations I got from iTunes are complete crap.
On a sidenote, as someone who has a large enough music collection that I in no way could remember what is in it, I was really hoping for recommendations based on my own library as well … at least just check to see if I already have the song before asking me to buy it.
What’s the matter with you people, Apple is in the business of making a profit for its shareholders. They’re not a frigging charity, get over it. Of course, they will try to make money with this. You don’t have to click on those songs, nobody is forcing you. It’s like those idiots who complain about the quality of TV programming…. That’s why you have an off button on your remote. If you don’t like it turn the damn thing off……….. Enjoy Genius, it’s a great tool.
HOW…..DO…..I…..SHUT……IT……OFF?
(menu) Store>Turn Off Genius
The new iTunes visualizer from Magnetosphere is tres cool.
The Genius Sidebar is just a ‘customers who bought this music also purchased…’ – done nicely though :)
does anyone know if you can still get the itunes sidebar under your library to show other albums from the artist and what other listeners bought or was that just old itunes?
20 minutes and still waiting for itunes to finish messing about with my library!
I don’t even need album artwork I only have a NANO!
This genius thing sounds like a pile of crap to me so will be the judge when i can actually get to my music!