My rant of the day - Multi-user and iTunes

This is an on going rant I have...When the iTunes and the iPod environment were created it is clear that someone thought through the potential of a household to own multiple iPods and PCs by allowing up to 5 PCs access to purchased content. What boggles the mind is that given MacOS' multi user capability Apple did not think through a multi user scenario where a family with multiple iPods would want to share a single music library on one PC, manage their own playlists, and have their personalized iPod/iPhone synchronization options.

iTunes recognizes a single location for both users which I created under the Public/Public Music on Vista, however each user has his own library catalog which is not synchronized when one or the other user adds content. I have been manually re adding the iTunes folder in an attempt to synchronize libraries. This worked OK until version 7.6, although I did have spurious duplicates which I manually deleted. Now the add folder only adds part of the new content and duplicates some of the files. There is no pattern to it adding duplicates and It seems totally broken. At this point, I may delete the library catalog and try rebuilding it, but this is not a solution every time you add content.

For a company that prides itself in superior software design, this leaves a lot to be desired. iTunes has come a long way, unfortunately it has a long way to go. By the way, Microsoft's Windows Media Player does work in a Multi-User environment....

 

Comments

[Chris Carlin]

It sounds to me like a stupid requirement handed down by the content providers.

Multiple iPods sharing a library? Heaven forbid!

[Bill Payne]

I'm sorry but you actually can use multiple ipods with one music library, and the main reason that apple didn't include the feature for a multi user music program is because iTunes is for your own personal music, and for the most part, 17 year old kids don't want there parents music. Yes, it would have been great to have the feature but there are very easy way's around this if you would use google for maybe 2 minutes tops.

[Stephen Skarlatos]

I disagree a whole family could have the entire library on one machine. Each family member would have his own login and synchronize the music they were interested in. Each user would only see his playlists which would keep everything well segregated. From a parents perspective they should know what their children are listening to...

None of the solutions found on the Internet fix the library problem where each user has to add to the music to his library manually even though it is already on the system. And when you add you get duplicates which just shows how poor the internal architecture of iTunes really is. Just look at Adobe Photoshop Elements, it monitors folders and pictures are automatically added to the catalog without you having to explicitly perform any action and no duplicates.