iTunes is bad software. I've avoided it for years but I'm finally stuck with it because of the iPhone. So now, I rant impotently.

This morning I'm informed iTunes wants to update. Maybe a patch for all the iPhone bugs? I don't know, it won't tell me what the update is for. But it insists on updating Quicktime too and spamming my desktop with Apple product icons and demanding a reboot.

Last night my sister asked me how to copy some new iTunes tracks she bought to her old iPod. Problem is she hasn't plugged the iPod into a computer in two years and doesn't have all the iPod tracks on her new computer. Any attempt to copy the new tracks over seems to involve a sync and removing all the old tracks that are not on her PC anymore. Neither of us could figure out a way to fix it in the few minutes we had; last I heard she was burning CDs and leaving the iPod at home.

The iTunes initial import of my music took forever. And was broken; it followed symlinks and m3u playlists and ended up with several copies of each of my songs. And while iTunes could identify and display the duplicates I can't find a button for "remove duplicate entries".

The whole process of managing what songs and movies are stored on my iPhone is terribly clumsy. What's wrong with just opening the stupid thing as a hard drive and copying files over?