Preston Gralla's picture
Preston Gralla

Seeing Through Windows

Is iTunes worse than AOL?

For years, people have complained that AOL software could be the worst mass-market software ever created. But increasingly, people are saying that iTunes could now take the crown. Check out my blog for details.

When it comes to bloat, bugginess, and all-around badness, AOL software is just about as bad as it gets. A massively overweight piece of software, it also features a terrible interface, constant crashes, and little worth using.

PC World, though, says that iTunes is the contemporary equivalent of AOL. In Annoying Software: Is Apple iTunes the New AOL?, Tom Spring complains about bloat, stealth updates, system hogging, and more.

If that's not bad enough, Rick Broida chimes in with 11 Things We Hate About iTunes. DRM, inefficient updates, and rotten playlist exporting are just three.

For me, though, the number one problem is that iTunes uses malware-like techniques to trick people into downloading Safari. As I've written in my blog, Mozilla Corp. CEO John Lilly says the way Apple uses iTunes to trick people into downloading Safari "borders on malware distribution practices."

Much of Apple's designs are elegant and functional. But when it comes to iTunes, they blew it big-time.

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