running iTunes in the background while trying to play Quake, you can just forget it.
iTunes is not great on windows, I hear this a lot. Despite that, it might be nice to do this - you can’t due to the software being to resource heavy, not working well with windows or whatever the reason. I have the same complaints of many apps, I can’t drag and drop from Word etc etc. If you complain about the job it’s meant to do - fair enough. If you complain because you tried something extra, well - sure it would be nice, but every app can’t run alongside every other app. It’s not a valid reason to say the app doesnt work.
Incidentally, I just tried iTunes with SimCity4 & had no problem on this G4 Powerbook (1.67Mhz + 1GB ram)

One of biggest flaw in iTunes is not being able to copy music from your iPod back to your machine.
I Agree. & to add to that, the big issue with the iPod is that you can’t copy music via drag & drop as a mounted drive. I think you should be able to use the iPod without iTunes at all. Drag MP3’s from your HD on there & play them while you travel. Plus, delete or drag them back off the iPod. This is the real issue.

Apple upgraded me too for free after my 7th iPod died.
I have 3 iPods in the house. 3nd Gen, Blue Mini & Video iPod. No probs with any of them. Your 7th replacement sounds extreme to me. I never heard of anyone who went though 7 anythings, never mind iPods. I know roughly 10 people who own Macs, iPods or both & some of them have a prob every so often. A failed HD, a bad pixel on screen - problems happen. I don’t think it’s Apple specific as you are obviously insinuating. Either you’re lying, or you’re stupid. Which is it? Please don’t exaggerate to prove your point, I am happy to listen objectively if you will let me?

As so your points: I didnt’ say AAC is DRM, I said it’s proprietary. Not the same thing at all. DRM is something bad that happens to you because of where you bought it, proprietary is something that happens cause of silly encoding policies. What I’m trying to distinguish is the difference between a file designed to play on all software easily (like ogg and effectively mp3) instead of just on one kind of software like AAC (which as far as I can tell only plays normally on iTunes). When iTunes tries to trick me into using aac instead of mp3 as default they are locking me into iTunes because nothing else will play those files now. If I bought tracks from teh music store it’s even worse because they won’t even play on another computer.

Sultan’s critiques were a bit specific to his/her admittedly hyper-specific needs, I’ll give you that. But that doesn’t mean that there are no problems with the iTunes software. It just kind of sucks for no reason so often, like not letting me use the “autofill” feature I could access with my shuffle when I was using a 2gb ipod nano. What’s the reason, why dont’ they see that I’d want to use a small nano in the same way as a small shuffle?

> The iPod hardware itself is hardly
> DefectiveByDesign

This is an excellent point, because I didnt’ say the hardware was defective by design. In fact that’s the exact opposite of what I meant. It’s the software that has been crippled, not the hardware, as evidenced by the ability to run Linux and do what you want with it.

In your comment you say that ipod+iTunes+utilities is just as good as a normal player. But what, really, are those utilities. In my experience they are programs who’s only purpose is to give you access to your device in ways that Apple explicitly chose not to give you (i.e. copy all files to hard drive, have normal finder access, use shuffle on ANY COMPUTER OTHER THAN THE ONE THAT FILLED IT). Would it take apple a long time to give you those features? Do you think they didnt’ try to make sure they could do it? Could they not buy those FREE applications and integrate them? Of course they could implement those features if they wanted to at all, but theyre too worried about the recording industry getting mad to do anything risky at all, even if that means i’m constantly frustrated because my device wont’ p lay on my friend’s computer and I have to plug his speakers directly into it. Things I pay hundreds of dollars for should just work, no utilities so I can use my hard drive as a hard drive.

And I mean, it’s iTunes business if they want to sell out their hardware customers to their content providers (RIAA), but I’ll be damned if I’m goign to buy my electronics from the company that’s more concerned with protecting content than with giving me a quality product. At the end of the day I guess I just dont’ think hardware/software should come from the media companies that want to stop me from doign what i want, and that’s what apple has become, a media company. I’ll take it from a neutral party instead.

(p.s. I also direct my ire at the music companies for trying to screw me over, but that goe in the form of just not buying anything from them till they give me something I want. I prefer Creative Commons music anyway)