iTunes 11.2 arrived on Thursday along with Apple's release of a new version of Mavericks (10.9.3). The new version of iTunes has some changes that will be welcome for podcast listeners, along with other enhancements and improvements designed to improve performance and reliability. The initial release also created a bizarre problem involving iCloud's Find My Mac feature and the local /Users folder. On balance iTunes 11.2.1 is an adequate improvements, but iTunes itself is a mess.

Podcasting support in iTunes needed a bit of a revamp, and it's finally gotten it in iTunes 11.2. The "Unplayed" tab has been revamped, to make it easier to track down new podcasts you haven't yet heard. A new Feed tab has been added to stream available episodes of the podcasts you've subscribed, or to download them to play them later.

You can save favorite episodes on your computer now, and iTunes also now sports the ability to automatically delete episodes after playback to help clean up your iTunes library and save some space.

iTunes 11.2 also gets a security update that patches a hole which could, under certain circumstances, enable someone to get your iTunes credentials. Apple has posted some info (opens in new tab) about the patch on its web site. The patch brings iTunes 7.2 in line with security changes already made in iOS 7.1.1 and Apple TV's 6.1.1 update.

If you've had trouble with Genius updates, rest assured that this update to iTunes fixes those issues. Overall performance and reliability has been improved, according to Apple. Which I guess explains why iTunes has only crashed on me once today. At least searching for content in iTunes and the App Store is a bit faster for me.

Most disturbingly, iTunes 11.2 arrived with a surprise for those of us who use the "Find My Mac" feature in iCloud. With that feature on, all of a sudden our Users folder disappeared.

Turns out this was a feature, not a bug. Somewhere along the way, Apple discovered that the /Users and /Users/Shared folders had "world-writeable" file permissions — a file security problem. The day after we discovered our Users folder went away, Apple posted iTunes 11.2.1, which corrects the problem the right way by fixing the actual file permissions issue instead of hiding the Users folder.

Pretty stupid feature if you ask me. Apple backpedaled so fast on this one it made my head spin. It smacks of sloppy QA.

Look, I'm an unabashed critic of iTunes. Poor performance with large libraries, issues with iTunes Match substituting the wrong tracks and album art, feature creep, user interface complexity — the list goes on and on.

I think iTunes is profoundly broken and has just gotten worse over the years. A bloated patchwork, iTunes tries to do too many things and does too many of them poorly. It's become Apple's catch-all for media, applications, tethered syncing of iOS devices and iPods and more. And don't even get me started on iTunes Match. I've made my case separately for why I think Apple should follow its approach with iOS and try to divide iTunes' capabilities into different applications.

iTunes 11.2.1 makes podcast management suck a bit less and fixes problems with Genius updating. Those are good things. But at this point it's just fixing what's broken and putting a bit of lipstick on a pig.

iTunes is due for a major overhaul.

Are you happy with iTunes 11.2.1? Or do you agree that this just smacks of poor form by Apple? Let me know in the comments.

In the interim, I'll be in my corner glaring at iTunes and saying spiteful things, and hoping that Apple takes a sledgehammer to this monstrosity.

60 Comments

I can honestly say that I enjoy iTunes more than any other digital content store that I have ever used but with that said, simplification as well as a web based application would certainly create a smile on my face.
Many users find iTunes to be perfectly adequate and even optimal for what they do. Many of us don't. I unfortunately fall into the latter category,. It's an app that I use every day, which makes it a constant source of irritation.
I totally agree with your points made. I certainly am not saying it is perfect and I do feel an overhaul is needed however I feel Apple and its iTunes has the most potential given its roots.
"Many of us don't." You mean many hardcore geeks / tech bloggers don't.
I think you are too kind to this abysmal offering from Apple. I am thinking of seriously stripping it out of OSX and using a simpler more reliable player. Apple seem to be going down the road of "bells and whistles rule-okay". When will they return to the happy days when they actually listened to what users wanted and didn't keep telling them what they ought to want and then fail to match even that arrogant claim with software that is not fit for purpose.
To put it crudely and from a users perspective , this is a shitty app with more hype than usability. The sooner it is scrapped the better.
Is this iTunes 11.2.1 only available for Mac? Because I got 11.2.0 on my windows PC Sent from the iMore App
iTunes 11.2.1 corrects a problem specific to OS X file permissions, so there's no Windows version.
Thank you very much for answering! I really appreciate that Sent from the iMore App
I like iTunes when it works... which was more often the last 2 or so years than the past year. In that time, iTunes Match has become 3000x slower, and wifi syncing of my iOS devices no longer works. I used to preach that Apple stuff "just works" but this is one area I can't say with a straight face. Apple... fix it. Or just stop breaking it at least....
I like iTunes and iTunes Match but oh the iTunes Store is achingly slow. Amazon makes buying media so much easier and cheaper (in the UK).
and Amazon is DRM free, so when you decide to play your music on something else, YOU CAN
I'm hoping that "IF" the Beats acquisition that is rumoured happens in fact, that iTunes will be totally redesigned to work with music and other audio only while more specifically, all of the other different kinds of media will be split up and given there own delivery/play applications. iTunes as it stands now is a bloated unwieldily beast that has got to be replaced with a better system and user experience moving forward. It is long past the point of no return!
see my comments below, but specifically regarding your comment about separating the apps out. It's probably because iTunes has to support windows that we don't see this happen. And also I think Apple is doing what they've always done...iterate. Seems like separating out applications was strictly and iOS thing and (perhaps) a Forstall thing that we might never go back to. Now that iOS and OS X teams are more integrated and controlled by one governing body, to me, it seems like they just don't know what to do with iOS and now they're just trying to make it more like OS X. This might be just one sign that they really did need Forstall and his vision more then they needed their teams to get along with each other. But that might be too cynical to say. And off topic.
Other than my old issues (no multi-library and multi-volume support, no true server appliance for home sharing), I am still fine with iTunes. My library is humongous (north of 9 TB) and there are no slowdowns, search, playlist management etc. everything just fine. Sure there are minor issues, but none of them disastrous and certainly a lot worse in most alternatives. To name a few anyhow: - Metadata management has not really improved for a decade. I know I might be in a minority here, but I would love to e.g. have staff data in there and create playlists like "all titles with Reeves Gabrels on lead guitar". I would also like to be able to add actor, director etc. data for own movies and be able to search for such data.
- In the same vein, some data is there, but not really usable. E.g. we are a multi-language household and we have a lot of international friends. The simple question "which of the hundreds of movies and tv shows I have here do have an audio track or subtitle in language X" can't be solved without starting each video and checking the available options. I can find this information faster on physical media.
- Since the store interface went Web-based we continue to have this ellipsis hell (cut off titles etc.) and flyover tooltips do not work consistently either. For some titles it is virtually impossible to read them in full, no matter what you do.
- No mean to have equalizer settings by media type (e.g. I want different settings for movies, music and audio books).
- Handling of compilations and classical records has not improved ever.
- Still no decent support for multi-monitor setups (e.g. always play fullscreen video on monitor two).
- Watched/Played status sync via iCloud works randomly.
- iOS WiFi syncing is quite unreliable. And I could go on for some time. Will splitting iTunes into a dozen apps solve any of these issues? If yes, then I am all for it. I just don't believe in it.
I think separating out is a whole new can of worms for Apple and the OS X team they just don't want to deal with. Supporting multiple platforms. You're talking basically splitting iTunes into 6 apps (iTunes, App Store, Music, Music Store, Videos and Podcasts). That means for legacy windows users, they'd have to create windows version of all those apps. Still too many Windows Users out there for this to be a viable solution. However, I'd love it since i'm all in with Apple stuff :P
I find iOS wifi sync to be completely broken. It randomly finds my ipad and iPhone, then forgets them, then once in a blue moon finds them, then promptly then loses them again. It's utterly hopeless.
FWIW: never had much of a problem with iTunes, considering all that it does. But, sure, I'd like to see the improvements you mentioned. Although I don't have as much frustration as you do, I only went all-in with Apple about 2 years ago, so I'm comparatively still overjoyed with my Mac, iPhone, and iPad etc. It's all relative, I guess....
At this point, my only issue with iTunes is it's incredible lack of stability. I would love if they would split device syncing out and build it into OS X because that it the worst part of iTunes and it's bringing down the music player/store portion of the application. And there's no reason for this. Also it would be nice if Apple didn't truncate the title of everything into oblivion.
My biggest gripes are with syncing...specifically podcast syncing. They've seemed to completely fix the problem when the syncing is going from one iOS device to another, but when it comes to syncing back to the mac or with the Apple TV, it's absolutely worthless. It should "just work" but it sadly doesn't. I listen to podcasts on every device I own. Sometimes it's from my iPhone, or iPad, sometimes it's from the Mac or even the Apple TV. But it never syncs over iCloud...my Mac and ATV that is. Alhtough, with recent ATV updates it does seem like the podcasts that actually show up on the ATV it syncs. For me I actually have to subscribe to podcasts on the iTunes store in the ATV, then it will sync them, which is crazy talk because I've signed in with my Apple ID...so shouldn't it just know what my subscribed list is? On my Mac it's a different and even more frustrating situation. When I listen to a podcast on my Mac, it doesn't sync that data back to my iOS devices, in vis versa as well. All my devices share the same Apple ID. Shouldn't that be the gateway to recognizing your synced items? One would think that but it's never worked for me. My guess as to what's holding up iTunes from evolving. Support for multiple platforms...meaning Windows. I think that's one part of it. Also that iOS and OS X are also two platforms and might have issues talking to each other. However one would think that if all your sync data is in iCloud, shouldn't that be enough to get the information your need to properly keep track of read counts and such? I'm sure there is some technical issue there that I'm unaware of but it doesn't make it any less frustrating. especially since iCloud has been around so long and iTunes even longer.
I agree with the article. iTunes in it's current incarnation lacks intuitiveness, tries to be jack of all media functionality and master of none. And, synchronization with iOS devices in particular is a horrific nightmare. I want to permanently get rod of some apps and they frequently return to haunt me. iTunes is way overdue for a major overhaul.... Including the name itself, which is so irrelevant to the majority of it's functionality. How about iMedia, or something else.....
I'm a fan of iTunes, but I agree it's time to streamline the software, or at least break it down into separate apps. I also have a relatively small library of music. The one thing I will say is that the OS X version of iTunes is way better than the Windows variant, not that this should be a shock to anyone.
I have more than 60,000 lossless tracks in my iTunes library on a 2008 iMac with 4GB of RAM. It’s beachball city!
why is there still an itunes? It is a clunky piece of shit on Windows and Mac and could be replaced by a crappy web app in no time
Agreed on the Webapp side. It would solve some of the issues related to a single app turned into several. But i suppose there are security issues with that. Not to mention Apple has never been a web-heavy company with regards to software. They rely on native apps that connect to the internet but not too much solely reliant on the web. It's un Apple but would make a lot of sense for cross-platform compatibility. Although i'd never want to use it on an iOS device.
a web app to play my local content? I don't need that. plus google has an even slower web music manager for google play that is bad. i just want it to work. I need to switch to media monkey full time.
I don't think i've seen an update to itunes that i actually use in years. They update things i couldn't care less about. Apple's like a movie studio that keeps giving me Host & Oblivion when i've told them I want The Dark Knight. Can you batch import playlists yet?
Agree. Has Apple (or any software company) ever given us apps that improve legacy feature while adding new AND useful ones? They usually let it get so bad and hope that people prefer the new features and then drop the legacy ones. Why is that? Why can't they just fix what broken and forget about the new features? the Apps are all free now...I can see spending most of my time in development of new features if I was going to charge money for a whole new version. But in today's App world, most are free or so cheap that it really doesn't matter. People are gong to update now regardless. So why not fix the broken things first?
They waste time making views nobody uses. There was the gimmick where the album cover color is the same as the background. Woooo! Yeah that's what i really needed. And i bring up playlists because every time some other thing in itunes messes up and i have to reinstall it i have to add back 50 playlists. I hate to make new playlists because i know what a pain it is to add them when itunes inevitably messes up. And how fricken hard is it. I can add one playlist but you can make it so i can add every playlist in a folder. I honestly get the distinct impression that Apple HQ is entirely full of people that have never used itunes. Here's another one. I plug in my iphone. I go to the movies tab And i decide i'm gonna turn on "sync movies" from the movies tab. Why as soon as i try to click it itunes tells me "Are you sure you want to remove all music, ringtones, books, movies...?" Well NO I don't want to remove all my music. Why would i want to do that? If i wanted to remove "music" i wouldn't be on the "movies" tab. Why can i just tell it to sync the specific folder? Oh i can. I just have to delete 40 GBS of music for no reason first. What so called genius thought that made sense? That me wanting to sync two movie clips equates to me wanting to delete all my music. But thank god you spent all that time on cover flow. It's not just itunes. They are lax in not fixing other things too. Hell i'm dealing with an issue on my iphone now. The iphone refuses to read the correct embedded mp3 album art. So now i got John Coltrane songs showing Van Halen album covers. I got KRS One songs with Talib Kweli covers. But the file is fine. You can check it in itunes, in the actual file directory and see that it has the correct art. the iphone just won't doesn't display it right. But here's the rub, i've come to find out this has been an issue backas far as ios 5. It's been on several versions of the phone. Converting to ios 7 doesn't fix it. In the apple forum there are 30 page threads on the issue going back to like 2009. No fix at all. Just tons of people pissed. And i've deleted all the music on my iphone several times. Eventually the problem comes back and the artwork is scrambled. "Bug fixes?" And from what i've seen it's still happening to 5s devices running ios 7. What's hilarious too. is if i use media monkey to copy music, the exact same songs, ios reads the file perfectly, it's only music copied by itunes that gets scrambled artwork. go figure. Now i only occasionally update. I updated to 11, then went back to 10 cause it was better. I eventually got up to date again in hopes of dealing with this album art issue but it didn't fix anything being on the most up to date itunes version. Just means you have the latest bloat.
>>>Why as soon as i try to click it itunes tells me "Are you sure you want to remove all music, ringtones, books, movies...?" Ha! This drives me crazy too!!!
Yep. It's so frustrating.
My lord, I thought I was the only one that wanted to punch my fist through a glass window when reading that "Are you sure you want to remove etc." message. What a PITA. I won't even get started on iTunes' phantom syncing of local music onto my iDevices.
Not at all! You are not alone. It's just so illogical. And what kills me it's it's been like that for many many many versions of itunes. It's like walking around with no underwear and your fly down for years but acting like there's no problem at all. All hanging out. And i just don't get how copying music from a nonApple program works fine but an offical Apple program screws up my music artwork. wth. Aside from the need to make it run quicker they need to fix some basic stupidities.
I hate iTunes because with all these updates things that used to work no longer work. It has become slower and no wifi syncing, song sometimes don't sync via cable. It needs a total overhaul
totally agree.
I have no particular problem with iTunes, yes it suffers a little from being all things to all people but given that it's Apple's joint platform on the PC too I can understand that. I think this article's a mess, not just because I don't agree with the author's point but because it's made so poorly, presented as a "review" of the latest point update but actually just a not-at-all veiled rant overflowing from whenever they were last asked (or decided to tell us) what they thought about iTunes. There's nothing new here, and no attempt to be fair handed, just a bore back up on his soapbox again. Enough already. Sent from the iMore App
As I mostly use iTunes on a Windows 8 machine, I've long hated every byte that makes up this bloated, crashy, cumbersome programme. Much to my surprise though, this latest update has sped iTunes performance up considerably. The difference is not subtle, it's dramatic. That said, it's still the slowest thing I use on Windows by far, but for iTunes to actually get better (it's usually the opposite) was a pleasant surprise.
I have no problem with iTunes as it is. I sync my iPhone and iPad with it regularly, it keeps a backup at the ready for either device should I need it, as a player it works just fine, and it works with my 2 AppleTV devices as well. Having to deal with launching and syncing 5 or 6 separate applications to do the same thing that happens when all I have to do is plug my iPhone into my computer would be a horrible pain in my opinion. The convenience of having only one application handle all the media and apps related to my i-devices was a great selling point and was touted by all the Mac pundits when iTunes came out. It is fascinating to me that all those pundits now consider that feature to be a downside. It is definitely not one for me.
I have always been bit puzzled about the complaints. It is insanely more problematic to write this reply using my ipad. The page just jump all over the place. When this is said, my biggest complaint is itunes ability to handle my library of music, and it ability to find and handle duplicates. Sorry for the spelling errors. It was impossible to fix using this web page.
Someone seems to have misheadlined this. It promises a review of 11.2.1 but it's a post about how Peter dislikes iTunes.
Last Wednesday, I spent 30 minutes trying to download podcasts onto my iPod Nano using iTunes 11.1 -- and failed. Nor did I understand how the syncing works. The application either tries to fit all my music in the device (not enough space for that, obviously), or, alternatively, it will delete every song on the iPod. What a freaking joke. This must be the most confusing UI I have ever come across. If someone could explain how I can transfer podcasts onto an iPod, I would be very thankful!
Yep it makes little sense. The whole forcing you to delete is stupid. I rant about it on my diatribe above lol. But what i do on my nano just drag and drop all my music on my nano (iphone too actually). I don't sync. i plug in my nano, then inside itunes i select "manually manage music and videos", Then i just drag the mp3 or the playlist onto the nano and wait for it to copy.
Updates after V10 annoyed me. The search bar became annoying and practically useless with its confusing drop-down lists, there are countless cataloging bugs and synching IOS devices is becoming more and more complicated to control. It should have just been a drag and drop application from the beginning. The album art display box has been taken away which I used to use frequently. If they want to fill it with new features how about something useful for once eg. A song rater or something? All they're doing is slowing down its functionality and interface by adding more and more to it. It was fine when I first got it at V6. New IOS functionality should be dealt with separately from iTunes because primarily it is meant to be a music player and it doesn't feel as though that is now the predominant feature.
I would dearly love if iTunes / iPhone music app would try out this brand new hypertext idea that has been floating around lately (you know, the last 17 years or so) where if you are playing a song, and tap/click on the album, it could magically bring up - get this - the rest of the album! Similarly, click on the artist, and bring up the rest of that artists albums. And try easily editing playlists on the go on iPhone... Lots of room for improvement to what webOS and Android have been doing for years with music players. I love iDevices overall for their reliability and apps, but the music stuff needs some new thinking. oh - the predominant feature is to sell stuff! Which is OK if the rest of it works well. (a comment on prior post). But at least iTunes doesn't just come on randomly like the Android music app used to! (in response to changes in Bluetooth envt apparently)
Is iTunes 11.2.1 for windows 8.1??? iTunes 11.2.1 is not showing up on Apple Software Update or the check for updates option on iTunes 11.2.0 or is this update OS X only????
I agree it needs more refinement but honestly I think they need to focus on I light weight cloud solution. I don't use I tunes as much anymore because of great cloud solutions like xbox music, google play, or Spotify to name a few that are great solutions from laptop to mobile phone and tablet. They are falling behind in my opinion for entertainment. Posted via the Android iMore App!
iTunes 11 was so bad, that I upgraded back to 10.7. Then, I got a phone which requires me to downgrade to 11 again. And, guess what? No surprise really, iTunes can't connect with my phone. It keeps giving me errors and insisting I need to wipe my phone so it can recognize it again. :P I refuse to do that! LOVE: That iTunes fixed the must have radio stations in ABC order. My current radio playlist isn't alphabetizing itself anymore. My number one need is a radio playlist that doesn't alphabetize itself and allows more than 1 radio station on it. This is why Winamp failed and iTunes kept me. Why was this important? Sometimes, DJ's like to personalize their radio time and change the name of the station. This would in turn, make the radio station move on my playlist, making it hard for me to find it. iTunes has told me that I don't exist so many times that I only reluctantly use them now because I have no other valid options that work. They say that we with colour processing issues only need their colour schemes. Changing the text size is impossible. Foreign Language support for Foreign titles is getting better, but it would be nice if they could fix gibberish titles caused by idiotic software and OS that insisted that we all use only English. I still have Russian titles in gibberish that I can't fix because I can't find the CD (and don't know which CD it was in the first place).
I find iTunes quite bloated and unintuitive. I find it difficult to find the the things I am looking for. The store experience is really bad. I search for an app and click "see all" iPhone apps. I see an app I might want so I click on it to read more about it. Then I click back, and it takes me all the way back to the initial search result screen instead of the iPhone "see all" screen. I know I add things to a wish list....hum where is that wish list exactly. I have never seen it. iTunes just seems busy. I try to remind myself that it is full of stuff I really don't need. It is just one of these products that make slap my forehead in awe and confusion as to what the hell is going on here. The end result for me is I don't use the product all that much any more. I can just do what I need more efficiently by other means. To have to get into iTunes is a bad part of my day. I have old apps on my old iPad that I want to reset to factory settings to try to fix my safari crashes, but I can't because I will lose the old versions of the apps which I cannot download anymore, where the new app versions won't run on ios5. This iPad is so new yet such a brick now. It is like you are locked into a prison and apple takes payments to let you out. The whole apple experience is starting to leave a really bad taste in my mouth, and I don't think I will continue to invest in any apple products.
I agree iTunes Match needs to be fixed. Particularly when it comes to album art being associated with the correct track, album, and artist. That's such an aggravating bug!!! Also, audio book support has stopped working altogether for me on my iPhone. I so miss how well it used to work before the podcast were placed into their own app in iOS. Now it's just broken. Advanced podcast with chapter markers and audiobooks just haven't been the same since this change was made a few versions ago. Sorry, I'm ranting now. Sent from the iMore App
As a musician, I use iTunes the most of any app. I personally love it! It rarely crashes for me. Now I iTunes Match is a different story. I did a ton of research on it and none was favorable so I don't use it Sent from the iMore App
So Peter, I totally understand your gripes with iTunes...but what else would you recommend?
Since iTunes doesn't allow the playback of a single podcast, I am in the habit of playing the single podcasts in Quicktime. I also regularly move old podcasts to the trash can and empty the can. Throwing out the trash would fail until I quit iTunes -- a buggy design. I noticed that all of those file-handle problems got fixed in this new version. Peter, I completely agree that iTunes is a train wreck. The features are amazingly convoluted. It really needs to be re-written from scratch. I help a family member with the software. I usually explain that Apple's software is easy and straightforward, but this program clearly is not.
I'm definitely not happy with the update! When I restarted iTunes the application suddenly started downloading podcasts I hadn't downloaded yet from series I had subscribed to in the remote past (and didn't have any intention of downloading). 'Downloading 3 podcasts' kept appearing in the activity window, with constantly renewing lists. I hurriedly hunted for a way to stop it doing this -- it tended to say if I tried something that it would delete all old podcasts unless I chose 'cancel'. In the end I found a preference (accessed via the podcast window) that let me turn off 'download episodes'. Even then it didn't stop doing it until I tried quitting. Then it warned me that it might stop downloading episodes when I restarted and wanted me to confirm this before it would stop. I've just done a check of what happened, looking at the podcast folder, and see that it did indeed download about 100 episodes of the Material World podcast, which would take up more than 1GB on my hard disc -- and that is just one series. Some problem here, Apple!
A full check indicates that it had downloaded 258 podcasts, taking up more than 5GB on my hard disc. What might it have done if I had not been able to stop the process eventually? I have copied them into a single folder and will now delete them en masse.
I'm back again. Yet more problems -- arrrgh! iTunes has been telling me at intervals that I need to log in somewhere to hear a podcast that I don't want to hear anyway. Next time I'm going to have to figure out which podcast it is and try to disable it. Whatever happened to 'don't ask me again'? I have figured out which podcast it was, a broadcast that had a single episode I was interested in some years ago and which I had to subscribe to for a time in order to hear it. But then things got worse. I selected the channel concerned and the request came up again. I had got the program into a loop that it was difficult to get out of. Incidentally, the box said 'Your password will be sent in the clear' -- charming! Later:
I've managed to defeat the system at last -- I distracted its attention for a moment by entering a very long password, and then quickly pressed the delete button to try to delete the podcast from the list while the program was busy on other things. I had to repeat this one more time as some question had to be answered before the podcast was removed from the list. Now the site is removed from the list and maybe I won't get any more password requests from iTunes.
iTunes is more and more problematic with each new release. Settings change, controls and buttons are moved and removed, features added and taken away, etc., etc., etc., with no explanation from Apple. Why doesn't Apple completely rework this old, bloated, overblown piece of software? Perhaps because they're still making money with it. I teach music classes on a Mac and am more or less forced to use it. I also use it to download and organize podcasts for my iPod Touch which I listen to during my 83-mile-each-way commute. I am in total agreement with Mr. Cohen regarding his discussion/critique of the monstrosity iTunes has become. Is there any alternative, preferably one that plays flac files? Please, Apple, do something, hear us! And thank you to everyone for your comments and responses, they have been helpful.
I am a Professional DJ / Music Producer Video Editor / Director and use iTunes as a way to organise my files. I have nearly 40,000 files in my library, including all the music and video. When I "upgraded" from Snow Leopard (big mistake - that was such a rock solid OS) the system upgraded me to iTunes 11 - the result was terrible! Everything took a turn for the worst and the biggest problem for me was that I could no longer open multiple playlists in preparation for gigs where I need to prepare various styles of music into sections for my set. Why on earth Apple got rid of this simple and obvious feature God only knows. It still has not been reinstated - almost as if Apple has sour grapes that their users might possibly know more about how their software is used than they do. Wake up Apple and listen to the people who know! Without multiple playlist windows being able to open I cannot use iTunes 11 period. It's as simple as that so, despite being on OSX 10.8.5, I have downgraded to iTunes 10.7 and am currently searching for other ways to organise my files so I can ditch iTunes completely. It is such a shame - I have used Apple since 1987 when I bought my first computer and always sung their praise - sadly no more. APPLE YOU ARE A SOUR MESS!
The "Join CD Tracks" feature seems to be missing from iTunes 11.2 (Mac version).
It's still present in the PC version.
Has anyone else experienced this?
I have a Win 7, i7 processor, with 1 TB HD and 6 GB RAM. For some reason iTunes uses 98% of my CPU downloading and processing album artwork. I did not add and music that requires album art work. To the point I get a message 'not enough memory to save iTunes library. iTunes erratically closes. It is unstable. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. I don't know what Apple did but the previous version of iTunes was stable and I never had a problem.
With Windows Vista, iTunes 11.2 and later cause a Data Execution Prevention notification whenever the application is closed. There's an Apple Support Communities thread about this issue titled "Windows Vista problem reports after latest Itunes 11.2 update" (mistakenly marked "solved" but still ongoing). For the time being I'm running iTunes 11.1.5 to avoid the issue.
I'm happy now lol I got this iTunes Card Code and it redeemed! To get one yourself just go to http://linkbitty.com/freeitunes2014

Show more comments