Not only is Apple’s iTunes application constantly crashing, stealing focus, or crashing my entire computer – it just erased all my podcasts and iTunes U files for no clear reason. This is especially maddening for someone who is careful to catalog their media well.
Given that I was about to go on a long bus journey, this is unbelievably annoying. All of a sudden, university courses I was in the middle of listening to are just gone. Podcast collections that I had assembled with some care are deleted. All my audiobooks have vanished as though they never were. Much of the content I had in there cannot simply be re-downloaded.
It is all extremely frustrating.
You came from nothing, and to nothing you shall return.
I am sorry for your digital loss.
I recall my first experience with iTunes. It renamed every MP3 I had when it imported the library, which was frustrating because at the time ID3 information was rarely filled out for Mp3s of the era.
I’m finding iTunes also tells me there’s a new version to download everytime I open it. The “Don’t remind me again” option does nothing. I also do not like that it is more or less mandatory for loading music, videos and apps onto Apple devices, which is one of the reasons I have preferred my Android devices to the iPhone 3G I once used (and still own).
What I have lost is actually worse than the original data files, which are pretty generic.
I have lost all my ratings, play counts, playlists, comments, custom settings, etc. Songs and podcasts can be re-acquired fairly easily. Rebuilding all that metadata would be tedious, painstaking work.
Hopefully, I will be able to restore my whole iTunes library and folder from my backup drive, after I move to Toronto.
Now my 160GB iPod refuses to sync and crashes every time I try.
I am going to bring my old 20GB 4G iPod as a backup, with whatever random content happens to be on it.
Your loss occurred in the week that Apple passed Exxon Mobile to become the largest company in the world with capitalization (# of shares times share price) at $337 billion to Exxon Mobile at $331 billion. Quite amazing considering that Steve Jobs reports that Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy in the 1990’s. (and who did Apple surpass to obtain #2 originally Microsoft). These changes reflect the importance of technology companies in our lives.
My Black Sabbath seems to be the only music tough enough to survive iTunes and iPod failures.
The road to New Orleans will be paved with metal.
I am working on recovering my iTunes Library. It seems possible that it will work, but it may just experience the same catastrophic failure as the previous one, before long.
Protecting metadata is tricky.