On Sun, 13 Oct 2019 18:15:25 -0400, Stan Brown wrote:

It manages metadata ...

Hi Stan Brown,

Thank you for hazarding a guess ... as I know that's risky on Usenet.
o It seems to me, you can do more WITHOUT iTunes, than you can with it.

But I'm pretty good with software (while most people are not, it seems).

I admit I only have a few thousand MP3 songs, so, for me, managing what you
call "meta data", for me, is simply the ID3tags themselves, which, as you
must be aware, is easily handled by a plethora of freeware apps.

I'm sure there is _other_ metadata (is there?) that matters to people
(e.g., album covers for example), but none of that would matter to me.

For videos, I don't deal with 'metadata' much, as I probably only have a
few score full-length feature films, as they simply take up too much space
on my hard drives (even with multiple terabyte drives now being cheap).

For photos, each photo is jam packed with EXIF metadata, which is an
integral part of the photo.

I'm sure there's other metadata that you speak of, so I might ask you, and
others, what 'metadata' does iTunes manage that you don't already manage
without iTunes?

It manages metadata and playlists.

As for playlists, I don't generally use them myself, but aren't they simply
a text file that VLC or MPCPlayer HD can just play, one by one?

If a playlist is just a text file, isn't it trivial to manage as many as
you want, completely outside of iTunes?

I looked at several freeware
programs a few years back, and based on their listed capabilities I
didn't find any of them worth downloading. Note "a few years back" --

I understand. Neither of us is an expert in this stuff.

I used iTunes myself, when I initialized iPods, but I was innocent then.
o I didn't realize iTunes enforced a Draconian "library" policy
O I didn't realize iTunes' installer was a piece of **** in many ways
o I didn't realize iTunes' bloatware was horrific (remember Quicktime?)

After just a few weeks on iTunes, I had to rip it off my system.
o It was that bad.

I have plenty of iOS devices, where I find zero need for iTunes.

As you may be aware, I have no problem turning my iPad into a read and
write USB stick - something that people on the Apple newsgroups don't even
know how to do (even though I wrote tutorials aplenty on the topic).

See this thread, from just today, for example, where Apple users "think"
they have to purchase expensive Apple dongles to get _less_ than what I
get, completely free.
o IOS 13 support for USB devices, by JF Mezei
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/misc.phone.mobile.iphone/kiBd5O6_O1w

The point is that I've been able to do EVERYTHING I need to do with both my
iPods and my iPads, WITHOUT iTunes.

Certainly what I do is NOT RESTRICTED by the Orwellian iTunes rules.
o That's why I asked why, on earth, anyone uses iTunes in the first place?

I don't want to put you on the spot, so I ask the question at large:
o What does iTunes do that you can't do better ... without it?

I don't remember details, but probably it was associated with
handling of some metadata and handling smart playlists.

I guess the keyword is "smart", since metadata is part of the data (e.g.,
EXIF information in JPEGs), and playlists (AFAIK) are simply text files.

Your mileage may vary. If you don't use the same capabilities of
iTunes that I do, you might well find a third-party product that does
what you need.

As I noted, iTunes is so badly written that it can't be on my system, which
is a decision I made in the iTunes 9 or 10 days (maybe even earlier), while
I was still on WinXP most of the time.

When I moved to Windows 7, and then to Vista and Windows 10, I never had a
need for iTunes' Draconian MP3 policy (they wipe everything out without
even telling you when they're doing it).

Since I don't initialize iPods anymore ... I don't even have a use for the
one thing iTunes did (where SharePod, older version, portable apps, works
just fine as a complete iTunes replacement on the iPod).

For my iOs devices, I _already_ have full read/write capability, as I have
the iOS devices turned into USB sticks, where I most often slide
full-length feature films over USB onto the iPad to play in VLC.

Given that I have full read/write to the iPads, I don't see what iTunes
gives us, but I certainly see what iTunes takes away - which is why I ask:
o What does iTunes do that you can't do better ... without it?

In this case, it's also a security hole that Apple didn't even look for for
more than a decade, which, if you're not aware, is a recurrent pattern for
Apple (see the newsgroups for details):
http://tinyurl.com/misc-phone-mobile-iphone
http://tinyurl.com/comp-mobile-ipad
http://tinyurl.com/comp-sys-mac-system
etc.

If someone who actually uses iTunes a lot can respond, that would be
helpful, as I generally deplore software that is designed to restrict what
you can do.

It seems to me, you can do more WITHOUT iTunes, than you can with it.