Apple needs to fix iTunes before the iPad, part two

David M Williams
Monday, 29 March 2010 13:52

Opinion and Analysis

The only officially sanctioned app to maintain Apple's i-devices - the iPod, iPhone and soon iPad - is iTunes. Yet, it has failed to keep up with the modern family's fleet of such gadgets. Here's another problem Apple needs to address.

Anyone who has an iPod and a family computer will be painfully aware how shy iTunes appears to be. The program simply wants to stick its head in the sand when it comes to a multi-user system.

By default, iTunes sets its music library to be under the 'My Music' folder each user on a Windows computer is assigned. Specifically, My Music\iTunes\iTunes Media.

If you, like me, have different user accounts for different members of the family - some with Bob the Builder wallpaper and limited access, for instance - you'll realise each person has their own set of folders, including 'My Music'.

That's ok, you might think; iTunes lets you specify an alternate location for the music library. Sure, it retains preferences per user so you have to log in to each account and set the location, but that is a one-off job.

Then the realisation hits; while you can direct the music library elsewhere you can't change where iTunes saves its settings. These will still sit in your My Music\iTunes folder. The 'iTunes Media Library.xml' and 'iTunes Library.itl' files sit gloating at you.

Each individual user may well be sharing the same pool of media but the settings that identify which items are included are still on a per-person basis. If I add a new CD to the collection it's virtually invisible to everyone else because their iTunes configuration files have no knowledge of it.