I will, however, agree that most of the “10 things iTunes should change” were indeed pretty ridiculous.

I just think that when the iPod started using video it forced iTunes to cram in a feature set that works in a completely different and sometimes contradictory way, and it goes beyond mere semantics. Watching movies in iTunes is frustrating for various reasons, and movies and songs have entirely different schemas for metadata. At a base level they require different methods of cataloging. There are no “albums” of movies. What do you list as the “artist” for a TV Show? You see where I’m going with this? Hell, why don’t we just cram iPhoto into iTunes as well? Call it iMedia?

I think Apple, and it’s consumers, would have been better served with a separate app for video management. Something that could better organize a fundamentally different media type than music. Then, use iSync to handle iPod management. In this way I think Apple has fundamentally confused itself.

Second, I don’t think they need to make a separate program for managing movies/apps/iphones. Agreed the name ‘iTunes’ kind of doesn’t fit the bill, but the rest of the content is not interfering. iTunes still is a music player at its core. The managing movies/apps and the rest is just additional if-you-want-it features which can be turned off in the preferences.

Third, do not confuse the Genius Sidebar (which is a rebranded Mini-store stacked to the side) with the Genius playlist. The playlist feature is totally non-commercial and really helpful when you need those quick playlists.

Four, I agree that iTunes needs to go through a trimming down. Read about it on my “10 things iTunes should change. Not!” post which comes under the related posts here itself.

And thanks for commenting! Hope you stick around.

Genius still seems like a lame gimmick to introduce more links to Apple Store products, though. And my point about iTunes being inconsistent and bloated still stands. It’s the one Apple program that, to me, has suffered an excessive amount of “feature creep”. They need to segregate it’s functions into a couple more concise apps.

Also, the fact that they are just now making changes that should have been implemented when they came out with video support makes me less than enthusiastic. They need a completely separate program for managing iPods/mobile devices, music, and video. iTunes is so bloated and inconsistant now. It defies the whole Apple logic of keeping things clean and simple.