As a recent convert from Linux/Amarok, I think iTunes is great. I really don't understand why it gets so much hate. It works perfectly fine for me, and looks quite pretty doing it. I don't know any other music player that has anything like "shuffle by groupings", which is a killer feature if you listen to a lot of classical music. Literally the only problem I've had is that it sometimes doesn't find album artwork[1], but it's easy to manually fix that.

What's the big issue?

[1] It's been 100% on non-artwork metadata.

iTunes killed my music collection. Two weeks wasted after iTunes turned the rips into a jumble of random files.

Of course I shouldn't have clicked the "Allow iTunes to manage..." button. Was it obvious what it would do?

No. It wasn't.

When you try to load apps from a device and it already has apps from the same device but a different session, you get an alert warning you about... something that doesn't make sense.

The correct option is to cancel, then iTunes goes ahead and syncs everything correctly.

Since when did Cancel mean Go ahead with Plan A?

Also, the app screen manager. To move apps you have to:

Click a screen with the app Wait for it to zoom Drag the app Wait for the target screen to zoom Wait for the other apps to shuffle around Drop the app

Why is the zooming necessary? Why can't you just drag and drop without zooming? Why does the zooming cover some screens, so sometimes you can't drop the app on the one you want?

Why can't you make folders in the file space of apps, and drag and drop files to/from the folders? Why can't you drag and drop a load of files at once?

And so on. So many elements of the design should be in textbooks as classic examples of how not to make a UI.

You're not. I've met very few OS X users that are even aware there is a strong contingent out there that despises iTunes. On OS X it's still great, and as of iTunes 12 it's back up to the speed level it should have always been, that includes syncing.

On Windows it has its foibles, but I still use it every single day at work. It's more than manageable, it's just not as responsive as it should be because of how it is built.

On both operating systems it tries to do too much. Where it excels is as a simple, clean jukebox. Start using it to manage movies or anything else and the flaws show up in spades, but that's never what it was to me.

I've been using iTunes since I was 9 years old. I've used every major version and it's one of the only programs I was using on OS 9 that I still use every day on OS X. As a jump-in-and-go library based jukebox, it pretty much has no equal. Throw in iTunes Match so my home library is instantly available on my phone and work PC, and I never have a reason to use anything else.

You're not the only one - I still use it daily.

iTunes is the best music app. I wish they'd break out the other media types into separate apps though.

I like it too. It's not perfect (what is?) but I'm not sure what I would be using if not iTunes.

Cog?

I use it on the Mac because it is small and light, and I organise MP3s by album directories with their own M3U playlists and a global large playlist anyway; I rip my own CDs. (Yes, this is considered archaic by some but at least I still have 16bit lossless physical media and fascinating sleeve notes to refer to, right?)

I also have my MP3s by Album Artist - Album directories with their M3U playlists (ripped from my collection), but I don't want to dig through directories, that's why I use iTunes. I can search, get some pretty artwork so I can find which version of a song I'm looking for, add it to a playlist, etc. Cog is a player, but I want a music manager.

Ah I just want a player. I already manage my music - that's what the directories are for. Additional metadata about the albums stored a database isn't going to improve the music for me.

Different requirements I suppose.

Cog is ugly as all hell and hasn't been updated seven years. It's nowhere near as capable as iTunes.

The non-stable version isn't too bad; the current stable one is quite dated for certain.

Additionally, the development version correctly handles VBR MP3s instead of the "stable" one which inaccurately estimates song lengths (ie, a 3.5 minute song is seen as 14 minutes long in the "stable" version).

But for playing MP3s from a list it's great!

If I wanted to manage my iPad with it, do backups, buy music, AirPlay videos, watch videos, rate my music (I already own it, why would I need to rate it?), stream radio stations, copy photos to/from my devices etc. etc. etc. then it isn't so great. That's what iTunes is - a bloated piece of software that is no longer just a music player. You call it capable, I call it bloated :-)