iTunes is a neat program, but it sucks at the same time. The only time I get the magical beach ball in OS X is when I am running iTunes.
The most common time to have iTunes freeze up is right after a video podcast has finished downloading. If you are watching a video in iTunes and another large download finishes iTunes freezes up. Quite often it will freeze up for up to a minute with the only thing on the screen is the wheel of death. On top of that whatever is playing in locks up, but the timer continues. You then have to scroll back in the video to find your place.
Then there is the iTunes store. This is truly the slowest web browser I have ever seen. The store is just an enhanced version of Safari to work with purchasing stuff from. It sometimes takes over thirty seconds to load the store up originally. There is no good reason it should ever take this long. It is a good design, just poorly implemented.
iTunes is one of the worst media players around as it is so bloated. It is much easier to use VLC to play media files as it is much lighter on the computer. It might not be as pretty, but it works so much better. The only issue I have with VLC is that it does not have the option to automatically download podcasts.
My primary use for iTunes is the 30+ podcasts I follow. The part of the software that works great is that it will follow these RSS feeds and automatically download the new items when they show up. If it wasn’t for this one feature I would not use iTunes at all.
What does this all mean? Well, iTunes is bloated and should be avoided if at all possible. I am currently in search for a good OS X application to download podcasts without using iTunes. I’ve yet to really take the time to search for an alternative. I guess that is why I am still using iTunes and not something else.
