iTunes 7 turning out to have major glitches

When we were deep inside Maestro Jobs' reality distortion field on Tuesday, all these new additions to iTunes 7 seemed like significant improvements over its previous version. But not quite 48 hours later, all is not quiet on the iTunes front. Specifically, users on Apple's web forums and our own tipsters are reporting that some new nanos aren't being recognized in Windows iTunes 7, music being played through iTunes 7 sounds "scratchy" at times, CoverFlow doesn't always entirely download properly, and there are allegations that iTunes 7 has become, slow, bloated, and a resource hog. Some of us here at Engadget who have installed iTunes 7 haven't noticed any bad playback or other slowdowns, but have been dissappointed that very few of the albums on our machines have successfully downloaded album art. Furthermore, The Sydney Morning Herald called iTunes 7 a "lemon" yesterday and went on to report that: "Both Mac and PC users appear to be affected by the glitches being reported, and numerous different threads on the Apple discussion forum have described a range of technical issues." Oh, and did we mention that many professionally produced podcasts -- including CNET's Buzz Oud Loud, Popular Mechanics, and our own -- are reportedly not working. If Apple doesn't do something about this pretty soon, people might start calling it iCan't -- as in: "I can't play my music anymore."

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Read - The Sydney Morning Herald
Read - Apple iTunes Forums
Read - Possible solution for nano issue in Windows
Read - Podcasts are broken
Read - Roku SoundBridge iTunes support broken (workaround here)

[Jason @ Jan 27th 2008 3:13PM]

Everything works fine for me until I download a rental. As soon as I try to play the rental it opens a new window to play it and FREEZES SOLID!.

The rental expired after 24 hours and then everything was fine again.

Yipee and goodbye 3.99

[Isabelle @ Feb 2nd 2008 12:29AM]

downloaded version 7, now I itunes won't play a next song in the library or playlist. Just plays one song at a time.

[Andrew @ Feb 19th 2008 4:30PM]

I'm having the exact same prolem

[Randy Kaplan @ Mar 9th 2008 2:55PM]

My iTunes has been cutting off the last 5 seconds of the last song I import from CDs. I thought it might be my computer but my friend's iTunes is doing it too. Anyone else? Why can't they fix this glitch already and let us get on with it?!

[berry.april @ Mar 30th 2008 2:32PM]

I have not heard any problems with my music but I can no long log on to iTunes store to purchase more music. Is that a problem with the program or my computer? It says the connection is bad even though everything else works great.

[Simon @ Apr 16th 2008 5:28PM]

On Windows XP, iTunes is just as broken in version 7 as the previous versions. Importing a CD is painful - often you can't get it to import or it imports half the songs and then stops. When you think it has worked sometimes you select a song on the iPod and a different song plays!
If you are importing your own songs it is worse, it has taken me an hour to get three of my own songs imported and set up under the correct album name and artist. Even now the first two tracks are labelled as track 1 - I just cannot get it to number them correctly. By comparison, Windows Media Player works perfectly and took 30 seconds to import my songs and edit the names of the songs/album/artist.
Shame we can't use Media Player to sync an iPod and then I wouldn't have to use iTunes at all (and that would be a great relief).

[Abdou @ May 6th 2008 2:00PM]

desde que instale la version 7 y actualmente tengo la version 7,6, cada 2 por tres pierde la ruta de las canciones, y es la 10 vez que borro todo y vuelvo a oranizarlo de A a Z, y ayer fue a actualizar el Ipod, y para el colmo me dice que no se encuentra los archivos originales, por cierto que lo tengo todo metido en un disco duro externo, y ya no se que hacer, es mucha musica y mucho tiempo y mucha paciencia, alguien sabe como puedo recuperarlo todo sin borrarlo todo y volver a organizarlo? gracias

[shahnawaz @ Jun 11th 2008 4:17AM]

Hi. I am using Windows Vista Basic Home. I downloaded the new version of Itune 7 version from their site (57MB). But everytime I want to install it, it is not happening. Kindly advice.

[Audrey @ Jul 9th 2008 12:44PM]

I have major issues with ITunes 7, i can only get as far as downloading it and installing it and it works fine until i turn the computer off for the night. Then when i go to switch it back on again it won't switch on, it just sticks and refuses to switch on. Twice i've tried installing it and twice i've had to completly restore the whole system from scratch to get it working again.

Up until version 6 i had no problems at all, don't actually have an IPod but was going to be getting one for xmas this year and now i can't even go back to version 6 cos i didn't do a back up of it :(

Not impressed with this new version at all and won't be attempting to ruin my computer again by installing it. I run Windows XP in case anyone's wondering.

[glenis brown @ Jul 20th 2008 7:20PM]

when ever i try to exit itunes i will freeze for a minuite or so, then it will disappear for a few seconds, the reappear right back on the screen. i just cant seem to close the program. what should i do, it's annoying, i dont what i tunes being displayed on my screen all the time. it slows up my pc, i only need it for when i am listening to music. what's the problem,how can i close it and keep it closed?

[miranda @ Mar 17th 2009 5:29PM]

itunes sucksz it wont let me open it so i cant put my fave new song on and im going nutsz! then i uinstalled it and it won let me reinstall it! whats next!? my computer will walk away and say it doesnt feel like workin?! it alredy does that ! so what the hell?!

[Gordy @ Sep 14th 2006 10:36AM]

Hmm, it's a good thing I backed up 6 before I installed it, but I haven't had any problems on my G4 933.

[Alex @ Sep 14th 2006 10:37AM]

HAHAHAHA.

is it just me that thought this post sounded really really funny? or am i just in a good mood.

anyhow..

i used to use iTunes. then by iPod died...

so no music for me :-(

but im thinking of investing on the new 80GB model.

thats all for me.

thank you.

[Henry @ Sep 14th 2006 10:38AM]

It's working fine for me, I'm still getting podcasts and it could find plenty of my album art.

[Binome @ Sep 14th 2006 10:37AM]

i'm running itunes 7 and have noticed no problems

[Gamey McGee @ Sep 14th 2006 10:39AM]

No problems whatsoever. Using it on 3 computers since release. 2 macs and 1 pc.

[andrew @ Sep 14th 2006 10:41AM]

mine works great no problems unlike wmp 11

[Dave @ Sep 14th 2006 10:44AM]

Yeah, Mac Mini here... spent about an hour last night farting around with Google Image search to begin filling the gaping album artwork hole. I was enjoying myself though, so I'm not pissed or anything. There are larger problems at stake in the world than this, I think.

As for Podcasts I admit that I don't regularly listen to them... I work in A/V and can't listen to anything but my own crap all day. Yes, my crap sounds brown. It is the smelliest sound you ever saw.

[aboriginal @ Sep 14th 2006 10:42AM]

Yup, have the scratchy tracks, but the most annoying is the "album art". Didn't auto add Gnarls Barkely and I can't batch add to the whole album - I have to add the art one track at a time. What's worse is that iTunes has chosen covers and changed art that was already in place - and different art in flip mode than the album in the second mode and I can't change that out. MacBook Pro 17 running here.

[rasbill @ Sep 14th 2006 10:41AM]

deep down i knew it was dumb to spend money on itunes then just download with bittorrent, now i cannot get itunes7 to even open never mind have any of these other problems with it

[Edward Black @ May 7th 2008 4:41PM]

did you manage to find a solution to the problem of opeming v 7

[Eddy @ Sep 14th 2006 10:41AM]

Not yet upgraded. So far I read many forums that there is no problem at all.

[kalmbach @ Sep 14th 2006 10:41AM]

I've had (still having) playback problems with earlier versions as well. It's strange they don't give you the option to select which souncard/output you want to use. Also, there are no buffer/driver settings.

I turned to Winamp instead. And you know what? Even though Winamp has the functionality, I don't need it. Because it simply works =)

[Jeff James @ Sep 14th 2006 10:41AM]

I installed it and noticed all the issues you mentioned (except the nano issue). Not running it anymore.

[pog @ Sep 14th 2006 10:41AM]

Have it running on 3 different Macs (G4, G5 and Intel)and with 3g and 4g iPods and its been flawless, although I agree the album art fetch is a bit tempremental.

Can't comment on the Windows version, but all in all I'm extremely happy with this upgrade personally.

[Ty @ Sep 14th 2006 4:12PM]

I downloaded itunes 7 and when im on the internet and change a website, the music gets very distorted. I hope thay fix the problem soon!

[Matt @ Sep 14th 2006 10:57AM]

I can not get the ipod games to work... it keeps saying "can not sync mini golf becuase this computer is not authorzied to use it" ......but its a fun way to burn 5 dollars and get mad...thats what they intend right?

[rmjb @ Sep 14th 2006 10:41AM]

Reading this post was surreal, it sounds like a MS product release.

- rmjb

[Ashley Allen @ Sep 14th 2006 10:46AM]

Coverflow is a great idea but iTunes can't seem to find the album art for stuff I can easily find on the music store!

How long to Zune?

[mikeR @ Sep 14th 2006 10:46AM]

iTunes 7 has been working wonderfully for me. Video playback is a million times better, and it feels a heckuva lot sprightlier than iTunes 6.

Sounds like a load of BS to me.

[Yixian @ Sep 14th 2006 10:49AM]

No problems at all here.

[Rick @ Sep 14th 2006 10:42AM]

No problems. Quite like it, actually.

[Little Joe @ Sep 14th 2006 10:42AM]

Ive had the cover art download issues.

Other than that, no other technical issues.

I does suck though that you can drag and drop your own album art onto the album and album art views.

[Matt @ Sep 14th 2006 10:44AM]

I haven't had one issue, yet, with iTunes 7. I play alot of Podcasts and no issues there. Music plays just fine, no "scratchiness" as reported. Movies and TV shows play smoothly.

[David @ Sep 14th 2006 10:43AM]

It's CoverFLOW, not Flip. CoverFlip sounds like a Microsoft ripoff.

[Brandon @ Sep 14th 2006 10:44AM]

I'm running iTunes 7 on a 24" iMac, a MacBook, and a Powerbook. I noticed that the Powerbook needed some time to download cover art and time to process gapless playback. Over a few hours of playing it ran a lot smoother. Of course it runs faster on the faster machines but even on a machine a couple years old it seems to run fine. Intially it did not download album art but I ran get album artwork from the advanced menu and it downloads more and more each time it scans. I also tried it in the RC release of Vista without any problems. I think once it updates the library and downloads the new album art content it runs much better.

[David @ Sep 14th 2006 10:44AM]

Yeah, I've been frustrated by these bugs on an otherwise very healthy computer (Windows). The program likes to recreate its start menu and desktop icons with each launch if you decide to move its shortcut folder from its original start menu location. If I plug in my nano, browse its music library and customize my choice of displayed columns and their order, it forgets the customization the next time I plug the nano back into the very same computer. Finally, highlighting a group of tracks on the same album and dragging album art over fails to assign this art to the album. At most, only the first track receives the art unless you manually add the art to each via the Get Info menu option.

[Mike Smeen @ Sep 14th 2006 10:47AM]

iTunes 7 will only mount my original 5G iPod on first boot. After I eject it, I have to reboot in order for it to pick it up. Windows mounts it as a drive just fine, though.

Other than that, I'm not noticing any issues. But that's a pretty damn big issue!

[F_N @ Sep 14th 2006 10:45AM]

It works pretty good for me (and I like it)!

Except: if you have more than one album called "Greatest Hits" (for example) - it gets confused. Even when you manually change all songs to the new art, it still appears as what it thought it was before on the left. Annoying, but it's the only thing I noticed. It also automatically burns a CD when you put it in (haven't found how you stop that yet)...

[Chris @ Sep 14th 2006 10:47AM]

Had Issues with the scratchy playback, on Windows. Also, it's a huge resource hog. Loaded it up, clicked play, got the scratchy noise, checked my Task Manager, 100mb of memory allocated, with 100+mb going to swap.

Windows sucks, this I know, but damm, it's like a 50% memory usage increase from iTunes 6.0.5.

Reverted back until somethings get fixed.

[Mr. Tips @ Sep 14th 2006 10:46AM]

People, please, have some consideration. This isn't a time for your success stories. As we learned from the Herald article, this software RUINED SOMEONE'S LIFE! It should be pulled immediately! Maybe we can start an online petition about this.

[G @ Sep 14th 2006 10:47AM]

I was also having problems with the podcasts from Cnet and Engadget, all the others seem to be working just fine. Someone suggested on the Cnet forums to play the podcasts on iTunes for a couple of seconds and that after sincronyzing with the iPod it will play the podcasts properly. Well, I did that and it worked, at least for the Cnet podcasts, I can't tell for the Engadget one since I didn't had the chance to try it.

[131172 @ Sep 14th 2006 10:46AM]

I have experienced "scratchy" songs once in a while and I thought it was due to my speaker. I smell 7.01

[Jason @ Sep 14th 2006 10:46AM]

Only installed it on my PC at work. It's VERY slow. It freezes up all the time. I have maybe 5% album covers. Gappless playback takes HOURS to get set up for only about 2000 songs.

But that's just my experience

[PN @ Sep 14th 2006 10:48AM]

I put my nano in disk mode and it worked just like that.....restored it.....left it on the dock......just fine

[ben @ Sep 14th 2006 1:41PM]

for the most part, I am not having any more problems(note: anymore). I was having some problems with album art, but then I figured out that there can not be any other art or it won't find new ones.

[Liam Daly @ Sep 14th 2006 10:49AM]

the jerky audio playback I found completely uninstalling itunes then reinstalling it fresh seemed to fix it on my machine but its a resource hog, seems to be memory leaks all over the place

[Chris @ Sep 14th 2006 10:48AM]

Anyone else notice this is coming out on the same day that the zune is releasing info LOL cant be good...

I have to agree im getting a fair bit of laggy feeling from my itunes when browsing through songs, and a few of my songs have shown that "scratchy sound" when playing but it seems to be quite random at which songs its affecting i really dont understand it... besides the fact i've had it crash once in the last 24 hours for a reason im still not sure of.

They'll probably release a patch to fix the problems ... hopefully atleast... personally im switching back to itunes6 until its fixed.

[craig @ Sep 14th 2006 10:49AM]

i haven't had any playback issues that i'm aware of, but i have had problems syncing with the ipod... has anyone else had this problem with iTunes 7?

I’ve always used iTunes to load songs onto my iPod (first revision 30gb 5th Gen). I don’t really use the Library feature—I don’t put songs in the iTunes library because I don’t listen to songs on my computer with iTunes.

To load a song onto my iPod, I just drag the song from the directory in Windows and drop it directly onto the iPod. This does not seem to be working with iTunes 7. I’ve tried dragging whole albums (all in one folder) and single mp3’s. The iPod and iTunes act like they’re working (the song appears to transfer), but the artist/song never shows up on the iPod.

The only way I can get songs onto my iPod is to first drag them into the iTunes library and then onto the iPod. This is a hassle. Has anyone else had this problem or know of a fix? Thanks.

[Twist @ Sep 14th 2006 10:51AM]

I haven't had any major problems (though the Cover Flow view is a bit glitchy). At first it was using a huge amount of CPU (my CPU meter was pegging at 70% with iTunes opened but not playing, load without iTunes was around 20%) but I walked away for a few hours and now it uses less CPU while playing than iTunes 6 used while idle. I figure it just needed some time to update the library and cache album covers (most of my mp3's already had them) and once that is done it behaves better.