"Final" iPod update fixes eject issues in Windows Vista

While iTunes 7.1 claimed to play nicer with Windows Vista, there was still reason for avid iPod users to hold back on upgrading, and now it looks like those final issues have been ironed out. Starting today, Vista users can download a software update that purportedly solves the problems some users were having as their iPod became corrupted when "ejecting them using Windows Explorer or the Safely Remove Hardware function in the system tray." Of course, those of you who got burned by this aren't as apt to become guinea pigs in finding out just how well (or not) the patch actually works, but for those mettlesome folks out there, feel free to hit the read link and commence downloading.

[Via WindowsVistaBlog]

[Mischa Lockton @ May 9th 2007 12:49PM]

Nobody can accuse them of being off the ball. 4 words to bring a shudder to a dev team: "play nice with vista"

[scorpio @ May 9th 2007 2:46PM]

How is Apple not "off the ball"? They are 4+ months late getting the iPod/iTunes to work with Vista. That's 4 months where I have not been able to use iTunes or sync my iPod. I can understand and tolerate a small company like DivX not having their act in gear to support the new OS at launch, but a company with the resources, profile and acumen of Apple? Inexcusable.

[Mischa Lockton @ May 9th 2007 4:27PM]

Actually, I am going to give them a pass here. The problem is Msoft doesn't provide good documentation to give their competition high hurdles. They would like to see us using WMP and all the M$ formats that go with it. They have shown no problem with predatory practices like this and been fined for it.

I would not be surprised if they purposefully did this. There was a case where renaming the app from netscape.exe fixed some mysterious crashes.

Don't get me wrong, Microsoft has its merits, but if the new itunes does weird things in Vista, I am WAY more suspicious of Microsofts activities than Apple, which has a much better track record of software stability.

[mike @ May 9th 2007 12:53PM]

next on list to fix for itunes

-Slow performance
-Crappy interface
-update ipod sync to work at least as well as winamp
-did i mention slow performance?

[slavko @ May 9th 2007 1:30PM]

What flavor of haterade are you drinking? lemon lime or fruit punch?

[plaidpjs @ May 9th 2007 1:39PM]

Mike,

1 & 4 - Slow Performance.

Not sure what hardware you're running, but I've used iTunes on four different Vista builds and had no issue with performance. And, compared to anything comparable, it has screamed. I'd suggest a possible reinstall and maybe defrag of your HDD. Remember, even Vista still doesn't play nice when it comes to keeping your file structure and allocation tables well optimized.

2 - Crappy Interface.

Well, here you're just in the dog house.... seeing as there is this popular sentiment that the interface is just about as simple and as eloquent as it comes for most users. Hence, why there are so many raves about it's design and why no other player/store/library/syncing tool has been able to compete, at least in any significant degree, in terms of ease of use.

3 - Update iPod syncing.

Not exactly sure how you mean this, Mike. What does WinAmp sync better or faster or differently? WinAmp, in general, is pretty much a lame piece of software in my opinion... but, to each their own. However, at least give us some context when you make a gripe.


Overall, it sounds like you just need to buy a Zune and use the Microsoft equivalent to iTunes. Not that I'd wish that on my worst enemy, but that would seem to alleviate all of your concerns.

However, let us not forget that some of what you may be experiencing isn't an inherent iTunes problem, but quite possibly a Windows failure. Especially seeing as most of your gripes ring similarly to other gripes I've seen posted around the web and in numerous "news" articles about how many other pieces of software perform under Vista, and some that performed the same way, if marginally better, under XP.

Ciao!

[LiQuiD_FuSioN @ May 9th 2007 6:10PM]

I have to admit that I totally agree with the poster "mike" on a lot of issues.

First of all, iTunes 7 is NOT perfect. Don't be an apologist.

This is all on XP SP2 with a 512mb memory, 1.3ghz processor laptop:

1. It way too long to open up iTunes 7 with my music library. Like 40-50 seconds "too long".

2. The interface is too clunky. You feel tied down to the cumbersome menus and can't really do anything without the program lagging either.

3. It takes up way too much memory than is actually necessarily!

I've also got another laptop with an Intel Core Duo processor with 1 gig of RAM + VISTA and it's STILL slow.

iTunes 7 seriously needs a good tweaking.

[treetrunk @ May 9th 2007 2:49PM]

I'm afraid I've got to agree on the slow performance. I'm running Vista and have the same music library in both WMP and iTunes (to sync my ipod) - WMP loads almost instantly, iTunes takes at least 30 seconds to even appear. It also uses much more resources - ~90MB RAM when playing a song vs ~20MB in WMP. They're both quick once they're loaded as I've got a fast machine, but there's no doubt iTunes is slower, especially at video playback.

As for the interface I've heard people "raving" about it (same with that of the iPod) but I don't get it! What is there to rave about? Put a grey "Windows classic" window in "details" view, put playlists in the box on the left, some rudimentary play controls at the top, and you get iTunes.

[plaidpjs @ May 9th 2007 4:57PM]

First, slow load times aren't what I'd consider a performance issue, especially for an app as large as iTunes. Consider, please, that it does a tremendous amount more than WinAmp, which is basically a jukebox/player. As to WMP, which is a different product altogether, perhaps it does load faster and have a smaller application profile. I honestly don't know, but I would venture to guess that in each case you are correct and I can tell you why, directly. Because it is probably yet another Windows product that is hooked directly into the overly bloated OS.

Just like the "supposed" performance boosts seen in escalating revisions to IE, the more it has pieces loaded by default in the OS at all times, the faster it will appear to start up and the lower its memory footprint will be. Again, however, startup is not the be all and end all of performance, it's usability. And, as you noted, once opened there isn't any substantive difference in performance, with the possible exception of video playback, and that most definitely goes back to hooking in the OS.

As to your second piece... LOL... 1) let's remember where "Windows Classic" comes from (yes, it is a bad copy of the original Mac OS... even Microsoft has acknowledged that), and 2) if it were really that simple, then ask yourself why no one had put it together like that before?

Even now, online stores and media palyers are trying, with varying degrees of failure, to duplicate the simplicity of the iTunes interface. And, given, if all you want is a player then there are surely lighterweight, more streamlined apps out there (on WIndows and Mac). But, for a base consumer level product, that is just supposed to function and function well, while providing multiple capabilities in a user-friendly environment that is not overly complicated to understand or work with... iTunes just has it locked.

[Josh @ May 9th 2007 2:01PM]

Does anyone else have the problem where when you load iTunes in the background and then take focus, the whole interface goes black until you resize the window?

[Charles W. @ May 9th 2007 2:24PM]

I have that issue. It sux.

[T-Will @ May 9th 2007 2:12PM]

iTunes scrolling is extremely slow on my XP box (P4 3 GHz, Radeon X700, 1GB RAM). If only it would would scroll as smoothly as Picasa does...

[Chase @ May 21st 2007 1:15AM]

You have almost the same comp as me! (P4 3 GHz, Radeon X700, 1GB RAM) iTunes 7.1 also scrolls extremely slow for me, but everything else is fast like it should be. I don't get it. I have a 7200 rpm HD, and I defrag all the time. Any suggestions?

[Small e BIG E @ May 9th 2007 2:21PM]

I find iTune performance to be awful.

I don't really like the interface and it's pretty slow. I don't think it's a "Windows failure", none of my other software runs this poorly. It's easy to just blame the OS and not the code. I know a lot of people who aren't really thrilled with it's performance.

I was a musicmatch user for years prior to getting an iPod, I wish they had left it as an option, I found it suited my needs just fine.

I am keeping an eye on the Zune. It was a decent start, though I didn't find it compelling enough to dump my 5g iPod. I think they are promising, and as long as they continue to up the ante for features versus Apple's offerings, consumers across the board win big time no matter what you end up buying.

[Josh @ May 9th 2007 2:29PM]

As one of the people who got burned by this (I use ephpod since iTunes is an abomination), and pissed that after a year of RCs, and RTM versions of Vista available since November, that apple hadn't addressed this issue prior to general public avialability, I decided that Zune was the way to go. I have yet to regret the switch, though I realize several of you will mark me as heathen despite not having used the Zune yourself. Trust me, all flaws to the Zune accounted, all are immensely barable after having lost everything off of my iPod.

[tim @ May 9th 2007 2:46PM]

haha, so you are saying that apple should have had this issue fixed back in 2003, later in 2004, again even later in 2004, several times through 2005, here and there in 06, the first part of 07, and then now? and they should have had it fixed when it goes going to be a completely different FS?

there are a lot of big software companies that arent ready for vista yet, but how many have full availability across mac, windows and (unsupported) linux support?

(and yes, i know it wasnt publicly available to developers all that time, its sarcasm)

[Ignacio @ May 9th 2007 3:42PM]

"As one of the people who got burned by this (I use ephpod since iTunes is an abomination), and pissed that after a year of RCs, and RTM versions of Vista available since November, that apple hadn't addressed this issue prior to general public avialability, I decided that Zune was the way to go. I have yet to regret the switch, though I realize several of you will mark me as heathen despite not having used the Zune yourself."

Err, do you recall that at launch, the _Zune_ *didn't* work with Vista? *Microsoft's own Zune didn't work with Microsoft's own Vista*. Not only that, it didn't work particularly well with XP either, at least for some people (Engadget had a particularly bad experience with it).

Not to mention that "working well with prerelease Vista != working well with final Vista".

[Anthony @ May 9th 2007 2:34PM]

i had more problems than that. and have let them know about it.

[tim @ May 9th 2007 2:41PM]

ill just be the blatant mac fanboy i am...

i wish the ipod was a more closed system, they should just keep it on macs. im done trying to convert people to a better system, because the unstoppable giant that microsoft is seems to know how to keep people from leaving. im obsessed with mac because it is a better system, same with the ipod, and people who say 'its a crappy player' are just ignorant. that is why it is ALWAYS one of the top performing players in any review. so take your zunes, transfer that 1/3 of the music they actually let you transfer, and be happy. same with zen, iriver, walkman, etc fans. just know that they lock you in almost as much as the ipod or zune, just in different ways.

and of course this is an MS issue more than an apple is, its lack of backwards compatibility. at least apple warned about performance when going to intel. time for MS to go the way of wal-mart, where people start to realize what is the best option, and the most convenient up front isnt always the one to go with.

i do like the new zune ads, im glad they dropped the social thing....

[mvan @ May 9th 2007 2:57PM]

"i wish the ipod was a more closed system, they should just keep it on macs. im done trying to convert people to a..."

to apple fan boy,
if that was the case then the 97% install base of windows users would not have purchased an ipod and apple would still be sitting with a low market share for ipods/itunes. The reason they are now the default choice for music players is because they opened it up to windows! There would be no Apple Tv or iphone, no R&D money to develop intel hardware etc..All of the consumer products from Apple (ipod, Tv, iphone) now support windows and this trend will continue..

[treetrunk @ May 9th 2007 2:59PM]

No, they should have fixed it when Vista was finished 6 months ago.

[treetrunk @ May 9th 2007 4:51PM]

Also, that's not sarcasm, it's just an incorrect rhetorical question. Making up some list of dates despite acknowledging Apple couldn't /actually/ have done so is a bit like saying "I suppose you think they should have battled a dragon" despite acknowledging dragons aren't real. It's just wrong.

[rp @ May 9th 2007 2:59PM]

Oh boo fucking hoo, poor little Vista users all worked up over Apple not getting on the ball and making things play nice with their main competitors new operating system.

Mac users have had to deal with Microsoft dropping the ball for YEARS and are still suffering for it. Why should Apple give five hundred shits about Microsoft's new operating system when Microsoft has been giving Apple the middle finger for so long? Where's the Windows Media Player update for Mac? Oh wait, they decided not to support Macs anymore years ago! At least you have a new version of iTunes! Where's the VB support for the upcoming version of Office? Oh wait, Microsoft doesn't care!

A company with the resources, profile, acumen, ridiculous amount of employees, and whatever else of Microsoft dropping the ball? Oh wait, it's Microsoft, everyone expects it.

[Small e BIG E @ May 9th 2007 3:39PM]

"Why should Apple give five hundred shits about Microsoft's new operating system when Microsoft has been giving Apple the middle finger for so long?"

You can choose any word processor you wish, don't use it if doesn't work. I only have one choice to manage music on my iPod.

I wouldn't care if I had another option, like I said, I liked Musicmatch just fine, Apple made this an issue by discontinuing support for 3rd party software, it has NOTHING to do with MS.

So, I'll tell you why they should fix it, because if they just manage to make the Zune just a little better, it might very well be my next media device. Hell if they make it sync wirelessly with Xbox 360, so you can transfer and manage both your system's media files with your portable... Where do I sign up?

[Grammar freak @ May 9th 2007 3:42PM]

I've been using my ipod on vista for a few months now and haven't had any corruption problems. I do get some bluescreens sometimes that I think are related.

[jack @ May 9th 2007 3:49PM]

does anyone know how can i add get those icons to my taskbar in vista

[g2 @ May 9th 2007 4:18PM]

On my AMD based Dell, iTunes does not work well in Vista. I can sync music, but video is where I have problems - slow, choppy, out of sync and crashes the entire Vista OS. Same with Quick Time. Tried all the compatiblity tricks, re-installs.

I tried it on Intel based high-end XPS Dell and everything worked fine.

Could it be that Vista is needing specific hardware (discrete video memory) or faster CPU clock to work properly ? Anyone with this experience ? Any thoughts?

[plaidpjs @ May 9th 2007 5:06PM]

Hahahahaha... uuuummmm... where have you been?

The largest problem I hear about and read in most blogs around the web are about how system intensive Vista is. One of the reasons it comes in like 50 gazillion variants. And, how much a good portion of Vista upgraders would much rather go back down to using XP.

I would almost consider it a sure thing that any serious video playback issues under Vista, whether from Apple products or other non-Windows alternatives, has to do with Aero and processing power. That is not to say that QT is without fault, or Apple... but, more often than not, it has been my experience that software performance issues after a "major" upgrade like Vista lie squarely in the hands of Microsoft and how they have either fuddled with something they didn't tell authors about or they added 15 un-necessary levels of complication onto the base API for a certain set of functions.

[AJ @ May 9th 2007 4:40PM]

What about the patch that will allow me to even use iTunes in the first place in Windows Vista? I just get a blue screen of death when adding my library, so I'm stuck using WMP 11. Instead I boot into XP and use iTunes. Quite lame, Microsoft, quite lame indeed.

[tekdroid @ May 9th 2007 5:16PM]

meanwhile, on the other side of the world, users with native Mass Storage-compliant audio devices with no restrictions and open-source format support scratch their heads at all the fuss a proprietary restrictive app brings to users.
http://www.cowonglobal.com/

[Josh @ May 9th 2007 5:42PM]

"Err, do you recall that at launch, the _Zune_ *didn't* work with Vista? *Microsoft's own Zune didn't work with Microsoft's own Vista*. Not only that, it didn't work particularly well with XP either, at least for some people (Engadget had a particularly bad experience with it).

Not to mention that "working well with prerelease Vista != working well with final Vista"."

I seem to recall that I specifically mentioned general public availability (that would be january, asshat) and also mention that the zune had this fixed in december, so way to call me out on nothing genius. Of course, with a registry hack you could get Zune to work just fine in November, but I'm not counting that.

All of that not-with-standing, yeah, working with prelease is not the same as working with release, but again, the RTM build of vista has been available since November which should have been enough time for apple to fix it by general availablity (January). Its MAY. way to take 6 months to get it working Apple. Of course, for a company that has shipped iPods infected with a virus, and claimed that the original windows version of iTunes was compatible with Win2k, despite 100% bluescreen on startup after install, I guess I should expect this from Apple. They obviously can't be bothered to so much as test their products.

[rp @ May 9th 2007 6:05PM]

Again, there's several reasons Apple does this sort of thing, all of which are quite possibly too obvious for you to understand due to you thinking Apple owes you and the Windows population some sort of favor.

1) MS has repeatedly screwed Apple over, as in so many times it's hard to count. Here's a return favor for MS.
2) Being competition, isn't it in Apple's best interest to show how crappy Windows is, either by infecting their OS' with virus or blue screening it to death?
3) To annoy Vista champion dicks like yourself.

Have a nice day!

[josh @ May 10th 2007 12:24AM]

1) MS has repeatedly screwed Apple over, as in so many times it's hard to count. Here's a return favor for MS.

- except that they aren't screwing MS over. this whole thing hasn't effected the vista market share one wit. All it has done is screw over the customer of apple, the people who bought iPods. That is shitty business practices. I have no doubt that apple has been petty about Vista, but I, as a customer, should not be caught in their spiteful little foot dragging. Hence why I am no longer a customer of Apple. I learned my lesson, thank you.

2) Being competition, isn't it in Apple's best interest to show how crappy Windows is, either by infecting their OS' with virus or blue screening it to death?

It only shows how utterly ignorant of their QA practices are, and if done intentionally, would be criminal. It is easy to crash any OS when you install a bad driver. I could write you a driver now that would guaranteed, 100% of the time, take down OS X. All I have to do is is start randomly assigning values to an unassigned pointer in a driver running in kernal space. Easiest thing in the world. There is no inherent protection when code is running in kernal space, and drivers MUST. It isn't a flaw in Win2k, which, incedentally, has a much better reputation for uptime than OS X in any incarnation. It was an amature mistake on the part of Apple, and fairly inexcusable, as was shipping a virus. OS X does not have any fewer vulnerabilities discovered than windows (and incidentally, it was a virus for a vulnerability that had been patched for months; its hard to take anything Apple says about security seriously when their IT department can't practice the basic tenants of security within the company. That's pretty fucking pathetic). You know, it seems like Apple does release security updates just like MS, and those updates do seem to patch a whole crap ton of stuff. The difference is that apple does it quarterly, leaving users' machines vulnerable longer.

3) To annoy Vista champion dicks like yourself.
What the fuck? Seriously, Apple's stategy is to annoy its customers? That is why they are neglegent about making their products cease to malfunction is a grossly appalling way? I post something critical about Apple's practices, which, mind you, are fairly well founded since you have as much admitted that Apple is guilty but should somehow be justified in their neglegence, and I am a "Vista Dick"? If I had to judge who was being irrationally platform loyal I think I would peg the guy who wanted to imply that a company would be justified in intentionally damage their customers' machines and data out of some pathetic sense of spite, aka you.

Seriously fuckwit, do you have your head shoved so far up the Steve's ass that you can't accept the company can screw stuff up? I can admit MS screws stuff up, IE until 6 SP 1 was a joke for security, WinG is rightfully baried, WinME and all responsible should be shot into space, but if MS was responsible for shipping a virus on the zune, for having WMP for the mac bring down the OS 100% of the time, and to claim Mac Zune support, only to have the zune become a brick when used with a newly released Leopard Mac users would be crying fowl for months. Why should Apple be absolved of blame for failing to support a customer scenario (iPod on Vista) that a not insignification number of their users likely encountered (Vista did ship more units in 2 months than OS X has, ever, after all)? This isn't about some lame ass platform war, this is Apple failing to support paying Apple customers. Hence why I am no longer an Apple customer.

[Dave @ May 9th 2007 6:54PM]

The iTunes problem I've got is that anything abover version 6 BSOD's my XP box when downloading podcasts with one of those STOP codes. I applied an older XP patch but it didn't help. There's a newer one, but I haven't had a chance to try it yet. Posted it to Apple's support forums, and worked with an engineer there providing him with my dump data, but he wasn't able to figure it out. So I'm still on iTunes 6.x.

[Vincent @ May 9th 2007 9:10PM]

Is that safety removal function really useful? Ive never used it for my ipod, what could happend if i dont use it.

[Andy @ May 9th 2007 9:59PM]

I've been running vista since Beta 2 and haven't had trouble syncing my iSuck.

[rp @ May 10th 2007 12:38PM]

No, I just don't give a shit about whining Microsoft users like yourself when Microsoft and you friendly little MS fanboys have basically told us to suck their dicks for so many years, and neither should Apple. If you knew anything about the Mac users experience with Microsoft products, you might think Microsoft did everything to make the Mac users lives miserable ON PURPOSE (oh wait, they did, do you even know what WMP is like on a Mac? Are you sure it doesn't bring down the OS?). It's funny that you won't be a customer of Apple's anymore when they fuck up once or twice, but then you talk about how Microsoft has screwed up over and over and are favorable to them. Platform zealot? Yeah, that's you for sure. What goes around comes around, shitface.

In other words, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you're cool, fuck you, I'm out.

[josh @ May 10th 2007 12:29AM]

Well my spelling and grammer was suitably horrendous in that post. I really should learn better. No point argueing with platform zealots of any kind, and no point argueing if the post reads as poorly as that. I apologize to the rational majority that foolishly read the above post. It really serves no purpose. The blind cannot be forced to see, and an Apple fan will never accept fallibility on the part of apple.

[Mike @ May 10th 2007 11:20PM]

The solution is simple.. I have a shiny new 30GB iPOD which boots up with RockBox software from http://www.rockbox.org. I can drag and drop any files I want onto my iPOD, and I can play and organize them right on the unit. I can move, deleted, and rename my music on the go.. I can copy it to my friend's PC.. I am free from Microsoft's and Apple's restricitions on what I can and can't do with my music. My very first MP3 player worked just like this too.. but since then, every MP3 unit you can buy seems to be restricted in some way either by Apple or Microsoft.. it is really very sad that I have to resort to aftermarked firmware just to let my iPod work the way I want it to.. not the way some Apple executive wants it to.

My 2 cents...

[Small e BIG E @ May 11th 2007 9:21AM]

"I honestly don't know, but I would venture to guess that in each case you are correct and I can tell you why, directly. Because it is probably yet another Windows product that is hooked directly into the overly bloated OS."

Yeah great, more guessing.

My machine has dual 3.2 Ghz Xeons in it, a 15k SCSI HD, and 4 gigs of RAM. My 3D software has less problem accessing the simulation data I cache to my drive.

rp @ May 9th 2007 6:05PM

"Again, there's several reasons Apple does this sort of thing..."

Nice. Don't you have some homework to do?

Whatever, it's poorly written software, period.