iTunes is probably the biggest online music retailer across the world. It has come far from its modest beginnings. Selling well via iTunes typically indicates an important music chart position for singers. The Apple Team have continued to provide more elements and functionality to the system. Nevertheless, iTunes has been receiving a large level of flak in recent times.

For starters, the music player is often criticized for its heavy style and lag on Windows computers. Granted, iTunes was designed for the Mac operating system but anyone would be forgiven to consider that Apple may respect that many computer owners have a personal computer and use Microsoft Windows as opposed to owning a Macbook or an Apple computer. Regrettably this certainly is not the situation and the program is often fairly resource heavy. It is certainly not an uncomplicated, sleek interface but it is actually extremely image and video intense. While looking around the iTunes Store users can encounter quite a lot of lag. A lot of people keep using different music players because they are a whole lot less system heavy. Using a RAM greedy piece of software is ordinarily fine for the high spec Apple systems but plenty of computers unfortunately often suffer while running several programs at once. This really is especially noticeable if you have an iPhone and compare it to your Windows computer. Ordinarily the iPhone functions quite quickly but using iTunes on a computer is frequently quite cumbersome! It could be good if Apple released a more streamlined model.

The second thing is, the way in which Apple has continued to include many more features to iTunes is also an advantage and a curse. It’s great simply because there is so much more features to it now. It is now not just a program to listen to music with, you can easily now also watch films, get video games, build playlists and organize your iPod and iPhone. The iTunes Store boasts millions of tracks to buy and people can even purchase films and television series. With the App Store you can also buy countless applications for a iPod Touch and iPhone. There are games, resources, maps, eBooks and much more. A few of the apps are absolutely free while others you have to purchase.

Nevertheless, a lot of people assert that there is too much functionality on iTunes and that it has become too big and bloated. However, what should be the solution? Perhaps Apple could deliver different services for the various features (e.g. a stand alone music player and music store). Alternatively it could deliver one program but allow customers to pull the plug on features which they do not make use of. For example, if a person owns an iPod but still buys all of their new music on CDs then they have little use for the iTunes Store for getting new songs. Likewise, the iTunes Store now has a lot of content which is exclusively offered through certain products. If a person does not have such a product then it is worthless for them to see it. In addition, lots of users don’t like the fact that they have to make use of iTunes to organize their iPod. This closed method to user friendliness has seen loads of customers and users becoming unhappy. It seems as though that while Apple wants people to join their club yet if you can’t join it completely then you will need to take care of the difficulties.

Instead of offering a stripped down version of iTunes, it should instead integrate even more features and functions. Apple definitely has the resources and the product development team to build a product that features a lot more, but it should at the same time be mindful to ensure that it stays sleek and well designed. It has recently started this course of action with the unveiling of Ping, a social network, available through iTunes, that is centered around music. Why not then integrate social book markin features and personalized home page profiles? It could be a wonderful way to add a social element to iTunes. As most people have seen with the massive popularity of social networks such as Facebook, socialzing online can lead to big profits as well. Not that Apple needs to get worried over its bank balance.