iTunes

There's a lot to like about iTunes for Windows - especially the Music Store, with which Apple may have won the online music wars with the radical idea of providing a service that doesn't suck - but I don't think I'll be using it as my primary media application. It's too much like the pushy girlfriend who moves in and immediately takes over your life, puts you on a diet, tells you what to wear and which of your friends you're still allowed to see. Me, I'm a perfectionist and a control freak; I have my own system, and it bugs me a little that I have to tell iTunes NOT to start renaming and rearranging files.

I wish I could say this is an expression of Apple's infamous "we know what's best for you; surrender all control to us" design philosophy, but it seems to be true of all of the big Integrated Media Content Manager type programs, from WMP to MusicMatch Jukebox. They all want to be the Only Program You'll Ever Need, and they all try to grab your media files for themselves during install, unless you smack their hand and tell them "no, leave that how it was."

And that's probably why I'm sticking with good ol' Winamp 2(.91). Winamp doesn't tell me how I should organize my music; it just plays it.