In keeping with my love-hate relationship with Apple, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the company’s dominant iTunes application as well. Over the years, iTunes has evolved from a simple, single-purpose media player into a bloated, slow, mess of an application that manages an amazing array of content types and devices. Apple being Apple, most of this functionality is designed to keep its users from dabbling in competing solutions of any kind, and Apple’s software, devices, and online services are very much designed to keep you locked in to the Apple family of products at all times. The key to this lock-in strategy, the nexus, is iTunes.
