Until version 9 of iTunes I was a wonderfully satisfied user. My library of 2,800+ songs rarely slowed when I’d select a song or playlist. My iPhone synchronized in the background without any slowdowns. I used to wonder about this Apple icon people called a “beach ball” because I rarely saw it. Then along came iTunes 9 and everything changed.

iTunes 9 added some wonderful features – most notably in the area of re-organizing applications on my iPhone (about time!) and throwing us a bone by making it easier to copy iTunes files from one authorized computer to another authorized computer on a network.

So don’t get me wrong – I enjoy the benefits that have been added.
The problem is there are two prices to be paid for these new benefits – namely speed and stability.

Meet Mr Beach Ball

For those of you on Windows computers, the beach ball is the Apple equivalent of Windows’ rotating hourglass. My iMac hardly ever had the beach ball or “please wait” indicator appear while I was working within iTunes prior to version 9. Now I’ve started to see the ball make a regular appearance.

It’s still only at the merely annoying level but I’ve started to wonder what will happen when Apple rolls out iTunes 9.5 or 10. Will the Beach Ball have an ever increasing presence on my computer?

There’s not enough benefit in iTunes 9 for me to put up with lengthy pauses and slowdowns on my computer. Based on the slowdowns introduced with iTunes 9 I might be hesitant to upgrade to the next version of iTunes when Apple releases it .

My iTunes catches the flu

Before iTunes 9 I could could count on half of one hand the number of times that my iTunes crashed. Since Apple upgraded to version 9 crashes have become a daily occurrence. There’s no rhyme or reason to when iTunes will take a dump all over my screen either. Usually I’ll notice problems changing from one section of the program such as my songs to another section such as my iPhone applications. And other times it will just up and quit in the middle of song selections.

I think I’ve been luck so far because none of my files have experiencing any data corruption and iTunes has faithfully re-started (after a lengthy beachball display).

Funny enough I was emailing the Geardiary team when Dan captured a screenshot of his iTunes crashing as he was reading my email where I described how I thought Apple really missed the mark with the iTunes 9 upgrade.

For now I live with the slowdowns and stability issues. I’m hopeful that Apple improves both the stability and speed of their iTunes program in future releases or they may see people becoming more reluctant to blindly update to the latest and “greatest” iTunes.