[aroxnicadi]

Not sure what Apple did to iTunes but it royally F**KED UP on their last release. It deleted every movie I had ever bought off of iTunes and now says they are all now on iCloud. Hours of downloads that they never paid for. Not one left on the external HD. It also severed the link between iTunes and the folder containing my apps I had downloaded for the iPhone over the past two years. Now they are is shambles and music folders all over the place and thousands of hour work gone trying to organize them, gone in a second because Apple's developers are turning into what Microsoft was like in the early years of 20xx.

Cook and company better start looking after customer rather than looking at the bottom line. They are starting to look like a bunch of rip-off artists like Microsoft still is.

[Mike Wuerthele]

Is this with the brand new update that's like 20 minutes old?

[aroxnicadi]

No, the previous piece of shit they released

[Mike Wuerthele]

That is a pretty dramatic failure. We've seen a few, but nothing on this scale. External library, right?

What drive model?

[aroxnicadi]

External Western Digital 4TB

[aroxnicadi]

How does someone re-establish hard links to files on the external hard drive with iTunes?

[aroxnicadi]

So what I have discovered that the piece of crap that Apple released last week has changed all the movies that were mp4's to m4v's and the update they released today or for those that are reading this at a later date, yesterday has not switched them back to that format.

This sort of bullshit is in some ways reminiscent of when Steve jobs was alive but at least he had the balls to come out and say they screwed up royally, but at the new Apple they don't really seem to give a shit, except for the bottom line and try to better another software company that developed what they don't have the foresight to think of.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Mike Wuerthele 

That is a pretty dramatic failure. We've seen a few, but nothing on this scale. External library, right?

Yep, same here.

iTunes library completely FUBAR. Had to delete it, and start building it up from scratch from backups.

This will be hours of time I will never get back.

iTunes is (and has been for quite a while) a complete an embarrassment.
Alas, if you have an iPhone / iPad, and a big library of ripped movies, you are almost forced to use it.

-t

[Mike Wuerthele]

Almost. Did you look at our piece on Stream To Me?

Pointers: play nearly any media file on your iOS device | MacNN

[aroxnicadi]

I don't stream movies or music to a iPhone from my Mac or visa versa since the screen on the iPhone is to small to watch movies comfortably and I don't have enough memory on the iPhone to save music nor the time to listen to it.

[aroxnicadi]

Anything out of Apple as to when they are going to fix this cluster**** with iTunes?

[Mike Wuerthele]

We don't have an inside track, but yeah, we want a fix too. For some reason, we seem to be the only place really calling Apple out on it.

Testing: iTunes update aggravates network, local library destruction | MacNN

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Mike Wuerthele 

Almost. Did you look at our piece on Stream To Me?

Pointers: play nearly any media file on your iOS device | MacNN

Streaming is (unfortunately) no solution for me.

I have had the capability with my Synology NAS for a a while, and for direct streaming from Mac to Mac, I have used Slinkware.

I do a lot of business travel, much of it outside of the US.
In most hotels, bandwidth is way too low to make streaming work.

I often want to watch movies on the plane, so streaming is a no go as well.

-t

[Mike Wuerthele]

VLC for iOS then. Allows for management of files on the device without having to go through iTunes.

https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-s...650377962?mt=8

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Mike Wuerthele 

VLC for iOS then. Allows for management of files on the device without having to go through iTunes.

https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-s...650377962?mt=8

Thanks, I'll check it out.

Getting the files on iOS devices is the bottleneck.
Dropbox works, but is a drag.

-t

[panjandrum]

Restore both your entire boot drive and your data drive from a backup just before the update. Many have had similar issues with the latest iTunes. In my case it was the more familiar case of iTunes 12.2 simply "forgetting" where everything was. So I didn't end up with an actual borked collection, hence restoring the boot drive was sufficient. However, your problem sounds more serious/complex, so I would suggest a complete restore and you should be good to go. (If you don't have a full backup, well, then that's a shame, but it's a lesson far too many users have to learn the hard way, and I expect you won't make that same mistake again). Remember, your data isn't safe unless you have at least three copies; a working copy, a complete routine backup, and some form of offsite backup.

As for you opinion about Apple quickly becoming the new Microsoft; I agree 100%. Current revisions of Apple software on all fronts make the experience of using Apple software feel very similar to using anything Microsoft with the exception of Windows 7 (which Microsoft absolutely nailed and then moronically abandoned in short-order). It's a continuous struggle to find features that are hidden or obfuscated for no reason (other than a certain someone at Apple putting their own personal sense of aesthetics before usability), a nerve-racking risk to install any update (removal of features, nasty bugs), etc. It started with iOS 7 and Lion, and it hasn't really let-up (well, the Mac OS seems to be slowly getting better again, at this rate in another 10 years it will be back to where it was). If this was the experience Apple offered when I started moving to Apple products and supporting them professionally (Mac Plus era), I would have never touched them; I would have turned and run the other way.

[Spheric Harlot]

You've been supporting Macs since the late 80s and forgotten about the iTunes installer bug that erased entire hard drives if they contained a space in their name, a decade ago?

And the printer engine that would eat itself until after a permissions repair and a reinstall of drivers?

Gosh. Having lost hundreds of tracks from my iTunes library over the past fifteen years for no apparent reason, I don't think it's any worse than it's ever been.

[Spheric Harlot]

The people experiencing problems: are you using iTunes Match and/or Apple Music?

[Mike Wuerthele]

The testing we're doing uses either/or. So far, the only reliable solution is iTunes 12.1.x

[turtle777]

I used iTunes Match, but never turned on Apple Music.

I don't think Apple Music par se is the cuplrit. Seems more like iTunes is more than the usual clusterf&$. Apple broke something in iTunes Match when they implemented Apple Music.

-t