All You Can Eat

Not only is it bad enough that iTunes comes out with a new 'update' every few weeks, the brilliant folks at Apple insist on packaging the update along with the entire program. There is absolutely no reason a music player should require a 34MB download. It's a shameless Microsoft-like swindle. They're banking on the fact that more and more people will be dumb enough to associate iTunes with all of their music and probably install QuickTime and use the clunky QuickTime too.

I always thought that Winamp would be the epitome of the streamlined player--small, efficient, yet robust. It still is far superior to iTunes in many ways, but since America Online publishes Winamp, I've noticed that even it's download sizes have gotten fatter over the years. For years a 1 to 3 MB download, then balooning to 8 or 10, then 14, and now 21 MB.

Apart from more updates, the only thing these updates allow me to do is enjoy slower system performance. iTunes installs several icons, tray utilities, and system services that are supposed to 'help' you, though I still can't figure out why it takes a half a minute to open up the damn thing.