My belief is that iTunes is purposefully broken and will likely be broken up into separate apps. On the music side it forces people to use streaming services i

My belief is that iTunes is purposefully broken and will likely be broken up into separate apps. On the music side it forces people to use streaming services instead which the music industry prefers to digital ownership, and Apple's own service is doing well. They've (Apple) always played ball with the music industry as everyone must, they've just managed to get better deals than most when working with them. Where it really hurts is in podcasting. I think podcasts & audiobooks would be much bigger if syncing worked worth a damn on iTunes. On the i-device side, syncing should be be removed wholesale from the media player. Honestly, it should be relegated to a little task icon like Caffeine. The only reason this isn't the case is because the storage capacity of these devices is so (needlessly) tiny, again perhaps purposefully in order to prevent day to day users from keeping a lot of downloaded music/videos locally.