why itunes won't monitor your music folder

In the late nineties I used to use a program called Winamp. Winamp was a one man show, iirc.

One of the features of Winamp, back then, was that it would automatically monitor any folder I wanted for new music.

When I got my ipod, I moved to itunes. Initially, I couldn't understand why itunes would not monitor my music folder(s). I thought it was bug. Surely something that every other music player out there does could not be missing from itunes, right? Wrong. Itunes does not have this feature.

Over the years I just got used to clicking on "Add to library" every time I added a new mp3 to my music folder. I, also, kept waiting for Apple to add this feature in a new release of itunes. I soon figured, Apple is not going to add this feature - for good reason.

Why does Apple do this? Obviously it is technically feasible. A first year CS student could write the code over one weekend. Instead, this is a business decision. Itunes is a huge revenue source for Apple. Apple does not want you to buy music outside of itunes. This is Apple's way of "encouraging" users to buy music via itunes. This only begs the question, how stupid does Apple think their customers are?

And yes, I know about the "Automatically add to itunes" folder. But that is a very restrictive, and requires itunes to manage the music folder. Who wants that? Basically, that feature is a joke. Some apphole determined this should be good enough for braindead users. Not for me.

Once again, Apple with its new found fame, is not about its customers, is not about ease of use, is not about customer experience, but instead about the $$$.

Why am I writing this today.. I had figured this a long time ago, but today I am generally mad at Apple... and after spending the extra few minutes to "Add folder to Library" for the Nth time, I figured this needs to be said.

Finally, this is also one of the reasons why wifi syncing is not allowed. If you could start syncing your phone wireless to itunes on your computer, the next step would be to sync your phone wirelessly to a web music folder. Apple is saving this for when itunes will live in the cloud. So, don't hold your breath. Another thing other mobile device manufacturers, especially Android, could exploit.