The ipad I was messing with wouldn't let me do a single damned thing with it until I plugged it in to a computer with itunes on it. It just came up with a graphic showing a picture of the data cable and an arrow pointing to the word "itunes."
If that's changed recently, it's for the best, but I couldn't figure out a way to put .cbr files on my ipad without itunes involvement regardless.
Everything iCloud was added in ios5. It made the devices computer free and now out of the box you get a welcome screen and screens setting things up. What you described was the experience 4.x and lower, yes that sucked.
I have tried installing itunes once. It lasted about 5 minutes, and was uninstalled.
My girlfriend has an ipad, and ipod. My understanding is you can only do one install of
itunes, on one computer, and must use that computer for loading the ipod?
This was what I was told when I suggested she bring the software over and install it on
a computer in my house, so I could help her with it.
Is this true?
I found the software pretty offensive, and useless for me.
I hate having quicktime on my computers, and won't install any of appl's update software, either.
In theory you can move the iTunes library between machines on a portable drive to accomplish what you wanted to do but even that is hard because it isn't self contained. I posted the steps a couple times over on hocp and macrumors forums, it is a little more than people realize to get that done.
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038249851&postcount=13
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038250686&postcount=16
Itunes isn't really pleasant but honestly it is a lot more than a media player, it is a complete management application to sync apple devices with files you didn't get via the apple ecosystem. Now because they don't want to allow file sharing between friends they do limit a lot of things you can do so limiting you to one computer makes sense for the hoops they had to jump through to make the whole experience possible while still bowing to media company restrictions.
IMO apple needs to make the devices more manageable themselves with some shared memory apps can get at. iOS5 was a big step in the right direction, hopefully they continue it and eliminate the whole need for iTunes media management.