My only Apple device is an iPod Nano 3rd generation, won many years ago at a promotion lottery. Even back then I was horrified by the iTunes. Looked nice, but it felt like it was trying to control my life.
Ditched it in a couple of days, looked for a free application that also allows to upload or download to any PC without the need of a crappy proprietary iTunes installed on the PC host. Why everybody can make a player act like a USB drive where one can drag files back and forth, while Apple needs a proprietary app installed on the host?
The player is nice, very good hardware, I still use it to play audiobooks in a DIY docking station. Yet, it was incredibly expensive if it were to buy. For that kind of money one would expect an iTunes that lets you do whatever you like, but no, iTunes was acting like the hardware was some kind of freeware.
Anyways, instead of iTunes found a program called "
floola", and using it since.
Floola was so good that I'm still using it today, without any updates. Very small program, I keep it in the iPod, and run it from the iPod. Available for Windows, Linux and Mac. Let's one move or copy whatever between a PC host and an iPod player. No question asked, no updates nagging, no firmware push, no data harvesting, no calling home, no other stupid thing each and every piece of software does nowadays. It just do one thing, and do it well, without asking for attention or trying to "protect" me, or to "enhance" my experience.