Like the rest of us, our friends a few cubicles down at PC World get fed up to the point where the dam of their frustration eventually bursts. Such was the case when PC World posted its 11 Things We Hate About iTunes, along with an equally ire-filled companion piece Is Apple iTunes the new AOL? (Our short answer: No. No, it isn't. Our longer answer: The new AOL? Really?)

PC World, we feel your pain. We at Macworld have been dealing with Apple issues since the dinosaurs walked the earth and have learned to deal with things with a measure of patience and understanding. With that in mind, allow me to attempt to take some of the sting out of those 11 hateful things.

1. Wildly Inefficient Updates

What PC World Hates: "Forcing us to download and reinstall the entire program for every little update. And bundling QuickTime, too, whether it's new or not."

It's true, when Apple issues a new version of iTunes it forces you to download the entire application rather than a patch. We, on the Mac side, suffer a bit less because we aren't required to also download QuickTime as Windows users are. For example, on the Mac the iTunes 7.7 download weighs in at 48.4MB. Windows users must download 60.6MB of data and it would be nice if there was a patch.

On the bright side, it's only 60.6MB for a couple of full applications versus a patch like, oh, say, Windows Vista Service Pack 1, which runs just under 727MB.

And while I appreciate the concern for those using a dial-up connection, you'll be pleased to know that nearly every feature brought to recent versions of iTunes have to do with bandwidth-intensive tasks such as renting movies and purchasing applications from the App Store. If you're stuck with a dial-up connection, it's unlikely you'll be doing any of these things. Feel free to stick with older versions of iTunes.

2. DRM (Boo!)

What PC World Hates: "So why does the iTunes Store still employ digital rights management (DRM) for the majority of songs in its library? Blaming the record labels no longer holds water: AmazonMP3 and Rhapsody are among a growing number of services selling DRM-free MP3s from all the major labels, not just EMI."

Yep, digital rights management sucks but I'm afraid giving a pass to the record labels doesn't hold water. Do you suppose Apple likes slapping DRM on the tracks it sells, or could it possibly be that the record labels, hoping to lessen iTunes' dominance and power, refuse to offer these same DRM-free tracks to Apple? I'm betting on the latter. And after reading this article in which my colleague Dan Moren touches on how record labels are using DRM-free content to bolster iTunes' rivals, perhaps you'd be inclined to agree.

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