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I've been using iTunes for about 2 years now, since purchasing my third-generation iPod. I loved the fact that iTunes would update the ID3 meta-tags in media content automatically when modified through the GUI. This feature enabled me to introduce consistency into my ID3 tag values (artist, album, genre, etc).

However, I was long leary of letting iTunes manage the organization and name of media files on the file-system. I've got thousands of files that were meticulously organizing by hand over the years. I was terrified by the thought of letting a new and unknown application rearrange them. Once you've seen the ill-conceived devices that often lie behind metaphorical curtain, it's hard to bestow your trust to any magician who could easily wreck countless hours of effort. But things were getting out of hand, and I figured it might be worthwhile letting iTunes handle the least-pleasant aspect of maintaing any collection: content management.

Well, iTunes does a wonderful job of managing media files. So well, in fact, that I never even think to look through the directory containing my media files. I have no need to. This makes perfect sense in terms of application usability. I want to listen to a media file, and not be concerned with how it's stored on the file-system. The file-system is simply an artifact of how modern operating systems store content. I want to use content, not be bogged down with read, writing, moving, deleting files. This translates into a beautiful separation of concerns: the user focuses on using content, the application focuses on managing content in forms not pertinent to the user-experience.

Thanks, Apple, for doing it right! And with the ability to search and browse by ID3 meta-tag values, my media has much more dimension that it ever did through applications that relied on me to act as the bridge between application and file-system.