First off, I think that Chris would agree with me in saying that MC10 is not for everyone, but for someone like me who needs to manage 10,000+ songs in various formats then this is really the only piece of software that can do it.
OK, you've heard paranoya's comments from the left and Chris's comments from the center, now you will get my comments from the right. BTW I make no bones about the fact that I can't stand iTunes and think it is a piece of cr...minimalist software that really doesn't do anything great, but does most things OK. Below you will find the pros and cons of iTunes vs MC10 and remember this is coming for someone who takes his MC10 quite seriously. So, here is my opinion FWIW.
iTunes
Pros
Dynamic Smartlists
Transfer speed to iPod
Gracenotes DB (for me this is a con).
Cons
Just about everything else vs. MC10
No Lame or FLAC for Windows users.
iTunes for Windows is nowhere near as good as the Mac version.
Music management. What music management?
MC10
Cons
Still can't tag AAC files.
Can't encode AAC files.
No smartlist wizard.
Documentation needs to be updated!!!
And above pros for iTunes.
Pros
Best ripper on the market. Equal of EAC in everyway.
Uses Lame for mp3s.
Ability to rip to lossless.
Can use external encoders
Smartlists are more powerful.
Bulk renamer.
Tagging interface is better.
Ability to create different views to filter music.
Ability to create plugins.
Support. There are actually people listening to what you want.
These are what have easily come to mind, and in fairness if I took some more time I'm sure I could come up with more pros for iTunes and a few more cons for MC10, but frankly I couldn't care less about iTunes, and I'm really not going to try and convert anyone away from iTunes, unless I think that they are in the same boat as me.
BTW I've tried to use iTunes a couple of times, and for me it just doesn't do anything that I need. I do use AAC, but I would never use iTunes to rip, and was totally unsatisfied with the AAC encoder Apple uses, so I switched to Nero. Frankly, I would love to have dynamic smartlists, but not at the expense of losing the music management abilities that I have in MC10, and since I do have lossless files there is really no reason for me to even have iTunes on my computer.
One last comment. Yes, MC10 is buggy, but if you can't take bugs then you shouldn't use beta software, and stick with the last none stable version. It would be nice if new buyers could use MC9, since even the last none stable version of MC10 has bugs.
And remember that this is a comment from a MC10 zealot, so take it FWIW.
Bill