4 ms·

Totally agree. I love Apple's products but iTunes is an abomination. One anecdote notes that U2's Bono complained to Jobs that it was no different than a spread

Totally agree. I love Apple's products but iTunes is an abomination. One anecdote notes that U2's Bono complained to Jobs that it was no different than a spreadsheet... well, I'd be happy if it were halfway as useful as a good spreadsheet. Instead it has zero flexibility. There seems to be a trend in some software to prefer search functionality over other basic UI techniques for presenting information. When I have a big music library, I don't always know what I'm looking for explicitly. I want to browse my music based on my own strategy, but doing this in iTunes has never really been possible. And it's not better on the iPhone's own music app. For a company that led the world in music-listening technology, their software for it sure has always been downright awful.

FussyZeus 11y ago
It's weird too, if you're looking at Playlists it looks like Excel, the only way out is to view your entire collection, but then you can't find sh!t because it gives you NO information as opposed to ALL information. Also, on the topic of playlists, removing a song from a playlist is labeled "Delete." Are you f!cking kidding Apple? This is UI Design 101!
- hellofunk 11y ago
  It blows my mind how Apple has let this atrocious product represent such a core part of what the company has always stood for: music. How did they let this happen in the first place, and more importantly, why in tarnation has it never been improved?
  - FussyZeus 11y ago
    Honestly I think it's good old fashioned Developer laziness, and/or marketing. They've whittled down all their Windows offerings to just iTunes for Windows, which handles devices, music, streaming, movies, etc. etc. and they don't want to have to develop and maintain multiple applications. And why OS X is infected? They probably share a fair amount of code. It's just feature creep. On iOS you have a Music app, a Podcasts app (which is garbage), a Store app and I believe Movies and whatnot are under videos. It makes a certain degree of sense, yet in OS X universe, all of these are brought down into a single app with just a clusterfuck of a UI. I honestly feel a little bad for whoever has to design it, I can't imagine how difficult it would be to combine all that functionality and feature creep into a UI that felt even a LITTLE coherent, and honestly they do a pretty good job, it's the problem they're handed that should be addressed, i.e. break it up into a few apps.
  - parasubvert 11y ago
    Same reason Microsoft Outlook still is in heavy use; its a complicated set of festures that are hard to get right or to replicate.
  - smacktoward 11y ago
    Because as long as it's the only supported way to manage your music on the world's most popular mobile devices, there won't be any appreciable market pressure on them to improve it. iTunes: Use It Because You Have To™
    - FussyZeus 11y ago
      It gets even more fun. When you're an iOS developer, all device provisioning and authorization happens via iTunes. So when iTunes is borked (which has totally never happened before) I can't build any projects to my devices until they fix it. I can't count how many times I've had to blow away iTunes application support directory to fix something that got screwed on Apple's end. It's a nightmare.
  - zeveb 11y ago
    > such a core part of what the company has always stood for: music Ummm, until the iPod (2001) Apple didn't stand for music. Apple's been around since 1976, 39 years; it's been a music-related company for fourteen of those years. Indeed, Apple Computer had to assure Apple Corps (the Beatles' record label) that it wouldn't enter the music business, which was the subject of lawsuits over the years (c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer). Years ago, before I discovered Unix and freedom, I was a huge Apple fan. I loved Macs (understandable, when one compares them to Windows and DOS machines). Apple stood for user-friendliness, for ease of use, even for happiness or pleasure. It never stood for music back then.
    - hellofunk 11y ago
      I should have said, what Apple 2.0 has stood for. Because music was very much the foundation for what led to the modern Apple Inc after Jobs return.

FussyZeus 11y ago

It's weird too, if you're looking at Playlists it looks like Excel, the only way out is to view your entire collection, but then you can't find sh!t because it gives you NO information as opposed to ALL information. Also, on the topic of playlists, removing a song from a playlist is labeled "Delete." Are you f!cking kidding Apple? This is UI Design 101!

hellofunk 11y ago
It blows my mind how Apple has let this atrocious product represent such a core part of what the company has always stood for: music. How did they let this happen in the first place, and more importantly, why in tarnation has it never been improved?
- FussyZeus 11y ago
  Honestly I think it's good old fashioned Developer laziness, and/or marketing. They've whittled down all their Windows offerings to just iTunes for Windows, which handles devices, music, streaming, movies, etc. etc. and they don't want to have to develop and maintain multiple applications. And why OS X is infected? They probably share a fair amount of code. It's just feature creep. On iOS you have a Music app, a Podcasts app (which is garbage), a Store app and I believe Movies and whatnot are under videos. It makes a certain degree of sense, yet in OS X universe, all of these are brought down into a single app with just a clusterfuck of a UI. I honestly feel a little bad for whoever has to design it, I can't imagine how difficult it would be to combine all that functionality and feature creep into a UI that felt even a LITTLE coherent, and honestly they do a pretty good job, it's the problem they're handed that should be addressed, i.e. break it up into a few apps.
- parasubvert 11y ago
  Same reason Microsoft Outlook still is in heavy use; its a complicated set of festures that are hard to get right or to replicate.
- smacktoward 11y ago
  Because as long as it's the only supported way to manage your music on the world's most popular mobile devices, there won't be any appreciable market pressure on them to improve it. iTunes: Use It Because You Have To™
  - FussyZeus 11y ago
    It gets even more fun. When you're an iOS developer, all device provisioning and authorization happens via iTunes. So when iTunes is borked (which has totally never happened before) I can't build any projects to my devices until they fix it. I can't count how many times I've had to blow away iTunes application support directory to fix something that got screwed on Apple's end. It's a nightmare.
- zeveb 11y ago
  > such a core part of what the company has always stood for: music Ummm, until the iPod (2001) Apple didn't stand for music. Apple's been around since 1976, 39 years; it's been a music-related company for fourteen of those years. Indeed, Apple Computer had to assure Apple Corps (the Beatles' record label) that it wouldn't enter the music business, which was the subject of lawsuits over the years (c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer). Years ago, before I discovered Unix and freedom, I was a huge Apple fan. I loved Macs (understandable, when one compares them to Windows and DOS machines). Apple stood for user-friendliness, for ease of use, even for happiness or pleasure. It never stood for music back then.
  - hellofunk 11y ago
    I should have said, what Apple 2.0 has stood for. Because music was very much the foundation for what led to the modern Apple Inc after Jobs return.