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At this point it is pretty clear that, at least on the Mac side, iTunes has no future. The Mac is clearly moving towards an iOS-like setup where there are seper

by ahakki 9y ago

At this point it is pretty clear that, at least on the Mac side, iTunes has no future. The Mac is clearly moving towards an iOS-like setup where there are seperate Apps for Videos, Music, Podcasts, and so on. Now that Apple has discontinued all non-iOS based iPods (so everything except the iPod touch) this raison-d'être has also disappeared. What remains to be seen is how this plays out on Windows.

minikites 9y ago
> What remains to be seen is how this plays out on Windows. Given that a computer isn't really necessary to operate an iOS device these days, could Apple just cancel the Windows version of iTunes without a replacement?
- jakebasile 9y ago
  That would leave Windows users without access to Apple Music, Podcasts, Movies, TV Shows, and so on.
  - monochromatic 9y ago
    Yeah, that's not very likely.
  - cmiles74 9y ago
    They could just use their phones or other iOS devices. I would think the number of Windows users who use iTunes and do not have an iOS device must be vanishingly small.
    - jakebasile 9y ago
      When I’m gaming, I don’t want to use my iOS device. I want the music coming out of the same headphones I’m already wearing.
CharlesW 9y ago
> What remains to be seen is how this plays out on Windows. My bet would be that iTunes/Win32 will be replaced with web apps, requiring Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) for DRM. iTunes for Windows currently relies on QTML ("QuickTime Media Layer"), which is the porting layer that the QuickTime team created to bring QuickTime (and QuickTime Player, etc.) to Windows. I'm sure that Apple would love to kill QTML as soon as they can. I'm also reasonably sure that Apple isn't interested in Universal Windows Platform (UWP) development. That leaves web technologies as a likely solution, which (based on iCloud's web apps) Apple's pretty good at, and seems to be betting on in earnest.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > My bet would be that iTunes/Win32 will be replaced with web apps, requiring Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) for DRM. That does not allow managing your iDevices... while I believe there is some html5 way to access Bluetooth, I rather hope they won't ever implement USB...
  - Someone 9y ago
    Well, there is https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/03/access-usb-devices-on-the-web https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/03/access-usb.... Luckily, they aren’t that insane: "Attacks against USB devices The WebUSB API does not even try to provide a way for a web page to connect to arbitrary USB devices. There are plenty of published attacks against USB devices that makes it unsafe to allow this. For this reason, a USB device can define a set of origins that are allowed to connect to it. This is similar to the CORS mechanism in HTTP. In other words, WebUSB devices are associated with a web origin and can only be accessed from a page from the same origin."
StringyBob 9y ago
Itunes is only used on my mac to backup my phone.
- earenndil 9y ago
  libimobiledevice has tools, idevicebackup2 and idevicerestore, and I'm fairly sure they work on osx. Take a look!

by ahakki 9y ago

minikites 9y ago

> What remains to be seen is how this plays out on Windows. Given that a computer isn't really necessary to operate an iOS device these days, could Apple just cancel the Windows version of iTunes without a replacement?

jakebasile 9y ago
That would leave Windows users without access to Apple Music, Podcasts, Movies, TV Shows, and so on.
- monochromatic 9y ago
  Yeah, that's not very likely.
- cmiles74 9y ago
  They could just use their phones or other iOS devices. I would think the number of Windows users who use iTunes and do not have an iOS device must be vanishingly small.
  - jakebasile 9y ago
    When I’m gaming, I don’t want to use my iOS device. I want the music coming out of the same headphones I’m already wearing.

CharlesW 9y ago

> What remains to be seen is how this plays out on Windows. My bet would be that iTunes/Win32 will be replaced with web apps, requiring Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) for DRM. iTunes for Windows currently relies on QTML ("QuickTime Media Layer"), which is the porting layer that the QuickTime team created to bring QuickTime (and QuickTime Player, etc.) to Windows. I'm sure that Apple would love to kill QTML as soon as they can. I'm also reasonably sure that Apple isn't interested in Universal Windows Platform (UWP) development. That leaves web technologies as a likely solution, which (based on iCloud's web apps) Apple's pretty good at, and seems to be betting on in earnest.

mschuster91 9y ago
> My bet would be that iTunes/Win32 will be replaced with web apps, requiring Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) for DRM. That does not allow managing your iDevices... while I believe there is some html5 way to access Bluetooth, I rather hope they won't ever implement USB...
- Someone 9y ago
  Well, there is https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/03/access-usb-devices-on-the-web https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/03/access-usb.... Luckily, they aren’t that insane: "Attacks against USB devices The WebUSB API does not even try to provide a way for a web page to connect to arbitrary USB devices. There are plenty of published attacks against USB devices that makes it unsafe to allow this. For this reason, a USB device can define a set of origins that are allowed to connect to it. This is similar to the CORS mechanism in HTTP. In other words, WebUSB devices are associated with a web origin and can only be accessed from a page from the same origin."

StringyBob 9y ago

Itunes is only used on my mac to backup my phone.

earenndil 9y ago
libimobiledevice has tools, idevicebackup2 and idevicerestore, and I'm fairly sure they work on osx. Take a look!