8 ms·

I absolutely abhor the Apple Music UI. Why...WHY is it that people design stuff like this? > Why are the fonts so large that you can't see list of songs prope

I absolutely abhor the Apple Music UI. Why...WHY is it that people design stuff like this? > Why are the fonts so large that you can't see list of songs properly? > Why do I have to click so many times to be able to view all songs in an album? > Within a couple of clicks, I should be able to view a list of songs in my playlist and I can sort it the way I want. By year, by genre, by any parameter of the song > Same thing for albums list and artists list Unbelievable - the new UI paradigm with BOLD fonts and large negative space is eating into the limited valuable real estate on a mobile device. What goes into these people's minds? Can someone shed some light?

jasonwilk 9y ago
I concur. One big pain point is how small the buttons are to change songs. I'm usually driving when listening to Apple music and would love it if I had huge buttons or could go vertical for driving model which made it dead simple. Nope, let's make it hard so my eyes go off the road. This and it also seems like Apple has given up on a lot of their playlists. Adding one song per week doesn't count as updated playlist. For how many billions they generate, you'd think you could just have an army of people making amazing playlists.
- threeseed 9y ago
  I actually disagree that Apple should make it easier for you to physically use your phone whilst driving. If you need to change songs use Siri or better yet pull over. And I also disagree that saying that Apple has given up on their "playlists" or that they are stagnant in content. There are many playlists within Apple Music: the auto generated ones e.g. Chill Mix which are refreshed once a week, the Beats1/Guest ones which are refreshed very often e.g. a few times a day and the ones littered through Browse which again are often updated once a week. Which "playlists" are you referring to ?
  - rainbowmverse 9y ago
    Arguing with a robot over spelling seems like it would be more distracting than hitting a button.
    - alsetmusic 9y ago
      > Arguing with a robot over spelling seems like it would be more distracting than hitting a button. The discussion preceding this comment is about navigational buttons, not selecting songs from a playlist. Siri will not argue with you when you simply request the “next song”.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - radus 9y ago
        > Okay, texting "Song"
  - wand3r 9y ago
    > I actually disagree that Apple should make it easier for you to physically use your phone whilst driving. My college banned smoking on campus halfway through my studies. They removed every ashtray from campus. This lead to people littering cigarette butts everywhere.
    - globuous 9y ago
      There's actually still ash tray in airplane toilets for that reason. I think it's legally required for airplanes flying through the US to have ashtray in toilets although it's illegal to smoke in these same airplanes ^^
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - obtino 9y ago
    > And I also disagree that saying that Apple has given up on their "playlists" They don't update any of their playlists that often. For instance, their "new music" playlist gets updated once every week. TripleJ, the local ad-free radio station in Australia, updates their new-music playlist every day. There's so much (western) music being released throughout the world that I find it unfathomable that it takes Apple a week to filter out 25 songs. I was with Google Music and they would have a new playlist (new music or otherwise) catered to my taste every morning.
    - threeseed 9y ago
      Having the New Music playlist change every day sounds like a terrible idea. Personally I am not going through 25 new singles every day so I like having the time to appreciate what has been chosen. If you want completely new music then look at the Radio section. They have full, hand-picked playlists which update at minimum 3x a day.
- hrktb 9y ago
  Wouldn’t getting back to the lock screen (slide from the top) solve your issue ? That’s super fast and you can almost blindly hit the buttons. For most audio app it’s a better control scheme than the in-app smallish buttons you struggle with.
eclipxe 9y ago
I love the Apple Music UI.
- mortenjorck 9y ago
  I'm genuinely surprised at all the disdain for it here. Coming at least from Spotify's scattershot mobile UI, Apple Music is straightforward, consistent, and, critically, performant (Spotify is the slowest-loading, non-game app on my phone). Certainly there are gaps, particularly when it comes to sorting. But all this about bold fonts and button sizes seems to stem more from an expectation that a music app should be a dense, text-focused experience like iOS's email app than from any fundamental design issue. Given Apple Music's focus on album art as the primary identifier for recordings, the UI has an appropriate information density - one can argue that's the wrong priority, but if you accept that premise, the UI supports it well.
  - gnud 9y ago
    Album art is the wrong focus if you listen to classical music, at least.
threeseed 9y ago
I am honestly confused what you are talking about. Looking at Apple Music right now I see no bold fonts except for say Library and Artists which only appear on those main screens. The negative space you talk about is largely a result of them making the thumbnails large (on list view) and because otherwise the screen would be cluttered (on now playing view). Personally I think it's clean and pretty well designed and a lot better than the alternatives.
- fermienrico 9y ago
  Please find the marked wasted space at the screenshot below (Yellow markup): https://i.imgur.com/EKJ4VHJ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/EKJ4VHJ.jpg 1. Is it really necessary to say “Apple Music” on top!? We know it’s Apple Music. Also "Get all the music you want" tag line is unnecessary. 2. Huge amounts of wasted space above “Browse”. 3. Space on the right of “Browse” 4. If the category/genes string length is small, why take up the entire bottom half of the screen? 5. Row spacing is excessively large I understand that white space has a tremendous value in design especially when you have screen real estate and valid reasons. On a phone, I want maximal density of information so I don’t have to go into a hierarchy try while I need to quickly do something. Flatter UI hierarchy is preferred over deeper obfuscation of branches. There is so much I could say. In fact, I might write a blog post explaining why Apple Music’s UI is one of the worst of any App I have ever used. I will explain and provide mock ups of the design.
  - clivestaples 9y ago
    I would enjoy reading such a blog post.
  - tozeur 9y ago
    Please do, that would be an enlightening read!
  - threeseed 9y ago
    1. It says Apple Music since you haven't paid for a subscription. 2. Mostly because of 1. But the rest is because when you scroll that white space changes to show the title. 3. This is to be consistent with the other sections. 4. This is a standard list view used across all of iOS. What exactly are you expecting Apple to do here ? 5. This might be to do with your phone or font size. The white spacing isn't that large on iPhone X. By all means write a blog but my suggestion would be to buy the app first just so you have the proper experience. And then appreciate that Apple designs their phones for a very broad audience i.e. think grandparents. Maximal density of information is not something most people want.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
I'm of the mind that all the good UI concepts for touch screen smartphones have been done. Combine this with change for changes sake and it's easy for me to believe we've passed Peak UI and are on the down the other side of the bell curve. I think we should demand a 12 month moratorium on UI changes across all operating system user interfaces and focus on stability and speed.
on_and_off 9y ago
>What goes into these people's minds? Can someone shed some light? Maybe I can shed _some_ light. I worked for one of the big music streaming services for a while. >limited valuable real estate on a mobile device. Maximizing data density on a screen is absolutely not a goal on any 'large audience' app. Yes, an app with tons of data crammed on a screen would make some folks happy in the HN/geeky communities (I am not sure that's true actually, but that's something that I often see power users asking for). That's not who these apps are targeting though. The design of these apps is often a mix between opinionated choices (basically what is trendy right now in the design circles) and what works in user testing. Turns out, most of our users are ABSOLUTELY lost when they have to interact with a mobile app. Music streaming services have way too many features : albums playlists radios some kind of AI powered automatically created track lists (all services give this a different name, but they all have pretty much the same feature) lyrics, podcasts On top of that, there is a ton of data for every single track : title album artist composer !!!! (classical music treatment is usually awful in any streaming app) . has lyrics ? is downloaded on your device ? The player adds another layer of complexity : current track queue random mode repeat mode Here is the dirty little secret of the music streaming industry : how to present all this in a way that allows random users (not geeks) to efficiently interact with the app : nobody knows how to do that :/ . There is just way too many information to cram on a screen. To pile on that, usual development cycles are focused on releasing new features, either to keep up with the competition or because that's how PMs demonstrate that they are 'improving' the app. It is orthogonal to actually improving the user experience and we can see cycles of several years where the UI becomes more and more bloated with random stuff until designers are able to push a redesign with half of the features. And soon we start cramming features again until the end of this new cycle.
- fermienrico 9y ago
  I think there is a balance between something that looks like Apple Music and an excel spreadsheet full of information. Apple Music is way out of the normal density expected from a quality app. Apple has a phenomenal understanding of UI and they're one of the best - just look at the UI of the settings menu on your iPhone. Everything is cleanly laid out - just the right amount of information density. Apple Music seems like it was designed by someone like Will-I-Am (sorry :-) ) with absolutely zero understanding of basic functional UI principles. If I were to design UI, I'd design it like how aviation does cockpits. Functional, not "trendy". Everything has a reason - if you can't explain "WHY", you shouldn't be designing UI. Personal taste, subjective opinions, "I kinda like it that way" doesn't work in aviation industry. Please don't take it as I mean Apple to follow the same principles, I am just mentioning the other end of the spectrum in UI design to provide contrast.
zamalek 9y ago
> Can someone shed some light? Touch interfaces are exasperated by Fitt's Law. This is actually good design.

jasonwilk 9y ago

I concur. One big pain point is how small the buttons are to change songs. I'm usually driving when listening to Apple music and would love it if I had huge buttons or could go vertical for driving model which made it dead simple. Nope, let's make it hard so my eyes go off the road. This and it also seems like Apple has given up on a lot of their playlists. Adding one song per week doesn't count as updated playlist. For how many billions they generate, you'd think you could just have an army of people making amazing playlists.

threeseed 9y ago
I actually disagree that Apple should make it easier for you to physically use your phone whilst driving. If you need to change songs use Siri or better yet pull over. And I also disagree that saying that Apple has given up on their "playlists" or that they are stagnant in content. There are many playlists within Apple Music: the auto generated ones e.g. Chill Mix which are refreshed once a week, the Beats1/Guest ones which are refreshed very often e.g. a few times a day and the ones littered through Browse which again are often updated once a week. Which "playlists" are you referring to ?
- rainbowmverse 9y ago
  Arguing with a robot over spelling seems like it would be more distracting than hitting a button.
  - alsetmusic 9y ago
    > Arguing with a robot over spelling seems like it would be more distracting than hitting a button. The discussion preceding this comment is about navigational buttons, not selecting songs from a playlist. Siri will not argue with you when you simply request the “next song”.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - radus 9y ago
      > Okay, texting "Song"
- wand3r 9y ago
  > I actually disagree that Apple should make it easier for you to physically use your phone whilst driving. My college banned smoking on campus halfway through my studies. They removed every ashtray from campus. This lead to people littering cigarette butts everywhere.
  - globuous 9y ago
    There's actually still ash tray in airplane toilets for that reason. I think it's legally required for airplanes flying through the US to have ashtray in toilets although it's illegal to smoke in these same airplanes ^^
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- obtino 9y ago
  > And I also disagree that saying that Apple has given up on their "playlists" They don't update any of their playlists that often. For instance, their "new music" playlist gets updated once every week. TripleJ, the local ad-free radio station in Australia, updates their new-music playlist every day. There's so much (western) music being released throughout the world that I find it unfathomable that it takes Apple a week to filter out 25 songs. I was with Google Music and they would have a new playlist (new music or otherwise) catered to my taste every morning.
  - threeseed 9y ago
    Having the New Music playlist change every day sounds like a terrible idea. Personally I am not going through 25 new singles every day so I like having the time to appreciate what has been chosen. If you want completely new music then look at the Radio section. They have full, hand-picked playlists which update at minimum 3x a day.
hrktb 9y ago
Wouldn’t getting back to the lock screen (slide from the top) solve your issue ? That’s super fast and you can almost blindly hit the buttons. For most audio app it’s a better control scheme than the in-app smallish buttons you struggle with.

eclipxe 9y ago

I love the Apple Music UI.

mortenjorck 9y ago
I'm genuinely surprised at all the disdain for it here. Coming at least from Spotify's scattershot mobile UI, Apple Music is straightforward, consistent, and, critically, performant (Spotify is the slowest-loading, non-game app on my phone). Certainly there are gaps, particularly when it comes to sorting. But all this about bold fonts and button sizes seems to stem more from an expectation that a music app should be a dense, text-focused experience like iOS's email app than from any fundamental design issue. Given Apple Music's focus on album art as the primary identifier for recordings, the UI has an appropriate information density - one can argue that's the wrong priority, but if you accept that premise, the UI supports it well.
- gnud 9y ago
  Album art is the wrong focus if you listen to classical music, at least.

threeseed 9y ago

I am honestly confused what you are talking about. Looking at Apple Music right now I see no bold fonts except for say Library and Artists which only appear on those main screens. The negative space you talk about is largely a result of them making the thumbnails large (on list view) and because otherwise the screen would be cluttered (on now playing view). Personally I think it's clean and pretty well designed and a lot better than the alternatives.

fermienrico 9y ago
Please find the marked wasted space at the screenshot below (Yellow markup): https://i.imgur.com/EKJ4VHJ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/EKJ4VHJ.jpg 1. Is it really necessary to say “Apple Music” on top!? We know it’s Apple Music. Also "Get all the music you want" tag line is unnecessary. 2. Huge amounts of wasted space above “Browse”. 3. Space on the right of “Browse” 4. If the category/genes string length is small, why take up the entire bottom half of the screen? 5. Row spacing is excessively large I understand that white space has a tremendous value in design especially when you have screen real estate and valid reasons. On a phone, I want maximal density of information so I don’t have to go into a hierarchy try while I need to quickly do something. Flatter UI hierarchy is preferred over deeper obfuscation of branches. There is so much I could say. In fact, I might write a blog post explaining why Apple Music’s UI is one of the worst of any App I have ever used. I will explain and provide mock ups of the design.
- clivestaples 9y ago
  I would enjoy reading such a blog post.
- tozeur 9y ago
  Please do, that would be an enlightening read!
- threeseed 9y ago
  1. It says Apple Music since you haven't paid for a subscription. 2. Mostly because of 1. But the rest is because when you scroll that white space changes to show the title. 3. This is to be consistent with the other sections. 4. This is a standard list view used across all of iOS. What exactly are you expecting Apple to do here ? 5. This might be to do with your phone or font size. The white spacing isn't that large on iPhone X. By all means write a blog but my suggestion would be to buy the app first just so you have the proper experience. And then appreciate that Apple designs their phones for a very broad audience i.e. think grandparents. Maximal density of information is not something most people want.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago

I'm of the mind that all the good UI concepts for touch screen smartphones have been done. Combine this with change for changes sake and it's easy for me to believe we've passed Peak UI and are on the down the other side of the bell curve. I think we should demand a 12 month moratorium on UI changes across all operating system user interfaces and focus on stability and speed.

on_and_off 9y ago

>What goes into these people's minds? Can someone shed some light? Maybe I can shed _some_ light. I worked for one of the big music streaming services for a while. >limited valuable real estate on a mobile device. Maximizing data density on a screen is absolutely not a goal on any 'large audience' app. Yes, an app with tons of data crammed on a screen would make some folks happy in the HN/geeky communities (I am not sure that's true actually, but that's something that I often see power users asking for). That's not who these apps are targeting though. The design of these apps is often a mix between opinionated choices (basically what is trendy right now in the design circles) and what works in user testing. Turns out, most of our users are ABSOLUTELY lost when they have to interact with a mobile app. Music streaming services have way too many features : albums playlists radios some kind of AI powered automatically created track lists (all services give this a different name, but they all have pretty much the same feature) lyrics, podcasts On top of that, there is a ton of data for every single track : title album artist composer !!!! (classical music treatment is usually awful in any streaming app) . has lyrics ? is downloaded on your device ? The player adds another layer of complexity : current track queue random mode repeat mode Here is the dirty little secret of the music streaming industry : how to present all this in a way that allows random users (not geeks) to efficiently interact with the app : nobody knows how to do that :/ . There is just way too many information to cram on a screen. To pile on that, usual development cycles are focused on releasing new features, either to keep up with the competition or because that's how PMs demonstrate that they are 'improving' the app. It is orthogonal to actually improving the user experience and we can see cycles of several years where the UI becomes more and more bloated with random stuff until designers are able to push a redesign with half of the features. And soon we start cramming features again until the end of this new cycle.

fermienrico 9y ago
I think there is a balance between something that looks like Apple Music and an excel spreadsheet full of information. Apple Music is way out of the normal density expected from a quality app. Apple has a phenomenal understanding of UI and they're one of the best - just look at the UI of the settings menu on your iPhone. Everything is cleanly laid out - just the right amount of information density. Apple Music seems like it was designed by someone like Will-I-Am (sorry :-) ) with absolutely zero understanding of basic functional UI principles. If I were to design UI, I'd design it like how aviation does cockpits. Functional, not "trendy". Everything has a reason - if you can't explain "WHY", you shouldn't be designing UI. Personal taste, subjective opinions, "I kinda like it that way" doesn't work in aviation industry. Please don't take it as I mean Apple to follow the same principles, I am just mentioning the other end of the spectrum in UI design to provide contrast.

zamalek 9y ago

> Can someone shed some light? Touch interfaces are exasperated by Fitt's Law. This is actually good design.