4 ms·

UX for laptops/desktops was solved in the early 2000. In the early 2000, my music library was a few dozens GBs played back using mpeg123 or something. Nowadays

by zoul 7y ago

UX for laptops/desktops was solved in the early 2000. In the early 2000, my music library was a few dozens GBs played back using mpeg123 or something. Nowadays it’s a Google Play Music subscription. Things have moved to the cloud, a lot. That’s a huge change in how computers work, requiring some serious UX changes. I too hate gratuitous UI changes, but things need to keep evolving.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Spotify and Google Play Music are a kind of worse version of UI of Foobar2000, with much limited features. There was a huge UX regression coming with the move to the cloud. I'm all for things evolving, but it's better if they don't devolve.
- agersant 7y ago
  Foobar is still working fine though <3
- crummy 7y ago
  For power users, maybe. When I open a music player the first thing I'll do is search for something, and there's no search box at all here: https://www.foobar2000.org/images/img/main.png https://www.foobar2000.org/images/img/main.png I'm sure there is a way to search, but I think Foobar is maybe built for a different kind of user than Spotify, etc.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    They shown the wrong tab. Below is the same thing, but with "Album List" tab selected: https://www.foobar2000.org/images/img/main-black.png https://www.foobar2000.org/images/img/main-black.png (ignore the white-on-black, that's orthogonal style change). See that Filter box? That's a search that, within the scope of your music library, works better than Google's or Spotify's. It's an incremental search box (I believe web kids call that "Instant" nowadays?), that filters the album list by your search about as fast as you type. I don't think it's built for "a different kind of user" - Spotify UI is pretty complex, because everything from search to managing playlists presents you with a pretty noisy UI that makes you click around a lot to find what you want and not click on what you don't want (Foobar never "suggests" you music it fully knows is not what you're searching for). Being a user of both - having switched to Spotify when it became easier than bringing an external drive full of MP3s to work - I can tell the basic UI interactions are of similar complexity, except Spotify is a bit more confusing at times. Foobar's incremental search is such a useful feature I ditched Winamp for it back in the old days, and I still use it as a go-to example in product/UI development sessions.
- pavel_lishin 7y ago
  > There was a huge UX regression coming with the move to the cloud. Maybe in terms of the things you can click and knobs you can twiddle, but moving my music into Google Play and off (e.g.) iTunes means that I can very trivially put music on my mobile device (using either that device, or the computer) that is almost instantly accessible offline, and easy to listen to. That twin gain - ease of sync and offline availability - completely blew Winamp and iTunes so far out of the water that they're in orbit, as far as I'm concerned. (There are things I miss; multiple genres for a given song/album. Organizing by folder and playlist. Visualizations. Sometimes Google Play will forcibly replace my uploaded files with the wrong version - I still have a few songs that are "censored", and it grates me whenever I hear them.)
  - ktpsns 7y ago
    As somebody paying for Spotify, I agree. As somebody who had a MP3 collection on his disk in the 2000s, I disagree. Without doubt, my wifi connection should make it easy and fast to synchronize music between my laptop and smartphone. Nevertheless, "moving to the cloud" favours a centralized setup. Thankfully we see more decentralization on the horizon.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      With music (and videos, and games) there's also another angle that I believe is in big part responsible for the success of Spotify and similar services: they provide an alternative between the only two options people had before - either spend a lot of money buying music in unwieldy formats, or acquire MP3s from copyright infringers.
    - pavel_lishin 7y ago
      I totally agree with you, there should be a self-hosted option. I'd love it if the Google Play API was sufficiently reverse-engineered to just install a modified version of their software to point to my own server. I've asked for open-source/self-hosted solutions before, and a few people here responded. One of the solutions looks like it promises to do what I want, though I haven't had a solid chance to look at it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19555899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19555899
wwweston 7y ago
> I too hate gratuitous UI changes, but things need to keep evolving. Do they? Once something is a tool that meets a need, should the default assumption be that any change can be justified by vague appeals to "evolving", or should there be some specific and defensible justification required beforehand?
msla 7y ago
In the 1950s, cars were made of steel and essentially designed to survive impacts by sacrificing the passengers. These days, they're identical fiberglass mice which fold up into a protective cocoon around their passengers on impact. You know how people drove cars in the 1950s? Steering wheels and some number of pedals. You know how people drive cars now? By calling an Uber, the drivers of which use steering wheels and some number of pedals. So... why hasn't the fundamental UX of the automobile evolved in the past half-century?
flukus 7y ago
> I too hate gratuitous UI changes, but things need to keep evolving. That's devolution in multiple ways. Your app is now tied to your subscription so there's no competition for best music app. The apps are now high latency bandwidth hogs that require a network connection. Your now held to ransom, stop paying us and you lose your entire music collection.

by zoul 7y ago

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Spotify and Google Play Music are a kind of worse version of UI of Foobar2000, with much limited features. There was a huge UX regression coming with the move to the cloud. I'm all for things evolving, but it's better if they don't devolve.

agersant 7y ago
Foobar is still working fine though <3
crummy 7y ago
For power users, maybe. When I open a music player the first thing I'll do is search for something, and there's no search box at all here: https://www.foobar2000.org/images/img/main.png https://www.foobar2000.org/images/img/main.png I'm sure there is a way to search, but I think Foobar is maybe built for a different kind of user than Spotify, etc.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  They shown the wrong tab. Below is the same thing, but with "Album List" tab selected: https://www.foobar2000.org/images/img/main-black.png https://www.foobar2000.org/images/img/main-black.png (ignore the white-on-black, that's orthogonal style change). See that Filter box? That's a search that, within the scope of your music library, works better than Google's or Spotify's. It's an incremental search box (I believe web kids call that "Instant" nowadays?), that filters the album list by your search about as fast as you type. I don't think it's built for "a different kind of user" - Spotify UI is pretty complex, because everything from search to managing playlists presents you with a pretty noisy UI that makes you click around a lot to find what you want and not click on what you don't want (Foobar never "suggests" you music it fully knows is not what you're searching for). Being a user of both - having switched to Spotify when it became easier than bringing an external drive full of MP3s to work - I can tell the basic UI interactions are of similar complexity, except Spotify is a bit more confusing at times. Foobar's incremental search is such a useful feature I ditched Winamp for it back in the old days, and I still use it as a go-to example in product/UI development sessions.
pavel_lishin 7y ago
> There was a huge UX regression coming with the move to the cloud. Maybe in terms of the things you can click and knobs you can twiddle, but moving my music into Google Play and off (e.g.) iTunes means that I can very trivially put music on my mobile device (using either that device, or the computer) that is almost instantly accessible offline, and easy to listen to. That twin gain - ease of sync and offline availability - completely blew Winamp and iTunes so far out of the water that they're in orbit, as far as I'm concerned. (There are things I miss; multiple genres for a given song/album. Organizing by folder and playlist. Visualizations. Sometimes Google Play will forcibly replace my uploaded files with the wrong version - I still have a few songs that are "censored", and it grates me whenever I hear them.)
- ktpsns 7y ago
  As somebody paying for Spotify, I agree. As somebody who had a MP3 collection on his disk in the 2000s, I disagree. Without doubt, my wifi connection should make it easy and fast to synchronize music between my laptop and smartphone. Nevertheless, "moving to the cloud" favours a centralized setup. Thankfully we see more decentralization on the horizon.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    With music (and videos, and games) there's also another angle that I believe is in big part responsible for the success of Spotify and similar services: they provide an alternative between the only two options people had before - either spend a lot of money buying music in unwieldy formats, or acquire MP3s from copyright infringers.
  - pavel_lishin 7y ago
    I totally agree with you, there should be a self-hosted option. I'd love it if the Google Play API was sufficiently reverse-engineered to just install a modified version of their software to point to my own server. I've asked for open-source/self-hosted solutions before, and a few people here responded. One of the solutions looks like it promises to do what I want, though I haven't had a solid chance to look at it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19555899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19555899

wwweston 7y ago

> I too hate gratuitous UI changes, but things need to keep evolving. Do they? Once something is a tool that meets a need, should the default assumption be that any change can be justified by vague appeals to "evolving", or should there be some specific and defensible justification required beforehand?

msla 7y ago

In the 1950s, cars were made of steel and essentially designed to survive impacts by sacrificing the passengers. These days, they're identical fiberglass mice which fold up into a protective cocoon around their passengers on impact. You know how people drove cars in the 1950s? Steering wheels and some number of pedals. You know how people drive cars now? By calling an Uber, the drivers of which use steering wheels and some number of pedals. So... why hasn't the fundamental UX of the automobile evolved in the past half-century?

flukus 7y ago

> I too hate gratuitous UI changes, but things need to keep evolving. That's devolution in multiple ways. Your app is now tied to your subscription so there's no competition for best music app. The apps are now high latency bandwidth hogs that require a network connection. Your now held to ransom, stop paying us and you lose your entire music collection.