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What the death of iTunes says about digital habits
- JMr3c376 7y ago... iTunes became a bucket of too many features, so apple split it up into multiple applications. Apple music is pretty much exactly the same as iTunes was without a bunch of non-music related features. It's silly to say ~"iTunes died" it just changed names.
- dzhiurgis 7y agoUses same 1gig of ram and misses some key features like proper track search. Go figure how it’s an improvement...
- tambourine_man 7y ago>proper track search Please explain. What is is missing? I find that it works pretty well. Is was one of its main selling point at the time and its interface spread throughout the OS: Finder, Spotlight, System Preferences, etc
- dzhiurgis 7y agoNew search field now return album covers (yuck). Old list search feature is now under View > Show Filter Field. Disappears after app restarts...
- tambourine_man 7y agoYou can change that. I configured it to work as it used to. I use it as the old 2000s versions, no album cover stuff
- dzhiurgis 7y agoPlease, how? I was just browsing my library today and it's a tragedy how bad it got...
- tambourine_man 7y agoSorry for the late reply. That's iTunes on Mojave. https://imgur.com/a/0DJml25 https://imgur.com/a/0DJml25 Haven't made the jump to Catalina just yet. Mostly because of Sizzling Keys (control iTunes from system wide keyboard shortcuts) I think the trick is to set “filter by all” on the search field, but there might be some other preference setting somewhere.
- Nextgrid 7y agoI know certain parts of iTunes including Apple Music are web apps. Could it be that the entire new Music app is just a web app (using their own implementation of an Electron equivalent)? That would explain the memory usage.
- madeofpalk 7y agoMy understanding is that they're kind of web pages. Rather than HTML/CSS/JS, they have custom elements that are rendered from the server markup.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- m463 7y agoProbably just became to unweildy for the developers and they split it out. I can't imagine successfully staffing a giant monolithic application. I think it would be hard to get job satisfaction working on a tiny piece of an app with decades of cruft. Most apps like this are several orders of magnitude larger than say, the linux kernel.
- unlinked_dll 7y agoI can't imagine how a music player became such a monolithic application in the first place... But I mean that's not true. I suspect the reason it was such a behemoth was because Apple wanted it to be the gateway and gatekeeper to both acquiring media and transferring it to the device. Like Spotify manages to do quite well for itself without being the monstrosity that iTunes became. I'd guess that the foundation of Apple's garden walls is also the source of their technical debt.
- morpheuskafka 7y agoNot to mention, the standalone iTunes Store is still called that, although it is certainly less successful now that Apple Music (the service, not the app) is available. And there is as of yet no plan to move away from the iTunes app on Windows.
- chmaynard 7y ago> Apple music is pretty much exactly the same as iTunes was without a bunch of non-music related features. Hmm, not really. I took a brief look at the UI during the Catalina beta and concluded that I wanted nothing to do with it. I have spent years learning how to use iTunes well. I'm not about to throw away that investment of time and energy on a new, untested app with a different UI. I'll stick with iTunes to manage my music library. Catalina will have to wait, probably forever.
- sysbin 7y agoThe new UI in Catalina is worse. You cannot view other albums when you have an album open, instead you have to click a button to go back for viewing all the albums again. I also think the music app takes way too much space of the screen for what it needs shown to function. Apple must not have anyone seriously working on it.
- wwweston 7y ago> I'm not about to throw away that investment of time and energy on a new, untested app with a different UI. Come on, now. Think of the poor product managers, the struggling UX researchers and designers. How are they going to make their careers off of minor upgrades tied down to past investments of users?
- WWLink 7y agoSpeaking of that, iTunes Radio and Apple Music are TERRIBLE guis! The web-based column views are really limited and crappy. You can do so much better with web GUIs if you want to, but Apple just wanted to waste a ton of screen space.
- ProfessorLayton 7y agoThis is so incredibly true and particularly frustrating on iOS where the music player + Apple Music is a complete UX mess. There are so many features that everything os buried under more and more menus. On top of that it is riddled with bugs!
- Nextgrid 7y agoThe Music app became a complete disaster on iOS. Now it's one thing if they want to kill their new streaming service due to bad UX, but the problem is that the stand-alone music app also suffered.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoThey totally destroyed the audiobooks feature. Can't edit ID3, no playlists with Catalina. It's hard to believe how they could destroy it so thoroughly.
- xnyan 7y agoFirst, I agree with you - it's bullshit they took away the features they did. That said, of all the people you know in the Apple ecosystem, how many people know/do the following: know what an id3 tag is, manage the metadata of their digital audio content, listen to audiobooks. Maybe I'm wrong, but most non-nerds I know don't and would not ever want to think about 1 and 2. Plenty of people who fall into 3, but again all people who don't like or work in tech that I know use audible or the public library or some other service. I like so much about Apple products, but my big and growing fear is that my needs and the needs of the kind of person who edits ID3 tags are constantly being subsumed by the much larger portion of their customer base that has no need and no desire be involved in anything like editing file metadata.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoTo some degrees I understand but I think this a dangerous path. The Mac is a tool for creators and professionals so if they make the Mac into an iPad then people will just buy iPads. Maybe that’s what Apple wants but I think it’s very dangerous to drive away the people who made you successful.
- mercer 7y agoThe vast majority of developers that I know use macs. And not just web developers. That's got to be a sizable userbase, considering that a growing number of non-devs that I know use crappy laptops and instead use their phones for most of their digital needs. Of course I have no idea if this is reflected in the world-wide breakdown of Mac users, but I'd be surprised if the 'programmer' category isn't sizable enough that it's kind of silly (in a typical Apple way) to ignore them.
- xnyan 7y ago
- naravara 7y agoI do feel like They’re having some trouble with the UX though since it has to juggle 3 kinds of file management. You’ve got the obvious “manage my music files on this device” part. Then you’ve got the “manage my music files as part of this iCloud library” part. Then you’ve got “stream music from the subscription service” part. It’s actually quite hard to make playlists and stuff since, over time, people start to lose track of what form they have the rights to any particular song.
- wtmt 7y ago> It's silly to say ~"iTunes died" it just changed names. I don’t agree at all. While iTunes was feature rich and relatively stable, the replacements are relatively feature poor and quite unstable. Apple should’ve taken another year to introduce the replacements.
- kalleboo 7y agoIt could have been much, much worse. They could have ported over the iOS Music app.
- pmullins 7y agoI'm pretty sure that's exactly what they did. My understanding is that they based the macOS version on the iOS version. Explains quite a bit.
- kalleboo 7y agoThe macOS Catalina Music app is very much still based on iTunes. It still supports AppleScript, the preferences dialog is still a modal, it retains a bunch of subtle (not always desired) behavior in stuff like metadata edit autocomplete and multiple window support, etc, it even has the ancient legacy visualizer, it's all still iTunes. The Podcasts/TV/Books apps that got split out OTOH I believe are all iOS ports
- pixelrevision 7y ago“relatively stable” You didn’t use itunes much did you?
- noughtme 7y agoDoes the author mean to say the ‘explosive success’ of itunes that required its functionality be spun off into three separate apps? Another boomer who doesn’t know how to use his phone or alter Finder preferences on the first page of settings!
- greatquux 7y agoI don’t know. He really floated away into his own sea at the end there. I sort of get his point, just not how he got there, or whether it’s really the case at all.
- hinkley 7y agoSome things sound great when you write the first few paragraphs and turn to hash by the time you get it all down. If I were reborn as an author I’d hope I was wise enough to always trust my editor more than my ego. They don’t hand em out to non writers.
- matheusmoreira 7y ago> Most iPhone users, instead of tapping on a favorite app, now just search for it from the top bar. Funny how "intuitive" interfaces must regress to ideas that must be over half a century old by now just to work properly.
- rosstex 7y agoDidn't expect the article to mention this, but this is absolutely true for me. I only know the locations of some apps, and I search for the rest.
- ViViDboarder 7y agoI rigorously organize my mobile apps, so this is quite rare for me. However, pretty much everything I do through my desktop (GUI at least) is done with search. Actually, I do the same in my terminal too with `fzf`, but to a lesser extent.
- pdimitar 7y agoWith time I discovered that the muscle memory I build to do tasks on my phone and tablet is strictly bound to the exact locations of the app icon and all the action buttons in it. So I am like you. I religiously arrange my home screens (iPhone and iPad) but just use `fzf` and other similar software pieces (like `helm` for Emacs) for pretty much anything on my Macs. I am also pondering paying for Alfred for macOS. I hear it's a fantastic piece with a similar search-centric idea in its heart.
- rosstex 7y agoP.S. thanks for introducing me to fzf, you just saved me tons of time!
- sevencolors 7y agoFascinating. My fist screen is all apps I use daily. The second is everything else in folders
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- CharlesW 7y agoMy take on the author's take is that by point 10, he's realized what a muddled and silly thing this is. > So what really failed, maybe, wasn’t iTunes at all… At which point whatever substance he's abused to get that far really kicks in for his final point. > In 1940, the German critic Walter Benjamin wrote about an angel in a Paul Klee painting. […] It is now clear, 80 years later, that the angel is looking at his phone. Sheesh.
- bjornlouser 7y ago“It is now clear, 80 years later, that the angel is looking at porn on his phone”
- mnemonicsloth 7y agoWalter Benjamin is the original inspiration for the postmodernists. His writing is nonsensically opaque. If his name appears in an article, it's a good sign that the article is about to go off the rails.
- claudiawerner 7y agoYour comment is wonderfully muddled, since Benjamin was not an original inspiration for so-called postmodernist thinkers at all. Benjamin (and his intellectual companions, Adorno, Marcuse and others) were very much modernists, right before the heyday of the French "postmodernists". One has to wonder how 'opaque' Benjamin is, given that he is one of the most studied critical theorists in philosophy and literature. He must be at least translucent if there are knowledgable people making sense and use of his ideas. Apparently his ideas are sufficiently clear and interesting for an interest on HN[0]. In fact... someone on HN in 2014 claimed that Benjamin was a "postmodernist" too, and they were quickly shut down on that claim[1]. [0] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=walter+benjamin https://hn.algolia.com/?q=walter+benjamin [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8295413 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8295413
- bordercases 7y ago> given that he is one of the most studied critical theorists in philosophy and literature Found your problem.
- gswdh 7y agoYeh I thoroughly hate iTunes. The opening time alone, but the store vs library separation was...
- est31 7y agoiTunes is dead? Have I missed something?
- mgleason_3 7y agoOr maybe, it’s just that iTunes sucks, hard. ...and has for 10 years. ...so Apple - let us manage our own digital media.
- LeoPanthera 7y agoI'm not sure you understand what iTunes is.
- remir 7y agoStreaming services, iCloud backup, podcasting apps on iPhone rendered iTunes obsolete.
- disposedtrolley 7y agoOn a side note, that quote by Fitche is the perfect summary of refactoring spaghetti code: > you could not remove a single grain of sand from its place, without thereby, although perhaps imperceptibly to you, altering something throughout all parts of the immeasurable whole
- DonHopkins 7y agoThe Abelian sandpile model of software design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abelian_sandpile_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abelian_sandpile_model
- cpach 7y agoNitpick: Fichte
- soufron 7y agoDid iTunes ever had a life?
- j45 7y agoiTunes was a stop-gap when Apple didn't want to have an app store at any cost for the iPhone when it first came out.
- Macha 7y agoWhile the iTunes client has been something I've directed much dislike to over the years, the iTunes store feels like the last place I can get mainstream music DRM free to just play on any of my devices and keep regardless of what licensing deals change. While Spotify is great for access to music, the client is very poor for library/playlist management, and some music I'd just like to have my own copy of. If the store ever shuts down in favour of Apple Music subscriptions only, it feels like I'd have to go back to buying CDs.
- scarface74 7y agoYou can get DRM free digital music from Amazon.
- Macha 7y agoI'll have to check if it's available in my country, most of their options to buy digital content are not.
- Macha 7y agoAs an update: It is not. It looks available, but attempting to pay for something prompts me to enter a US/UK/DE payment method depending on which site I use.
- cpach 7y agoDo they offer lossless files? E.g. FLAC.
- scarface74 7y agoNo - 256kbps AAC
- tgv 7y agoFor classical and jazz, there's e.g. prestomusic.com
- hbk 7y ago
- cortesoft 7y agoI am confused... I still sync my phone to my iTunes on my computer. There is no other way to add music that I get from outside of Apple. Also, I use it to have a full backup of my phone. I have hundreds of gigs of photos and videos I don't want to lose, and you can only backup everything if you use your computer.
- knolan 7y agoOn MacOS 10.15 Catalina, iTunes is replaced by various Music, podcasts, Apple TV apps with device management moved to the Finder. iTunes is still a thing on Windows.
- rewtraw 7y agoiCloud seems to do a fine job backing up photos and videos. When I get a new iPhone, I don't even take a manual backup -- I just login to iCloud and wait for everything to sync. iCloud restore populates all my apps, settings, photos, videos, etc. Apart from having to setup FaceID and re-enter passwords, it's like nothing changed.
- cortesoft 7y agoBut I can backup to my computer for free... I would have to pay $9.99 a month for 2TBs of iCloud storage....
- wtmt 7y ago> Apart from having to setup FaceID and re-enter passwords, it's like nothing changed. ...except for waiting (several) hours re-downloading things and blasting out the data limits on one’s broadband plan. A local sync with a computer has been much faster for me all the time when setting up a new phone.
- wheybags 7y agoThe repeated use of the word "Americans" in this piece, where what they mean is "people" is particularly jarring...
- unixhero 7y agoiTunes was one entire antipattern.
- thought_alarm 7y agoMy iTunes Library is 15 years old, contains 11,496 songs, 871 music videos, 2,418 television episodes, and 67 movies. Only now it's split up to two different apps, once of which is laughably unfinished but otherwise continues to do the job. Meanwhile, after 5 1/2 years and $578, I cancelled my Netflix subscription and have no intention to ever start it up again. Dead, indeed.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mcenedella 7y ago“(A note for older readers: More time separates us today from the debut of the first iPod than separated the first iPod from the debut of the first Macintosh computer.)“ Wow.
- garyrob 7y agoYeah. Wow.
- dredmorbius 7y agoSimilarly, OS X is now older than Classic Mac OS (1984) was when OS X was released (2001).
- kristofferR 7y agoWell, technically the last OS X release was in 2015, but I get your point.
- em-bee 7y agoit's much older than that if you count NeXTStep history. OS X didn't start from scratch
- dredmorbius 7y agoFair point, though I'm satisfied at looking at Apple's marketed offerings. You could take NeXT back to Thompson & Ritchie. NeXTStep as ur-Aqua is also a fair argument, but again, not occurring on mainline Mac generally. By that argument Classic Mac might be traced to the Alto and MOAD.
- em-bee 7y agoi am not familiar with the history of the Alto or MOAD and how they connect to the classic mac. i'd love to learn more though. according to wikipedia classic MacOS was partially based on Lisa OS, whereas OS X is nothing more or less than a full port of NeXTStep with a slight visual update. i have used both. they are the same UI. the difference is cosmetic. it's the same code too. i believe the kernel has changed more than the UI layer. the question is not the spiritual ancestors but how old the code is that is still in use today. and i belive that if we look we'll find some Objective-C code in OS X today that goes all the way back to the first versions of NeXTStep.
- blihp 7y agoI wouldn't say that iTunes died of natural causes, but rather that Apple killed it. Bit by bit over the course of years starting with the iPod Photo when they added picture syncing, then video, etc etc. Even podcasts never really fit in that well with the static library model that worked so well for your music library. It's too bad because when it was just an app to manage your music library it was clean, easy to use and logical. When it had to manage the kitchen sink of crap that Apple piled into it and morphed into a syncing app first and music player/library management became a secondary (or lower) priority, it never had a chance.
- wutbrodo 7y ago> when it was just an app to manage your music library it was clean, easy to use and logical. Strong disagreement here: I always found iTunes to be the poster child of incompetent design. It's design was a good fit for stuffing a lot of functionality into because it was never coherent or usable to begin with.
- tus88 7y agoA someone who lives outside the Apple bubble...how Apple users listen to music now? Spotify? What if you have a local library?
- unlinked_dll 7y agoI don't use my phone as a listening device at all. I'm split between Foobar 2K and Plex on other devices, Spotify at work. For the car it's basically local NPR but I don't drive much.
- snuxoll 7y agoThe Music app handles local libraries just fine.
- tus88 7y agoIs that the logical successor to itunes? If so did it really die or just morph into something else?
- dangus 7y agoiTunes did not die, no. It morphed as you described. The iTunes Store app is used to buy music on iOS. The Music app has an iTunes Store section as well. You can disable even being shown Apple Music (the subscription service) to both of those apps. You can sync locally just like your iPod, but on Catalina that functionality has been moved to Finder. But I believe you can initialize a music or photo sync in the respective apps as well. Audiobooks have moved out of iTunes (music) and into the Booms app. Not really that much has changed besides organization. And the changes have been a good idea, IMO.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- KiDD 7y agoThis article is just dumb... iTunes, while a bit bloated, worked just fine. Music replaces it well for music stuff. Mostly seem to complain about the removal of Apps function from iTunes, which was actually harder to manage your home screen with then just doing it on the device.