5 ms·

Their UI quality is more mystique than reality. iTunes was a particular abomination among many. Not only did it have a terrible interface which conformed with n

Their UI quality is more mystique than reality. iTunes was a particular abomination among many. Not only did it have a terrible interface which conformed with nobody's standards and looked nothing like any other Mac app, it also had a propensity for eating your music, especially music which was yours and acquired outside the Apple store. Hardly a quality program. Apple apps are still famous for focusing more on keeping you in their walled garden than on making the best UI for the user.

908B64B197 6y ago
> iTunes was a particular abomination among many It didn't have to be really good: It was better than any other digital music store out there!
- loup-vaillant 6y ago
  Software that does this: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250315803 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250315803 is likely worse than nothing at all.
CharlesW 6y ago
Assuming you mean Apple Music (iTunes was an okay MP3 player/ripper, but is dead), I consider it the exception that proves the rule. Enjoy the schadenfreude of this recent Apple Music for macOS review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mimixco 6y ago
  No, I meant iTunes. Their willingness to make that was a harbinger of Bad Things to Come, ala the review you linked. Apple had some good UI ideas in the past. For a fleeting moment, they were the best. But eons ago they sold out the user to sell him a lifestyle/subscription system built around keeping people from leaving. This vastly compromised their UI designs to the point of making them frustrating and sometimes futile.
  - loup-vaillant 6y ago
    I once read a composer complaining that iTunes has deleted his master records and "helpfully" replaced them with compressed files (lossy compression of course). I tried to find it to prove your point, but found this instead: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250315803 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250315803 Software that loses data it fetched or produced is an accident. Software that actively search for and deletes data it has nothing to do with (in backups!!), is malware. People went to jail over such things.
    - mimixco 6y ago
      There are many iTunes stories like that. A friend of mine who is a composer and singer had his original songs erased from his library, irreplaceable live recordings, because of Apple's open hostility toward files they didn't create.
  - CharlesW 6y ago
    iTunes was SoundJam MP with an Apple makeover. Both SoundJam MP and Audion were the shit at the time, so I recall being thrilled at the acqui-hire. Why specifically do you hold iTunes in such low regard? The bolt-on, beyond-music functionality has always sucked, but I didn't find it wanting from a music management POV. (Although I never used it for ripping. dBpoweramp for me, thank you.)
    - mimixco 6y ago
      iTunes was never as good as any of the free music managers out there at the time. It lacked most serious features that users with a real collection (of their own) might need. Anything related to finding, sorting, organizing, naming, changing metadata, moving, sharing, re-ripping, ripping at all, etc. were severely crippled. Perhaps that's because SoundJam didn't build those features. But they stayed unbuilt because Apple didn't want them. As far as the raw UI, they were shown to the door by Zune which was a massive failure! Couldn't Apple with its money and music business success have made Zune or something even better? Of course they could. They had an early lead. My point is they chose not to because openness and control in music (or anything else) is antithetical to their business model. This adversarial view of users is also what lead to terrible iTunes bugs like eating your music, which others also recall well.

908B64B197 6y ago

> iTunes was a particular abomination among many It didn't have to be really good: It was better than any other digital music store out there!

loup-vaillant 6y ago
Software that does this: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250315803 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250315803 is likely worse than nothing at all.

CharlesW 6y ago

Assuming you mean Apple Music (iTunes was an okay MP3 player/ripper, but is dead), I consider it the exception that proves the rule. Enjoy the schadenfreude of this recent Apple Music for macOS review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mimixco 6y ago
No, I meant iTunes. Their willingness to make that was a harbinger of Bad Things to Come, ala the review you linked. Apple had some good UI ideas in the past. For a fleeting moment, they were the best. But eons ago they sold out the user to sell him a lifestyle/subscription system built around keeping people from leaving. This vastly compromised their UI designs to the point of making them frustrating and sometimes futile.
- loup-vaillant 6y ago
  I once read a composer complaining that iTunes has deleted his master records and "helpfully" replaced them with compressed files (lossy compression of course). I tried to find it to prove your point, but found this instead: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250315803 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250315803 Software that loses data it fetched or produced is an accident. Software that actively search for and deletes data it has nothing to do with (in backups!!), is malware. People went to jail over such things.
  - mimixco 6y ago
    There are many iTunes stories like that. A friend of mine who is a composer and singer had his original songs erased from his library, irreplaceable live recordings, because of Apple's open hostility toward files they didn't create.
- CharlesW 6y ago
  iTunes was SoundJam MP with an Apple makeover. Both SoundJam MP and Audion were the shit at the time, so I recall being thrilled at the acqui-hire. Why specifically do you hold iTunes in such low regard? The bolt-on, beyond-music functionality has always sucked, but I didn't find it wanting from a music management POV. (Although I never used it for ripping. dBpoweramp for me, thank you.)
  - mimixco 6y ago
    iTunes was never as good as any of the free music managers out there at the time. It lacked most serious features that users with a real collection (of their own) might need. Anything related to finding, sorting, organizing, naming, changing metadata, moving, sharing, re-ripping, ripping at all, etc. were severely crippled. Perhaps that's because SoundJam didn't build those features. But they stayed unbuilt because Apple didn't want them. As far as the raw UI, they were shown to the door by Zune which was a massive failure! Couldn't Apple with its money and music business success have made Zune or something even better? Of course they could. They had an early lead. My point is they chose not to because openness and control in music (or anything else) is antithetical to their business model. This adversarial view of users is also what lead to terrible iTunes bugs like eating your music, which others also recall well.