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My main issue with services is that they’re degrading the general experience in favor of pushing them. The Music app is barely functional for listening to your

by orev 4y ago

My main issue with services is that they’re degrading the general experience in favor of pushing them. The Music app is barely functional for listening to your own music files, and they make it very difficult to find broadcast radio streams, instead promoting “Apple Radio Stations”. Setting up a new phone prompts you incessantly about Apple Wallet, iCloud, etc. and uses badges to make you think something is wrong until you begin the process for each (the badges go away if you cancel out of it).

tims33 4y ago
100% agree. It is clearly a compromise of their user experience values in exchange for revenue on some slight above mediocre services.
boplicity 4y ago
It's been clear for a couple of years now (to me) that Apple devices have become a sales platform for Apple services. It first started when I was constantly getting notifications that I was "running out of space" and needed to sign up for paid iCloud services. This, in fact, when I had plenty of space on my Macbook. Such things have only continued. They're adding new products and paid services at a slow but steady pace, and regularly sending me notifications to sign up for those services. When you "upgrade" the OS, you're confronted with a whole slew of opportunities to sign up for more services, with no way to just ignore these prompts. I don't blame them for doing this, but it's become increasingly grating, and turned me off of Apple in general. Like a lot of companies, they're focused on growing their bottom line, and don't see how they're angering their locked-in customers.
- turdit 4y ago
  “they… don't see how they're angering their locked-in customers.“ yea those apple employees are so stupid they have no idea that nagging you constantly is annoying. no of course they just don’t care about other people including their customers. although to be fair sociopathy is essentially just another form of stupidity
  - el_dev_hell 4y ago
    > although to be fair sociopathy is essentially just another form of stupidity Out of curiosity, what do you mean by this?
- samatman 4y ago
  I get more storage than I need, unlimited music, and a comical excess of games, for less than Netflix a month. It's all seamless and I rarely think about it. Yeah I could spend Apple prices for Apple gear and not get the cloud stuff but. Why?
  - tjr225 4y ago
    iCloud is very nice if you’re in the Apple ecosystem.
    - pen2l 4y ago
      I wonder if it’ll ever allow file uploads, à la Dropbox.
      - mwint 4y ago
        It does, through the Files app (and Finder on macOS)
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    What services do you buy? My house is all Apple, and we’ve never bought services other than some applecare.
  - ericd 4y ago
    Because not everyone who uses Apple devices uses only Apple devices and wants to go full lock-in.
com2kid 4y ago
> The Music app is barely functional for listening to your own music files, and they make it very difficult to find broadcast radio streams, instead promoting “Apple Radio Stations”. Oh wow I remember when Microsoft did that! Wow that turned out badly for them, even if the Zune app had an amazing UI. Same mistakes, different decade.
gumby 4y ago
> The Music app is barely functional for listening to your own music files I do still have all my old itunes music in the Music app, so not sure if that's what you're complaining about. OTOH both Music and iTunes can only handle a limited set of file types; neither can do anything with my huge library of flac files. Perhaps that's your complaint, which I agree with.
- techsupporter 4y ago
  I think I am the luckiest person ever because I have thousands of uploaded music files (all converted to ALAC if they weren't already in MP3) and have never had a problem listening to them on any of my devices. The Music app reads the metadata the files already had and I've been able to import lyrics and the like without an issue. It all even works properly on Apple Music for Android, when I briefly had to carry an Android phone for work. Plus, I can edit the metadata for tracks that come from Apple Music to my own tastes so I can tag that a song from the service is one version while my copy of it is a different version. For me, Music is one of those things I hope Apple never "modernizes" because I feel like a lot of this nerd-level functionality would be lost in a major rewrite. It's certainly light years ahead of Spotify's truly pathetic "local files" function.
- berkut 4y ago
  IMO the experience of using Music app for local files (AAC or MP3) has regressed over the years from the 3GS days... You can't hide some things like the Radio button, you can't click artist names of songs playing to jump to the artist, etc... it's functional, but not great... Apps like Ecoute are alternatives and better in some respects (better navigation IMO), but worse in others.
dawson 4y ago
This is true for community generated playlists too. I pay for Apple One, therefor Apple Music, but I keep returning to YouTube Music and Spotify because they both prioritise community generated playlists in their recommendation engine and search results.
CSSer 4y ago
I have an Apple TV 4K, series 6 Watch, iPhone 11, a few Homepod Minis, and smart lights. I also have a MacBook Pro. It is astounding to me how much money I've put into the Apple "ecosystem" only to have anything but a seamless experience with Music and Homekit. It is downright pathetic. Music just doesn't sync well across my devices. Full stop. I can start playing something on my phone, select my Homepods as my speakers via Airplay, and it will play. But if I lock my phone and come back a few minutes later, it'll forget what is currently playing on my HomePods and make me "replace" the music. If I try to control it from my other devices it's the same story. More than once I've had it yell at me for trying to play music in more than one place at a time and try to get me to upgrade to a family plan. I'm single and live alone. Siri also often misunderstands scene names. I just turned to one of the HomePods and said, "Hey Siri, activate 'Nightlights Only'" (a scene name). She said, "Good night." and did nothing. This happens no matter how well I enunciate (general American accent) or how many times I try. In the process of messing with it just now to prove my point before sharing, Siri hit a snag and told me to go update my iCloud account in the home app, so I did and ran into the same problem as this user[0] did two years ago (disappearing password prompt). It's wild. This is not the Apple that made iMessage and Messages in OS X the most seamless text messaging experience I've ever experienced before. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/HomePod/comments/jsw122/homepod_updated_icloud_password_problems/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HomePod/comments/jsw122/homepod_upd... Edit: I had my iPhone’s wifi off. Apparently I had to be on the same network to resolve the iCloud issue. Why not mention that?
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I am also heavily invested in Apple gear, but any feature dealing with Siri/HomeKit gets a big doubt from me. I have two HomePods setup in stereo mode configured to an Apple TV 4K, and I cannot reliably get it to tell me today’s date, start a timer, play a movie, and not even pause or resume the Apple TV 4K. It is so bad, that recently, if you say “Hey Siri, resume”, the audio resumes playing from the Homepods, but the Apple TV 4K still displays the screensaver until you press play on the remote. I do not even understand how that bug works (and it is a new one, the software continuously gets worse).
  - 4y ago
bhauer 4y ago
> The Music app is barely functional for listening to your own music files... The fact that you can't click a band name to navigate to that band's list of albums when playing local media is perhaps the thing I hate most about iOS. The band name renders in the color of a link, but is non-interactive.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ChildOfChaos 4y ago
Ahhh yes, I hated this. My phone kept saying is wasn't fully set up because I hadn't set up Apple Pay but at the time my bank didn't even support it. I think I might have ADHD and I like to minimise any visual distraction by removing everything I can, else it becomes overwhelming for me, just seeing that badge marker when going through something was enough to annoy me. I really wish there was more customisation so you could turn all that crap off that you didn't need / use so it wasn't even through, there is just too much junk on these devices but it's there to serve Apple and not you as a user.
NonNefarious 4y ago
The best part is how Cook declared that the future of Apple is in services like Apple Music, but then Apple made it harder to consume those services by removing the headphone jack from its best-selling music player (the iPhone) and gimping its battery to make it "thinner." So dumb.

by orev 4y ago

tims33 4y ago

100% agree. It is clearly a compromise of their user experience values in exchange for revenue on some slight above mediocre services.

boplicity 4y ago

It's been clear for a couple of years now (to me) that Apple devices have become a sales platform for Apple services. It first started when I was constantly getting notifications that I was "running out of space" and needed to sign up for paid iCloud services. This, in fact, when I had plenty of space on my Macbook. Such things have only continued. They're adding new products and paid services at a slow but steady pace, and regularly sending me notifications to sign up for those services. When you "upgrade" the OS, you're confronted with a whole slew of opportunities to sign up for more services, with no way to just ignore these prompts. I don't blame them for doing this, but it's become increasingly grating, and turned me off of Apple in general. Like a lot of companies, they're focused on growing their bottom line, and don't see how they're angering their locked-in customers.

turdit 4y ago
“they… don't see how they're angering their locked-in customers.“ yea those apple employees are so stupid they have no idea that nagging you constantly is annoying. no of course they just don’t care about other people including their customers. although to be fair sociopathy is essentially just another form of stupidity
- el_dev_hell 4y ago
  > although to be fair sociopathy is essentially just another form of stupidity Out of curiosity, what do you mean by this?
samatman 4y ago
I get more storage than I need, unlimited music, and a comical excess of games, for less than Netflix a month. It's all seamless and I rarely think about it. Yeah I could spend Apple prices for Apple gear and not get the cloud stuff but. Why?
- tjr225 4y ago
  iCloud is very nice if you’re in the Apple ecosystem.
  - pen2l 4y ago
    I wonder if it’ll ever allow file uploads, à la Dropbox.
    - mwint 4y ago
      It does, through the Files app (and Finder on macOS)
- gnicholas 4y ago
  What services do you buy? My house is all Apple, and we’ve never bought services other than some applecare.
- ericd 4y ago
  Because not everyone who uses Apple devices uses only Apple devices and wants to go full lock-in.

com2kid 4y ago

> The Music app is barely functional for listening to your own music files, and they make it very difficult to find broadcast radio streams, instead promoting “Apple Radio Stations”. Oh wow I remember when Microsoft did that! Wow that turned out badly for them, even if the Zune app had an amazing UI. Same mistakes, different decade.

gumby 4y ago

> The Music app is barely functional for listening to your own music files I do still have all my old itunes music in the Music app, so not sure if that's what you're complaining about. OTOH both Music and iTunes can only handle a limited set of file types; neither can do anything with my huge library of flac files. Perhaps that's your complaint, which I agree with.

techsupporter 4y ago
I think I am the luckiest person ever because I have thousands of uploaded music files (all converted to ALAC if they weren't already in MP3) and have never had a problem listening to them on any of my devices. The Music app reads the metadata the files already had and I've been able to import lyrics and the like without an issue. It all even works properly on Apple Music for Android, when I briefly had to carry an Android phone for work. Plus, I can edit the metadata for tracks that come from Apple Music to my own tastes so I can tag that a song from the service is one version while my copy of it is a different version. For me, Music is one of those things I hope Apple never "modernizes" because I feel like a lot of this nerd-level functionality would be lost in a major rewrite. It's certainly light years ahead of Spotify's truly pathetic "local files" function.
berkut 4y ago
IMO the experience of using Music app for local files (AAC or MP3) has regressed over the years from the 3GS days... You can't hide some things like the Radio button, you can't click artist names of songs playing to jump to the artist, etc... it's functional, but not great... Apps like Ecoute are alternatives and better in some respects (better navigation IMO), but worse in others.

dawson 4y ago

This is true for community generated playlists too. I pay for Apple One, therefor Apple Music, but I keep returning to YouTube Music and Spotify because they both prioritise community generated playlists in their recommendation engine and search results.

CSSer 4y ago

I have an Apple TV 4K, series 6 Watch, iPhone 11, a few Homepod Minis, and smart lights. I also have a MacBook Pro. It is astounding to me how much money I've put into the Apple "ecosystem" only to have anything but a seamless experience with Music and Homekit. It is downright pathetic. Music just doesn't sync well across my devices. Full stop. I can start playing something on my phone, select my Homepods as my speakers via Airplay, and it will play. But if I lock my phone and come back a few minutes later, it'll forget what is currently playing on my HomePods and make me "replace" the music. If I try to control it from my other devices it's the same story. More than once I've had it yell at me for trying to play music in more than one place at a time and try to get me to upgrade to a family plan. I'm single and live alone. Siri also often misunderstands scene names. I just turned to one of the HomePods and said, "Hey Siri, activate 'Nightlights Only'" (a scene name). She said, "Good night." and did nothing. This happens no matter how well I enunciate (general American accent) or how many times I try. In the process of messing with it just now to prove my point before sharing, Siri hit a snag and told me to go update my iCloud account in the home app, so I did and ran into the same problem as this user[0] did two years ago (disappearing password prompt). It's wild. This is not the Apple that made iMessage and Messages in OS X the most seamless text messaging experience I've ever experienced before. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/HomePod/comments/jsw122/homepod_updated_icloud_password_problems/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HomePod/comments/jsw122/homepod_upd... Edit: I had my iPhone’s wifi off. Apparently I had to be on the same network to resolve the iCloud issue. Why not mention that?

lotsofpulp 4y ago
I am also heavily invested in Apple gear, but any feature dealing with Siri/HomeKit gets a big doubt from me. I have two HomePods setup in stereo mode configured to an Apple TV 4K, and I cannot reliably get it to tell me today’s date, start a timer, play a movie, and not even pause or resume the Apple TV 4K. It is so bad, that recently, if you say “Hey Siri, resume”, the audio resumes playing from the Homepods, but the Apple TV 4K still displays the screensaver until you press play on the remote. I do not even understand how that bug works (and it is a new one, the software continuously gets worse).
- 4y ago

bhauer 4y ago

> The Music app is barely functional for listening to your own music files... The fact that you can't click a band name to navigate to that band's list of albums when playing local media is perhaps the thing I hate most about iOS. The band name renders in the color of a link, but is non-interactive.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ChildOfChaos 4y ago

Ahhh yes, I hated this. My phone kept saying is wasn't fully set up because I hadn't set up Apple Pay but at the time my bank didn't even support it. I think I might have ADHD and I like to minimise any visual distraction by removing everything I can, else it becomes overwhelming for me, just seeing that badge marker when going through something was enough to annoy me. I really wish there was more customisation so you could turn all that crap off that you didn't need / use so it wasn't even through, there is just too much junk on these devices but it's there to serve Apple and not you as a user.

NonNefarious 4y ago

The best part is how Cook declared that the future of Apple is in services like Apple Music, but then Apple made it harder to consume those services by removing the headphone jack from its best-selling music player (the iPhone) and gimping its battery to make it "thinner." So dumb.