6 ms·

> iTunes used to be if not the, then certainly a flagship app for Apple. I have used iTunes off and on for around two decades and it has never been a great or

> iTunes used to be if not the, then certainly a flagship app for Apple. I have used iTunes off and on for around two decades and it has never been a great or even mediocre experience. It was always bad. The author is fondly remembering a time which might never have existed.

tafda 4y ago
To be fair, SoundJam MP really whipped the llama’s ass. Apple ruined it after the acquisition.
judge2020 4y ago
For me, iTunes was quite good on Mac. It's the Windows experience that has always been an afterthought, for example: why is there not an option to turn off "black out other monitors when going full-screen on a movie"?
- smoldesu 4y ago
  I didn't even mind it on Windows, honestly. The installation process was convoluted and it was a bit resource-heavy to run, but I liked it more than Winamp and Windows Media Player at the time. It was a flawed port, but still nice to use.
- cptskippy 4y ago
  > why is there not an option to turn off "black out other monitors when going full-screen on a movie"? Here was my train of thought on reading that: Who voluntarily uses iTunes? Who voluntarily uses iTunes on Windows? Can you watch movies in iTunes on Windows? Why would you ever want to do that? Blacking out other monitors on full-screen? That's a pretty novel idea, I've never seen that before. Apple would never implement such a cool feature on a competing platform.
  - devin 4y ago
    - You stream music from Apple Music - You have purchased video/tv content on your Apple TV or other iOS device - You want your podcasts sync'd across your devices
mistrial9 4y ago
for those that "deify" Steve Jobs, please recall the day that Jobs Apple CEO personally visited the tiny office of Audion developers, and told them "you have no chance" of marketing their fun and well-designed Mac native application.. as part of the iTunes rollout, backdrop anti-trust on MSFT over media tools.
- davidy123 4y ago
  He also promised to open source the tech behind Facetime, presumably because he could see it would create a rift in society. Now, Tim Cook dances on that rift.
jprete 4y ago
iTunes was set up to organize and listen to a music collection instead of just showing a table of music files. That was a pretty good experience and I don’t know of any other app that does that even today.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  It is a web app but the Jellyfin music player does a good job of organizing music. If you like listening to albums you can also keep them in your file system by artist, album, and song and have an easy time finding things.
lapcat 4y ago
I have used iTunes — consistently — for around two decades, and while I agree that iTunes was mediocre, Music app is soooooo much worse. It's total crap. Embarrassingly bad. I would happily trade Music app to get iTunes back again.
- matwood 4y ago
  What's funny is that when they announced iTunes was going away, people cheered because they hated the kitchen sink approach that iTunes had become. I think a lot of the Music.app issues stem from it being what looks like a SwiftUI/Catalyst app more than anything else.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Does it? Music.app not only looks like iTunes but is iTunes. Though I guess it depends on which tab you're in.
    - matwood 4y ago
      When it was announced: https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/3/18647182/apple-itunes-podcasts-music-tv-mac-os-wwdc-2019 https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/3/18647182/apple-itunes-podc...
wyager 4y ago
At least the old itunes wouldn't randomly jump into a fullscreen video player (!??) for some fraction of songs in my library.
chongli 4y ago
I’ve been using Music (previously iTunes) since it was called SoundJam MP. It’s always been fine for me. It’s had some issues here and there but nothing that would ever get me to describe it as “bad.” Why do you think it’s bad? I’ve heard others say the same but I’ve never heard a general (as opposed to esoteric) reason.
- agsnu 4y ago
  I miss Audion.
JohnBooty 4y ago
I thought it was pretty great around roughly 2004-2015. What won me over compared to Winamp was iTunes' smart playlists. I'm actually surprised they haven't borked, neutered, or removed that feature. It's still the same and it's still good. It did a lot of other things right too. It was convenient to edit metadata for multiple files. CD ripping was painless and used a high quality mp3 encoder at a time when that was not a given. In general, it was one of those apps that just behaved logically to me and rarely if ever surprised me in a bad way. When iTunes introduced "iTunes in the cloud" or whatever it was called -- the ability to have your files mirrored in the cloud -- I was more or less in heaven for a while. I had a few moans and niggles but nothing much. I actively kind of hate it now though. Too many media types (with different paradigms) crammed into one app. The result is a mess. Not sure it could be any other way.
TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
I instantly gave up on iTunes around 2006 or so when I spent three weeks ripping music from CD into my own file system, imported it into iTunes (because let's see what happens...) and it utterly and spectacularly trashed everything. I haven't used it since. (Although it still starts automatically when I try to rip a CD using XLD.) Now I use VLC for music on my phone and Vox on MacOS. Both are imperfect. FLAC isn't gapless in VLC, and Vox keeps trying to sell me things. But they work well enough to get some semblance of the job done. The real problem is the conflict between utility and consumption. iTunes/Music were never there to conveniently manage and play audio (utility), but to lock users into a consumption silo. So importing and playing music from external sources has never been a design goal. Vox has some similar issues, but isn't quite as bad. VLC is more of a utility app, which makes it more useful. (I suspect it has no problem playing an MP4 audio playlist.)
Nevermark 4y ago
I happily used iTunes to manage a library and playlists for many years. And then it became a slog and I gave up. iTunes/Music has always been an unusual app, but there were work flows (play flows?) whose practicality has come and gone.
vor_ 4y ago
I thought iTunes was great for many years. However, I never used the Windows version.

tafda 4y ago

To be fair, SoundJam MP really whipped the llama’s ass. Apple ruined it after the acquisition.

judge2020 4y ago

For me, iTunes was quite good on Mac. It's the Windows experience that has always been an afterthought, for example: why is there not an option to turn off "black out other monitors when going full-screen on a movie"?

smoldesu 4y ago
I didn't even mind it on Windows, honestly. The installation process was convoluted and it was a bit resource-heavy to run, but I liked it more than Winamp and Windows Media Player at the time. It was a flawed port, but still nice to use.
cptskippy 4y ago
> why is there not an option to turn off "black out other monitors when going full-screen on a movie"? Here was my train of thought on reading that: Who voluntarily uses iTunes? Who voluntarily uses iTunes on Windows? Can you watch movies in iTunes on Windows? Why would you ever want to do that? Blacking out other monitors on full-screen? That's a pretty novel idea, I've never seen that before. Apple would never implement such a cool feature on a competing platform.
- devin 4y ago
  - You stream music from Apple Music - You have purchased video/tv content on your Apple TV or other iOS device - You want your podcasts sync'd across your devices

mistrial9 4y ago

for those that "deify" Steve Jobs, please recall the day that Jobs Apple CEO personally visited the tiny office of Audion developers, and told them "you have no chance" of marketing their fun and well-designed Mac native application.. as part of the iTunes rollout, backdrop anti-trust on MSFT over media tools.

davidy123 4y ago
He also promised to open source the tech behind Facetime, presumably because he could see it would create a rift in society. Now, Tim Cook dances on that rift.

jprete 4y ago

iTunes was set up to organize and listen to a music collection instead of just showing a table of music files. That was a pretty good experience and I don’t know of any other app that does that even today.

PaulHoule 4y ago
It is a web app but the Jellyfin music player does a good job of organizing music. If you like listening to albums you can also keep them in your file system by artist, album, and song and have an easy time finding things.

lapcat 4y ago

I have used iTunes — consistently — for around two decades, and while I agree that iTunes was mediocre, Music app is soooooo much worse. It's total crap. Embarrassingly bad. I would happily trade Music app to get iTunes back again.

matwood 4y ago
What's funny is that when they announced iTunes was going away, people cheered because they hated the kitchen sink approach that iTunes had become. I think a lot of the Music.app issues stem from it being what looks like a SwiftUI/Catalyst app more than anything else.
- astrange 4y ago
  Does it? Music.app not only looks like iTunes but is iTunes. Though I guess it depends on which tab you're in.
  - matwood 4y ago
    When it was announced: https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/3/18647182/apple-itunes-podcasts-music-tv-mac-os-wwdc-2019 https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/3/18647182/apple-itunes-podc...

wyager 4y ago

At least the old itunes wouldn't randomly jump into a fullscreen video player (!??) for some fraction of songs in my library.

chongli 4y ago

I’ve been using Music (previously iTunes) since it was called SoundJam MP. It’s always been fine for me. It’s had some issues here and there but nothing that would ever get me to describe it as “bad.” Why do you think it’s bad? I’ve heard others say the same but I’ve never heard a general (as opposed to esoteric) reason.

agsnu 4y ago
I miss Audion.

JohnBooty 4y ago

I thought it was pretty great around roughly 2004-2015. What won me over compared to Winamp was iTunes' smart playlists. I'm actually surprised they haven't borked, neutered, or removed that feature. It's still the same and it's still good. It did a lot of other things right too. It was convenient to edit metadata for multiple files. CD ripping was painless and used a high quality mp3 encoder at a time when that was not a given. In general, it was one of those apps that just behaved logically to me and rarely if ever surprised me in a bad way. When iTunes introduced "iTunes in the cloud" or whatever it was called -- the ability to have your files mirrored in the cloud -- I was more or less in heaven for a while. I had a few moans and niggles but nothing much. I actively kind of hate it now though. Too many media types (with different paradigms) crammed into one app. The result is a mess. Not sure it could be any other way.

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago

I instantly gave up on iTunes around 2006 or so when I spent three weeks ripping music from CD into my own file system, imported it into iTunes (because let's see what happens...) and it utterly and spectacularly trashed everything. I haven't used it since. (Although it still starts automatically when I try to rip a CD using XLD.) Now I use VLC for music on my phone and Vox on MacOS. Both are imperfect. FLAC isn't gapless in VLC, and Vox keeps trying to sell me things. But they work well enough to get some semblance of the job done. The real problem is the conflict between utility and consumption. iTunes/Music were never there to conveniently manage and play audio (utility), but to lock users into a consumption silo. So importing and playing music from external sources has never been a design goal. Vox has some similar issues, but isn't quite as bad. VLC is more of a utility app, which makes it more useful. (I suspect it has no problem playing an MP4 audio playlist.)

Nevermark 4y ago

I happily used iTunes to manage a library and playlists for many years. And then it became a slog and I gave up. iTunes/Music has always been an unusual app, but there were work flows (play flows?) whose practicality has come and gone.

vor_ 4y ago

I thought iTunes was great for many years. However, I never used the Windows version.