4 ms·

iTunes is sticking around on Windows but will just be for audio books and podcasts? That’s absolutely bizarre.

• tecleandor 3y ago
  iTunes... but no tunes in it? :P
  • chrisjj 3y ago
    Tunes are permitted ... provided they are in audio books ;)
• gruez 3y ago
  ...only if you also install apple music or apple tv. If you don't you can still use it for music/videos. >When you install the Apple Music or Apple TV app, you can only use those apps for your music, TV shows, and movies; you can continue to use iTunes to listen to your audiobooks and podcasts.
  • iggldiggl 3y ago
    While offline playback will be unaffected, I wonder how long iTunes's connection to the iTunes store ecosystem will keep working and whether you'll eventually be forced to install Apple Music for accessing the iTunes store?
• rchaud 3y ago
  Messy branding is now par for the course at Apple. The iPad line alone is something out of a Dell catalog: iPad, iPad 10thgen, iPad Air, iPad Mini, iPad Pro.
  • bee_rider 3y ago
    The only one that really sticks out as odd there is the 10th gen. Basic, Air, Pro is also their laptop lineup, right—it has been for quite a while, and nobody has complained. Mini seems like a reasonable and easy to interpret addition give tablet use-cases. I’m guessing the 10th gen is the one with the super long support lifetime or something like that? That’s a slightly weird iPad-ism.
    • Kwpolska 3y ago
      > Basic, Air, Pro is also their laptop lineup In the most recent iteration of this lineup, the 12-inch MacBook was comically underpowered, especially for its price, there was no good reason to purchase that instead of an Air or a Pro. This was also quite short-lived, with an official discontinuation after four years.
      • bee_rider 3y ago
        Huh, I didn’t know they’d dropped the basic model. It always made sense to me, at least: “pro” is premium in a power direction, “air” is premium in a lightness direction, and the base model is just the base model. But I guess it is unsurprising that Apple doesn’t want to do a base model, haha. Another way of looking at it, I guess, is just that it is an evolutionary process, and every MacBook is a descendent of the Air now.
        • Kwpolska 3y ago
          The 2015-2019 12-inch MacBooks had zero benefits over MacBook Air, maybe other than the Retina screens, until the release of the 2018 Retina MacBook Air. Other than that, they had CPUs <= 1.4 GHz, a single USB-C port, and even the camera was only 480p. They were never cheaper than the base model of the 13-inch MacBook Air.
          • bee_rider 3y ago
            Oh wow. It did seem like an odd device, but I thought they were at least cheaper than the Airs. How strange of them.
    • ascagnel_ 3y ago
      The issue with the Mini is that you'd usually expect it to be the budget option (since it has a smaller screen), but it's more of an Air with a smaller screen in terms of hardware and features, with a price to match.
      • 3y ago
• al_borland 3y ago
  I assume this is to cover the gaps in the new apps. In macOS they moved extra stuff to Finder. It seems the device sync app might make more sense on Windows. Maybe that will happening in time.
• dangus 3y ago
  It’s weird branding. Your local music and iTunes purchases live in the Music app. Apple Music the service also lives in the Music app. (Music purchased on iTunes can be downloaded directly to the device without syncing, but you need to manually sync with your computer to transfer over music that you acquired elsewhere. Either that or you subscribe to the iTunes Match service assuming that sticks around) Basically, in the PC version of these apps the main difference compared to Mac seems to be that Apple didn’t split Podcasts and Audibooks into separate apps. They’re just mushed into an app that’s weirdly called iTunes. I feel like they should have clumsily but less confusingly called it “Apple Podcasts and Audiobooks”