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The phrase “everything you needed to be entertained” is indicative of the biggest problem that I see with Apple today: a focus on consumerism and passive consum

The phrase “everything you needed to be entertained” is indicative of the biggest problem that I see with Apple today: a focus on consumerism and passive consumption. Twenty years ago, iTunes’ emphasis was on collecting, experiencing, and enjoying an art form. It’s a very subtle difference, but it speaks to the attitude that Apple projects today. When was the last time the intersection with the humanities was mentioned, versus how sleek and desirable the technology is?

breathen 3y ago
> Twenty years ago, iTunes’ emphasis was on collecting, experiencing, and enjoying an art form. This was (and is) also a blatant form of consumerism. I honestly don't see any difference in the negative effects on this outside of going through apple rather than my local FYE.
- incanus77 3y ago
  Sure, Apple aligned itself in a way that ultimately added to its and its partners’ bottom lines. But somehow, the company’s attitude felt aspirational to me in a way that it does not today.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Then you fell for the lifestyle advertising. Simple as that
    - incanus77 3y ago
      I can see your point. For me personally, though, the progression was: 1. Like the look & feel of Apple hardware 2. Feel like the iPod/iTunes scene is shiny bullshit, but whatever 3. Buy a laptop & figure I'll give OS X a shot, if not install Linux 4. Fall in love with the ability to really get some work done rather than have to futz with my system all the time (despite loving to futz with my system) 5. Eventually, become an Apple platform developer
- Liquix 3y ago
  ? no it wasn't. it was taking a beautiful, timeless, intrinsically valuable thing (music) and building a business around it. the idea was that if iTunes is the best way to tag, collect, burn, and listen to music, people would naturally adopt it and then go spend money in the store. this lies in contrast to modern apps' desire to provide an endless library of content within the app or paid service. drives up engagement but pretty soon the point is less "best in class for music lovers" and more "how do we keep them here forever spending money"
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    I don't know what you mean. Content in Apple Music is still best in class. And music lovers spend less money with a monthly streaming subscription, than they used to spend purchasing tracks or albums. I don't know about you, but I certainly spent more than $10.99 a month back when I was buying CD's. And it's even cheaper now in relative terms if you factor in inflation.
    - refulgentis 3y ago
      They mean that 20 years ago I was really into music blogs and videos and tagging and getting videos onto my iPod to the point it's literally what got me into programming: step by step, shitty AppleScript to set up auto convert + add to iTunes flows, compiling C to get the latest HandBrake that could do non-DVDs... Now it's too easy: I have the absolutely fantastic experience of having infinite music in my hand on demand without any of the work. I've completely lost touch with music over the last decade. I am always vaguely frustrated because it's not _that_ good, it panders to my taste too much, and there's no value to any of it. The foraging made it a hobby and intellectually stimulating, the "please tap this! or this! or this! or this!" makes it boring and all the same.
      - crazygringo 3y ago
        > The foraging made it a hobby and intellectually stimulating Funny, I get a far superior foraging experience exploring radio stations based on obscure artists and other people's playlists. I don't understand how the friction of having to build programming tools made your music experience better. And I truly don't understand how making things easier leads to you losing touch with music. Maybe it's more just a function of getting older and having other, new priorities enter your life?
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  iTunes started as a free utility for organizing and playing mp3s for mac users, then Windows support was added. For the first few years you couldn't even spend money on it if you wanted, then they added the iTunes store without removing any functionality, and still charged nothing. What it is now is absolutely blatant consumerism, but you are misremembering what iTunes originally was.
recursive 3y ago
And a presumption that if I want anything other than what they're giving me, it's me that's wrong. Just like they did with the headphone jacks.
- incanus77 3y ago
  I’m not sure I’ve ever understood this take. I think Apple has always been like this (one-button mouse, B&W display, proprietary keyboard plug, dropping the floppy, adopting USB, adopting FireWire, making the original iPod only function as a FireWire hard drive on Windows, etc.) But, like any product maker, the choice of whether you buy it or not is up to you. If you don’t like the whole package, find another option? To put it another way, if, for whatever reason, someone made a delicious food item that was perfect for me in every way — mind-blowing taste, exceptional packaging, incredible mouthfeel, truly a cut above any other food — except that it gave me the extreme shits, I wouldn’t keep eating it and complain about it all the time. I would simply not buy it anymore. I don’t think, as a complete package, it’s for me — despite the fact that everyone has the right to food to nourish them.
  - refulgentis 3y ago
    I've never 100% understood it either, the only steelman I've been able to come up with over years is most people are like me and lose or damage the wireless earbuds every 6-12 months. I'm lucky enough to be a yuppie tech nerd with disposable income to treat it as a fact of life. Whereas for them it feels like a forced march to spend $150 every year.
    - sleepybrett 3y ago
      > Whereas for them it feels like a forced march to spend $150 every year. Except that you are not, there exists a 8-10$ dongle from apple for lightning to headphone and, i just had to check, there exists a usb-c to headphone dongle for the same price range if you happen to have the newest gen phone. So instead it's a forced march to buy a new dongle if you happen to lose your cheap wired headphones/earbuds, assuming you just leave the dongle attached to the headphones/earbuds.
dehrmann 3y ago
Lenovo's jab at this was their slogan "for those who do."
crazygringo 3y ago
> iTunes’ emphasis was on collecting, experiencing, and enjoying an art form. I get much more enjoyment out of experiencing new music through radio functionality in Apple Music or Spotify than wasting time "collecting". It expands my horizons rather than limiting myself to what I already know I like. There's nothing passive about recommendations. I hear a new song I like, I go to research the artist, I start a new radio station based on them, find other artists I didn't know before... it's far more active and stimulating than just listening to the tracks I already know on repeat.
- sgu999 3y ago
  That's a widely different experience I'm getting from it, discovery is really bad in my opinion. "hearing a new song I like" is usually in a completely different place than Apple Music... I don't know if I'm an outlier, but recommendations are absolute rubbish on the home page. Same goes for Netflix actually.
- crowcroft 3y ago
  In my experience you almost entirely lose the human experience of sharing playlists, talking about new discoveries, getting together with people to listen to new music. For each individual it is probably a better experience, but there is something lost still. I don't know if it's fair to lay blame for that on Apple though, it seems like that's where things are going anyway in some many dimensions of life.
  - sunshowers 3y ago
    Just the other day, I discovered a rather incredible ambient/drone album using a nonstandard tuning [1] via Spotify's Discover Weekly, and excitedly pinged all my art-music-liking friends about it. [1] Trances by Jules Reidy: https://juliareidy.bandcamp.com/album/trances https://juliareidy.bandcamp.com/album/trances
    - pmontra 3y ago
      I looked for it on YouTube (via Invidious) and found it. Not my kind of music but that's not the point. The point is that if somebody likes to keep a copy of some songs discovered during a day of autoplaying through YouTube, downloading them is very easy for anybody that wants to. Maybe it's easy to do it also from Spotify but I don't use it so I have no idea.
sgu999 3y ago
> When was the last time the intersection with the humanities was mentioned, versus how sleek and desirable the technology is? Probably around a decade ago, at least. The low hanging fruits of digitalisation have been gone for a while now. I can't really think of anything they've released since for which it was immediately obvious what "problem" was solved. So it requires different arguments to convince us to buy their stuff...
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  Apple watch with ECG? released 2018
- mplewis 3y ago
  Apple Fitness+ launched in 2020 and continues to be heavily updated today?
dr-detroit 3y ago
[dead]
jollyllama 3y ago
> Twenty years ago, iTunes’ emphasis was on collecting, experiencing, and enjoying an art form. Or, better yet, creating. Time was when FCP trounced any video editor for Window, all of which were buggy and unreliable. Now, FCP is more of a niche product for pro or semi pro editors. Garageband was never the top choice for pros, but it was highly accessible at that time. Hours of fun for an adolescent. Now, it's weird and tough to use, presumably due to a fruitless bid to target the pros. Apple has basically given up on the low end of the pro market with their product choices and it's extremely disappointing. At a 5000 ft. view, their product line was basically gentrified as monied consumers pushed out artists and creators.
- paulrpotts 3y ago
  When Apple Logic becomes enshittified, my #1 reason for still owning Macs will go with it.
- riversflow 3y ago
  > weird and tough to use, presumably due to a fruitless bid to target the pros. Have you tried the phone app? It’s fantastic, and easy to use. I assume the expectation is that if you are opening Garageband on a Mac these days, you “graduated” from the phone. > fruitless bid to target the pros. I personally know multiple musicians who have albums on streaming services that they made in Garageband.
  - jollyllama 3y ago
    >Have you tried the phone app? It’s fantastic, and easy to use. I assume the expectation is that if you are opening Garageband on a Mac these days, you “graduated” from the phone. I have not tried the phone app; that makes sense.
- Angostura 3y ago
  Schools still use GarageBand a lot in the UK. It doesn’t seem that weird.
- Nullabillity 3y ago
  This idea of a "low-end creation apps" always sat weird with me. As kids our go-to tools were usually pirated copies of Cubase, Vegas, and Photoshop. Garage Band, iMovie/Windows Movie Maker, or MSPaint weren't even considered.
ghostpepper 3y ago
Well for one, they released an app separate from Music entirely focused on listening and enjoying and discovering classical music.
Spooky23 3y ago
They focused on collecting because they were selling the collectibles. Music is a very emotional and impactful art form. Sometimes we confuse the art with the business. They are very different.
hot_gril 3y ago
The Mac in the early 2000s was centered around creating. iLife was the big selling feature. As a kid, I was super thankful my parents bought an iMac because it meant I could create music in Garageband, organize it in iTunes, mix into into a home video that iMovie loaded from my digital tape camera over FireWire, then burn a DVD in... iDVD. I spent countless hours creating stuff that way, whereas on my previous handed-down Win98 laptop I only played games. Not much of that works as a selling point anymore. iMovie and Garageband are still great, but they don't even come preinstalled.

breathen 3y ago

> Twenty years ago, iTunes’ emphasis was on collecting, experiencing, and enjoying an art form. This was (and is) also a blatant form of consumerism. I honestly don't see any difference in the negative effects on this outside of going through apple rather than my local FYE.

incanus77 3y ago
Sure, Apple aligned itself in a way that ultimately added to its and its partners’ bottom lines. But somehow, the company’s attitude felt aspirational to me in a way that it does not today.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Then you fell for the lifestyle advertising. Simple as that
  - incanus77 3y ago
    I can see your point. For me personally, though, the progression was: 1. Like the look & feel of Apple hardware 2. Feel like the iPod/iTunes scene is shiny bullshit, but whatever 3. Buy a laptop & figure I'll give OS X a shot, if not install Linux 4. Fall in love with the ability to really get some work done rather than have to futz with my system all the time (despite loving to futz with my system) 5. Eventually, become an Apple platform developer
Liquix 3y ago
? no it wasn't. it was taking a beautiful, timeless, intrinsically valuable thing (music) and building a business around it. the idea was that if iTunes is the best way to tag, collect, burn, and listen to music, people would naturally adopt it and then go spend money in the store. this lies in contrast to modern apps' desire to provide an endless library of content within the app or paid service. drives up engagement but pretty soon the point is less "best in class for music lovers" and more "how do we keep them here forever spending money"
- crazygringo 3y ago
  I don't know what you mean. Content in Apple Music is still best in class. And music lovers spend less money with a monthly streaming subscription, than they used to spend purchasing tracks or albums. I don't know about you, but I certainly spent more than $10.99 a month back when I was buying CD's. And it's even cheaper now in relative terms if you factor in inflation.
  - refulgentis 3y ago
    They mean that 20 years ago I was really into music blogs and videos and tagging and getting videos onto my iPod to the point it's literally what got me into programming: step by step, shitty AppleScript to set up auto convert + add to iTunes flows, compiling C to get the latest HandBrake that could do non-DVDs... Now it's too easy: I have the absolutely fantastic experience of having infinite music in my hand on demand without any of the work. I've completely lost touch with music over the last decade. I am always vaguely frustrated because it's not _that_ good, it panders to my taste too much, and there's no value to any of it. The foraging made it a hobby and intellectually stimulating, the "please tap this! or this! or this! or this!" makes it boring and all the same.
    - crazygringo 3y ago
      > The foraging made it a hobby and intellectually stimulating Funny, I get a far superior foraging experience exploring radio stations based on obscure artists and other people's playlists. I don't understand how the friction of having to build programming tools made your music experience better. And I truly don't understand how making things easier leads to you losing touch with music. Maybe it's more just a function of getting older and having other, new priorities enter your life?
dghlsakjg 3y ago
iTunes started as a free utility for organizing and playing mp3s for mac users, then Windows support was added. For the first few years you couldn't even spend money on it if you wanted, then they added the iTunes store without removing any functionality, and still charged nothing. What it is now is absolutely blatant consumerism, but you are misremembering what iTunes originally was.

recursive 3y ago

And a presumption that if I want anything other than what they're giving me, it's me that's wrong. Just like they did with the headphone jacks.

incanus77 3y ago
I’m not sure I’ve ever understood this take. I think Apple has always been like this (one-button mouse, B&W display, proprietary keyboard plug, dropping the floppy, adopting USB, adopting FireWire, making the original iPod only function as a FireWire hard drive on Windows, etc.) But, like any product maker, the choice of whether you buy it or not is up to you. If you don’t like the whole package, find another option? To put it another way, if, for whatever reason, someone made a delicious food item that was perfect for me in every way — mind-blowing taste, exceptional packaging, incredible mouthfeel, truly a cut above any other food — except that it gave me the extreme shits, I wouldn’t keep eating it and complain about it all the time. I would simply not buy it anymore. I don’t think, as a complete package, it’s for me — despite the fact that everyone has the right to food to nourish them.
- refulgentis 3y ago
  I've never 100% understood it either, the only steelman I've been able to come up with over years is most people are like me and lose or damage the wireless earbuds every 6-12 months. I'm lucky enough to be a yuppie tech nerd with disposable income to treat it as a fact of life. Whereas for them it feels like a forced march to spend $150 every year.
  - sleepybrett 3y ago
    > Whereas for them it feels like a forced march to spend $150 every year. Except that you are not, there exists a 8-10$ dongle from apple for lightning to headphone and, i just had to check, there exists a usb-c to headphone dongle for the same price range if you happen to have the newest gen phone. So instead it's a forced march to buy a new dongle if you happen to lose your cheap wired headphones/earbuds, assuming you just leave the dongle attached to the headphones/earbuds.

dehrmann 3y ago

Lenovo's jab at this was their slogan "for those who do."

crazygringo 3y ago

> iTunes’ emphasis was on collecting, experiencing, and enjoying an art form. I get much more enjoyment out of experiencing new music through radio functionality in Apple Music or Spotify than wasting time "collecting". It expands my horizons rather than limiting myself to what I already know I like. There's nothing passive about recommendations. I hear a new song I like, I go to research the artist, I start a new radio station based on them, find other artists I didn't know before... it's far more active and stimulating than just listening to the tracks I already know on repeat.

sgu999 3y ago
That's a widely different experience I'm getting from it, discovery is really bad in my opinion. "hearing a new song I like" is usually in a completely different place than Apple Music... I don't know if I'm an outlier, but recommendations are absolute rubbish on the home page. Same goes for Netflix actually.
crowcroft 3y ago
In my experience you almost entirely lose the human experience of sharing playlists, talking about new discoveries, getting together with people to listen to new music. For each individual it is probably a better experience, but there is something lost still. I don't know if it's fair to lay blame for that on Apple though, it seems like that's where things are going anyway in some many dimensions of life.
- sunshowers 3y ago
  Just the other day, I discovered a rather incredible ambient/drone album using a nonstandard tuning [1] via Spotify's Discover Weekly, and excitedly pinged all my art-music-liking friends about it. [1] Trances by Jules Reidy: https://juliareidy.bandcamp.com/album/trances https://juliareidy.bandcamp.com/album/trances
  - pmontra 3y ago
    I looked for it on YouTube (via Invidious) and found it. Not my kind of music but that's not the point. The point is that if somebody likes to keep a copy of some songs discovered during a day of autoplaying through YouTube, downloading them is very easy for anybody that wants to. Maybe it's easy to do it also from Spotify but I don't use it so I have no idea.

sgu999 3y ago

> When was the last time the intersection with the humanities was mentioned, versus how sleek and desirable the technology is? Probably around a decade ago, at least. The low hanging fruits of digitalisation have been gone for a while now. I can't really think of anything they've released since for which it was immediately obvious what "problem" was solved. So it requires different arguments to convince us to buy their stuff...

MichaelZuo 3y ago
Apple watch with ECG? released 2018
mplewis 3y ago
Apple Fitness+ launched in 2020 and continues to be heavily updated today?

dr-detroit 3y ago

[dead]

jollyllama 3y ago

> Twenty years ago, iTunes’ emphasis was on collecting, experiencing, and enjoying an art form. Or, better yet, creating. Time was when FCP trounced any video editor for Window, all of which were buggy and unreliable. Now, FCP is more of a niche product for pro or semi pro editors. Garageband was never the top choice for pros, but it was highly accessible at that time. Hours of fun for an adolescent. Now, it's weird and tough to use, presumably due to a fruitless bid to target the pros. Apple has basically given up on the low end of the pro market with their product choices and it's extremely disappointing. At a 5000 ft. view, their product line was basically gentrified as monied consumers pushed out artists and creators.

paulrpotts 3y ago
When Apple Logic becomes enshittified, my #1 reason for still owning Macs will go with it.
riversflow 3y ago
> weird and tough to use, presumably due to a fruitless bid to target the pros. Have you tried the phone app? It’s fantastic, and easy to use. I assume the expectation is that if you are opening Garageband on a Mac these days, you “graduated” from the phone. > fruitless bid to target the pros. I personally know multiple musicians who have albums on streaming services that they made in Garageband.
- jollyllama 3y ago
  >Have you tried the phone app? It’s fantastic, and easy to use. I assume the expectation is that if you are opening Garageband on a Mac these days, you “graduated” from the phone. I have not tried the phone app; that makes sense.
Angostura 3y ago
Schools still use GarageBand a lot in the UK. It doesn’t seem that weird.
Nullabillity 3y ago
This idea of a "low-end creation apps" always sat weird with me. As kids our go-to tools were usually pirated copies of Cubase, Vegas, and Photoshop. Garage Band, iMovie/Windows Movie Maker, or MSPaint weren't even considered.

ghostpepper 3y ago

Well for one, they released an app separate from Music entirely focused on listening and enjoying and discovering classical music.

Spooky23 3y ago

They focused on collecting because they were selling the collectibles. Music is a very emotional and impactful art form. Sometimes we confuse the art with the business. They are very different.

hot_gril 3y ago

The Mac in the early 2000s was centered around creating. iLife was the big selling feature. As a kid, I was super thankful my parents bought an iMac because it meant I could create music in Garageband, organize it in iTunes, mix into into a home video that iMovie loaded from my digital tape camera over FireWire, then burn a DVD in... iDVD. I spent countless hours creating stuff that way, whereas on my previous handed-down Win98 laptop I only played games. Not much of that works as a selling point anymore. iMovie and Garageband are still great, but they don't even come preinstalled.