Marco Arment: iTunes is a "toxic hellstew"

[navaira]

There are things that Apple can do with iTunes easily and without splitting it into 5 apps.

* repair the search function in My Music
* unify the interfaces between My Music, Apple Music and iTunes Store (currently each of them is different and there is really no reason for that)
-- unify the search results display between all three
* add Stream Album option to iTunes Store and Buy Album option to Apple Music (currently they seem to be completely separate despite living in one app)
* bring back Cover Flow
* obviously fix what Apple Music and iTunes Match do to people's libraries (but there are other threads about this)
* fix syncing with devices
* make the "See Complete Album" option work everywhere (currently it works for me maybe 5% of the time, despite the fact I checked many of those albums are available on Apple Music)
* stop moving playlists around every time a new version is released
* remember last played song after I quit iTunes (I have heard the beginning of a-ha's Analogue way too many times because of this)
* add Android phone sync (this might happen with the Apple Music app comes to Android phones)

That would do for starters.

 

[schlaufox]

And building a Playlist, a hobby of mine, is now a difficult chore whereas it used to be a pleasure. When Apple took away the ability to open Playlists in seperate windows they eliminated the ability to drag/drop easily, very disappointing.

You drag, the Playlists menu slides over, and you drop. Unless I'm missing something, that can't be that bad?

Subscription Apple Music is not going to ever be more than 10% of the market so it makes zero sense that Apple would cripple iTunes with it in a lame attempt to fleece their loyal customers.

???

Spotify has been around for years and the paid subscribers only account for 4% of the market.

The most recent article I could find put Spotify at 60M users, with 15M paid. That's 25%.

People simply don't want to rent music, especially when its free all around them. FM Radio, iTunes Radio, iHeart Radio, Pandora, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube.

Yes, and I imagine I could find a similar quote from someone when the iTunes Store launched, wondering how it would find success against the likes of Napster. Apple Music hopes to solve the very issue you've pointed out.

 

[zhenya]

Please, stop with the automatic OSX argument counter of "show me numbers" already.

If 91% of the computers in this world run Windows and the iPhone is the single most popular smartphone in the world, it stands to reason that 91% of iPhone users run Windows. Could be more, could be less, it'll be in that ballpark.

iTunes for Mac is meaningless. iTunes for Windows is a cash register.

BJ

God, please just stop hanging on to statistics like these as if they are the holy grail and the end to all discussion. The fact is, you haven't really needed iTunes to use your iPhone for years now, and from my experience, most average iPhone users don't ever connect to iTunes for anything at all, so those numbers are meaningless.

 

[navaira]

The most recent article I could find put Spotify at 60M users, with 15M paid. That's 25%.

Here you are:

http://www.macworld.com/article/293...ssive-growth-ahead-of-apple-music-launch.html

On Wednesday, Spotify hit back with some impressive statistics about its growth. Spotify says it now has more than 20 million paying subscribers and 75 million active users. That’s double the number of paying users Spotify had in May 2014 when it hit the 10 million subscriber mark.

 

[Ulenspiegel]

God, please just stop hanging on to statistics like these as if they are the holy grail and the end to all discussion. The fact is, you haven't really needed iTunes to use your iPhone for years now, and from my experience, most average iPhone users don't ever connect to iTunes for anything at all, so those numbers are meaningless.

As one opinion on MR is not a "holy grail" either that intends to stop a discussion.
I guess iTunes that has its shortcomings is like the lack of ports on rMB, i.e. "nobody uses them". We heard that quasi argument thousand times, nevertheless it does not change the real situation.

 

[Rogifan]

God, please just stop hanging on to statistics like these as if they are the holy grail and the end to all discussion. The fact is, you haven't really needed iTunes to use your iPhone for years now, and from my experience, most average iPhone users don't ever connect to iTunes for anything at all, so those numbers are meaningless.

Yeah I have a hard time believing many Windows PC users are buying songs on iTunes on their PCs. Maybe they use it to manage large libraries of their own music. But you shouldn't need the current bloated iTunes app to do that.

 

[schlaufox]

Yeah I have a hard time believing many Windows PC users are buying songs on iTunes on their PCs. Maybe they use it to manage large libraries of their own music. But you shouldn't need the current bloated iTunes app to do that.

I really don't understand this argument. If you want to manage a large library of your own music, you want a capable piece of media management software, like iTunes.

I use iTunes every day, have done for over 7 years, on both Windows and Mac, with a library that's now ~24000 songs. It seems like accusations of iTunes as being bloated rest on it having a large range of features, which might appeal to some and not others.

That isn't bloat when you're the only capable media management software out there, used by novices and pros, casual listeners, and enthusiasts.

 

[Fuchal]

I'll be happy if iTunes stops playing my album tracks in reverse order.

 

[flur]

Here you are:

http://www.macworld.com/article/293...ssive-growth-ahead-of-apple-music-launch.html

IMO Spotify needs to kill the free tier. Even if they lost half their users they'd still more than double their income.

 

[flur]

I really don't understand this argument. If you want to manage a large library of your own music, you want a capable piece of media management software, like iTunes.

I use iTunes every day, have done for over 7 years, on both Windows and Mac, with a library that's now ~24000 songs. It seems like accusations of iTunes as being bloated rest on it having a large range of features, which might appeal to some and not others.

That isn't bloat when you're the only capable media management software out there, used by novices and pros, casual listeners, and enthusiasts.

On Windows, there are other products that do what iTunes does only they're less complicated and less bloated. So that's what people use. And no, complicated =/= feature-rich. Software can be both feature-rich and intuitive.

On Mac, there's only iTunes. This is why Mac users are the ones that want to see iTunes improved. Windows users don't care, because they have other options.

 

[tkermit]

On Windows, there are other products that do what iTunes does only they're less complicated and less bloated. So that's what people use.

Can you give even a single example of a piece of software on Windows that's equally feature-rich as iTunes yet less complicated to use? There's definitely feature-rich media center software out there, but in my experience it either comes with a vastly more complicated UI, is incredibly ugly, or both. I've yet to find one that makes the same compromise as iTunes between full-featuredness,complexity, beauty and usability as iTunes does. I would love to have a real alternative to iTunes, even if it was on Windows.

 

[Ray Brady]

How many people that own five-year-old Windows PCs are even using iTunes on the desktop?

Me for one. I have an antique HP desktop I use exclusively for Remote Desktoping into my even older PC at work. Aside from Citrix, the only other application I usually have open on that machine is iTunes, playing podcasts in the background while I work. I've never had a problem with it, so I don't have a whole lot of incentive to change.

 

[Rogifan]

Ben Lovejoy at 9to5Mac joins the party:

http://9to5mac.com/2015/07/28/opinion-itunes-nuke-from-orbit/

I could go on, but tl;dr: iTunes is a total mess – about as far from an It Just Works experience as you could possibly get, and an utter embarrassment for a company which prides itself on simple, intuitive user interfaces. It needs to die, and be replaced with individual OS X apps which each do one job, and do it well.

 

[flur]

Can you give even a single example of a piece of software on Windows that's equally feature-rich as iTunes yet less complicated to use? There's definitely feature-rich media center software out there, but in my experience it either comes with a vastly more complicated UI, is incredibly ugly, or both. I've yet to find one that makes the same compromise as iTunes between full-featuredness,complexity, beauty and usability as iTunes does. I would love to have a real alternative to iTunes, even if it was on Windows.

Why? You seem to really like iTunes. Honestly, if you think iTunes has beauty and usability (I don't, obvs), I'm not sure you'd agree with anything I'd recommend. You'd be much better off doing a search yourself.

 

[tkermit]

Why? You seem to really like iTunes. Honestly, if you think iTunes has beauty and usability (I don't, obvs), I'm not sure you'd agree with anything I'd recommend.

I just think it's better than everything else that's out there (for my usage and expectations). I really don't see any alternative for me personally unless I lower my expectations for a beautiful UI by a lot. Doesn't mean that there aren't tons of things I'd like to see changed about it. I hate how little Apple is doing to support metadata for classical music for example. The one thing I truly don't have any complaints about really is the way it looks except for where the nice looks impede usability, e.g. missing composer information, or track name fields whose width can't be easily changed in all but the Songs view. Incidentally that's the one view I fear would go away if Apple was to rewrite iTunes. Because the Music app on iOS absolutely sucks in that regard as well. And we all know what Apple models their OS X apps after these days. Although to be fair, it's actually gotten a lot better in iOS 8.4 compared to previous iterations.

 

[schlaufox]

And no, complicated =/= feature-rich. Software can be both feature-rich and intuitive.

I think that iTunes is feature-rich and intuitive. I realise I'm in a minority.

I wonder if its MacRumors users/tech enthusiasts who skew the general perception of this; I wonder if assertions of bloat and over-complication come more from claiming Apple's constant re-working of the iTunes UI as some sort of proof of bloat, than from an honest appraisal of iTunes 12.

On Windows, there are other products that do what iTunes does only they're less complicated and less bloated. So that's what people use.

This is patently untrue.

Why? You seem to really like iTunes. Honestly, if you think iTunes has beauty and usability (I don't, obvs), I'm not sure you'd agree with anything I'd recommend. You'd be much better off doing a search yourself.

Why? Because we're skeptical that such an example exists. And when there isn't such an example, the necessity of iTunes' many features, catering to all, is perfectly clear.

 

[mporcheron]

iTunes 12 makes me appreciate Spotify so much more. Apple Music simply doesn't fit in iTunes.

Consider the following: Pick an artist from your music library, click All Music (maybe we're missing an album). Great! It's on Apple Music, although I can't add it to My Music from here, I have to actually view the album. Let's do that.

This changes the tab to "New" which seems to mean Apple Music in an non-obvious way. But, ok, whatever.

Ok, add the album to My Music with the + in the top right and then let's go back to where we were using the back button (standard gestures don't work here for no reason).

Where does the back button take you? It should take you back to where you were, but it doesn't. It takes you to the previous page you were on in the Apple Music "New" tab, which could have been a different artist, album or whatever. If you weren't on one since opening iTunes, you can't even use the button.

iTunes seemingly has four functionalities (My Media, Apple Music, iTunes Store, iOS Sync) all mushed together with bad flow between each function and it jumps between them as you use the app.

 

[boltjames]

You drag, the Playlists menu slides over, and you drop. Unless I'm missing something, that can't be that bad?

Moving songs from one playlist to another is difficult, you have to right click and go to a submenu and navigate to a song. I have 100s of playlists. The new iTunes playlist management is a step backwards, was much easier when you could double-click a playlist and have it open in a separate window.

The most recent article I could find put Spotify at 60M users, with 15M paid. That's 25%.

Exactly, Spotify has a 25% subscription rate. But that 25% of Spotify represents only 1.8% of the onlline audio market. It's fractional. It's not worth pursuing. Spotify was launched in 2006. It's 2015. If Spotify was going to happen, if music on a rental model was going to be successful, it would have happened already. And if Apple does a great job, at best it might be 10% of the overall market. BFD. Not enough meat on the bone to put iTunes through this hell.

Yes, and I imagine I could find a similar quote from someone when the iTunes Store launched, wondering how it would find success against the likes of Napster. Apple Music hopes to solve the very issue you've pointed out.

Apple Music is highway robbery. We have an established model that works very well. Record companies get their artists broken, they get their songs on the radio, billions of people hear them for free, and then purchase the songs worth archiving. Apple Music is trying to get us to pay $120 a year for what we already have, and worse- to subsidize the record companies for releasing bad music. No thanks.

The average iTunes user spends $12 a year on songs they wish to own. Apple Music is trying to fleece them 10-fold.

BJ

 

[boltjames]

God, please just stop hanging on to statistics like these as if they are the holy grail and the end to all discussion. The fact is, you haven't really needed iTunes to use your iPhone for years now, and from my experience, most average iPhone users don't ever connect to iTunes for anything at all, so those numbers are meaningless.

You're talking about two different things here:

A casual user will have very little need for iTunes Desktop.

But a power users will have a big need and right now it's being compromised by the Apple Music scam.

BJ

 

[boltjames]

Here you are:

l

No, here you are.

Take 25% of 13% to visualize how many people are paying for subscription streaming services and Apple Music's potential market share is the same as Slacker and I don't even know who the hell Slacker is.

Look at that chart. Look at all that FREE music. Who would pay $120 for the same thing they have now?

BJ

 

[boltjames]

IMO Spotify needs to kill the free tier. Even if they lost half their users they'd still more than double their income.

Without the free tier, Spotify would vanish. Everyone would flock to iTunes Radio + iTunes Music Store like 80% of the market does now anyway.

These "all you can eat" streaming services don't offer anything except a rental model to appease record companies for their lack of quality product.

BJ

 

[flur]

Without the free tier, Spotify would vanish. Everyone would flock to iTunes Radio + iTunes Music Store like 80% of the market does now anyway.

These "all you can eat" streaming services don't offer anything except a rental model to appease record companies for their lack of quality product.

BJ

Free isn't a rental model, it's free. And 20mm paying subscribers isn't exactly nothing. As they've got about 75mm users, even if half their users left when the service stopped offering a free tier, they'd still have 17.5mm more paying users than they have now, putting them at 37.5mm users. Compared to AM's 10mm users, I'd say that's quite a lot.

 

[schlaufox]

Moving songs from one playlist to another is difficult, you have to right click and go to a submenu and navigate to a song. I have 100s of playlists. The new iTunes playlist management is a step backwards, was much easier when you could double-click a playlist and have it open in a separate window.

It doesn't seem difficult to me, but I accept that it seems like a step backwards, and of course wouldn't be the first time Apple is guilty of such a thing.

Exactly, Spotify has a 25% subscription rate. But that 25% of Spotify represents only 1.8% of the onlline audio market. It's fractional. It's not worth pursuing. Spotify was launched in 2006. It's 2015. If Spotify was going to happen, if music on a rental model was going to be successful, it would have happened already. And if Apple does a great job, at best it might be 10% of the overall market. BFD. Not enough meat on the bone to put iTunes through this hell.

Online audio market. That's everything, I presume. There are a lot of reasons why Spotify might not have been very successful in a grand way. For starters, the 2006 date is disingenuous; Spotify has had a staggered release, and only released in the U.S. in the tail end of 2011. And they are having to build an entire brand from nothing.

Spotify is also a service entirely separate from most people's already established music library, and the software used to organise it. Another reason why I find the integration of Apple Music into iTunes as crucial: it encourages its use by presenting one, unified library. Your music is not split between apps.

Apple carries so much more weight than Spotify, in general, but particularly within the Music industry and market. People trust Apple. People will be trying out Apple Music in a way they'd never bother to try out Spotify. The people streaming music right now are generally enthusiasts. Apple has the opportunity to change that.

This is why the music streaming service is at the moment small. Not because people don't want it, and not because 'all music sucks nowadays'. We're moving into the mainstream. I said it before, but prior to Apple introducing the iTunes Store, do you think, by the numbers and data, it appeared that it was worth pursuing an online music store?

Apple Music is trying to get us to pay $120 a year for what we already have, and worse- to subsidize the record companies for releasing bad music. No thanks.

Nope. Free, ad-supported, radio is not an on-demand, offline-downloadable, library-integrated, streaming service.

Apple Music scam

Ok.

 

[boltjames]

Free isn't a rental model, it's free. And 20mm paying subscribers isn't exactly nothing. As they've got about 75mm users, even if half their users left when the service stopped offering a free tier, they'd still have 17.5mm more paying users than they have now, putting them at 37.5mm users. Compared to AM's 10mm users, I'd say that's quite a lot.

It's a nice little business, but compared to iTunes it's a pipsqueak.

iTunes is a toxic hellstew because of too many fractional ideas bolted-on. Genius? Match? Now Apple Music? Enough. You don't let your third string quarterback cost you the Super Bowl.

BJ

 

[HopefulHumanist]

Pretty sure BJ is the only one who doesn't think it's possible for Apple Music to cannabilze iTunes Store sales. Remember, the labels feared this which is why they were against the lack of payment during the trial.