Why such a difference between iOS and OS X Apple Music?

[AlliFlowers]

So yesterday I pretty much wrote off Apple Music, having looked at it only on my Mac. Today I decided to give it another try while waiting on my car to be servcied...on my iPad. It's like a completely different app with completely different options and services. WTH, Apple?!

I was happily creating stations, and listening to artists I love, without having to go hunting for them on my iPad...but if the same options are there on the desktop, they are well hidden.

 

[mostman]

So yesterday I pretty much wrote off Apple Music, having looked at it only on my Mac. Today I decided to give it another try while waiting on my car to be servcied...on my iPad. It's like a completely different app with completely different options and services. WTH, Apple?!

I was happily creating stations, and listening to artists I love, without having to go hunting for them on my iPad...but if the same options are there on the desktop, they are well hidden.

The mac version needs a rewrite. Part of the problem is that it tries to do too many things. For example, Music+iTunes are two different apps on the phone. On the mac, they are integrated, and that causes a giant mess. Right now switching between "Apple Music" and "iTunes Store" on the mac is jarring and confusing - "View in iTunes Store? How do I view in Apple Music?"

 

[kmj2318]

The mac version needs a rewrite. Part of the problem is that it tries to do too many things. For example, Music+iTunes are two different apps on the phone. On the mac, they are integrated, and that causes a giant mess. Right now switching between "Apple Music" and "iTunes Store" on the mac is jarring and confusing - "View in iTunes Store? How do I view in Apple Music?"

Searching within the New tab is how to see only Apple Music stuff. Or searching in any of the Apple Music tabs (For You, Radio, Connect) will send you to your search results in New. I completely ignore the Store tab, wish I could hide it.

So yesterday I pretty much wrote off Apple Music, having looked at it only on my Mac. Today I decided to give it another try while waiting on my car to be servcied...on my iPad. It's like a completely different app with completely different options and services. WTH, Apple?!

I was happily creating stations, and listening to artists I love, without having to go hunting for them on my iPad...but if the same options are there on the desktop, they are well hidden.

Do you have examples? I've been finding the experience mostly consistent, it's just weird because the Apple Music features are being built on top of the old app.

 

[mostman]

Searching within the New tab is how to see only Apple Music stuff. Or searching in any of the Apple Music tabs (For You, Radio, Connect) will send you to your search results in New. I completely ignore the Store tab, wish I could hide it.

Right - thats my point. Its a mess. Totally agreed that you should be able to hide it.

And, Who thinks to go to "New" to "Search"? You can also search Apple Music by clicking on the segmented control in the search drop down.

The biggest head scratcher is this one: listen to a station, when a song comes on that you like, you can click the "..." to add it to your music. So far, so good. Now, what happens if I want to view the album in Apple Music. Nada. But I CAN view it in "iTunes Store". Ok, lets try that. Oh look, I can buy it here. How do I stream this other song from this album? I can't. Simply impossible. There is no path from the iTunes Store BACK to Apple Music. You have to go and search for it. Search? Now we are back to the original problem. Complete mess from a usability standpoint.

 

[shinji]

The Mac interface definitely needs to be revamped. It's like it was an afterthought they rushed just to have something. Maybe fixed in El Capitan.

 

[zhenya]

For the most part it seems to make sense to me, but I've been using iTunes, Match, and Beats for so long that I'm largely used to their quirks. I did run into the same issue as you though where there are paths to the Store, but not to directly stream it. Whether this is intentional or just a design quirk remains to be seen. (ie. even when subscribed to Apple Music, are they going to keep trying to direct you to the store to sell you a copy as well?)

 

[AlliFlowers]

I found some of the problem resolved itself by restarting iTunes on the Mac. Now the biggest problem seems to be that you can't remove a station once you've created it.

 

[JuryDuty]

I don't see much of a difference. They both seem broken to me.

 

[Traverse]

El Capitan has a different iTunes Logo in the promotional images. It may be that attains 12.2 is just a patch to carry users until iTunes 13 in the fall.

It's all a mess to me. What happened to iTunes Radio? Is it just "Radio"? Does it work the same way? I don't want Apple Music, but I used iTunes Radio.

 

[simon48]

Desktop iTunes has had UI problems for a least a decade. Like others have said, it's just can do too many things to be clean and easy to understand.

It's a tough problem to fix, but Apple has totally dropped the ball by not completely rethinking iTunes's UX and UI by now. I think they either need to merge sections or separate them more. Having more sub tabs might help by creating more breadcrumbs.

 

[MentalFloss]

Well, the one thing I can say for sure is that iTunes on Mac and Music on iOS were written by two separate teams with only very loose coordination between the two. On iOS, you can add a song to "My Music" and a playlist with just one tap (ok, it is supposed to work at least, it's just buggy right now). In iTunes on the Mac, that requires two separate actions. No consistency there.

Apple needs a manager who can coordinate all their music-related apps. Perhaps I should apply. Hey, if someone from Apple is reading this: Manager in embedded software development with 15+ years of experience here, willing to relocate to Cupertino... ah, well, who am I kidding. If Apple wanted to fix this, it would be fixed already.