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Comment by ghrifter | Hacker News Reader

Two apps I use the most on my iPhone are Podcasts and Music. On my PC (windows) I use iTunes often.

Both the iPhone apps and the modern version of iTunes are an utter, over-designed mess. It felt like the core programming functionality was there, until some UX designer got a hold of the front end of those apps and decided to fubar it beyond recognition.

There is _Literally_ no way to just look at all music on your iPhone. You have to have it in playlists or add the songs you want to a playlist, or just shuffle all songs.

*Edit: No way to look at all iPhone songs while not using iTunes with your iPhone plugged into your PC.

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This kills me. In an older version of iTunes (not that long ago), I could open it up and see every song in my library in one big long list. Typing a few characters would find the song I wanted. When that song finished playing, it would just play the next one in the list.

Now, it's just as you say - hard to find specific albums or artists or songs, and once I do, I can't quite tell what it'll do when a song finishes playing. Since I found it through the search box, and not in a list... will it play the next song in the album? In a playlist? Will it just stop?

What I don't know is whether my feelings about the new interface is logical, or if it could be summed up as "you damn kids." Is it a paradigm that I'm just not used to yet, or is the UX objectively bad?

I just think that for some programs or interfaces, like YouTube, it is fine for a while. Works great.

But then they hire a new UX person, or the incumbent UX person gets bored - so they keep refactoring the interface to put out an image of "getting work done" or "adding features and enhancements".

Basically making work for themselves and refactoring an already fine interface that user's are familiar with and just introducing new headaches to users along the way.

This just isn't true. You can easily browse your songs on an iPhone in the Music app by album, artist, song, genre, etc. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, or maybe you're not familiar with the UI?

I have iOS 9.2 and updated Music to the latest version. There is no "view all songs". But perhaps you found some way? Like I just want to see all songs, not playlists, not genres, everything. I'd love to find out :)

Go to "my music" and where it says "Artists" (it's pink) with the downward carrot, press it - you'll get a list where "songs" is an item.

The reason you couldn't figure it out is because Apple has completely abandoned usability in favor of a comically flat UI aesthetic.

Wow. Many thanks! Such a dumb UI decision.

I'm constantly re-discovering functionality hidden behind buttons that don't look like buttons in iOS.

My Music > Tap the red "Artists" button beneath the scrolling list of recent songs at the top.

A UI disaster that most Music users will never discover.

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