Comment by smcl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smcl | Hacker News Reader

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In your usability rants I have every one of those problems too (particularly autocorrect and swiping). I wonder how widespread this is? I'd like to add four more:

1. iTunes is slowly degrading into a usability nightmare - recommendations are often albums I own and bought from Apple!

2. the OS itself seemingly picks apps at random for the "play" button on the "swipe-up" menu. Like I might play a podcast on, say, Monday morning and then switch to music - but for the remainder of the monday and some of tuesday when I pause, lock and then later use the "swipe-up" menu it tries to resume playing the podcast not the music. not to mention this menu has two tabs, and switching between them involves a swipe - which usually triggers some of the sliders (Brightness, volume, position) on the screen. This clearly didn't go through any UX testing.

3. no way to disable "voice control" home key shortcut - my iPhone 6S has an AWFUL habit of interpreting background noise as "Dial my ex girlfriend". I somehow can't kill the call before it starts ringing, but usually I don't see it because something has pressed the home button in my pocket. It's truly embarrassing.

4. "Do you trust this computer?" for the millionth time, yes!

This is my last iPhone, I think.

>iTunes is slowly degrading

That is incredibly generous considering the past decade of itunes, especially for Windows users. So much bad code, legacy cruft, and inconsistent UI decisions

I'm a Windows user and love iTunes. There's just isn't any piece of software that lets me sync all my selected playlists with a single click via Wifi to Android (iSyncr app) reliably. I can also use a remote to navigate (Retune app) and access whole library.

Too bad there's no other contenders on Linux as well, there's a million players, but no syncing because apparently it makes more sense in 2016 to sync a song with uploading it to an other computer (teh cloud™) then download it back instead of copying it locally within 1m of proximity.

Surely it has grown into a behemoth with managing iPhones, online Music etc., but one can simply not use that.

Rsync works well for me but I don't use much of the android specific apps. I think now that they fucked around with the storage permissions it might not actually be possible without root.

Phone OSes aren't rocket science, at this point I just want a phone that has buildroot support, even if that means it lacks a GUI.

With sync I mean full oneway sync with playlists created in the music player. I create a playlist which I'll then listen too in iTunes and with 2 clicks it's fully existing on the phone, with the .m3u playlist file, recognized by the media player. If I add/remove songs, change sorting in that playlist, the result is completely synced on the phone. I didn't find anything simple as this without extra fuckery and praying I can rely on it. It just works.

Rsync can do two way sync, the only two exceptions are:

1) deletions don't sync

2) colisons are resolved by overwriting the side that is synced last

    --delete

is your friend

Plex (premium) works surprisingly well for me with music. Can sync or play from server. Should work in Linux too. https://launchpad.net/~plexapp/+archive/ubuntu/plexht

> Tip!: The Mobile Sync feature requires an active Plex Pass subscription for the main Plex Media Server account.

Paying for being able to transfer files within 1m ? Yeah no. Thanks for the tip though.

Well iTunes is not free either. I paid lifetime fee. It's expensive but to me worth the peace of mind. And should Plex go bad, it forces you to keep your files in a decent structure, so I feel confident I could migrate them to some other solution pretty easily, should push come to shove.

iTunes as in software is free. My music is mainly electronic livesets, nothing DRM, so all the streaming services mean nothing to my taste.

Well, iTunes runs only on Windows and OSX, neither of which are free. Nitpicking maybe. I don't like streaming services either except my own. What did you mean by that "within one minute"? I didn't understand that.

Given the thread, I think the fact that your solution is based around an android phone is telling.

Well iTunes already syncs to iPhones natively in the same manner, also via a wireless connection. The only difference is that you control which playlists are synced in iTunes itself (not whole library, checkmark beside playlist), not on device.

Uh, you could just sync the playlists (and the music, too, if you wanted) to Google Drive or Dropbox. Drive is the better option if you want integration.

Google Play Music (or any other music app) will then pick up the synced playlists

> apparently it makes more sense in 2016 to sync a song with uploading it to an other computer (teh cloud™) then download it back instead of copying it locally within 1m of proximity.

From the original post.

Been there done that, waiting in a full sport gear in the room for a playlist to sync going around the fucking planet while being 1m apart.

Did you try MediaMonkey?

Ah so I typed "iTunes" instinctively, but I meant the iOS app - guess it's called just "Music".

The desktop iTunes is a horror show in and of itself :D

Weird. My experience is opposite of yours. When I try to adjust the brightness or volume, the damn thing swipes to the next card instead!

Also weird: My opposite experience is just as maddening :)

I've actually had this too, but the other use-case is more common for me (I adjust volume using the buttons, and rarely change brightness). I think it's the flat-UI thing where it's hard to see the boundaries of the slider element - so I would maybe not swipe near it if there was a little boundary, and you wouldn't swipe outside it.

I'd like to add Airplay issues to your list please. Airplay used to be magic and extremely dependable. Now it just randomly cuts out on me, things don't work first time around 30% of the time. It takes a number of goes sometimes to get things to work the way they did the day before. Its a nightmare.

Thankfully you can turn off voice control in iOS 10. Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Home Button.

You just became my favourite person of 2017 so far - thanks heaps!

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