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Comment by orev | Hacker News Reader

My biggest issue right now is that the iOS Music app has been almost completely hobbled by Apple Music (the service). I just want an app I can use to play my existing media files, but it’s always pushing you to subscribe to the service.

Especially annoying is that they have hidden the previously free access to streaming terrestrial radio stations (not the same thing as the Apple Radio subscription). You can only access them now if you know the URL, and they’re impossible to search for in the Radio tab of the app.

The business drive to push people the paid subscriptions is taking over everything else.

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Most annoying for me: the need to be connected to the internet for a lot of views.

I leave the apartment, enter the elevator, put headphones in my ears and literally cannot do anything in the Music App, because it thinks it is still connected to my WiFi. Why can’t the default views be offline first.

I kinda like random/automatic autoplay but because Apple Music only seems to buffer the next 0.002 seconds of music any interruption of network service tends to just ... stop playback. And when you manually start it again, it switches to a "random autoplay, but from downloaded songs only" mode and you have to futz around to get back to the "random autoplay from all music" mode by clearing the queue with that one-song playlist hack. Same problem when leaving the house, have to remember to manually disconnect from wifi to avoid playback being interrupted.

Also, why does it take five seconds to connect to the Airpods? Even Linux is quicker. Sometimes it seems to take even longer. These devices are mere nanoseconds apart!

It all just seems to be built on a "the network is very reliable" assumption - in a mobile device.

Yes! I have Beats Flex with Apple's H1 chip, and I really really miss Steve Jobs calling in all bluetooth & mac HW and SW teams, showing them the unreliable 5s+ long switch (that 1/3 time ends up with my mac's speakers selected back, and music playing in the office), and threatening to fire them if this is not fixed in a week.

Interesting you say that about the Airpods. In my experience I've found that Airpods work extremely well so long as they're only paired with your Apple devices. Once I paired them to my PC I started having issues where they'd drop from my iPhone randomly in the middle of playback. After unpairing them from the PC altogether the problems went away.

That's because you didn't disconnect them (manually) from the PC, both Windows and Linux will grab the airpods when something tries to play audio, even if that "playing audio" is technically silent.

After years of just ... avoiding the issue of why I can't play my local mp3s and flacs with my iPhone, I finally broke down this year and searched for a decent app for this, and the answer is an app called Doppler. It's not free, but it's not very expensive, and the developer is very responsive. Recommended.

I suspect the entertainment industries, (film, tv and music), have fundamental differences from technology products in how they operate.

The necessity of an integrated stack of content and delivery has had corrupting influence on Apple products.

In Music, pushing content on For You and elimination of free radio as described to drive revenue at the clear expense of customer experience.

In Apple TV, the company has to compete in providing content that is at odds with Apple values. For example, the recent purchase of John Lasseter’s work and having to put punchy Mcpunchington Will Smith on the cover of Apple TV because the content was already bought.

The content-value mismatch is ok with me, given they distribute other studio's films that Apple's leadership has expressed issues with. I.e. Danny Boyle's "Steve Jobs".

They can be a consistently indulgent distributor, or a consistently selective content producer, but not consistent in both roles. I prefer the former.

(I found Boyle's movie brilliant, when interpreted as a serious comedic drug dream, subsequent to a marathon reading of Steve Jobs bios, articles and opinion pieces. Of varying questionability and authenticity. In random order. On a plane.)

If you're looking to manage and play local media, Swinsian (http://swinsian.com) is a nice native app that comes extremely close to the peak iTunes experience of yore.

I highly recommend the excellent Broadcasts[1] app for streaming radio.

1: https://apps.apple.com/app/broadcasts/id1469995354

I use Spotify for streaming and Castbox for podcasts. But I've never found a satisfactory solution for my own files— the sync piece is so hard to get right, and since I'm a Spotify subscriber anyway, it lets me cache playlists on my device for when I know I'll be offline, all with less friction and planning-ahead than if I had to connect it up somehow to another machine containing my own MP3s.

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