How iTunes Is Changing on PC
support.apple.com
support.apple.com
First, the linked documentation provides no information about where to get the Apple Devices App. It turns out, it's only available from the Microsoft App Store. Fair enough, but odd that the documentation never says that. Second concern: yikes, this synchronization app is 188 Mb in size. But whatever, I have tons of storage on my PC, so let's proceed.
The final and biggest issue: the app simply never recognizes my phone. The phone is unlocked and has trusted the computer. It shows up in Windows Explorer as a storage device (significantly hobbled by Apple's needless file system obfuscation, but that's not new). The Apple Devices App never stops saying "Connect a device to proceed."
All told, a typical Apple software experience.
If Android weren't so awful, I'd be much happier. The way Android devices appear as just a standard storage device with a normal file system is so much easier to deal with.
Forcing customers to use a shitty JUKEBOX app to manage all the content (including applications) on a handheld Unix computer was embarrassing on day one. But after a decade... and then more... it's offensive to those customers.
Now they made the already-shambolic Windows situation even worse. It's bad enough on Mac, where the videos you shot yourself inexplicably wind up in the "TV" app now. Why the hell would you look in Apple TV for stuff you shot on your phone?
The fact that they let you do via cable so many things that their competitors have deprecated entirely or moved to cloud is commendable. These apps all still support iPods as well.
Tell me how to buy an album from Google and have it automatically sync to your iPhone when it’s plugged in to the computer. No cloud.
Tell me how to make a backup image of your Android phone without touching a Google account. Apple’s sync app can do it for you. Let me guess, you have to use a developer tool that wasn’t intended for the consumer?
Not sure what the hell you're talking about regarding Apple TV.
Also, Google doesn't sell albums, but you can buy music from Amazon or any other store you like and have good sync support instead of being limited to iTunes.
So the question here is “how does Grandma sync content and make full device backups without the cloud?”
It sounds like Google’s option is to implement it yourself. You’ve got to go out and find the right software for your needs and none of it is made by Google.
For full device backups you have to be well-informed enough to enable Android debugging (which, again, is a developer feature and is labeled as such), or to get a third party program like syncthing/rsync. You have to build your sync stack on your own without Google’s help.
That DIY situation fine for a lot of people and it is true that it’s more powerful and open than what Apple gives you. But Apple is selling you a solution that is much more friendly to the average person and represents a complete solution without relying on third party software.
I can tell a 70 year old who refuses to use the cloud how to plug their iPhone into a Mac or PC and take a regular backup without needing to put their data on a cloud. On the Mac you don’t even have to install software, and on the PC the software comes from Apple directly. I don’t have to explain how to tap the build number seven times to enable developer options.
Just curious, what is it that people don't like about Android?
Yes, this happened to me a decade ago on 2 different Android devices. Since then I've moved my family and extended family to iOS and my ongoing tech support is dramatically reduced.
It's a lot harder to tell older relatives, just go buy a Samsung Android. Likely they will come back with some low end android that the salesperson said was on sale.
Where as If I tell, go get an Apple iPhone. They can pick that up and get the "right one", which ever it is.
Also, Samsung offers lower end phones with lesser but still good update policies. They're good phones but a lot cheaper than any iPhone, which should satisfy your older relatives.
If I say buy an Apple iPhone and its very likely they turn up with an iPhone maybe not the one I told them but a new Apple iPhone.
But if I say Samsung Android, they are just as likely to buy some weird no-name Android because it was a color they wanted or size or something the salesman pushed on them cause "Android is Android right?"
like how the back gesture works on iphones across generation and apps?
> Reliable security updates for old devices that still function
7 years of update isn't long enough?
> Heavy integration with the Google spyware ecosystem
last I checked iOS is closed source. Run your own OS or just don't use google apps. I bet most people are using gmail and google maps on their iphones too.
> Poor CPU performance and battery life.
compared to which android phone? and is this before or after apple throttles your iphone?
> Low-quality peripherals such as cameras
flag ship androids consistently have better camera hardware compared to iphones, iphone just makes it up with better camera software. You could go the sony route if you don't live in the U.S. to get a better overall camera focused phone.
> Manufacturer defects in Google-branded device
good thing you have options in android ecosystem.
What's so awful about Android? When was the last time you used it. I use both regularly and frankly find a lot of what Android does these days better.
Heck, Apple Music on Android is even my Music app of choice.
Well, I switched for another reason - I've had three Pixel phones, and all three phones had hardware failures in less than 2 years, so there is that.
I'm with you on Google's hardware being just awful, but though iPhone hardware is better, the software makes it nigh unusable, and without at least another decade of regulatory action, Apple won't allow me to replace the bits I don't like with better software.
I.e. you can get your sms from an android on your windows PC through multiple applications, but it's not built-in and you still need to configure it. Same with the easy switching with air pods. Also available for select headphones and various devices, but not built-in.
I am always giggling about apple fanboys being outraged about windows including advertising in the start menu however, considering apple inserts an advert for their cloud storage in the settings app that can't even be dismissed/disabled.
And that's ignoring the constant reminders that you really should use apple music, the gaming service etc
No alternative. No 'get a code on another device', just PFO.
[1]: https://cider.sh/
First world problems of course, but just needlessly frustrating.
The latest release, v2.3.0, also supports forcing the player to use 256kbps[2]
[1]: https://cidercollective.itch.io/cider
[2]: https://cidercollective.itch.io/cider/devlog/674855/cider-v2...
Persistent Felony Offender?
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/02/06/apple-id-security-keys-...
Edit: nope, "security keys not supported on icloud for windows"
Edit edit: need to first install the latest icloud for windows (which I don't want but fine). Seems to provide an auth layer so now it works.
Not sure if it’s already pushed out.
iTunes is just a mess. It's the software equivalent of a badly executed all-in-one printer, scanner and fax. Has it improved? No clue. I haven't bothered with it other than for backups.
My complaint about Apple Music is very simple: For some incomprehensible reason they make playing an entire album or albums, in order, as recorded, impossible. Take works such as Brandenburg concerto and a bunch of classical work or most of Pink Floyd's albums. In Windows Media Player I can listen to this work as intended, in the order the album was recorded. I can easily create a playlist of albums and play them back as recorded. With Apple Music, last I looked, this was still impossible.
I own a large library of CD's. I transferred all of them to Windows Media and clan play recorded works as intended without having to handle the physical media. Again, last I looked, this is impossible with Apple Music. The couple of attempts I made over the years were nothing less than disastrous exercises in futility.
Not sure what ideological or business basis Apple uses to effectively destroy an artist's creation and refuse to deliver it as intended. It is clear that selling single songs might be one of these motivating factors. OK, I get it. And this might even make sense for much of the large body of popular music. However, there are works of art that are not one hit wonders and, in my opinion, deserve the respect, consideration and option to experience them as intended.
I last used iTunes on windows in like 2010 or so, I think. It was pretty awful. Although, it did have a neat feature, you could share your library over the lan, so it was neat to listen to other people’s music in a dorm. I’m sure they’ve removed that feature by now, it was too good to be true.
Present day, I only ever install iTunes on a Windows machine to do backups. My parents still use it to copy CDs to their phones, but that's it.
Performance was also bad compared to Windows Media Player, never mind Foobar2000 etc.
And for syncing, the non apple devices just let you copy the files onto them as USB Mass Storage devices, only the iPod needed special software.
Loved me some Creative Zen MICRO. I'm sure there were better competitors but it's what I had. There was a tiny 1" mechanical HDD in it with a compact flash interface. The drive is now part of my office desk flare. A real conversation starter.
It's nice owning things. It has no ads, unlimited skips, and music doesn't sporadically disappear.
Same here. I eventually replaced my iPod with an Android phone, but found a software combo that allowed you to sync your iTunes library to your phone just as easily, and also enable reverse syncing of ratings and playback counts. Sadly those apps have been sold to some company that's trying to turn them into cash grabs, but at least for now the old versions keep working for me, even on my new phone and Android 14 (albeit with some tweaking that's rather requires a rooted phone).
The advantage of iTunes is that it's perfect for also managing my collection of radio comedy, because you can easily re-classify manually imported files to be treated as podcasts, which makes for a nice UX (podcasts remember their playback position, and podcast apps track which episodes you've already listened to and which are still unlistened). Most other podcast apps don't allow manual file management, so I'd have to set up fake podcast feeds for my local files otherwise, which would definitely be a hassle.
Even if— sorry, when— my library got corrupted, and when different sections started taking 1-2 seconds to load, I still liked using it.
I only switched away from iTunes when I switched to subscription-based streaming.
No. It has always been awful.
I was briefly excited to hear that media synchronization had been separated from iTunes. That gave me hope that I would be able to put media on my phone without a cloud intermediary and without the crippling mess of iTunes. But, sadly, my experience is that the Apple Devices App simply doesn't recognize my phone at all, so it's non-functional for me.
The sentiment surrounding the iTunes release for Windows was notably intriguing. I recall that quite a few people seriously considered taking a day off just for its launch!
1. It has a taskbar player, which is a tiny strip of media controls which sits in your taskbar. AFAIK the only other player to offer this is Windows Media Player.
2. It has the best-looking (for me) GUI with the column browser etc.
3. You can use parental controls to disable all the crap like the store/videos/radio/etc. to make a very minimalist player.
The only problem I have with it is that older versions don't sync correctly with modern devices (iPod, iPhone, etc.) but there are workarounds for this using a virtual machine: https://www.tersetechtips.com/how-to-keep-using-an-old-versi...
In the taskbar meaning where you select applications that can maybe show the window title but by default is just icons these days? Or the in the notification area / system tray? If the later, Winamp has a bundled plugin for that, and I believe Foobar2000 does too.
>When you install the Apple Music or Apple TV app, you can only use those apps for your music, TV shows, and movies; you can continue to use iTunes to listen to your audiobooks and podcasts.
I’m guessing the 10th gen is the one with the super long support lifetime or something like that? That’s a slightly weird iPad-ism.
In the most recent iteration of this lineup, the 12-inch MacBook was comically underpowered, especially for its price, there was no good reason to purchase that instead of an Air or a Pro. This was also quite short-lived, with an official discontinuation after four years.
It always made sense to me, at least: “pro” is premium in a power direction, “air” is premium in a lightness direction, and the base model is just the base model.
But I guess it is unsurprising that Apple doesn’t want to do a base model, haha.
Another way of looking at it, I guess, is just that it is an evolutionary process, and every MacBook is a descendent of the Air now.
Personally, I like my mini being a mid-tier device. Apple probably positioned it this way to avoid undercutting their cheapest model. It’s also a bit cramped. You’re sacrificing some usability for size and they’d rather people make that trade off because they want it rather than it being cheaper.
(Music purchased on iTunes can be downloaded directly to the device without syncing, but you need to manually sync with your computer to transfer over music that you acquired elsewhere. Either that or you subscribe to the iTunes Match service assuming that sticks around)
Basically, in the PC version of these apps the main difference compared to Mac seems to be that Apple didn’t split Podcasts and Audibooks into separate apps. They’re just mushed into an app that’s weirdly called iTunes. I feel like they should have clumsily but less confusingly called it “Apple Podcasts and Audiobooks”
Maybe it's time to retire the name "iTunes," or have "iTunes" be the name of a suite?
Pity them.
This was (and is) also a blatant form of consumerism. I honestly don't see any difference in the negative effects on this outside of going through apple rather than my local FYE.
1. Like the look & feel of Apple hardware
2. Feel like the iPod/iTunes scene is shiny bullshit, but whatever
3. Buy a laptop & figure I'll give OS X a shot, if not install Linux
4. Fall in love with the ability to really get some work done rather than have to futz with my system all the time (despite loving to futz with my system)
5. Eventually, become an Apple platform developer
the idea was that if iTunes is the best way to tag, collect, burn, and listen to music, people would naturally adopt it and then go spend money in the store.
this lies in contrast to modern apps' desire to provide an endless library of content within the app or paid service. drives up engagement but pretty soon the point is less "best in class for music lovers" and more "how do we keep them here forever spending money"
Content in Apple Music is still best in class.
And music lovers spend less money with a monthly streaming subscription, than they used to spend purchasing tracks or albums. I don't know about you, but I certainly spent more than $10.99 a month back when I was buying CD's. And it's even cheaper now in relative terms if you factor in inflation.
Now it's too easy: I have the absolutely fantastic experience of having infinite music in my hand on demand without any of the work. I've completely lost touch with music over the last decade. I am always vaguely frustrated because it's not _that_ good, it panders to my taste too much, and there's no value to any of it.
The foraging made it a hobby and intellectually stimulating, the "please tap this! or this! or this! or this!" makes it boring and all the same.
Funny, I get a far superior foraging experience exploring radio stations based on obscure artists and other people's playlists.
I don't understand how the friction of having to build programming tools made your music experience better.
And I truly don't understand how making things easier leads to you losing touch with music. Maybe it's more just a function of getting older and having other, new priorities enter your life?
Some people think that curating a music collection is fundamentally different from collecting funkopops or some other similar mass-market consumerist behavior.
Those people are wrong, but that is what they think.
They'll ramble on about purity and emotion completely oblivious to the fact that someone searching for, categorizing, and collecting various types of paperclips is perfectly capable of experiencing the same emotions.
What it is now is absolutely blatant consumerism, but you are misremembering what iTunes originally was.
Just like they did with the headphone jacks.
I think Apple has always been like this (one-button mouse, B&W display, proprietary keyboard plug, dropping the floppy, adopting USB, adopting FireWire, making the original iPod only function as a FireWire hard drive on Windows, etc.) But, like any product maker, the choice of whether you buy it or not is up to you. If you don’t like the whole package, find another option?
To put it another way, if, for whatever reason, someone made a delicious food item that was perfect for me in every way — mind-blowing taste, exceptional packaging, incredible mouthfeel, truly a cut above any other food — except that it gave me the extreme shits, I wouldn’t keep eating it and complain about it all the time. I would simply not buy it anymore. I don’t think, as a complete package, it’s for me — despite the fact that everyone has the right to food to nourish them.
Except that you are not, there exists a 8-10$ dongle from apple for lightning to headphone and, i just had to check, there exists a usb-c to headphone dongle for the same price range if you happen to have the newest gen phone.
So instead it's a forced march to buy a new dongle if you happen to lose your cheap wired headphones/earbuds, assuming you just leave the dongle attached to the headphones/earbuds.
I can understand some grousing when the headphone jack was removed. I can't understand grousing still almost 8 years later. Buy the phone or don't buy the phone, they clearly aren't going to add the jack back.
They're so much better than what we had before that once you've used them for a few days it's hard to go back.
If you have to use Windows computers for work and use Microsoft Teams and all that, Samsung line works. If you want to connect with a Linux computer, Apple AirPods get terrible audio quality (and had same issue on Windows 11), but the Samsung Galaxy Buds (all of them) seem to work fine.
Stating that you are forced to use or upgrade a thing, that Apple is somehow giving you something counter to what they have offered or that you have decided to pay for, or that there is some platonic ideal of hardware that Apple should be pursuing is the take that puzzles me. Just... choose another piece of hardware.
But let's be real, a smart phone is practically a requirement to participate in modern society, and there are two options. iOS and Android. "Opting out" is becoming increasingly hypothetical.
I get much more enjoyment out of experiencing new music through radio functionality in Apple Music or Spotify than wasting time "collecting". It expands my horizons rather than limiting myself to what I already know I like.
There's nothing passive about recommendations. I hear a new song I like, I go to research the artist, I start a new radio station based on them, find other artists I didn't know before... it's far more active and stimulating than just listening to the tracks I already know on repeat.
For each individual it is probably a better experience, but there is something lost still. I don't know if it's fair to lay blame for that on Apple though, it seems like that's where things are going anyway in some many dimensions of life.
[1] Trances by Jules Reidy: https://juliareidy.bandcamp.com/album/trances
The point is that if somebody likes to keep a copy of some songs discovered during a day of autoplaying through YouTube, downloading them is very easy for anybody that wants to. Maybe it's easy to do it also from Spotify but I don't use it so I have no idea.
Obviously that's not giving you a local .mp3 file, but that's because it's streaming, not buying.
The one thing I miss is the recommendations, especially as I like music that isn’t very mainstream. It might be that Spotify’s algorithm is better than Qobuz, or it has a huge amount more data.
[1] https://tinangelrecords.bandcamp.com/album/se-ve-desde-aqu
Not saying every musician has the obligation to chase my personal tastes of course but it never fails to get a sigh out of me, haha.
If you've ever saved a song to your library or favorites, you're "collecting", just with less freedom
Probably around a decade ago, at least. The low hanging fruits of digitalisation have been gone for a while now. I can't really think of anything they've released since for which it was immediately obvious what "problem" was solved. So it requires different arguments to convince us to buy their stuff...
Or, better yet, creating.
Time was when FCP trounced any video editor for Window, all of which were buggy and unreliable. Now, FCP is more of a niche product for pro or semi pro editors.
Garageband was never the top choice for pros, but it was highly accessible at that time. Hours of fun for an adolescent. Now, it's weird and tough to use, presumably due to a fruitless bid to target the pros.
Apple has basically given up on the low end of the pro market with their product choices and it's extremely disappointing. At a 5000 ft. view, their product line was basically gentrified as monied consumers pushed out artists and creators.
Have you tried the phone app? It’s fantastic, and easy to use. I assume the expectation is that if you are opening Garageband on a Mac these days, you “graduated” from the phone.
> fruitless bid to target the pros.
I personally know multiple musicians who have albums on streaming services that they made in Garageband.
I have not tried the phone app; that makes sense.
Edit: I would say the Apple tools like FCP were low end in relation to setups with dedicated editing keyboards, etc.
Music is a very emotional and impactful art form. Sometimes we confuse the art with the business. They are very different.
Not much of that works as a selling point anymore. iMovie and Garageband are still great, but they don't even come preinstalled.
I'm not even sure what I would search for in terms of Windows software or what kind of cable I would need. And Apple's branding is so ... operationally overloaded, overlapping, whatever, I'm confused.
I believe that's incorrect: https://support.apple.com/guide/itunes/transfer-files-itns32...
Also see: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/transfer-music-ipod-computer/
Transfer Music from iPhone, iPad, & iPod to your Mac or PC https://macroplant.com/iexplorer/tutorials/how-to-transfer-m...
Transfer iPhone & iPod Music to your Computer or to iTunes https://imazing.com/iphone-music-transfer
I should probably get a similar device just to practice. This is an odd little operation I've been called upon to perform.
I have submitted bug reports with exact steps, reproducible on at least two accounts on five different conmputers. Haven't heared back, doubt I'll ever will.
Anyone can recommend a streaming service that isn't Apple Music, Spotify or YouTube Music? Bonus points if I can just add a plugin to my old trusty winamp to use it.
I know people like to criticise Spotify's UX/UI but whenever I'm using Apple Music on my partner's devices (she has AM, I'm on Spotify) it's a quite marked difference in snappiness of the UI, Apple Music for some reason has the same weird loading behaviour that the App Store suffers from (and sometimes even fucking System Settings on macOS goes through), and I can't understand how Apple can drop the ball that much in their own platforms...
I don't understand. These are "just" media players and all split up to do one thing each. How do they all do that one thing so miserably. TV hangs for multiple seconds every single time I download or delete episodes of TV shows and the player is so incredibly bad and doesn't save your progress properly
My use case is I've found that, for reasons unknown, the streaming quality is worse than if I download the episodes. Streaming always stays at 720p or lower whereas downloading gets me 1080p every time. And being able to watch things when I move around even with spotty internet
Slow. The main "Listen Now Screen" is slow. It's an un-cached webview or something, that should be instantaneous.
The "Search area" is on the scrolling side bar on the left, and the toggle for searching between Apple Music and just your own library is on the right. It's not in the toolbar at the top where it should be and where it is on damn near every other macos app.
The lyrics can't expand to bigger, unless you switch to fullscreen mode, and then they're often unreadable because of the background colours.
I can't exactly recommend it because I haven't used it since 15 years and it surely must have evolved since.
I’ve tried:
- redownloading the app
- deleting all local state in the Music folder
- logging out of my account, and logging back in
- deauthorising my PC, then reauthorising it
It just never starts playback, no matter what I do!
Cider works fine. The Music apps on my phone and Mac work fine. Very weird.
edit: plus, they have a lot of problems with music artists getting mixed together - if an artist has a common name, say “Ray”, you’ll see music from other artists with the same name mixed in. Apple’s support totally disclaim responsibility and said I should contact the record label to get them to correct it. This is absolutely ridiculous, and the record label predictably doesn’t care. It ruins recommendations :/
This being Windows, at least you're not being forced to immediately upgrade like it happens on a Mac (where those things are seemingly tied to your version of macOS) and in the case of eventual breakage can continue using a previous version indefinitely, but that leads to the next question – on the off chance that you do want to use the iTunes store, too, how long will that keep working with old iTunes versions?
Given this also went along with an iCloud for Windows redesign.
Instead of them fighting Windows, make the experience slightly better for their customers which really just helps keep them in your Ecosystem, just slightly expanded.
Which I was sort of more confident about when it seemed to just be in a forgotten corner of Apple somewhere just ticking along. Now it's clear someone has come up with a strategy™, I think there's more risk they might screw with both to push people into subscription services, and I can't help but see an iTunes Store shutdown as being the beginning of the end for digital music sales.
Even on win10, windows media player is still garbage. iTunes has the column browser which, although disabled by default, is superior for navigation. Its also better for editing file metadata and managing playlists. You can automate iTunes via COM and I have my own command line music player program that uses this, to get playlists and similar metadata.
edit: This reminds me. Wasn't there a FOSS project that has most of Itunes functionality?
At best it merely avoids some users caring.
If you don't install the other app, iTunes is the same.
You indicated a preference for the new Music experience by installing it.
If you don't indicate that preference, iTunes doesn't change.
They did it by making the new app disable functionality of the existing.
> You indicated a preference for the new Music experience by installing it.
By that insane logic, installing e.g. Edge would justifably prevent use of Chrome.
What is that functionnality? If it is about playing audio, there are tons of apps for that.
If I plug iphone in to a PC without itunes, best I can hope for is extraction of images. To even access a small portion of the rest of the filesystem, I need(ed now ) itunes.
What I recall using once for some backup purposes was a itunes like program that gained access to almost everything ( all media ).
But that's probably with the forcing podcasts on me when I don't want them rather than anything intrinsic.
I listen to music when I work because it blocks stuff out and I don't need to actually listen to it.
Podcasts catch my attention when one of hosts says something like:
Wait, you can't say that. You'll offend all the furries.
Then I'll have to rewind and listen to understand why they are talking about furries on an F1 podcast. But then it turns out I misheard it anyway.
I don't see why a user should be forced to use different apps depending on the type of the audio content.
While yeah debundled separate apps will make probably the main use case of what was the bundled app better it also likely leads to stagnation and buggier experiences over time in the apps where the less popular features were debundled into.
Like all knowledge and talent required to code the Audiobooks app is the same as whats required to code the Music app so which team would you rather be on given the choice.
Without iTunes, I would have to set up some fake local podcast feed on my computer to get those episodes into the podcast app of my choice instead.
[1] Using iSyncr + Rocket Player after switching from an iPod to an Android phone – sadly those apps were sold by the original developer two years ago, though, and the new owners are seemingly just trying to turn them into a cash grab, so I cannot recommend them any more, though for now the old versions sort of keep working, albeit you need a rooted phone to work around some issues.
General tools are great and I'm never going to argue that there should not be generalized tools (like say a VLC), but specialized tools are also great and should be encouraged where they make sense. To me the differences between listening to music and listening to audiobooks or podcasts are different.
That's merely a reason not to use one /inadequate/ app for all audio.
Inadequacy is not an app requirement.
Most podcast client apps don't allow manually importing files, so I'd have to maintain fake podcast feeds for all my local files. There's software for that, too, but it'd still be more cumbersome than with iTunes where I just need to set the media type of those files to "Podcast" and I'm done.
It's pretty neat, and pretty surprising, that I can still sync my iPod in 2024. But having a large collection of audiobooks means there's a lot of data clogging up my system drive - where audiobooks would otherwise be an ideal candidate to be offloaded almost anywhere else (they're slow, they're infrequent, etc).
Back in the day, you uploaded all your own media. you didn't have access to hundreds of thousands of streaming options across music, podcasts, and movies. Having a single app to upload your media and sync to your MP3 player was optimal.
Now that everything is streaming, and accessible on mobile without a need to sync to a local source, the benefits of media type unity is much weaker. It's easier to have individual apps that provide access points to each type of media library and optimized for that type of media.
But,
There are still those of us (such as myself) that prefer the local media sourcing, using iPods, etc, and that would love a unified app without any store. Just a window into my personal media library and the ability to sync it to a handheld device. Though the options for handheld devices these days are both slim and expensive...
It's good to be able to focus on things, but this is way too categorized and just drives even more clutter.
I just hope this doesn’t actually come with three times the resource impact of iTunes. As far as I remember from my Windows days, iTunes was enormous and basically supplied half the macOS standard library and frameworks compiled to DLLs with it.
It's a fascinating new version of the old stack that works much better on Windows, if those things are true. At least in my usage so far, the Apple Music and Apple TV apps feel much better on Windows than iTunes ever has.
I’m sure if Spotify had the choice they would split things into separate apps. Having separate apps makes it much easier to deploy changes since you don’t need to coordinate (as much) with other teams for every release.
In practice, this doesn't appear to be an obstacle. Companies like Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, etc. have many apps in the App Store "Top Charts".
If anything, this would be a smart marketing strategy if Spotify could (for example) make a compelling standalone "podcast" app, because it would allow them to double or triple their footprint on App Store charts.
A music app simply lists what you have available. SaaS bloatware on the other hand constantly changes its UI to maximize engagement and nudge users towards ad-stuffed podcasts, because the music is a loss-leader for them.
I think that's overly reductive.
They have different kinds of metadata, distribution mechanisms, and ideal UIs.
I don't know if you remember but iTunes was the overbloated app from hell that couldn't be refactored because it was too far gone. Every year it got slower and buggier and increasingly just wouldn't work.
Thank god they started cleaving off chunks into separate new apps that got built from scratch. It was a monstrosity.
I don't understand why you think separate apps is a problem. Heck, the #1 complaint about Spotify is that they added podcasts and audiobooks into the existing app rather than as new apps, which clutters up the interface.
More like noTunes then
Their Apple Digital Masters program (formerly Mastered for iTunes or "MFiT") offers guidance and tools for labels, which is why Apple's iTunes catalog offers such consistently high quality.
https://www.apple.com/apple-music/apple-digital-masters/docs...
I've been wanting to add a lot of Super Furry Animals albums to that stick but my mac mini died last year and I wasn't in a hurry to get a new mac. From time to time I think about pulling the SSD out of it and getting the Python script running on my Linux server, I could either use a MP3 encoder like LAME (always encoding at a high bit rate so it's going to be OK) but I do hear people have cheated to get the Apple AAC encoder to run on other OS
https://www.andrews-corner.org/qaac.html
I've used the same software to pack up music for my Garmin watch and for that I do use AAC Pro at 96kbps because I figure in the gym or out on a run it is a noisy environment. For that the Apple encoder really is superior to alternatives.
Apple’s podcast apps have been second rate since the very early days also. So they should just give iTunes for PC the Viking funeral it deserves.
Like Flutter, its unfixable jankiness comes from not using native controls. Anyone using iTunes for Windows is really using a bit of pre-X Mac OS in the form of Carbon/QTML. This is surely one of the reasons that Apple is gradually giving iTunes for Windows that Viking funeral you're asking for.
- Older versions of iTunes had a great "home sharing" function that allowed sharing the library with devices running iTunes on the LAN. I used this very extensively. iTunes running on my 2008 Mac Pro still runs the server, and there is kinda-sorta client functionality in Apple Music, a bit hidden, but it is not reliable (constantly disconnects mid-song). Also, there was never an iOS client which would stream from this server. There were some half-baked attempts at open-source apps that would do it, but Apple broke them by encrypting the streaming across my own LAN.
- iTunes stored podcast and audiobook files in a simple and transparent way. Now podcasts (accessed using the separate Apple Podcasts app) are stored buried in Library subdirectories with long gibberish filenames. Although they're really just MP3 files with extra tags, it's now very difficult to just grab an episode by filename and save it elsewhere or forward it to a friend.
- iTunes had best-in-class tag editing. Apple Music's tag editing is buggy.
- Don't get me started on the "iTunes Match" debacle. https://www.macrumors.com/2021/08/05/itunes-match-users-repo...
Jobs had a vision of the Mac as a media hub for managing your collection and I liked that vision. Apple even (eventually) removed DRM from iTunes downloads. Forcing me into DRM and subscription services? No thanks. What I've done instead is, gradually, buy many dozens of used CDs and rip them, to replace any lossy iTunes files I purchased years ago. My entire library is now CD + ALAC (lossless) + purchased FLAC files that some vendors offer (and which were never supported on iTunes or Apple Music, but play flawlessly from the Synology). I use rsync to sync my iTunes library to my Synology NAS, and use Synology's free iOS apps to stream the whole library on our iOS devices, or on laptops and desktops, just use the web player. It works great and I can stream to stereo receivers without any difficulty as well using an AudioEngine B-Fi. No streaming services, no monthly bills.
I hate the UI on Apple Music enough that I don't use iTunes Home Share anymore, but instead run an instance of MPD and then just control playback through ncmpcpp. But to modify tags, add ratings, etc. I have a Screen Sharing session open to the 2007 machine to use iTunes. I have an ongoing project to write a web app that would free me from iTunes altogether, but it will be a while before that's usable.
I don't remember if I ever encountered the disconnection issues you did with a modern machine + home sharing with an older one. The thing that drove me the most nuts was that I could not use home sharing if I was using my headphones over bluetooth. They had to be plugged in for home sharing to work.
My favorite trick was when I figured out how to get the advertisements from home sharing forwarded over VPN, so I could use it when I was on work travel. Unfortunately that broke when I upgraded from Mavericks to High Sierra and I never figured out how to fix it.
Also, foobar2000 of course.
Do you mean Spotify is better because it's all in one? Or specifically as a podcast client it's better? Because, as a podcast client, Spotify is shockingly bad. Perhaps the worst podcast client available. Apple Podcasts, Overcast, and Pocketcasts are all much, much better.
This is Spotify's main advantage: most people already have it installed, and it's good enough if you don't care that much about the podcast-listening experience.
Anyways, I can't seem to find a suitable alternative that will keep track of my listening progress across both linux and iOS.
What is so special about podcast-listening experience that you would need a specific player for?
The UI is lackluster, since it's just the same one from the normal Spotify Music experience. Because they bought Joe Rogan they had to add video too and video is horribly implemented. There isn't even an obvious way to turn it off. I consider myself tech-savy but I gave up trying to turn off and just switched to Apple Podcasts.
Podcasts and Music are not the same.
Please if you really want Podcasts to happen then, Spotify, make a separate App for it.
Not a spotify nor Apple Music/Podcast/itunes user here.
Aren't both audio stuff where you press play, pause, stop, rewind and fast forward?
The only difference I can think of is that you might sometimes want to accelerate playback of podcasts but that doesn't mean it can't exist in the same player.
1) An online catalog of series that is searchable (probably both by name and topic and participants).
2) That catalog must contain metadata both at a series level and an episode level.
3) That online catalog must also be navigable without search, of course.
4) Ability to subscribe to any given series and for the app to have an option to pre-cache an episode for offline use.
5) Several content controls that aren't really required for music listening but are must haves for podcasts such as timed skips (30s, 60s) and playback speed adjustment (only useful in a music player where you probably want to do beat matching).
I think the biggest differentiator though is the episode/series catalog. It makes podcasts actually discoverable.
I don't think it is hard in term of UI nor does it justify a different app when you can have an additionnal tab that allows to find podcast. You just have to change the criterias.
Subscription to podcast is done via rss right? I don't think that is a huge deal either.
It just comes down to that management/browse/search task dwarfs the playback code.
I'd rather have small apps that do one thing well, not a megaapp that does all things badly.
I like listening to mine on Overcast (previously with the Apple Podcasts app)
* discover/search podcasts and subscribe to them.
* download new episodes automatically
* create a playlist of episodes; when an episode is finished, it's removed from the list and deleted automatically
* keep track of your position in an episode; since they can several hours long, you don't want to restart from the beginning
It's a a fork of a fork of the old Amarok, supporting more features and modern support while retaining the original UI.
Could be for helping you tune your musical instruments.
I have done it this way since forever.
Everything has always transferred off just fine at least for me.
For a huge library like that I would go with a reliable software like iMazing.
https://github.com/libimobiledevice/ifuse
I type "ifuse /mnt/iphone" and there is a DCIM/###APPLE dir with the images and videos where I use "cp -a" to copy the files to my computer
If you want a certain format for the images, just set the camera to use that format, or convert it yourself after copying off the phone.
My process is:
* Connect iPhone to MacBook or similar
* Use Image Capture to dump all photos to a local directory in $HOME
* rsync the directory to my NAS
* Run a wrapper script around ExifTool [0] to sort the photos into folders