iTunes will never work well • Hacker News Board

Re: iTunes will never work well

#311

Post by Filligree » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 2:34 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #165

striking wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their reputation stemmed from the days where everything was discoverable. Want to delete a file? There's a trash can glued to your dock. Need to perform a function but don't know the name? Look it up in the Help menu's search box. Now, though, they've done the Windows 8 thing of overloading gestures and hiding behaviors. Want to see your notifications? Two-finger swipe to the left, starting from the edge of the touch…

Imagine what real 3D gesture recognition will be like.[1] [1] https://atap.google.com/soli/

Tiring.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#312

Post by cmiller1 » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 2:34 PM UTC

dTal wrote: post #284

jheriko wrote: post #11

i don't understand how apple have a reputation for good ui... all of their stuff is terrible. the main problem: zero discoverablity - i need to google how to do things, then get some snotty fanboy answer about how easy and obvious it is, but there is literally no way to infer the functionality from the design. they do love to steal context too... and interrupt your flow... ... i could go on and on, but having zero-di…

I had an SSH password once with a # character in it. I tried to log in from a friend's Macbook and was forced to ask him how to type this. Apparently it was Option-3. Completely unmarked. Astonishing. But hey, at least you can type §.

Huh? I have a Macbook Pro and a Microsoft keyboard on an old Win XP box right next to each other right now and they both, clearly labeled, have # above the "3" for shift-3

Re: iTunes will never work well

#313

Post by newscracker » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 2:37 PM UTC

When iTunes started, it was fine because there was only music to deal with. But with the addition of other media types in iOS devices, it's become very messy. If you have books and photos on your iOS device, there is no simple way to get these to their respective apps on the Mac (iBooks and Photos/erstwhile iPhoto). Using iTunes will do almost nothing if you aren't buying all your stuff from Apple, except backup all data (including these) into a "hidden" location. You'd have to use each of these apps every time you want to just get the latest from the iOS device to it.

Apple should introduce a simple sync application that will take all photos to Photos, all books to iBooks, all apps to iTunes or some new App app (the removal of app transfer from iOS devices into iTunes is a big issue in different ways), all music to iTunes, etc., along with all the respective user-created metadata (like collections for books, favorites for photos, etc.). Most importantly, this should work for things obtained from non-Apple sources.

(Sometimes I wish Apple would have interviews with users like me to understand how difficult things are and use that to improve its products)

Re: iTunes will never work well

#314

Post by Bartweiss » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 2:39 PM UTC

Dain42 wrote: post #114

rtpg wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

want to eject a disk? drag it to the trash can...? I think Apple was good at keeping things consistent across apps, but the chosen metaphors were sometimes just as confusing (if worse) than the blessed windows one. Not that it matters, everything is learned behaviour anyways. Consistency is already a great achievement.

> want to eject a disk? drag it to the trash can...? That was just something that was there forever, basically since 1984. It was part of the Macintosh vernacular. You could also right-click to eject.

But it's been considered a terrible design choice since 1984. It's not one of those things that we decided against long after it was put in place, Unix philosophy types were complaining about the inconsistency of that choice the day it came out.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#315

Post by StuffMaster » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 2:44 PM UTC

jharohit wrote: post #295

There never was and never will be a better music player than Winamp! #WinampSkins

Foobar2000 my friend

Re: iTunes will never work well

#316

Post by Bartweiss » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 2:50 PM UTC

the_other wrote: post #264

creshal wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Are people only allowed to have multiple screens after passing some OSX geek initiation rite?

Sure, people can have as many screens as they can manage. I still think it's reasonable to assume that if you know how to configure a system to spread your desktop over three screens and to hide the widget that gives you the feedback/discoverability then you can use the skills that got you there to get you out of your predicament. If your argument is that the dock is the wrong place for that feedback because it can b…

I would argue that OS X still has bad multi-screen support because I shouldn't have to hunt for where dialog boxes and status updates have been placed. Yes, I'm capable of doing so, but that doesn't mean I want to.

Broadly, I object to the inconsistency and high astonishment factor more than any specific choice. For example:

- If a program has dialog boxes open (e.g. a 'find' box), they maintain relative position as you drag the main window across screens. Which, if you move to a smaller screen, puts them in offscreen no-man's-land where they can't actually be used or closed.

- Popups should consistently happen on either the active screen, or the active/furthest-forward window of the spawning program. As is, they unpredictably follow either rule, or borrow from the next bullet:

- Spotlight should appear somewhere sane and predictable. Either the same every time, or over my active window, or over my mouse cursor. Instead, it appears on the window which my Dock has most recently minimized to. My hidden Dock, which I have to use the mouse to locate/move. And then let re-minimize, because OS X doesn't update Spotlight's target when it appears but when it goes away. And which can automatically move itself to different screens without my help, based on where I open programs. Again, invisibly because it's hidden.

- And Spotlight's screen is also the screen where it will open new programs (a good decision). So I can't just look for it, I have to revert to the mouse to move either Dock or program to the screen I've been attempting to use this entire time.

So rambling aside, I think OS X actively causes time-consuming problems for multi-monitor users. I resent that because it's a pain even if I memorize the rules and how to solve the problems.

In particular, I object to tying large swathes of behavior to the Dock, since it's location/contents are both invisible and unpredictable for many users.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#317

Post by baldfat » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 2:51 PM UTC

Tinyyy wrote: post #303

jjawssd wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No more analog-only headphones on the new iPhone. DRM capable digital to analog adapters coming in 3...2...1...

It's kinda disingenuous to make wild speculations like that.

That isn't wild speculations.

All Non-Apple Lighting Cables require a official chip from Apple. So Tim Cook might say that DRM is wild speculation it is actually happening now with all their cables.

So in order to buy a adapter I MUST buy a cable with a chip from Apple that makes it authorized.

EDIT : I guess EFF are wild speculators?

"To its credit, Apple has been adamant it won’t use the new design to restrict your listening experience. But therein lies the problem: you shouldn’t have to depend on a manufacturer’s permission to use its hardware however you like (or, for that matter, to build your own peripherals and accessories for it)."

Currently "it’s impossible to connect a speaker or other audio device to an iPhone without Apple software governing it"

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/09/analog-last-defense-ag...

Re: iTunes will never work well

#318

Post by Bartweiss » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 2:53 PM UTC

jsymolon wrote: post #266

nasduia wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wanted to eject a disk back then? Drag it onto the trash can. Not the most clever ui decision in the days when formatting floppy disks was a common task.

Sounds like a "fail safe" operation. Eject is a lot safer than format.

Yes, but there was still good reason to hate it - what about users who learned the pattern the other way?

It sounds silly, but ejecting disks was about as common as deleting local content. Overlapping "delete" functionality with anything else still threatens to cause unintended deletes, even if this was better than the reverse.

(It's still fuzzy with Volumes in OS X, where you can click an 'eject' button that effectively deletes downloaded content if you haven't copied it out. Check out how many Volumes low-confidence users have running some time.)

Re: iTunes will never work well

#319

Post by Bartweiss » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 2:57 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #95

striking wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their reputation stemmed from the days where everything was discoverable. Want to delete a file? There's a trash can glued to your dock. Need to perform a function but don't know the name? Look it up in the Help menu's search box. Now, though, they've done the Windows 8 thing of overloading gestures and hiding behaviors. Want to see your notifications? Two-finger swipe to the left, starting from the edge of the touch…

a) If you want to see notifications click the button in the top, right corner where it's always been. b) Apple has not changed the behaviour of buttons on OSX. They still look like they always have. c) Computing resources are not finite like oil. It's there to be used. d) Which gestures are available has always been in the Trackpad system preference which has videos to show you how to use them.

I'm not sure I accept D) as a full defense of a confusing system.

I get that some things can't be made intuitive, and have to be learned. But "there's a video somewhere if you know to look" is a crappy justification for the current setup. As is, non-regional gestures compete with regional versions of the same motion and the enabled-by-default gestures aren't terribly well chosen.

I've watched a lot of non-power-users work their touchpad, accidentally fire off either the wrong gesture or an unintended gesture, and then sort of click aimlessly until they get back to something recognizable. That's a sign that OS X is failing users, no matter how elegant things look to Apple.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#320

Post by massysett » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 3:03 PM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #265

massysett wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Apple would have split up iTunes long ago if it were only a Mac application, but they don't want to distribute a bunch of smaller Windows apps.

Is that so? Some years ago I remember some rando's blog post that seemed to completely invent this narrative from thin air, and it got repeated a lot by Apple fans who have never built Windows applications and probably grossly overestimate its cost. This seems like a pretty lame excuse for one of the world's most powerful companies to not do something it would otherwise want to do.

I don't guess it's a cost issue. iTunes is the Apple trojan horse into the Windows platform. They know that they can get anything onto a Windows desktop by crammng it into this one application. My guess is that strategically they don't want to give this up.