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Ask HN: Why doesn't Apple bring continuity to the Music app?

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Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't Apple bring continuity to the Music app?

#11

Post by CSSer »

locusofself wrote: post #5
Smoosh wrote: post #3

They sort of do have it. You can be playing music on your phone and "tap it" onto a HomePod. It also works the other way, I can ask Siri on the HomePod to play something, and the details will show on my iPhone & iPad. I don't know if there is a way to go from iPhone to computer. EDIT: That may not qualify as a "handoff" though. But it does handoff from current device to AirPods when you put them in, so there's that.

The feature to handoff to your homepod, at least on the classic homepods that I have, sucks. It's very slow and unreliable.

Everything about the HomePods seem to be. I once asked what time it was and due to wifi problems it gave me some generic error message. It baffled me that this thing has to phone home for the time.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't Apple bring continuity to the Music app?

#13

Post by semireg »

nielsbot wrote: post #8
purpleblue wrote: post #6

The Apple Music app is terrible, one of the worst on the market. I hate it, it is so clunky and borderline unusable.

Which part? This isn't my experience at all...

Almost the entire thing. How about keyboards having an integrated pause play button but it only works for Apple Music if it’s the last responder in handling the event. On YouTube? Hijacked. Incoming phone call and you want to pause music? Nope, your Mac ANSWERS THE PHONE! I was finally fed up and installed a 3rd party app that forces pause play to only hit Apple Music.

I use my MBP through a USB-C dock with an external SSD attached and whenever Time Machine or CCC triggers a backup my audio starts skipping. Sure, that isn’t Apple Music’s fault, but it’s part of the ecosystem and that kind of performance should be considered when designing the system.

And then the UI. All web views with click delay.

I like exploring jazz and electronic genres but navigating and scrolling to start one sub-genre takes like 30 seconds. There’s no way to pin genres that you like or hide genres you don’t care about.

I feel like my collection of music from 2000s is gone, even though it was uploaded to the cloud or something … through some apple program 10 years ago. I still have the metadata of my collection but even that is just a facade.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't Apple bring continuity to the Music app?

#14

Post by kochikame »

semireg wrote: post #13
nielsbot wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part? This isn't my experience at all...

Almost the entire thing. How about keyboards having an integrated pause play button but it only works for Apple Music if it’s the last responder in handling the event. On YouTube? Hijacked. Incoming phone call and you want to pause music? Nope, your Mac ANSWERS THE PHONE! I was finally fed up and installed a 3rd party app that forces pause play to only hit Apple Music. I use my MBP through a USB-C dock with an extern…

Maybe it's generational because I seem to be around the same age as you and I also hated the way my music collection "disappeared" into Apple Music (and a whole host of other things I disliked, chief of which that it keeps giving options for things you almost never want or need while at the same time it's hard to just, y'know, find and play and tag the music you want)

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't Apple bring continuity to the Music app?

#15

Post by SkyPuncher »

semireg wrote: post #13
nielsbot wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part? This isn't my experience at all...

Almost the entire thing. How about keyboards having an integrated pause play button but it only works for Apple Music if it’s the last responder in handling the event. On YouTube? Hijacked. Incoming phone call and you want to pause music? Nope, your Mac ANSWERS THE PHONE! I was finally fed up and installed a 3rd party app that forces pause play to only hit Apple Music. I use my MBP through a USB-C dock with an extern…

Ugh, that dives me crazy - but it's not an Apple Music issue. It's a MBP issue.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't Apple bring continuity to the Music app?

#16

Post by baby »

purpleblue wrote: post #6

The Apple Music app is terrible, one of the worst on the market. I hate it, it is so clunky and borderline unusable.

The only thing I can say is that:

1. It has come a long way. iTunes really was a horrible piece of shit software for many years. It is much much much better now.

2. There isn't any viable alternatives. I don't care what people say, I've tried them all.

IMO there's two bigger issues that really prevent anyone from competing and improving the status quo:

a. You need to be friends with the music industry to be in this field, and to retain this friendship there's a lot of things you just can't do. Imagine if something like these flash widgets that you could embed in your website to stream your favorite playlists could still exist.

b. The Apple ecosystem is preventing a lot of people (I believe a majority of phones are iPhones in the US) from moving to competitors and improve competition.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't Apple bring continuity to the Music app?

#17

Post by mlindner »

baby wrote: post #16
purpleblue wrote: post #6

The Apple Music app is terrible, one of the worst on the market. I hate it, it is so clunky and borderline unusable.

The only thing I can say is that: 1. It has come a long way. iTunes really was a horrible piece of shit software for many years. It is much much much better now. 2. There isn't any viable alternatives. I don't care what people say, I've tried them all. IMO there's two bigger issues that really prevent anyone from competing and improving the status quo: a. You need to be friends with the music industry to be in this f…

> 1. It has come a long way. iTunes really was a horrible piece of shit software for many years. It is much much much better now.

Speak for yourself. iTunes user interface was so much easier on the computer to use than the current mess that is the Music app on the computer. I'd love to get the old iTunes app back.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't Apple bring continuity to the Music app?

#18

Post by wkat4242 »

baby wrote: post #16
purpleblue wrote: post #6

The Apple Music app is terrible, one of the worst on the market. I hate it, it is so clunky and borderline unusable.

The only thing I can say is that: 1. It has come a long way. iTunes really was a horrible piece of shit software for many years. It is much much much better now. 2. There isn't any viable alternatives. I don't care what people say, I've tried them all. IMO there's two bigger issues that really prevent anyone from competing and improving the status quo: a. You need to be friends with the music industry to be in this f…

I think Spotify does things a lot better and they fought the music industry a lot. These days everyone does it.

They also do multi device so much better. It take feels "Apple". If I'm playing music on my phone I can actually change the song on a third party client on my FreeBSD desktop which isn't supported by Spotify at all.

Spotify really does a lot of those things "you just can't do" and they aren't even big friends with the music industry (though I guess despite their initial battles they are now)

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't Apple bring continuity to the Music app?

#20

Post by wkat4242 »

mlindner wrote: post #17
baby wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing I can say is that: 1. It has come a long way. iTunes really was a horrible piece of shit software for many years. It is much much much better now. 2. There isn't any viable alternatives. I don't care what people say, I've tried them all. IMO there's two bigger issues that really prevent anyone from competing and improving the status quo: a. You need to be friends with the music industry to be in this f…

> 1. It has come a long way. iTunes really was a horrible piece of shit software for many years. It is much much much better now. Speak for yourself. iTunes user interface was so much easier on the computer to use than the current mess that is the Music app on the computer. I'd love to get the old iTunes app back.

I think itunes wasn't bad for music.

The problem was more that it was also managing files on your office, doing firmware updates and a whole load of unrelated crap.

And it still does all this on windows.. :/

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