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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?

#31

Post by nostromo »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #28

It's not even just continuity between devices that it lacks, most times when I plug my iPhone into my car's USB port, it always starts playing the library at track 0 (alphabetically). Normally I could avoid this if I open the Music app before plugging it in, but it would not always work. So one of my favourite things about Spotify is that this doesn't happen. However, unless I have the Music app still installed on th…

This is actually a problem with your car. Some cars will issue a play audio command immediately upon connection. If no songs are in your iPhone's music queue, it will dutifully start from the top.

Most newer cars won't do this, and you may be able to shut it off in your car's settings somewhere.

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

#32

Post by 10729287 »

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.

I think it's what I like and why I chose Apple Music. It's so dated and oldschool, it's perfect to just enjoy full albums as I mainly do. I don't care about their playlist (They are awful) and the signal to noise ratio is way better than spotify.

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

#33

Post by NoPicklez »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #28

It's not even just continuity between devices that it lacks, most times when I plug my iPhone into my car's USB port, it always starts playing the library at track 0 (alphabetically). Normally I could avoid this if I open the Music app before plugging it in, but it would not always work. So one of my favourite things about Spotify is that this doesn't happen. However, unless I have the Music app still installed on th…

My iPhone doesn't even work in my car says "Device is unsupported" yet my friends iPhone which is the same model works. It worked for a good 7 years then just deviced to stop any of my devices. Aux works, but its not the same. But my friends iPhone works, I have no idea why.

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

#34

Post by pprotas »

code_witch_sam wrote: post #25
CSSer wrote: post #9

I’m going to be glued to this thread because I desperately want this. If you ask me, a lack of features like this is the #1 failure of the Apple ecosystem. I’d even go so far as to call it a kind of big, indirect lie. Why own a ton of Apple devices if you can’t seamlessly and easily control things on whatever Apple device is nearest? For years I feel like I was told as long as I carefully and meticulously shelled out…

i opened the music app on my watch, clicked the airplay icon, and i see all of my home devices (homepod, apple tvs) listed. even my mac mini is listed.

AirPlay is different from the desired functionality. It basically uses your mac as a remote speaker, instead of actually opening the music app on the computer and playing music there.

You can test this out quite easily: play any audio from your mac (YouTube, Apple Music, whatever) and then try to pause it on your watch. This is not possible.

Spotify Connect allows you to do this easily on the other hand.

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

#35

Post by freetime2 »

pprotas wrote: post #34
code_witch_sam wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i opened the music app on my watch, clicked the airplay icon, and i see all of my home devices (homepod, apple tvs) listed. even my mac mini is listed.

AirPlay is different from the desired functionality. It basically uses your mac as a remote speaker, instead of actually opening the music app on the computer and playing music there. You can test this out quite easily: play any audio from your mac (YouTube, Apple Music, whatever) and then try to pause it on your watch. This is not possible. Spotify Connect allows you to do this easily on the other hand.

Apple’s “home” app allows for a bit of that. You can control music on homepods/apple tv from any device. I don’t think you can control a Mac like a speaker, though. And I actually find it buggy as heck when trying to control a speaker from multiple devices - requests are constantly timing out, the UI doesn’t update properly with the current state, etc. In practice I always just use AirPlay and control it from a single device.

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

#36

Post by npunt »

a_bonobo wrote: post #22
CSSer wrote: post #9

I’m going to be glued to this thread because I desperately want this. If you ask me, a lack of features like this is the #1 failure of the Apple ecosystem. I’d even go so far as to call it a kind of big, indirect lie. Why own a ton of Apple devices if you can’t seamlessly and easily control things on whatever Apple device is nearest? For years I feel like I was told as long as I carefully and meticulously shelled out…

Cory Doctorow recently coined 'enshittification': >When switching costs are high, services can be changed in ways that you dislike without losing your business. The higher the switching costs, the more a company can abuse you, because it knows that as bad as they’ve made things for you, you’d have to endure worse if you left. He wrote it in the context of Twitter/Facebook, but it fits for other 'closed' ecosystems li…

Enshittification is a great term. Great piece by Cory too. I wrote something similar about 'UX Erosion' a few years ago about the same dynamic on social apps:

>UX Erosion, n; 1. shiny new service & concept appears with great UX that attracts creators, followed by a slow undermining of that UX, transitioning from delight-oriented to lock-in, habit, and apathy.

https://nickpunt.com/blog/ux-erosion/

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

#39

Post by b15h0p »

pprotas wrote: post #34
code_witch_sam wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i opened the music app on my watch, clicked the airplay icon, and i see all of my home devices (homepod, apple tvs) listed. even my mac mini is listed.

AirPlay is different from the desired functionality. It basically uses your mac as a remote speaker, instead of actually opening the music app on the computer and playing music there. You can test this out quite easily: play any audio from your mac (YouTube, Apple Music, whatever) and then try to pause it on your watch. This is not possible. Spotify Connect allows you to do this easily on the other hand.

That is true for AirPlay, but AirPlay 2 works differently: It controls playback on a device (say, a HomePod) and all devices on the network see what is playing on that device and can control playback.

Still, this does not seem to be what OOP wants.

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

#40

Post by RHSman2 »

nightpool wrote: post #29

I have the same question about YouTube Music—it's actually at the point now where YouTube proper does handoff better then the music app does, but Spotify is still way ahead of any other company in this area, including seamless handoff and using your laptop/phone as a remote control for a desktop or a different phone. I think most people just don't have multiple devices tbh, so companies don't see it as worth it to in…

Spotify have one job. Razor focus
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