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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?

#41
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.

But not my iPad, for some reason. That's a that an omission that baffles me.

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

#42

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

That’s strange to me. I moved over from Spotify and expected QOL degradation that didn’t happen.

Sound quality is better, artist are getting pay more and I have more music available(Joanna newsom, skeemask)

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

#43
Since no one has actually attempted to answer your question yet I'll give my guess as to why: I think Apple generally invested way too little time and developer talent into the development of Apple Music. I think this is evident in many ways when you look at the Music apps, _especially_ the macOS one. Since the initial release of Apple Music very little has happened to the apps, leading me to the conclusion that they're not spending time to improve them either.

Recall that Apple bought Beats to acquire the music streaming platform that Beats was developing with the purpose of turning it into Apple Music. To me this always seemed like a bit of a weird move since Apple could obviously build their own music streaming service without acquiring a company to do so. My guess is that someone at Apple who's more of a business person than a product person wanted Apple to have a Spotify competitor ASAP and saw the acquisition of Beats as a quick way to get there (with means that a business person can carry out: acquisitions). The acquisition happened, Beat's tech was turned into Apple Music (probably with time to market as the key metric that management cared about), Apple Music was released. Then the business person was happy, called it a day, and moved on.

Had Apple put their own focus and top talent into Apple Music the way they did with iTunes and iTunes Store back when iPod was their main cash cow, then I think Apple Music would have been very different. But alas, "music streaming" is probably just a check mark in someones list of services that Apple should have, and it's already checked so the job is done :)

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

#44
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…

>Why own a ton of Apple devices if you can’t seamlessly and easily control things on whatever Apple device is nearest?

Because owning a ton of Apple devices lets you show off to other people how cool you are, and earns Apple a ton of money. Why should they bother fixing this stuff when Apple users will buy all-Apple devices no matter how badly they work together?

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

#45
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…

>Why own a ton of Apple devices if you can’t seamlessly and easily control things on whatever Apple device is nearest? Because owning a ton of Apple devices lets you show off to other people how cool you are, and earns Apple a ton of money. Why should they bother fixing this stuff when Apple users will buy all-Apple devices no matter how badly they work together?

Or because their competition is so far behind that what little Apple has in terms of integration is still miles ahead.

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

#46
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why own a ton of Apple devices if you can’t seamlessly and easily control things on whatever Apple device is nearest? Because owning a ton of Apple devices lets you show off to other people how cool you are, and earns Apple a ton of money. Why should they bother fixing this stuff when Apple users will buy all-Apple devices no matter how badly they work together?

Or because their competition is so far behind that what little Apple has in terms of integration is still miles ahead.

I haven't tried it for myself, but many comments here say that Spotify works far better, across many different devices and even with 3rd-party client software.

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

#47
post #42

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

That’s strange to me. I moved over from Spotify and expected QOL degradation that didn’t happen. Sound quality is better, artist are getting pay more and I have more music available(Joanna newsom, skeemask)

The sound quality is better, and you have different music available. The app itself, though, is not that great. It's slow and inconsistent.

Moreover, if we're looking at the content itself, if you like some niche or more specific genres, you're out of luck. The music is there, but your only hope to find more of it is relying on public playlists created by the community.

I really do hope that Spotify nails it with its Hi-fi sub. The difference in sound quality is very noticeable to me.

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

#48
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 agree 100% but, if you wanted to change ecosystem as whole (not just for music), what alternatives are there, really?

They clearly get away with this because whatever you'd change it with you'd be far worse off.

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

#49
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…

I mean, that's just vendor lock-in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in

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