This is one bit of software I've always refused to install.
How iTunes Is Changing on PC
181–190 of 332 posts
Re: How iTunes Is Changing on PC
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. It is nice to have separate apps for Music, Podcasts and audiobooks. You know, do one thing well. Spotfiy tries to do all of these and it's a bloated mess.
“Do one thing well” isn’t the same thing as “make several almost identical copies of a monolith, all wearing different hats”. 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.
The new apps seem to take more advantage of the open source collaborated cross-platform version of Foundation rewritten in Swift that uses as much of Windows' WinUI and other native libraries as it can get away with (via more direct WinRT/Swift bindings), much thinner than the Objective-C Foundation the old iTunes was built on that used very few Windows native libraries. The apps themselves are still closed source so we don't know for sure, but overall they seem less bloated and more "Windows native" than the old iTunes, while apparently still sharing a lot of Swift code with their Apple platform relatives.
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.
Re: How iTunes Is Changing on PC
#183Re: How iTunes Is Changing on PC
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure I’ve ever understood this take. 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?…
I've never 100% understood it either, the only steelman I've been able to come up with over years is most people are like me and lose or damage the wireless earbuds every 6-12 months. I'm lucky enough to be a yuppie tech nerd with disposable income to treat it as a fact of life. Whereas for them it feels like a forced march to spend $150 every year.
> Whereas for them it feels like a forced march to spend $150 every year.
Except that you are not, there exists a 8-10$ 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.
Re: How iTunes Is Changing on PC
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know what you mean. 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.
They mean that 20 years ago I was really into music blogs and videos and tagging and getting videos onto my iPod to the point it's literally what got me into programming: step by step, shitty AppleScript to set up auto convert + add to iTunes flows, compiling C to get the latest HandBrake that could do non-DVDs... Now it's too easy: I have the absolutely fantastic experience of having infinite music in my hand on dem…
Maybe as you matured and developed more responsibilities as life went on, you had less time and energy to invest in music as a serious hobby. This is a normal development.
Re: How iTunes Is Changing on PC
#186Has iTunes on Windows ever been good? I think I tried it in 2003-4, and it was garbage then, so I uninstalled it. In the intervening 20 years, I've never heard anyone say "it's good now!", so I never re-installed it. I assumed that if you were a dedicated Windows user, you just wouldn't use iTunes, and if you weren't a dedicated Windows user but loved your iPhone, you'd do what Apple wanted you to do in the first pla…
As someone who generally hates Apple, I actually enjoyed iTunes on Windows in the ~2007-2012 era when I had to use it to manage my iPod Touch (and second one a friend gave me, since I ran out of space on the first, spreading the MLPMusicArchive across both). Performed fine on my somewhat-potato laptops, had a nice interface and search function, got the job done syncing the iPods. I never got the big deal about iTunes…
As someone who generally loves apple iTunes on any platform has always been a usability nightmare. In previous generations and mostly on windows it's attempt to both 'be my winamp, vlc and ebook manager AS WELL AS manage my phone more generally' was just a usability clusterfuck of epic proportions.
Re: How iTunes Is Changing on PC
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Twenty years ago, iTunes’ emphasis was on collecting, experiencing, and enjoying an art form. 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.
Sure, Apple aligned itself in a way that ultimately added to its and its partners’ bottom lines. But somehow, the company’s attitude felt aspirational to me in a way that it does not today.
Then you fell for the lifestyle advertising. Simple as that
Re: How iTunes Is Changing on PC
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm, I have never had a problem dragging and dropping them off my iPhone via the device that shows up in the My Computer screen when I plug my phone in via USB. I have done it this way since forever.
Sounds like you are doing a few photos at a time? My library count is now over 200k photos. It worries me that it is almost impossible to get a guaranteed backup of them from iCloud to local storage. Even when I tick the box in Mac photos app to store originals, from my own testing I’ve found lots of images are still only locally loaded when first viewed. Not great for making local backups!
Typically several hundred to 1-2K at most I guess. A mixture of regular, raw, and videos.
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.
Re: How iTunes Is Changing on PC
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
? no it wasn't. it was taking a beautiful, timeless, intrinsically valuable thing (music) and building a business around it. 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 engagemen…
I don't know what you mean. 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.
>I don't know what you mean.
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.
Re: How iTunes Is Changing on PC
#190I like how Apple's page starts with "When iTunes was originally released, it had everything you needed to be entertained. Now, there are individual apps for all your media" - yes, exactly! That's the problem!
Strong disagree, when itunes was about managing your phone generally (backups, resets, file transfer), managing your personal music collection on and off your phone, managing and playback (sans books i think) your itunes store purchases (music/movies/books)... it was too much. It created a weird usability nightmare where things that should have not been blended were blended.