Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How iTunes Is Changing on PC

support.apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 332 posts

Re: How iTunes Is Changing on PC

#241

Post by NoPedantsThanks »

bhauer wrote: post #232

I was briefly excited to hear they had separated media synchronization from the atrocity of iTunes. I just experimented with the "Apple Devices App" for PC. Unfortunately, the experience has been poor, which is what I should have anticipated given Apple's track record for PC software. First, the linked documentation provides no information about where to get the Apple Devices App. It turns out, it's only available fr…

Apple's fear of proper I/O strikes again.

Forcing customers to use a shitty JUKEBOX app to manage all the content (including applications) on a handheld Unix computer was embarrassing on day one. But after a decade... and then more... it's offensive to those customers.

Now they made the already-shambolic Windows situation even worse. It's bad enough on Mac, where the videos you shot yourself inexplicably wind up in the "TV" app now. Why the hell would you look in Apple TV for stuff you shot on your phone?

Re: How iTunes Is Changing on PC

#242

Post by aniforprez »

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #205
aniforprez wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple TV is also somehow hot garbage I don't understand. These are "just" media players and all split up to do one thing each. How do they all do that one thing so miserably. TV hangs for multiple seconds every single time I download or delete episodes of TV shows and the player is so incredibly bad and doesn't save your progress properly

Huh, it never occurred to me that you could download episodes on an Apple TV. What’s the use-case? I download shows on my iPad so I can watch them when I’m traveling without internet, but my Apple TV is always plugged in. Intermittent connectivity in the home? Maybe bugs stick around because the feature is rarely used?

I'm not talking about the device btw. I am indeed talking about the TV app that comes preinstalled on Apple devices. I watch from my Macbook. The TV app is confusingly also Apple TV with a subscription service called Apple TV+

My use case is I've found that, for reasons unknown, the streaming quality is worse than if I download the episodes. Streaming always stays at 720p or lower whereas downloading gets me 1080p every time. And being able to watch things when I move around even with spotty internet

Re: How iTunes Is Changing on PC

#243

Post by prmoustache »

sleepybrett wrote: post #199
prmoustache wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Podcasts and Music are not the same. Not a spotify nor Apple Music/Podcast/itunes user here. Aren't both audio stuff where you press play, pause, stop, rewind and fast forward? The only difference I can think of is that you might sometimes want to accelerate playback of podcasts but that doesn't mean it can't exist in the same player.

Podcast apps, good ones, have many features you don't need in a simple app like a winamp or vlc. 1) An online catalog of series that is searchable (probably both by name and topic and participants). 2) That catalog must contain metadata both at a series level and an episode level. 3) That online catalog must also be navigable without search, of course. 4) Ability to subscribe to any given series and for the app to ha…

There are audio players that allows you to find radios by various criterias: genre, bitrates, location, etc.

I don't think it is hard in term of UI nor does it justify a different app when you can have an additionnal tab that allows to find podcast. You just have to change the criterias.

Subscription to podcast is done via rss right? I don't think that is a huge deal either.

Re: How iTunes Is Changing on PC

#244

Post by NoPedantsThanks »

incanus77 wrote: post #170
recursive wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a presumption that if I want anything other than what they're giving me, it's me that's wrong. Just like they did with the headphone jacks.

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?…

[dead]

Re: How iTunes Is Changing on PC

#246

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

prmoustache wrote: post #151
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #13

As long as I can still move pictures from wife's phone. Still, this is such an annoying change. As in, Itunes on PC always sucked, but it did not occur to me that Apple would want to actively make it worse. edit: This reminds me. Wasn't there a FOSS project that has most of Itunes functionality?

> edit: This reminds me. Wasn't there a FOSS project that has most of Itunes functionality? What is that functionnality? If it is about playing audio, there are tons of apps for that.

If I plug iphone in to a PC without itunes, best I can hope for is extraction of images. To even access a small portion of the rest of the filesystem, I need(ed now ) itunes.

What I recall using once for some backup purposes was a itunes like program that gained access to almost everything ( all media ).

Re: How iTunes Is Changing on PC

#247

Post by kabdib »

gwbas1c wrote: post #236

Does it seem strange that "iTunes" is for audiobooks and podcasts? Maybe it's time to retire the name "iTunes," or have "iTunes" be the name of a suite?

You can tell which team that lost the turf war and has to maintain the old code.

Pity them.

Re: How iTunes Is Changing on PC

#248

Post by paulrpotts »

iTunes was a complex mess with too much functionality in one app, but for many years it worked really well for me. Replacing it with the new apps has been a process of removing functionality I relied on, obfuscating and making less user-friendly existing functionality, and pushing people into using cloud services. Some examples:

- Older versions of iTunes had a great "home sharing" function that allowed sharing the library with devices running iTunes on the LAN. I used this very extensively. iTunes running on my 2008 Mac Pro still runs the server, and there is kinda-sorta client functionality in Apple Music, a bit hidden, but it is not reliable (constantly disconnects mid-song). Also, there was never an iOS client which would stream from this server. There were some half-baked attempts at open-source apps that would do it, but Apple broke them by encrypting the streaming across my own LAN.

- iTunes stored podcast and audiobook files in a simple and transparent way. Now podcasts (accessed using the separate Apple Podcasts app) are stored buried in Library subdirectories with long gibberish filenames. Although they're really just MP3 files with extra tags, it's now very difficult to just grab an episode by filename and save it elsewhere or forward it to a friend.

- iTunes had best-in-class tag editing. Apple Music's tag editing is buggy.

- Don't get me started on the "iTunes Match" debacle. https://www.macrumors.com/2021/08/05/itunes-match-users-repo...

Jobs had a vision of the Mac as a media hub for managing your collection and I liked that vision. Apple even (eventually) removed DRM from iTunes downloads. Forcing me into DRM and subscription services? No thanks. What I've done instead is, gradually, buy many dozens of used CDs and rip them, to replace any lossy iTunes files I purchased years ago. My entire library is now CD + ALAC (lossless) + purchased FLAC files that some vendors offer (and which were never supported on iTunes or Apple Music, but play flawlessly from the Synology). I use rsync to sync my iTunes library to my Synology NAS, and use Synology's free iOS apps to stream the whole library on our iOS devices, or on laptops and desktops, just use the web player. It works great and I can stream to stereo receivers without any difficulty as well using an AudioEngine B-Fi. No streaming services, no monthly bills.

Re: How iTunes Is Changing on PC

#249

Post by paulrpotts »

jollyllama wrote: post #212
incanus77 wrote: post #138

The phrase “everything you needed to be entertained” is indicative of the biggest problem that I see with Apple today: a focus on consumerism and passive consumption. Twenty years ago, iTunes’ emphasis was on collecting, experiencing, and enjoying an art form. It’s a very subtle difference, but it speaks to the attitude that Apple projects today. When was the last time the intersection with the humanities was mention…

> Twenty years ago, iTunes’ emphasis was on collecting, experiencing, and enjoying an art form. Or, better yet, creating. Time was when FCP trounced any video editor for Window, all of which were buggy and unreliable. Now, FCP is more of a niche product for pro or semi pro editors. Garageband was never the top choice for pros, but it was highly accessible at that time. Hours of fun for an adolescent. Now, it's weird…

When Apple Logic becomes enshittified, my #1 reason for still owning Macs will go with it.

Re: How iTunes Is Changing on PC

#250

Post by pmontra »

sunshowers wrote: post #210
crowcroft wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience you almost entirely lose the human experience of sharing playlists, talking about new discoveries, getting together with people to listen to new music. For each individual it is probably a better experience, but there is something lost still. I don't know if it's fair to lay blame for that on Apple though, it seems like that's where things are going anyway in some many dimensions of life.

Just the other day, I discovered a rather incredible ambient/drone album using a nonstandard tuning [1] via Spotify's Discover Weekly, and excitedly pinged all my art-music-liking friends about it. [1] Trances by Jules Reidy: https://juliareidy.bandcamp.com/album/trances

I looked for it on YouTube (via Invidious) and found it. Not my kind of music but that's not the point.

The point is that if somebody likes to keep a copy of some songs discovered during a day of autoplaying through YouTube, downloading them is very easy for anybody that wants to. Maybe it's easy to do it also from Spotify but I don't use it so I have no idea.

Post reply on HN