Stop the Apple Music app from launching • Hacker News Board

Re: Stop the Apple Music app from launching

#241

Post by rmunn » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 1:42 AM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #149

titzer wrote: post #66

I still can't believe they killed iTunes. I used to have my entire digital music library in iTunes. Most of that was music I had ripped myself from CD, but I had a handful of albums I bought of iTunes and even some TV shows. When they wholesale abandoned iTunes and deleted from Mac OS in favor of...whatever Apple Music is, I knew I'd never trust them again. I searched for some decent mp3 players for a while, and even…

iTunes is the single worst most rage inducing software I have ever experienced. It is the only software that has brought myself and numerous family members to literal tears. Its concept of “syncing libraries” in the early iPhone era was so unbelievably broken. I wish I believed in software hell because then I would be happy knowing that’s where iTunes existed.

iTunes was responsible for my moving from iPhone to Android. My first phone was an iPhone 3G. But I could not simply transfer .mp3 files onto it from Linux; I had to run iTunes to transfer music onto the iPhone, and that meant loading up a VM running Windows just to run iTunes. (And pass the USB slot into the VM, and set up file sharing... it was all doable, and not that hard, but it wasn't simple).

So my next phone was an Android phone. And I could just plug it into a USB slot, and it showed up as an attached drive, the same way a thumbdrive did. Simple file transfer, at last.

That was nearly twenty years ago, and I have never bought an iPhone or iPad since.

Re: Stop the Apple Music app from launching

#242

Post by akeck » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 2:45 AM UTC

I vibe coded a similar thing using a combo of launchctl commands and Apple Script (closes Music app if it's open) with MS Copilot of all things. It works pretty well.

Re: Stop the Apple Music app from launching

#243

Post by wodenokoto » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 2:52 AM UTC

titzer wrote: post #66

I still can't believe they killed iTunes. I used to have my entire digital music library in iTunes. Most of that was music I had ripped myself from CD, but I had a handful of albums I bought of iTunes and even some TV shows. When they wholesale abandoned iTunes and deleted from Mac OS in favor of...whatever Apple Music is, I knew I'd never trust them again. I searched for some decent mp3 players for a while, and even…

While I’m not sure Apple Music is the music app we deserved, iTunes had become this gigantic everything-but-the-kitchen-sink kind of monstrosity and I think it was the right call to split it up.

Worse, the fun, here’s your music collection as a wall of cover images didn’t sit well with consumers who just wanted, I don’t know, get fed music and not curate themselves and I guess that’s how we ended up with mediocre.

Re: Stop the Apple Music app from launching

#244

Post by eviks » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 2:57 AM UTC

nkozyra wrote: post #39

eviks wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OS isn't supposed to be premium since it's free, does that help figure it out?

You can't buy the OS directly, but it certainly isn't free.

How do you figure a price of 0 is a high price?

Re: Stop the Apple Music app from launching

#245

Post by hod6654 » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 3:14 AM UTC

gausswho wrote: post #140

After I discovered my Mac Mini was downloading animated wallpapers until filling up 80Gb of space, then doing it all over again every time I reboot, I decided I'd had enough and installed LuLu firewall and blocked every outbound to apple.com. I don't use any of their services anyway, and some of them approach malware suspicion (keyboard input analytics daemon??)

Is there a consensus on what can be blocked in LuLu/LS without breaking any functionality?

Re: Stop the Apple Music app from launching

#246

Post by ezfe » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 3:15 AM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #159

ezfe wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Music app reads the same library and has the same core music-oriented functions as iTunes. Is the interface what you're missing?

My main complaints are that it’s clearly store and subscription first, local music and playlists a distant second. Still works however.

I don't really understand what you mean - yes, it is designed for Apple Music, a tab for browsing for new music, etc.

But it still has library views for songs, albums, artists, and playlists. That's the whole thing. Additional tabs to support modern music streaming don't devalue those tabs.

Re: Stop the Apple Music app from launching

#247

Post by inadequatespace » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 3:38 AM UTC

jxmorris12 wrote: post #73

> The app does absolutely no work in the background. It works by simply existing as a running process, thanks to having the same bundle identifier as the Music app. I love clever, low-or-no-code engineering solutions like this. You typically need to understand a systems very deeply to reach this level of elegance. In this case, one has to understand exactly what happens when the play button is pressed in Mac OS, how…

[flagged]

Re: Stop the Apple Music app from launching

#248

Post by laleck » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 4:07 AM UTC

al_borland wrote: post #79

titzer wrote: post #66

I still can't believe they killed iTunes. I used to have my entire digital music library in iTunes. Most of that was music I had ripped myself from CD, but I had a handful of albums I bought of iTunes and even some TV shows. When they wholesale abandoned iTunes and deleted from Mac OS in favor of...whatever Apple Music is, I knew I'd never trust them again. I searched for some decent mp3 players for a while, and even…

You can turn off the cloud service in Apple Music and still use it with your local tracks and music downloaded from the iTunes Music Store (which still exists). I did this for most of last year. I had all local music in Apple Music, disabled the cloud stuff, and synced it all to my iPhone by plugging it in with a cable, as if it was an old iPod. It all still worked.

Yes, but I have a big pet peeve about the offline experience.

In iOS Music, tapping the artist name on a song launches the artist’s cloud Apple Music page —- even if you’ve hidden paid Apple Music.

Disabling cellular data for the Music app fixes this by showing an album view of the downloaded music from the artist. However, the cloud version is unavoidable on WiFi. It’s a small but annoying example of how Apple made the classic experience worse to push their subscription product.

Re: Stop the Apple Music app from launching

#249

Post by nuker » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 4:44 AM UTC

titzer wrote: post #66

I still can't believe they killed iTunes. I used to have my entire digital music library in iTunes. Most of that was music I had ripped myself from CD, but I had a handful of albums I bought of iTunes and even some TV shows. When they wholesale abandoned iTunes and deleted from Mac OS in favor of...whatever Apple Music is, I knew I'd never trust them again. I searched for some decent mp3 players for a while, and even…

> I still can't believe they killed iTunes. I used to have my entire digital music library in iTunes. Most of that was music I had ripped myself from CD ...

iTunes Match still exists, one of the handful of subs I pay for.

Re: Stop the Apple Music app from launching

#250

Post by port11 » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 6:29 AM UTC

riazrizvi wrote: post #28

It's very sad to see Apple using these lowbrow Microsoft tactics. Press ganging your users into launching your other shit product is brand cannibalism.

Not to defend Apple, but the button has worked like this since… forever? If you have another music player or YouTube or what have you, the button controls that instead.