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Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

cezarywojcik.com

21–30 of 54 posts

Re: Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

#21

I hate to be the person who nitpicks, but > I turned on the Beats1 station to see if it was any good, heard some rap "music", and then very very quickly turned that station off. It's OK not to personally like specific genres, but please don't go as far as to dismiss those you don't like as not being "music".

No, it is perfectly acceptable to use hyperbole. Anyone who says differently should be shot. If you like rap music, you are stupid, and your parents are stupid.

Criticizing music in a post about music preferences is not unreasonable. Thicken your skin.

Re: Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

#22

I hate to be the person who nitpicks, but > I turned on the Beats1 station to see if it was any good, heard some rap "music", and then very very quickly turned that station off. It's OK not to personally like specific genres, but please don't go as far as to dismiss those you don't like as not being "music".

No, it is perfectly acceptable to use hyperbole. Anyone who says differently should be shot. If you like rap music, you are stupid, and your parents are stupid. Criticizing music in a post about music preferences is not unreasonable. Thicken your skin.

...but it's not a post about music preferences, it's a post about software usability.

Re: Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

#23
post #15

[deleted]

I was originally a subscriber to Google Music but the iOS app (I last tried it about 4 months ago) is absolutely terrible. Streaming didn't always work well and when trying to cache things it would constantly cache broken songs with many issues with them. It was impossible to use every day. I had hoped to stay with it especially since I got in on the $7.99 deal but I need the music to actually work across all of my devices.

Re: Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

#26
"Apple Music sucks for creating playlists" doesn't mean "Apple Music is a usability nightmare."

The entire industry is aware of the fact that user-generated playlists don't actually work to achieve mega-scale consumption. If they did, Spotify would be at 200m global subscribers and we would all pay for enhanced playlist features. People don't actually know what they want to listen to, and they don't want to spend time on curation -- not even on time curating their curators.

Spotify was built on the false premise that people wanted a "social jukebox" and that this "social stickiness" would somehow create an experience that, when combined with licenses to every track possible, would create an experience superior to pirated channels. Look, they'd say -- you can now see what your friends are listening to, and enjoy unparalleled social discovery! Better still, you can simply subscribe to their playlists and ride off their cool vibes!

The vast majority of people just don't care about this stuff, and definitely not enough to pay for it. They want to press play and skip stuff. And that's about it. The Pandora UI is the UI to beat. Everyone in the business knows this -- hence why you see everyone pushing radio metaphors over playlists.

If you're judging Apple Music on the basis of its playlist UI, you're an edge-case user judging edge-case features. Time to reflect on the fact that you aren't the target audience.

Re: Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

#27

I hate to be the person who nitpicks, but > I turned on the Beats1 station to see if it was any good, heard some rap "music", and then very very quickly turned that station off. It's OK not to personally like specific genres, but please don't go as far as to dismiss those you don't like as not being "music".

No, it is perfectly acceptable to use hyperbole. Anyone who says differently should be shot. If you like rap music, you are stupid, and your parents are stupid. Criticizing music in a post about music preferences is not unreasonable. Thicken your skin.

Did you want a reply, or the catharsis of getting downvoted from "stupid" users who like rap?

Re: Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

#28
I used Apple Music a lot today - I didn't really find anything majorly off-putting about the UI. There were a few quirks which I'll let Apple off the hook for, seeing as they haven't dramatically changed their Music app in 9 years (unless you're counting the flattening that came with iOS 7.)

To say Apple Music is a "usability nightmare" is a HUGE stretch IMO. If I opened the app and was presented with 1000 different options along with every single interface guideline being ignored, sure, maybe that would be a "nightmare".

I think what you mean to say is "Apple Music isn't close enough to perfect yet, from a usability standpoint."

Re: Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

#29
post #13

This is basically clickbait designed to capitalize on the new service. With zero observation of what people want and how they experience it, he conducts a dry and pedantic assassination of the UI. I've talked to 4 regular users today all of whom were having an enjoyable experience and expressing no concern about the UI - instead the conversation was all about what it was allowing people to discover and listen to. The…

Your comment would be more useful if you actually addressed the "pedantic" things. Have you even read the post?

- Can't delete multiple items or move multiple items to another list

- "three dots" AND right click shows different contextual menus

- 4 clicks to delete items from the "My music" menu.

While I don't think the article is especially balanced, these items are far from pedantic.

Re: Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

#30
post #15

[deleted]

I was originally a subscriber to Google Music but the iOS app (I last tried it about 4 months ago) is absolutely terrible. Streaming didn't always work well and when trying to cache things it would constantly cache broken songs with many issues with them. It was impossible to use every day. I had hoped to stay with it especially since I got in on the $7.99 deal but I need the music to actually work across all of my d…

I use Google Music only for the library it offers of my own uploads. The iOS app works pretty well now, a new one was just released that didn't spoil the fun. I don't use any of the paid service.
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