Apple Stole My Music • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#211

Post by nurmara » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:55 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #188

nurmara wrote: post #143

I sympathize with OP and I generally really hate Apple's direction when it comes to software and user experience ever since OS X Lion. However, OP shouldn't claim that Apple 'stole' his music files. He signed up for a paid service and he should have checked how the service will affect his computer. We as users are responsible to know what software we're running on our machines and what it does to our data. I understa…

Nobody on Earth reads the entire manual before starting up some software; it's the vendor's responsibility to not have insensible defaults like "delete my local versions of files without asking me"

True. We have reached this level because of our complacency, and not due to Apple inherently trying to be malicious towards people like OP. The vendors are responsible to have sensible defaults, but we can't buy their products, use their software, sign up for their services, and then complain about malice when the vendors are delivering exactly what we signed up for and agreed upon. I'm just trying to say that OP should focus his energy on being more self conscious about what he signs up for rather than claiming that Apple is stealing his data. He gave up ownership of the data the moment he agreed to the TOS. What Apple is doing is counterproductive and just illogical from a UX point of view (in my opinion) but they did not steal OP's data. The title is a bit clickbait-y in that sense.

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#212

Post by digi_owl » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:56 PM UTC

mtreis86 wrote: post #147

pjsg wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No -- you aren't alone. Whenever I connect my daughter's iPhone to iTunes (say to add more music) we take our lives in our hands. You get scary popups that ask you a question and provides two options -- neither of which is what you want. I don't know whether this is deliberate on the part of Apple to discourage the use of iTunes, or whether they really think that it works well and is intuitive. For anybody from Apple…

Itunes is the worst. It can, without asking, delete the music from your device or your folders, reorganize your folders, rename your songs and reset their id3 tags. The mentality of "our users are stupid, just do everything for them" seems pervasive throughout apple's products.

And it is a mentality that is spreading.

The whole "user is stupid" attitude was basically stated to me by a big name Gnome developer a year or so ago.

And his like seem to have their fingers in more and more of what lives above the Linux kernel (and are likely chomping at the bit to do the same to the kernel itself once Linus is out of the way).

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#213

Post by Lawtonfogle » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:56 PM UTC

delinka wrote: post #8

onion2k wrote: post #5

I can't think of a single reason why Apple would want to delete the files from the user's computer apart from an intent to lock the user in to the service by making it tremendously hard to leave. That's the black hole of UI dark patterns.

"I can't think of a single reason why Apple would want to delete the files from the user's computer..." Well, to save precious local storage space of course. Apple's just being helpful here. But seriously, sounds like a "good idea" gone wrong - "I know! Let's save the user some space by serving all their music from the cloud!" The moment that file deletion came up in the design, the option to opt-in should have been…

>But seriously, sounds like a "good idea" gone wrong

Don't contribute to stupidity what can adequately be explained by malice, especially when dealing with a massive company who hires quite intelligent individuals.

Lock-in was intended, and then some smart people found not just a way to sell it, but make it look more acceptable even if they were called out on it.

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#214

Post by simonster » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:58 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #194

simonster wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article you linked to appears to describe something totally different. It says that if you delete your music from your computer, then re-downloading the music through Apple Music will give you DRMed files. But it also says: > If you haven’t deleted your own copies of your music, then there’s nothing to worry about. If you download onto other devices from Apple Music, those devices will get the DRM versions, but y…

When he says copies, I think he was referring to his backup ?

The preceding sentence is:

> Either way, if you’ve used iTunes Match as a convenient way to free up space on your Mac by deleting your own copy of any of your music, don’t cancel your subscription in favor of Apple Music if you want to keep that music DRM free.

Given the reference to freeing up space, it seems like he is talking about the original music files within iTunes and not a backup.

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#215

Post by sangnoir » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:59 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #113

funkyy wrote: post #75

I am surprised at people trying to rationale Apples wrongdoing by pointing at Google and bringing some crazy examples. There is no rationale in this - this is outright breaking your privacy and ownership rights. No terms and conditions can be above law. It doesn't matter what others do - Apple is doing those crazy things here and there trying to test the ground which indicates they are not pro privacy and pro user, b…

I don't see anybody rationalizing Apple's wrongdoing here, though. Whom are you referring to?

I'm not OP, but I'm guessing they are referring to buro9[1], who posted an hour before.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11635184

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#216

Post by cha5m » Thu, May 05, 2016, 2:02 PM UTC

Stuff like this often makes me question using any DRM or platform-locked services, particularly steam. If valve decided to make a shady decision there is very little that its users could do about it.

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#217

Post by denzil_correa » Thu, May 05, 2016, 2:03 PM UTC

simonster wrote: post #163

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But from the article, Ms Amber said the SW was functioning as intended.

But other people have posted here and said they enabled Apple Music and their music was not deleted, so clearly this doesn't happen under all circumstances, and this wouldn't be the first time a technical support representative was wrong. This is a pretty extraordinary claim and I'm not really willing to believe everyone loses all their local music when they turn on Apple Music without more data to confirm.

The same thing has happened to me as well.

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#218

Post by mpswardle » Thu, May 05, 2016, 2:04 PM UTC

rossng wrote: post #74

Every time I am asked to set up someone's Apple device, I find it incredibly difficult to: * Get it synced properly * Determine what is stored in iCloud/on-device * Ensure that device contents are actually backed-up, unless done manually * Set up simple things like email accounts Just a month or two ago, I was helping someone whose iTunes music wouldn't sync to their iPhone. It turned out that, when they signed up to…

It "just works" if you fully buy into the ecosystem. i.e. all content stored in iCloud nothing synced via cable etc.

I happen to do this since i tend to need a new iPhone every 2-4 months and it's just easier to pick up a new one, sign in and let it set itself up exactly as the old one.

But anything that deviates from this workflow, you tend to run into problems.

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#219

Post by leephillips » Thu, May 05, 2016, 2:04 PM UTC

bittercynic wrote: post #210

leephillips wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend Android for anyone in a position to change. I plug my Android phone into my Linux laptop. The phone's filesystem is mounted. I move, copy, delete whatever music and photos I want. Dead simple and rational. I put Flickr on the phone. Photos I take with the phone are automatically backed up to Flickr, and I can see them from anywhere.

This has gotten worse over time as well. It used to be you could mount your phone's storage as a mass storage device, but now (as far as I can tell) MTP is the only option.

Yes, it's MTP with my current phone and linux installation. Is there a problem with this? After I figured out where the filesystem was mounted (a bit of a pain), I could use it like a normal mount, as if it were an external USB drive.

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#220

Post by dempseye » Thu, May 05, 2016, 2:10 PM UTC

givinguflac wrote: post #71

I read the whole thing and all I hear is waaaahhh I don't keep proper backups of data I care about, nor do I learn about the service functions before signing up... This is ABSOLUTELY NOT the way it works, it's not a shady practice, I use it daily and have lost nothing. Sorry you ran into a bug but the is just Stupid. I would be shocked if the phone agent he spoke to is a real person.

From TFA:

> I recovered my original music files only by using a backup I made weeks earlier.