iOS 13's Music App Sucks • Hacker News Board

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#231

Post by ubercow13 » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 12:14 AM UTC

samstevens wrote: post #43

barrowclift wrote: post #34

While I agree iOS 13’s Music.app is pretty shoddy in many respects, there’s plenty of alternatives other than Spotify that might better fit their requirements. (Marvis Pro, Soor, etc.) I consolidate the biggest players yearly in a review, which might be helpful for the author’s search: https://barrowclift.me/post/second-annual-ios-music-player-c...

This looks incredible! I've bookmarked this to check out later, but as an immediate question: do any of these support Apple Music/Spotify as a backend for downloading music? I'd prefer to stick with a monthly subscription for access to all music if at all possible. Edit: also, you have an incredibly pretty website.

Some support acting as a client for Apple Music, including Marvis. The API is quite comprehensive, they can do most stuff the official app can do, including libary curation and discovery stuff. One exception is downloading songs in advance (you can add new music to your library, but not download it to your device; however if you go back to the Apple app to kick off the downloads, the downloaded songs are played through the 3rd party app after that). If you just add to your library and stream, you wouldn't need to do that.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#232

Post by joshschreuder » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 12:16 AM UTC

I recommend trying some alternative apps.

I'm currently using Marvis which I really like, but there's also Cs (formerly Cesium), Miximum and Soor which differ quite a bit but are all much nicer than the default Music.app

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#233

Post by jedberg » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 12:17 AM UTC

pb7 wrote: post #228

jedberg wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iMessage suffers from the same interoperability problems that most Apple software does -- they don't really consider use cases that don't involve Apple. Hangouts for example understands how different carriers handle different types of data differently, and accounts for that when sending messages. So when you send to a group with different capabilities, it adjusts accordingly and automatically in the background.

What exactly is your issue with iMessage? Messages on iOS also automatically adjust to the participants' capabilities. Have you used iMessage recently? It degrades quite well. You can't backfill functionality that doesn't exist on SMS.

I use iMessage every day. Most of my friends are on iMessage. Most of my family too.

The problem is our family group text. Some of the family is on Android. For the family group text, I use Hangouts because not all the messages go through if I use iMessage.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#234

Post by jdminhbg » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 12:23 AM UTC

HeckFeck wrote: post #147

One of the context menus mentioned in the article says: Suggest Less Like This I presume Apple mean "Suggest Fewer Like This"? "Suggest Less Like This" means you have some dissatisfaction in the manner Apple used to suggest these songs.

Suggest Less Music Like This works just fine.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#235

Post by derefr » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 12:33 AM UTC

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #118

derefr wrote: post #47

I feel like Music.app is a pair of similar apps squished together, when they share no common frontend functionality and work far better apart: • Apple Music (the subscription service) • iTunes (the library with syncing and an optional digital music locker subscription-service) Each of the two has its own obvious top-level navigation. Each of the two has its own independent backend services (e.g. the recommendations i…

Well, for one possible answer: I personally don't want "music that I have added to my library by ripping or buying digital files of" and "music that I have added to my library by clicking 'favorite' in a streaming music service" to be separate libraries. "Okay, I want to listen to a song or two from the most recent album by The Black Keys, so I'll go to this app, but now I'd like to listen to ELO's Greatest Hits, so…

That's nice if you actually subscribe to Apple Music. As it stands, searching your library in Music.app returns results from Apple Music, with ~3 extra taps required to see the results from your own library, and often the inability to even navigate to a result in your own library if it matches the name of a title that's been delicensed from Apple Music.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#236

Post by hyperdimension » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 1:51 AM UTC

vlucas wrote: post #86

> First things first, why do I get a tab bar with 5 icons, and I only ever use 2 of them? I don’t care about “For You”, “Browse” and I certainly don’t give a rat’s ass about ”Radio”. You lost me on the opening sentence. I didn't even bother to read the rest of the article. I was expecting this to be based some some valid objective reasons why the app sucks, not personal preferences. I use Spotify, and have found the…

You expected a page entitled "iOS 13's Music App Sucks" to be objective, of all things?

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#237

Post by prostheticvamp » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 2:22 AM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #217

prostheticvamp wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My nieces are mid-teens. They had CDs played to them for lullabies and the like when they were little. By the time they were old enough to want to play their own music, it came in the form of YouTube or streaming. They’ve never ripped a CD, or bought an individual track for download. Two of them have no idea what a “file” is. The third thinks a “file” is some bygone shibboleth known only by dorks like their uncle. Th…

> I’m willing to gamble they are more representative of apple’s target demo than you or I are. How many Apple products can your nieces buy with their salary?

Between the three of them, one.

Between their ability to wheedle devices out of their parents, every goddamned device.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#238

Post by viburnum » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 2:45 AM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #152

viburnum wrote: post #81

The music app is also really slow to boot up. Ten years ago it was automatic. Just a huge performance regression.

I have suspicions the new app is a web app just like parts of iTunes are web apps.

I had suspected it was Swift but your idea makes more sense.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#239

Post by plorg » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 3:14 AM UTC

barrowclift wrote: post #34

While I agree iOS 13’s Music.app is pretty shoddy in many respects, there’s plenty of alternatives other than Spotify that might better fit their requirements. (Marvis Pro, Soor, etc.) I consolidate the biggest players yearly in a review, which might be helpful for the author’s search: https://barrowclift.me/post/second-annual-ios-music-player-c...

While you're here, every time I try to load that page my browser (Firefox on Android) hangs with most of the page rendered, and then Android crashes. It's not my adblocker (uBO in default deny mode, still happens with it disabled), but I haven't yet nailed down what it is. Maybe some default flag I've switched, e.g. to disable notifications or block autoplay video?

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#240

Post by asdff » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 3:51 AM UTC

berdon wrote: post #35

samstevens wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here; I agree that I'm not considering other users in my rants. I'm not a designer, and don't have solutions that would help everyone that Apple is targeting with this product. Part of the reason I'm unhappy with the options forced on me is the removal of my ability to customize the tabs. If Apple wants to push Radio, that's fine. Do I have to suffer navigational difficulties, when previously I could replace t…

You're using an Apple product - Apple is known for their tailored and single-path UX that they don't simply expect their users to love, they also don't care when they don't. I'm not saying your complaints aren't valid or warranted - they're just not relevant to Apple unless their designers agree with you.

that particular feature the author talks about has been around since the ipod era. then again, stripping previously ubiquitous functionality has been apple's m/o in the later half of this decade.