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Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

cezarywojcik.com

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Re: Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

#31

Post by archagon »

Played around with Apple Music a bit this morning. It has promise, but despite the hyperbolic title (wish people would stop that!!) I agree that it's a little bit of a mess. I think the problem comes with smooshing the iTunes Music Store and the Music app together. Suddenly, the interface I'm used to is relegated to just a single tab to the right of four others that I only have a passing interest in. Also, some of my favorite artists that I routinely listen to on Spotify have gaps in their catalogues (Tipper).

Say what you will about Spotify, but their native iOS app is really top-notch. I keep finding little details that make my user experience so much more delightful. For example, I recently learned that you could swipe left and right on the "now playing" bar on the bottom to move between songs. It feels really organic and I wish other players would adopt it. I also just found out that you can swipe right on songs to queue them up for playback, and now I use it all the time. Dunno WTF happened with their desktop client, though.

Oh, and now that I've learned that you can (secretly) search Spotify by genre ('genre:"progressive metal"') and see the top tracks, my life (and music discovery) have been much improved. I also routinely bulk-add the top tracks from artists I'm investigating to get a feel for their music. Don't see a way to do either in Apple Music.

Re: Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

#32

Post by woah »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #21
joe_internet wrote: post #6

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.

I see what you did there

Re: Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

#34

Post by GauntletWizard »

throwaway3453 wrote: post #27
GauntletWizard wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I want an argument about how often I am seeing people being offended by having their preferences criticized. I can take somebody disagreeing with me (except on this issue, of course :) ), and civil society relies on criticism, and people accepting criticism. Berating people because they are dismissive of things they don't like is a path that lies madness. Feedback should not be purely positive, truncating the negative, because then effects that are polarizing or simply have costly disadvantages outcompete effects that do are more mildly positive, but without (or fewer) drawbacks.

Re: Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

#35

Post by GauntletWizard »

joe_internet wrote: post #22
GauntletWizard wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Software usability of what? Music preferences software.

Re: Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

#36

Post by autoconfig »

numair wrote: post #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 tim…

Sources for these claims on what the vast majority of people want?

Either way this is a terrible excuse. It implies that you necessarily have to sacrifice good list support in order to promote discovery and other features. They are not mutually exclusive. As a consumer I don't think it's too much to expect a good playlist UI in a major product like this, especially coming from a company that prides itself in delivering good user interaction.

Re: Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

#37

Post by obstinate »

iLoch wrote: post #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…

Agreed. A nightmare would be if it were difficult for the typical person to figure out how to get it to work. For that, things like gdb or git would be fine examples.

"Apple Music's playlists have some bugs and usability issues" new title sadly less sensational.

Re: Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

#38

Post by mbell »

shadowfiend wrote: post #12

The criticisms here are 100% fair… But it's worth remembering that Spotify's fundamental unit is the user playlist. It's what the social experience is built around, it's what the user's experience is built around, it's what the consumption experience is built around. Apple Music, on the other hand, has a pretty strong bent towards curation and suggestion. It's clearly oriented to encourage you to use the curated play…

> But it's worth remembering that Spotify's fundamental unit is the user playlist

I don't think that is true.

My interaction with Spotify is much more about listening to an artist or song and using 'more like this'. And the fundamental unit of sharing is 'friend x listened to this song'. If I know I like their tastes I tend to list to that song then, if I like it, listen to 'more like this'.

I spent about an hour earlier trying to use Apple Music via iTunes and left incredibly frustrated. I couldn't make it do anything I actually wanted it to do.

As a simple example, go to 'new' then, pick a genre from the incredibly awkwardly placed drop down, scroll down and you see 'top songs'. Cool, I thought, lets play the top songs from this genre! Except, as near as I can tell, there is actually no way to play those songs as a 'playlist'. You can click one at a time, and they play, but after each finishes it just stops.

Re: Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

#39

Post by threeseed »

[deleted] wrote: post #33
threeseed wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty basic. The advantage of Apple Music is the hand curated content, integrated 24/7 radio station and ability to view artist posts. As it stands now it really isn't worth the money.

[deleted]

But then if you are happy with listening to ads surely Spotify would be a better pick.

For the paid tier it definitely doesn't offer many features other then basic streaming.

Re: Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

#40

Post by obstinate »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #34
throwaway3453 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I want an argument about how often I am seeing people being offended by having their preferences criticized. I can take somebody disagreeing with me (except on this issue, of course :) ), and civil society relies on criticism, and people accepting criticism. Berating people because they are dismissive of things they don't like is a path that lies madness. Feedback should not be purely positive, truncating the negativ…

Saying that rap is not music may be criticism. But it is certainly ignorant and unconstructive criticism. It is criticism in the same sense that "your mom" jokes are.
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