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Apple Plans End of iTunes

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Re: Apple Plans End of iTunes

#41

Post by klodolph »

ErikAugust wrote: post #26
chrisseaton wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because despite what everyone thinks again and again, music is not hierarchical, as a file system is. Does my album go under the composer, the conductor, the orchestra or the soloist?

It goes under Albums, no?

The question is how you organize the albums, hierarchically. The easy case is when you have artist/album/track, like:

Music > Buckethead > Enter The Chicken > Funbus

But how do you file, say, classical music? Do I file this album under Wilhelm Furtwängler, the conductor? Do I file this under Bach and Beethoven, the conductors of various tracks? Do I file this under Wiener Philharmoniker?

In iTunes it’s irrelevant, because I can find the album by looking for Composer=Bach, Composer=Beethoven, artist=Wilhelm Furtwaengler, or artist=Wiener Philharmoniker. With a filesystem I would… use symlinks or something?

Re: Apple Plans End of iTunes

#42

Post by wuunderbar »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #30
wuunderbar wrote: post #27

I really hope the next iOS makes some sort of "leapfrog" UX change where we move away from icons on a grid for the home screen, especially for iPad. I know this may alienate and confuse some iOS users, but I trust Apple can figure out some way for this to be intuitive for their users.

Why?

For iPad, it's primarily clunky and a huge waste of space.

For iPhone, I'm certain there is a better way to discover and open apps than what was devised a decade ago. The current pull-down search is useful, but as a naive idea: some sort of search & auto-complete on the home screen would be great.

EDIT: Bonus - Trying to organize your apps is a nightmare. How do you organize a bunch of icons split across multiple screens?

Re: Apple Plans End of iTunes

#43

Post by saagarjha »

abstrct wrote: post #24
saagarjha wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without iTunes, customers can manage their Apple gadgets through the Music app. Presumably this will get moved into Music.

This section was super disappointing. It sounds more like iTunes is being rebranded to Music since it’s still going to be the hub for managing iOS devices. What exactly is changing here other than the name?

Some of the ancillary features are getting refactored out, it seems. Plus the app might be getting a rewrite so it's not some awful C++ cross-platform hybrid?

Re: Apple Plans End of iTunes

#44

Post by firasd »

scarface74 wrote: post #33
firasd wrote: post #22

Good move. I predicted this in my 'iTunes will never work well' post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12527098 "At this point, whatever the causes of the product problems with iTunes and related iOS apps — feature scope, management, team structure, etc. —we can be pretty sure that the only ‘solution’ will appear when this software achieves end-of-life, the same way that the mystery of how to set recording time o…

Yes iTunes “never worked well” even though at its height it was the number one music store in the US....

Fair enough. My claim was from September 2016, predicting that it will never work well in the future (and the UX problems I highlighted were from 2010 onwards.) I think it was pretty obvious that the app will need to be unbundled (about an year after my post, Apple started removing some features from iTunes like the iOS App store).

I'm sure people liked it in 2004 (although I never was blown away by it.) Also the fact that it was the #1 store can reflect music distribution agreements (and the success of iPod/iPhone) more than its prowess as a product.

Re: Apple Plans End of iTunes

#46

Post by brians »

chrisseaton wrote: post #23
kvark wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minority here, I never understood why music players shifted towards iTune-ish style of owning and re-categorizing everything in their own way... I mean, OS has a file system, why not just rely on it? Throw some searchable tags in, and you get the same abilities but without obscurity.

Because despite what everyone thinks again and again, music is not hierarchical, as a file system is. Does my album go under the composer, the conductor, the orchestra or the soloist?

Hard links are going to blow your mind. https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Hard-Link...

Seriously, I had my MP3s organized this way pre-iTunes. I get why that can’t scale to the general public, but I still think a tool could approximate it.

Re: Apple Plans End of iTunes

#47

Post by mrep »

derefr wrote: post #25
mrgalaxy wrote: post #7

> Apple has pushed the iPad as a laptop replacement for years. But many pro users have noted that while the hardware is capable enough, the software is still behind. As other HN users have noted in the past, until Apple gives me access to a terminal where I can run the command line tools required for my work, I have absolutely zero interest in replacing my laptop with an iPad.

Apple’s usage of the word “user” (as in “pro user”) doesn’t usually mean to include developers. “Pro users” refers to the category of people who use computers as a black box to do professional things.

So what do you call all the people who develop for apples platforms because they make an extremely high portion of the value for an OS. Without Mac/iOS developers, apple would have gone bankrupt long ago as no OS can compete withouts external developers?

Re: Apple Plans End of iTunes

#48

Post by madeofpalk »

lwansbrough wrote: post #6

The article also mentions new tools for building cross-device apps. I hope that induces a non-superficial commitment to PWAs but sadly I wouldn’t bet on it.

What do mean? Safari, on both iOS and macOS, supports most aspects of PWA (most notably, Service Workers), and has done so for quite a while.

Re: Apple Plans End of iTunes

#49

Post by reaperducer »

chrisseaton wrote: post #23
kvark wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minority here, I never understood why music players shifted towards iTune-ish style of owning and re-categorizing everything in their own way... I mean, OS has a file system, why not just rely on it? Throw some searchable tags in, and you get the same abilities but without obscurity.

Because despite what everyone thinks again and again, music is not hierarchical, as a file system is. Does my album go under the composer, the conductor, the orchestra or the soloist?

Does my album go under the composer, the conductor, the orchestra or the soloist?

This is one of my peeves with the 40's channel on Sirius. There could be the wonderful voice of a woman singing a song, but the display will only read "Benny Goodman Orchestra."

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