Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What the death of iTunes says about digital habits

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 120 posts

Re: What the death of iTunes says about digital habits

#41

Post by wwweston »

chmaynard wrote: post #20
JMr3c376 wrote: post #2

... iTunes became a bucket of too many features, so apple split it up into multiple applications. Apple music is pretty much exactly the same as iTunes was without a bunch of non-music related features. It's silly to say ~"iTunes died" it just changed names.

> Apple music is pretty much exactly the same as iTunes was without a bunch of non-music related features. Hmm, not really. I took a brief look at the UI during the Catalina beta and concluded that I wanted nothing to do with it. I have spent years learning how to use iTunes well. I'm not about to throw away that investment of time and energy on a new, untested app with a different UI. I'll stick with iTunes to manag…

> I'm not about to throw away that investment of time and energy on a new, untested app with a different UI.

Come on, now. Think of the poor product managers, the struggling UX researchers and designers. How are they going to make their careers off of minor upgrades tied down to past investments of users?

Re: What the death of iTunes says about digital habits

#42

Post by WWLink »

chmaynard wrote: post #20
JMr3c376 wrote: post #2

... iTunes became a bucket of too many features, so apple split it up into multiple applications. Apple music is pretty much exactly the same as iTunes was without a bunch of non-music related features. It's silly to say ~"iTunes died" it just changed names.

> Apple music is pretty much exactly the same as iTunes was without a bunch of non-music related features. Hmm, not really. I took a brief look at the UI during the Catalina beta and concluded that I wanted nothing to do with it. I have spent years learning how to use iTunes well. I'm not about to throw away that investment of time and energy on a new, untested app with a different UI. I'll stick with iTunes to manag…

Speaking of that, iTunes Radio and Apple Music are TERRIBLE guis! The web-based column views are really limited and crappy. You can do so much better with web GUIs if you want to, but Apple just wanted to waste a ton of screen space.

Re: What the death of iTunes says about digital habits

#43

Post by thought_alarm »

My iTunes Library is 15 years old, contains 11,496 songs, 871 music videos, 2,418 television episodes, and 67 movies.

Only now it's split up to two different apps, once of which is laughably unfinished but otherwise continues to do the job.

Meanwhile, after 5 1/2 years and $578, I cancelled my Netflix subscription and have no intention to ever start it up again.

Dead, indeed.

Re: What the death of iTunes says about digital habits

#44

Post by cortesoft »

rewtraw wrote: post #30
cortesoft wrote: post #28

I am confused... I still sync my phone to my iTunes on my computer. There is no other way to add music that I get from outside of Apple. Also, I use it to have a full backup of my phone. I have hundreds of gigs of photos and videos I don't want to lose, and you can only backup everything if you use your computer.

iCloud seems to do a fine job backing up photos and videos. When I get a new iPhone, I don't even take a manual backup -- I just login to iCloud and wait for everything to sync. iCloud restore populates all my apps, settings, photos, videos, etc. Apart from having to setup FaceID and re-enter passwords, it's like nothing changed.

But I can backup to my computer for free... I would have to pay $9.99 a month for 2TBs of iCloud storage....

Re: What the death of iTunes says about digital habits

#46

Post by naravara »

JMr3c376 wrote: post #2

... iTunes became a bucket of too many features, so apple split it up into multiple applications. Apple music is pretty much exactly the same as iTunes was without a bunch of non-music related features. It's silly to say ~"iTunes died" it just changed names.

I do feel like They’re having some trouble with the UX though since it has to juggle 3 kinds of file management.

You’ve got the obvious “manage my music files on this device” part. Then you’ve got the “manage my music files as part of this iCloud library” part. Then you’ve got “stream music from the subscription service” part. It’s actually quite hard to make playlists and stuff since, over time, people start to lose track of what form they have the rights to any particular song.

Re: What the death of iTunes says about digital habits

#47

Post by zentiggr »

wwweston wrote: post #41
chmaynard wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple music is pretty much exactly the same as iTunes was without a bunch of non-music related features. Hmm, not really. I took a brief look at the UI during the Catalina beta and concluded that I wanted nothing to do with it. I have spent years learning how to use iTunes well. I'm not about to throw away that investment of time and energy on a new, untested app with a different UI. I'll stick with iTunes to manag…

> I'm not about to throw away that investment of time and energy on a new, untested app with a different UI. Come on, now. Think of the poor product managers, the struggling UX researchers and designers. How are they going to make their careers off of minor upgrades tied down to past investments of users?

Jean-Baptiste Emannuel Zorg, channeled here... I'll be ready to pound your back when you choke on that cherry :)

Re: What the death of iTunes says about digital habits

#48

Post by Macha »

scarface74 wrote: post #39
Macha wrote: post #25

While the iTunes client has been something I've directed much dislike to over the years, the iTunes store feels like the last place I can get mainstream music DRM free to just play on any of my devices and keep regardless of what licensing deals change. While Spotify is great for access to music, the client is very poor for library/playlist management, and some music I'd just like to have my own copy of. If the store…

You can get DRM free digital music from Amazon.

I'll have to check if it's available in my country, most of their options to buy digital content are not.

Re: What the death of iTunes says about digital habits

#50

Post by saeranv »

CharlesW wrote: post #8

My take on the author's take is that by point 10, he's realized what a muddled and silly thing this is. > So what really failed, maybe, wasn’t iTunes at all… At which point whatever substance he's abused to get that far really kicks in for his final point. > In 1940, the German critic Walter Benjamin wrote about an angel in a Paul Klee painting. […] It is now clear, 80 years later, that the angel is looking at his ph…

I think you missed the point of this article, it's meant to light-hearted, and satirical.
Post reply on HN