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

iOS 13's Music App Sucks

samuelstevens.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 261 posts

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#51

Post by derefr »

ringzero wrote: post #9

Apple Music, and particularly iTunes Match, are the opposite of "just works". I wanted to switch back from Spotify, but I found that Match had made a complete mess of my library. Half of my album art gone. Albums were striped with some tracks that were replaced with the iTunes store versions, and some left as my uploaded MP3 V0 versions (most obvious because, even with Sound Check on, the volume levels between each t…

Odd trick: if you have HQ MP3s, and you want them to get “matched” instead of “uploaded”, transcode them to iTunes Plus (256kpbs constrained-VBR max quality AAC) format. iTunes will then be far more likely to get a fingerprint match, for some reason.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#52

Post by bryanmgreen »

dangus wrote: post #14

> Except that I already pay for Apple Music, I don’t use these tabs, and I’m considering leaving Apple Music for Spotify Stop ranting and do it. Vote with your wallet. Your $10 tells Apple that everything is fine. I don’t subscribe to any music, personally. I use the Music app with Apple Music disabled (Settings > Music > Show Apple Music (Off)).

Not the perfect solution, but it helps... Thanks!

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#53

Post by fit2rule »

After years of misery trying to just have a plain old music collection, fighting Apple all the way, I've built myself .. a plain old music collection. Just a filesystem with all my music, collected over the decades, carefully organised by hand.

All it took was the ability to manipulate and administer a filesystem - a skill that, it seems, all the major players are hell bent on devolving for all their users.

I taught my kids to use the filesystem. They find stuff faster than any of their peers.

I use this same technique for bookmarks too - if I like a page, I print it to .PDF and put it in the filesystem. 15 years of .PDF-based bookmarks later, I don't need the Internet to find stuff that I've read years ago. Its still right there.

Seriously, kids. The filesystem is your friend. Please stop teaching the users that its hard. Its really not.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#54

Post by otterley »

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.

Apple does care about customer feedback, but by and large, they're not looking for it on HN or in random blogs. If you want to reach out to them, you can do so here: https://www.apple.com/feedback/

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#55

Post by Shebanator »

As someone who worked on Google Play Music for many years, I'd like to point out that a lot of the UX criticisms here are really just personal preferences, and those preferences are based in very large part on the way you listen to music. Some people are "lean back" listeners who just want to put on a radio station of music they like and not fiddle with it. Others are expert curators who have tens of thousands of tracks in their personal collections. Some are all about their personal custom playlists, and don't care about music libraries or radio stations at all.

It is pretty much impossible to build a music UX that optimizes for all three of these user types, since they want such different things. Apple Music, Spotify, and Google Play Music have all made different choices in how they address this. Some of those were (IMHO) good choices, others weren't. But it is dangerous to assume that what works well for you will work well for others. The discussion about the queue here is a great example: one person hates it with a passion, another loves it.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#56

Post by bryanmgreen »

I no longer use Spotify, instead going for Amazon HD because the sound is so much better, that being said...

Spotify UI and UX is so significantly light years better than any other music app on the market. Not perfect, but it should be a model for everyone else. Back when I used it, I even liked how they integrated my personal library.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#58

Post by larrik »

My complaints, with a library primarily MP3's:

1) It often forgets where I am in a song, or in a playlist. Or which playlist 2) After "upgrading" to iOS 13, all my songs now have "jump forward/backward 30 seconds" buttons instead of "Next/Prev". Wat 3) Sometimes it jumps into the middle of the next song. It's done this for like 5 years, although 13 is the first time to actually realize it's the middle of the song, so I can at least rewind. 4) I sync it to a single iTunes library, and every time I back up my phone, it duplicates any playlist I've used since last time... (probably more an iTunes complaint, which is a dumpster fire and has been since version 1.0)

It's generally gotten worse over the years. The Radio feature used to be awesome (way better than Spotify's), but now it's a paid feature?

I love that you can "Play Next" vs "Play After" in iOS 13, though.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#59

Post by bryanmgreen »

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…

Was looking for this comment.

I can see a world where they exist together in one universal library, but if they can't figure that out through good UI and UX, they 100% should be two.

Unfortunately they want to pressure everyone into buying a music subscription, so that won't happen.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#60

Post by endorphone »

Analemma_ wrote: post #27
dangus wrote: post #14

> Except that I already pay for Apple Music, I don’t use these tabs, and I’m considering leaving Apple Music for Spotify Stop ranting and do it. Vote with your wallet. Your $10 tells Apple that everything is fine. I don’t subscribe to any music, personally. I use the Music app with Apple Music disabled (Settings > Music > Show Apple Music (Off)).

> Stop ranting and do it. Vote with your wallet. Your $10 tells Apple that everything is fine. There are annoying things I can find with every platform/company and their associated fans, but this is a sickness that seems unique to Apple users: they gripe and complain, but-- sometimes in the first sentence of their post!-- vow that they will never switch to something else. Which makes all their complaining pointless,…

"but this is a sickness that seems unique to Apple users: they gripe and complain, but-- sometimes in the first sentence of their post!-- vow that they will never switch to something else"

That is an interesting caricature. It's particularly interesting to me because while I've heard many people profess that they'll never use an Apple product -- a weird hill to climb and define ones id by -- I've seldom heard an Apple user say they would never use a competitor.

In real life every product has faults. I don't subscribe to Apple Music but instead use Spotify -- I could name a dozen very irritating behaviors of the product (some absolutely bizarre elements, like trying to clear a queue of songs). That doesn't mean I should cancel and wipe my hands of it. In this case the complaint is that this guy -- who never fulfilled the caricature, though by your post I imagine most assume he must have -- doesn't immediately cancel because of some UI grievances, when every competitor offers its own problems.

Post reply on HN