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Apple Plans End of iTunes

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Re: Apple Plans End of iTunes

#81

Post by jrochkind1 »

kvark wrote: post #8
nategri wrote: post #5

I remember when iTunes came out for Windows ca. 2003. I had friends with Macs so I leapt at the chance to try it for myself---it just seemed lightyears ahead of whatever I was using to interface with my music library at the time (Winamp, probably). And what a long, slow, weird, decline it's been since then.

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.

The files managed by iTunes on MacOS are indeed on the file system, and indeed organized in directories by artist name and album name (from the tags).

I'm not sure what you mean.

Re: Apple Plans End of iTunes

#82

Post by sjsotelo »

psychometry wrote: post #10

As someone who prefers to own music and organize it how I want, this is incredibly disappointing. I have no doubt that Apple Music will include only a fraction of the features I've come to depend on.

1000% agree with you. As a DJ and a connoisseur of 24bit music iTunes is incredibly good at organization not to mention the third party support in dj software and applications. I cannot believe a better windows alternative will ever exist and honestly unless a team is backed with money probably won’t be.

Re: Apple Plans End of iTunes

#83

Post by benj111 »

scarface74 wrote: post #69
asveikau wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may be envisioning two extremes when the parent comment wants a happy medium. I.e. files on disk in any way the customer wants, but add a db on the side to do things like play counts and tags. With reasonable defaults for most people who don't care about filesystem layout.

The filesystem is strictly hierarchal. How do you have one song in multiple playlists without duplicating the songs? How do you propose to make that usable for the average person. History kind of proves that Apple took the right approach in the iPod era. The simple drag files to an attached device MP3 players failed to become successful.

Just have the playlist be a list of links to files?

A la M3u files.

Re: Apple Plans End of iTunes

#84

Post by radicaldreamer »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #76

Hm, I wonder if I'll still be able to sync music and podcasts to my iPod. My 10-plus-year-old iPod is rock solid technology, hardware and software, just keeps on working. At this point it feels like some retro SF alternate vision of the future we could have had, with simple easy to use things that never broke.

Yes, that’s why the new Mac music app is supposedly built from iTunes code (probably the device support components) rather than the iOS Music app code.

Re: Apple Plans End of iTunes

#85

Post by ken »

scarface74 wrote: post #28
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.

No you don’t. With iTunes you could have smart playlists like “create a list of all of the songs I haven’t played in X days”. Normal people didn’t want to tag songs and use the filesystem. Do I really need to bring up the “No Wireless. Less Space than a Nomad. Lame.” Meme and how geeks didn’t get the iPod? https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...

Since 10.4, the Finder has had Smart Folders for this. (I believe Windows got a similar feature in Vista.) Apple even bragged that it worked "Just like iTunes" when they introduced it.

This geek doesn't understand why we need two nearly-identical systems. Once you make the more-general form, refactor the prototype to use it!

Normal people wouldn't need to "use the filesystem" any more than they do with iTunes now. Just make iTunes use these features internally so we don't have two incompatible sets of tools, and two separate sets of bugs.

Re: Apple Plans End of iTunes

#86

Post by psychometry »

chrisseaton wrote: post #21
psychometry wrote: post #10

As someone who prefers to own music and organize it how I want, this is incredibly disappointing. I have no doubt that Apple Music will include only a fraction of the features I've come to depend on.

If you want to organise your music how you want, why were you using iTunes in the first place - an app which organises your music for you? Surely it was already not suitable for your particular workflow and never aimed or claimed to be?

I think organization is done through playlists and metadata, not file locations. So my point stands.

Re: Apple Plans End of iTunes

#87

Post by corobo »

saurik wrote: post #77
scarface74 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you don’t. With iTunes you could have smart playlists like “create a list of all of the songs I haven’t played in X days”. Normal people didn’t want to tag songs and use the filesystem. Do I really need to bring up the “No Wireless. Less Space than a Nomad. Lame.” Meme and how geeks didn’t get the iPod? https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...

> Do I really need to bring up the “No Wireless. Less Space than a Nomad. Lame.” Meme and how geeks didn’t get the iPod? People love to bring this up... but that product (pretty much) did fail, in no small part because it had less space than a Nomad. The iPod wasn't successful until a couple revisions later and after the introduction of iTunes (which led to an end-to-end rethink of how you loaded music on these devic…

On the other hand I know what an iPod is, only ever heard of a Nomad through the quoted quote

There was a winner

Re: Apple Plans End of iTunes

#88

Post by npunt »

holy_city wrote: post #34
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.

I'm going to disagree about the hardware being capable enough, the memory and compute resources are too weak for professional uses where MacOS is the standard. If the rumors are true and Apple is planning to abandon x86_64 for their machines to switch to the ARM cores for everything, I'm going to have to pry the mac pros running 10.6.8 from the cold dead hands of our users to get them over to Windows with modern hard…

Take Geekbench for what it's worth, but the absolute fastest of the old cheesegrater Mac Pro's (dual 6core X5675) are just 56% the speed of a A12X single-core, and only about 40% faster multi-core. The next iPad Pro's A13X will probably get close to evening the playing field on multi-core.

It's really only the memory capacity that the Mac Pro's have an undisputed advantage on (4-6GB vs up to 128GB). Memory bandwidth is way faster (33GB/s vs 19GB/s) on A12X owing to LPDDR4 vs DDR3.

The latest iPad Pros are beneficiaries of a decade of intense R&D from the most profitable product in the world (iPhone). Form-factor aside, the chips themselves are stupid fast.

http://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/13281048

https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/11468644

Re: Apple Plans End of iTunes

#89

Post by the_jeremy »

saurik wrote: post #77
scarface74 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you don’t. With iTunes you could have smart playlists like “create a list of all of the songs I haven’t played in X days”. Normal people didn’t want to tag songs and use the filesystem. Do I really need to bring up the “No Wireless. Less Space than a Nomad. Lame.” Meme and how geeks didn’t get the iPod? https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...

> Do I really need to bring up the “No Wireless. Less Space than a Nomad. Lame.” Meme and how geeks didn’t get the iPod? People love to bring this up... but that product (pretty much) did fail, in no small part because it had less space than a Nomad. The iPod wasn't successful until a couple revisions later and after the introduction of iTunes (which led to an end-to-end rethink of how you loaded music on these devic…

iTunes was already out when the iPod was announced.

Re: Apple Plans End of iTunes

#90

Post by asveikau »

scarface74 wrote: post #69
asveikau wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may be envisioning two extremes when the parent comment wants a happy medium. I.e. files on disk in any way the customer wants, but add a db on the side to do things like play counts and tags. With reasonable defaults for most people who don't care about filesystem layout.

The filesystem is strictly hierarchal. How do you have one song in multiple playlists without duplicating the songs? How do you propose to make that usable for the average person. History kind of proves that Apple took the right approach in the iPod era. The simple drag files to an attached device MP3 players failed to become successful.

Putting aside what has been mentioned elsewhere on the thread (m3u playlists, hardlinks) or similar technical solutions...

You really think the iTunes filesystem layout is what made iPod successful?

Not, say, the fact that it was solid hardware, good UI, etc., from a desirable brand?

The comment was saying, my read of it anyway, is they didn't appreciate that it would slurp up and rename the files you give it.

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