Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#1

Post by dzohrob » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 3:06 PM UTC

Hi HN—

I've been chewing on different side project ideas and I've become fixated on creating an alternative Apple Music player.

I spend ~10h a day (or more!) at my desktop, mostly coding and listening to music. And iTunes, my primary music player and browser, is awful -- bloated, slow, and tied to an ecosystem of hardware music players that's basically irrelevant to how I listen now.

I want to build a new, minimal Apple Music client that lets you play everything from AM with a clean, attractive interface, and consumes minimal resources.

Some potential features/additions: - Daily/weekly links to reviews from AllMusic, Pitchfork, NYTimes, etc, so you can listen to albums alongside the reviews - Better sorting and organization of albums in iTunes -- eliminate duplicates/remasters, categorize into "real" albums vs EPs and compilations, etc - Social features that don't suck, based on your existing social networks (email, twtr, fb, etc) - Better recommendations by artist, album, genre, etc - TimeHop-style features for music from different years

Anyone else have this problem with iTunes? Any thoughts/feedback?

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#2

Post by akhatri_aus » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 3:22 PM UTC

One thing very at odds with Apple's design etiquette with iTunes is there are a lot of message dialogs that block the whole ui. Typically a message dialog that blocked things underneath it would be a last resort, and of all things in a music player app.

One example is if you have a song in your queue and press play on another song you get a message (which of course blocks the UI):

"You are about to start playback. Do you want to clear the song previously added to Up Next?" [Play song] [Cancel] [Clear Song]

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#3

Post by dzohrob » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 3:39 PM UTC

akhatri_aus wrote: post #2

One thing very at odds with Apple's design etiquette with iTunes is there are a lot of message dialogs that block the whole ui. Typically a message dialog that blocked things underneath it would be a last resort, and of all things in a music player app. One example is if you have a song in your queue and press play on another song you get a message (which of course blocks the UI): "You are about to start playback. Do…

agree, the modals are insane! iOS does better, it's pretty crazy how poorly the desktop has kept up.

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#4

Post by dominotw » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 3:57 PM UTC

sorry for asking this. Why can't you use something else?

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#5

Post by qalmakka » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 3:59 PM UTC

I honestly have stopped buying iPhones just to stop having to deal with that utter pile of rubbish that iTunes is. It was maddening riddled with bugs and just hopelessly hacked up on Windows, way beyond the amount I could find acceptable.

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#6

Post by ibz » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 3:59 PM UTC

It used to be OK but it's gotten worse and worse, to the point where it's hardly usable - both on OSX and on iOS. I miss the foobar2000 days on windows! One thing I do like about iTunes is the ability to browse music by artist, by album, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#7

Post by anonlastname » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 4:00 PM UTC

It's proprietary and full if DrM. Of course it sucks. Just pirate your music.

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#8

Post by ibz » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 4:00 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #4

sorry for asking this. Why can't you use something else?

Good point. Maybe the question should really be [Ask HN]: Are there any decent iTunes alternatives?

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#9

Post by spsrich » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 4:02 PM UTC

When your ten year old kid tells you they hate a piece of software that should be all you need to know.

It's atrociously bad.

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#10

Post by cfadvan » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 4:02 PM UTC

I admire your goal, but my first question is, have you tried Foobar2000? You could create a theme that has most of your features, and at heart it is nicely minimalist.