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Apple Removing Ping From Next Version of iTunes
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its things like ping and itunes that are a good reminder for those extremist apple fans that they aren't some sort of godly company. They're brilliant at some things, but clearly useless at others, and that's fine.
Ping was aiming to do what Spotify does already, and does very well. But if iTunes as a whole [not with "Ping" or any other feature name, just built-in] had free demo sharing, a "now playing", accurate listings of artists' work, connection to actual social networks instead of trying to make it's own, it would be a winner. Like others have said, it's isolation was the reason it flopped.
The single use I get out of Spotify is to look at new music, make public playlists that friends from my Facebook feed can see, and see what else my friends are listening to. If apple created an architecture that connected all it's devices using iTunes to do the same thing.. it would kill these other apps dead.
Does iTunes even recognise when you've listened to a song on another device?
The single use I get out of Spotify is to look at new music, make public playlists that friends from my Facebook feed can see, and see what else my friends are listening to. If apple created an architecture that connected all it's devices using iTunes to do the same thing.. it would kill these other apps dead.
Does iTunes even recognise when you've listened to a song on another device?
It's good to know that Apple can try new things, make mistakes and still be around tomorrow.
Some people are lambasting the service in an "AppleHipster saiz ware iz yur god naw, AppleFanbois?" kind of way, but I see it as an Apple strength. Why not give it a crack? It might catch on. If it doesn't, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try something else.
I'm glad that they're big enough now that some of these ideas that they might not otherwise have tried get to see daylight and have their turn. And that they're savvy enough to know when to cut their losses.
Some people are lambasting the service in an "AppleHipster saiz ware iz yur god naw, AppleFanbois?" kind of way, but I see it as an Apple strength. Why not give it a crack? It might catch on. If it doesn't, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try something else.
I'm glad that they're big enough now that some of these ideas that they might not otherwise have tried get to see daylight and have their turn. And that they're savvy enough to know when to cut their losses.
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This is what I've been thinking. The core user functionalities of social networking are there now or will be very soon. The critical restriction the exclusivity to apple hardware or half-arsed web apps. If they ever made a deal to merge cloud networks with say Microsoft so that users could seamlessly share across platforms it could get really interesting.
If apple can slowly take control of the user experience of the data on Facebook and google they can turn those sites into dumb pipes and starve them of advertising opportunities. Say Siri could search simultaneously on multiple engines, automatically delete the ads and feed the results to the user. The do the same thing for fb etc. eg. Set up messages and a Facebook plugin to automatically relay a fb message as an iMessage, and automatically add new followed twitter content to the relevant iCloud app, whether photostream, videostream, messages,
This is already happening with flipboard etc. so far the pipe owners keep the user metadata and plan to unseat apple (Facebook phone). Apple will be well positioned to flick a switch one day to change pipe provider with minimal impact on the user.
Ping
I must have been one of the few who checked out Ping quite often. Some of my friends are on it and when I see they have bought a song or album, or if I have, we usually talk about it.
Ping could have been a lot more if Apple bothered to put some effort into it. It could have been used as a review site for everything in the store, not just music. So Apple couldn't get together with Facebook on this, but it did have Twitter on board, but so what? Anything I did on Ping didn't show up on Twitter. Ping is a very isolated social network so the likelyhood of people wanting to use it, as well as Twitter and Facebook, weren't going to be high as it wouldn't interact with other social networks.
I must have been one of the few who checked out Ping quite often. Some of my friends are on it and when I see they have bought a song or album, or if I have, we usually talk about it.
Ping could have been a lot more if Apple bothered to put some effort into it. It could have been used as a review site for everything in the store, not just music. So Apple couldn't get together with Facebook on this, but it did have Twitter on board, but so what? Anything I did on Ping didn't show up on Twitter. Ping is a very isolated social network so the likelyhood of people wanting to use it, as well as Twitter and Facebook, weren't going to be high as it wouldn't interact with other social networks.
Ping, I just met you,
and this is crazy!
But you can go now,
no-one used you maybe!
I think I used Ping once for 5 minutes or so. Apple also never really promoted it over it's existence so I think it's just fair they're phasing it out. Maybe it's just a minor feature iTunes had but it still is hard to give up on something you hoped would catch fire! So Kudos to Apple for taking the decision in killing of a feature they hoped would be more popular.
and this is crazy!
But you can go now,
no-one used you maybe!
I think I used Ping once for 5 minutes or so. Apple also never really promoted it over it's existence so I think it's just fair they're phasing it out. Maybe it's just a minor feature iTunes had but it still is hard to give up on something you hoped would catch fire! So Kudos to Apple for taking the decision in killing of a feature they hoped would be more popular.
That would be sweet, but last.fm is owned by CBS, not sure what licensing would be involved to have it integrated. I'm sure they've considered it.
Ping I suppose could do something similar - scrobbling is or was opensource I believe.
Exactly. They tried, it didn't work, they dumped it. It isn't the first time they've got it wrong and it certainly won't be the last.
Glad to see that Apple can easily admit this and move on. I was sure Ping would never work on the day of the announcement, people simply don't want more social-network-type-of-things, and Ping really didn't make a lot of sense.
Many other companies keep pushing their products for years despite them being unsuccessful, like Microsoft still hasn't given up with Windows, after all these years… Just kidding.
Many other companies keep pushing their products for years despite them being unsuccessful, like Microsoft still hasn't given up with Windows, after all these years… Just kidding.
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Replace a social network consumers don't care about with a lossless codec consumers don't care about.
Sound logic!
It was a cute idea and worth trying out but it never really went anywhere. The right thing to do is simply admit it wasn't a great idea and move on rather than letting it languish. Good call by Apple. If only MySpace had done the same thing.
