Apple May Be Planning to Break Up iTunes With New Music and Podcast Apps for Mac

[BWhaler]

What worries me is every time apple reboots software, from Final Cut Pro to iWork et al, is we get a v0.7 missing tons of key features, and then we wait years after continually complaining to get it bAck to a usable baseline.

Plus, as news+ and the marzipan apps show, Apple no longer has good U.K. chops.

Yes, iTunes is bloatware. My fear is the modern Apple can’t build the replacement.

 

[NBAasDOGG]

I hope MacOS 10.15 also fixes our keyboard issues and reduces the price of the piss-poor quality MacBook Pro.

 

[boto]

Please be true!! The only reason I’m subscribed to Spotify is the superior desktop experience.

 

[An-apple-a-day]

There’s much to be celebrated with this speculative course of events.

But the replacement apps being Marzipan is not part of that celebration. Marzipan, in its current form, is anti-Mac.

For me, this will be something to mourn, not celebrate.

While its overall breadth of functionality is indeed overreaching and it has its UI quirks, iTunes does work generally quite well. I currently use pretty much all of its non-streaming features, and the only significant issues I have as of now (after lyrics syncing was finally fixed) is artist artwork remaining the default image in many cases (even for music purchased from the iTunes Store), and the tendency for it to want to randomly revert the metadata I'd worked so hard to fix on some purchased music.

I have a dedicated Mac system with an external TB2 RAID-5 storage bay serving as a media center via iTunes and Home Sharing. I own about 3,000 movies, more than half of those purchased from iTunes. I'd say I have a pretty large investment in digital content, especially movies.

With both Mac and Apple TV 4, I can reliably watch any movie content in my library, regardless of whether purchased from iTunes or ripped from my blu-ray collection. If the media center Mac goes to sleep and/or the external disk drives spin down (e.g., a movie was paused for too long because I had to make a beer and popcorn run), both Apple TV and iTunes on a client Mac generally have not too big of a problem resuming playback. Sometimes I may have to re-navigate to the media center library and find the movie again as a "recently viewed" item (easier on Apple TV) or via find/filter (easier in iTunes if not purchased content). Not a huge deal... at least it mostly works.

Now, if I try that with TV app on iOS device, it's a disaster. A movie will initially start playing pretty reliably if the media center is awake and the connected disks are spinning. But pause a movie for too long and the TV app crashes every time (presumably because the connection to iTunes on media center is timing out, which would clearly be considered a bug). To make matters worse, finding a movie in my library that was not purchased from iTunes appears to be impossible in the TV app.

Apple seems to be forgetting about the loyal customers who have opened their wallets wide and purchased content to fill their libraries. I don't think I'm the only one who hates streaming and who wants unlimited access to his library (even without an Internet connection). For movies, TV shows, and music, my Mac-based media center on my LAN is my hub, not iCloud.

If iTunes is replaced by a set of apps, including one that looks anything like the current TV app on iOS, I will be extremely unhappy. The thought of having to utilize another separate media center application to serve my non-iTunes purchased content makes me ill. And I don't even want my iTunes purchased content to be served from the cloud.

 

[farewelwilliams]

i pretty much hate stroughton smith's tweets about apple products. he keeps mentioning Apple should admit they're wrong about touchscreens on Mac and that everyone wants one so Apple should just build one. NO, this is why we don't have engineers designing products.

but i agree with him that i'm glad to see itunes finally breaking up.

 

[tothemoonsands]

For me, this will be something to mourn, not celebrate.

Apple seems to be forgetting about the loyal customers who have opened their wallets wide and purchased content to fill their libraries. I don't think I'm the only one who hates streaming and who wants unlimited access to his library (even without an Internet connection). For movies, TV shows, and music, my Mac-based media center on my LAN is my hub, not iCloud.

I could not agree more. I think it is important to vocalize this here and submitting feedback to Apple through any possible means. There are those with massive, customized libraries. There are those with poor internet where downloading is a must to enjoy HD. There are those who have been burned by paid iTunes movies/music disappearing from their libraries due to licensing changes, store region changes, etc - which makes downloading a necessity. And yes, there are those who still prefer using an iPod over a phone with the barrage of notifications and battery drainage.

This could easily be a case of "one step forward, two steps back" if they are not careful. It could well be their intention to shutter the iTunes store entirely. But the thing is...avid customers have spent fortunes amassing ownership of their digital content, and these people cannot be neglected.

It scares me because Home Sharing clearly doesn't work the best on the iOS version of TV app (for some reason it works great on tvOS though). It is a feature that is being neglected - intentionally or not. The MacOS tv app would likely be closer related to iOS version than tvOS...so will Home Sharing be equally poor? Not to mention all of the missing features (external drives, etc.). Ugh.

 

[Shirasaki]

It looks like you misunderstood me... The Space on MacBook Pro 15’, 2017, macOS 10.14.4 is not an issue, with 2TB SSD. My next MacBook Pro will have 4TB SSD, but...

Because Apple insists on 256K, I won't have enough space on the biggest iPhones they make!

Apple Music also has a limit of 75K Songs that one is allowed to Upload!

Apple Music doesn't allow us to pick which Tracks we want to Upload! If it did, maybe 256K would be less of a problem, because I'd make a Selective Choices, that I can control!


Those are some of the limitations that I am talking about!

I want My Own Music Library to be Separate from Apple Music!

Many people have their own LPs or whatever recordings on their Macs, and they want to Sync them to their iPhones! They don't want to give up a Full Control of their own Music, and let Apple Music handle it for them, and mess up their Metadata, or worse!

As many people have said, it's also wise to keep Local Backups of everything, instead of just trusting iCloud, or any kind of Cloud...

Hmm. What about this idea? Only put a subset of your main library to your iPhone instead of entire library? By no means you can listen through your entire library once per day I believe. Maybe space is much less of an issue.
I do agree that cloud in general is inherently unreliable and dangerous compared to local storage.

 

[tothemoonsands]

Hmm. What about this idea? Only put a subset of your main library to your iPhone instead of entire library? By no means you can listen through your entire library once per day I believe. Maybe space is much less of an issue.
I do agree that cloud in general is inherently unreliable and dangerous compared to local storage.

As someone who grew up with iPods...I don't like that solution at all. In theory that sounds fine to only put a subset and manage accordingly. But throw in the unpredictability of what you are in the mood for, varying internet access due to travel etc., and other random factors like that.

I not only want to OWN the majority of my content, I want it to be LOCAL. (and I am by no means an iCloud/cloud skeptic or hater...I happily use it as an OFF-SITE BACKUP)

 

[rumornot]

Hmm. What about this idea? Only put a subset of your main library to your iPhone instead of entire library? By no means you can listen through your entire library once per day I believe. Maybe space is much less of an issue.
I do agree that cloud in general is inherently unreliable and dangerous compared to local storage.

Sorry, if I didn't already made it clear enough...

I do not put my entire library on my iPhone! I only put the Selected Smart Playlists! But again:

Being at 53 K Songs Syncing now, I am will eventually reach the 75 K Apple Music Limit.

And again, I'd have o increase the File Size of my 32K, and 128K Songs to 256K per each Song, thus the Total File Size of my Music, that is being Synced to iPhone increase 8 Times. As Previously wrote here:

53 GB of my Present Content at 32K Mono x 8X = 424 GB! Even if the Next iPhone is 1TB, 424 GB, is almost half of that 1TB. But that 424 GB will keep growing!

And we are not guaranteed 1TB iPhone yet. Right now, the biggest Capacity is 512GB.

And, as I previously wrote:

Apple Music does not allow me to Select which Songs I want to Sync to Apple Music!

Thus, I have no control of my own Content, given the Apple Music Rules as of now!

I hope I have made explained it better this time!


I hope that somebody at Apple is reading this! Using Apple's own Feedback Site is very frustrating. Here are a few examples why:

There is no Live Counter for the Number of Characters, and they don't tell us How Long the Post can be!

The Text Box cannot be resized to see one's entire Post!

And again, without Live Counter and Number of Characters Limit, it's a torture!

And then it's - Don't call us, we won't call you! It's like talking to a wall!

This Forum allows much longer posts, and also Rich Text Editing, unlike Apple Feedback!

I love Apple, but their Feedback Site needs to be improved!

It would be very smart of Apple to monitor Threads like this. That way, they will get a strong Feedback from some of their most devoted, loyal customer, who are pretty experienced! It's people like us who made Apple what it is today! And that allowed them to seduce a lot of people worldwide who might not always be as experienced as many of us here!

Apple is often praised for having passionate, loyal customers, and Apple brags about that! But then, if they ignore us, their passionate, loyal customers, they would be dumping down their products, and wiping out their advantages vs. their competitors!

Thank you, and everyone else for your support!

And Thank You, Apple, for not ignoring us, hopefully!

 

[mpainesyd]

I could not agree more.
...

Yes - there are many useful features in software that Apple has dropped or made unworkable (Front Row, iChat with conferencing, Quicktime 7, iWeb, the original Keynote (before it became an iOS clone) etc). I have been using a Mac running iTunes as a media center for more than a decade. I don't want to rely on subscriptions and streaming in future. I already miss iOS app management and ringtone management in iTunes with no alternative software available.
This development, if true, adds to the disaster of 10.15 likely not supporting 32-bit apps. I simply cannot get replacements for numerous apps that work well and are used frequently. I will be keeping "automatic updates" turned off and try to keep my system as-is for as long as possible.
There, finished my rant... if only Apple would listen to its loyal users!

 

[frou]

iTunes is the posterchild for Legacy Software

 

[bluecoast]

I suspect that iTunes is going to stick around for a while though (1-3 years more).

I can see it still being home to the iTunes music store & its downloads and your own ripped music - with the Music app also sharing in that functionality (ie playing downloaded music).

Syncing and restoring via lightning is an interesting one. I imagine that for the moment, it will remain in iTunes (Apple can’t do everything at once) with a sync app being released as part of MacOS in 2020 or so, leaving iTunes as a legacy app.

The situation on Windows is also interesting. I would imagine that we’ll see the tv, podcast and music marzipan apps appearing in windows too, over time but I imagine that their rollout will be slower than on the Mac - you could imagine TV appearing first.

Presumably it’s going to be more cost effective for Apple to start to support more modern apps (and if the Windows lite rumours are true, apple wont be able to bring iTunes to that platform).

 

[amaze1499]

Overdue.

 

[atoqir]

It is nice to see that for once most Windows, Android and Apple users agree about a topic: iTunes is terrible.

I have to use it on Windows to upload my music to iCloud library and retag some things. Apart from that I always listen through my iPad, iPhone or webplayer Mushish to avoid iTunes.

It looks and performs terribly. They should just make an electron app like spotify for playing and uploading. And make it look like the iOS apps. The grey itunes 2001 look is horrendous in this day and age.

 

[cycomiko]

Happily removed the music app, been using spotify. Hopefully they imporve hte podcast app, it is a stupid mess at the moment.

 

[jbfj91]

Good news. Remember many people asking for this in the last years, especially, when Apple Music was introduced. But when nothing happend it was kind of forgotten. Hope they do it well with UIKit. The current UIKit Apps really don’t impress me.

 

[KALLT]

And with Apple's current focus on services, any new "Music" app is likely to be geared more toward selling and serving the subscription service rather than a user's personal library. The crappy iOS revamp has already provided ample evidence of that. iTunes has its faults, but it has always been a very capable program.

iTunes has been a great program for offline music libraries. It is flexible and even the interface is smooth these days (especially the scrolling though thousands of albums). The problems with iTunes only really start once you enable Apple Music, because then all sorts of things happen in the background that you have no control over. I tried going back to Apple Music several times, but it screwed something up in my library every time.

 

[FoxMcCloud]

Please be true

 

[berrymetal]

Everyone b*tching about iTunes now, but when Apple just ports the terrible iPad music app to macOS everyone will VERY happy about it right?

 

[Heineken]

Marzipan apps suck.

 

[Ishayu]

That's some good news right there! I wonder what app will take care of syncing with our phones though, especially on Windows, but you know what? I don't even care really. iTunes is a complete mess, and it's about time it gets broken up into smaller, manageable, usable, and fast apps.

Bring on the revolution! Even if it means I have to download 6 different programs on my Windows box and have 4 different apps on my Mac or whatever.

And hey, it's not like it's hard to work out where these things could go. Books and audiobooks goes into Books, purchased movies go into QuickTime, or just "Movies", like they friggin' used to be, along with TV. Podcasts goes into a Podcasts app, and iOS apps stay on iOS.

When you connect your phone, it gives you access to all your documents, neatly organised, and you can just copy it out into a backup folder, and on MacOS, it'll just offer to do it automatically for you and copy it into a folder specifically designed for the purpose. Easy.

 

[kazmac]

What will happen to my 600 movies, 600 tv shows and thousands of songs on my iTunes server with home sharing? Apple has wanted to stop people from ripping DVD's and downloading local copies of iTunes movies for awhile, maybe the time has finally come? Oh well, at least there are old versions of MacOS and iTunes.

IIRC there was a similar rumor a few years ago but it turned out to be wrong.

If that happens I am done.

I rely on downloading iTunes movies and storing my ripped DVD collection on my iMac and back up drives. The simple fact is Apple will never offer the hundreds of genre films (foreign and domestic) I’ve got backed up.

I hate that you need an internet connection now on iTunes to see what movies are currently on your iDevice. I do not stream.

 

[Shirasaki]

As someone who grew up with iPods...I don't like that solution at all. In theory that sounds fine to only put a subset and manage accordingly. But throw in the unpredictability of what you are in the mood for, varying internet access due to travel etc., and other random factors like that.

I not only want to OWN the majority of my content, I want it to be LOCAL. (and I am by no means an iCloud/cloud skeptic or hater...I happily use it as an OFF-SITE BACKUP)

Believe me. I was once on your foot before when my library was very small (20GB Max). Nowadays, with 2600 songs occupying essentially 450GB+, carrying everything with me becomes simply impossible, not to mention I will keep adding more and more. Since then, I decide to use playlist and such to sync the music. Regarding the mood, I tend to have a wide enough range of music to listen to or don’t listen to anything at all.

 

[Music Ambulance]

My body is ready.

 

[0958400]

I would certainly welcome that move, however, splitting up shouldn't mean removing functionality as they have - oh so often - done in the past (remember the iCloud version of Pages?).

Music app:

• should still be able to work with any kind of ratings that have been introduced in the past and the users have chosen to work with (be it stars, favorites...)
• should still offer services for music that is owned and locally stored, if they want me to solely rely on Apple Music, I will switch.
• hopefully Dougs' Apple-Scripts will still work, which I really doubt
• editing of tags (covers, albums, names...) is a necessity for locally stored music
• a real sql database might help with large libraries to speed up anything from launching, editing and listening

Movies / TV App:

• own homemade movies should still be useable and transferable to any device
• I would also welcome to be able to change the tags of iCloud movies as some of these tags (starting from weird genres that the movie doesn't belong to (Gremlins 1 is horror, Gremlins 2 is comedy), some boxed movies have foreign title names e.g. in French (bought in the local iTunes Store), the sort order of the movies is sometimes incomprehensible (the James Bond movies are - I think - organized by their English original title, not by release date etc.) Granted, this is a problem of the iTunes store and terrible tagging from the studios, but as long as that isn't cleaned up, I'd like to clean it up for myself, at least in my local database, knowing it won't be transferred to my iDevices...

Podcast app:

• usual functionality, I really don't use it that much, to be honest.

Another interesting question is - how do you transfer files, if the app on the iOS device doesn't support iCloud...

If I were Apple, I'd simply buy Swinsian, give it sync functionality and we'd have a great music iTunes replacement.
[doublepost=1554544210][/doublepost]

Not true, for instance if you're on a long transit (say, a train, a plane or a bus) and don't have access to WiFi, or only to a low-quality connection.

I agree, sometimes I wonder if Apple knows that normal people do not have WiFi everywhere. Everytime I drive through my local forest I cannot use Siri, as... "Siri isn't available right now, try again later." X(
[doublepost=1554544921][/doublepost]I would welcome the finder to have an extension to edit meta-tags for music that would help in organizing local music, now add smart folders which deal exclusively with music files to it and you could have some iTunes functionality, esp. the organization within finder.