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Apple Planning to Bring Music and Podcasts Apps to Microsoft Store

hot-gril said:
Yeah, it's embarrassing how Windows doesn't properly manage photos. People seem to rely on their phones storing all photos forever.
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I tried to make photos on Windows 10 work, with my personal O365 and the 1TB of OneDrive you get. Even installed the OneDrive App on my iPhone to sync photos. The whole experience was just sad. You have to open the OneDrive app to make the photos go to OneDrive and then the photos app on Windows 10 is just horrible.

It mostly works, just slow and buggy as all get out. OneDrive Photos on the web is terrible once you get more than a 100 photos or so, just super, super slow.
 
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Darmok N Jalad said:
Photos would be a nice addition--the iCloud Photos sync service on Windows I just couldn't get to work reliably. Some days it would accept new files in the upload folder, other days it would not without killing the service and restarting it.

Now the MSstore, that's a crapshoot when it comes to getting things to work. I've never had a consistent and reliable experience there. My favorite was trying Halo:MCC--the game would make it to the menu screen and lockup. It wasn't my PC, every game from Steam worked perfectly. I'm not sure how many folks even bother going through the MSstore for any software. Last I checked, it wasn't exactly brimming with quality content, and Windows 10 has been out for over 5 years now.
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Honestly Microsoft should just give up on the store. Its a collection of junk. Half the games I tried to get running from there (Forza, Halo etc) just would not work.
 
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I’ve found the Microsoft store a frustrating experience, but I think this is a good decision by Apple, and overdue. Expand the reach of the ecosystem. Putting iTunes on Windows helped sell a gazillion iPods.

TheMacDaddy1 said:
Honestly Microsoft should just give up on the store. Its a collection of junk. Half the games I tried to get running from there (Forza, Halo etc) just would not work.
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Maybe, if all you care about is playing games. I wouldn’t know.
 
It would certainly be long overdue. I don't believe there's a PC on earth that can run iTunes for Windows at an acceptable speed, it is quite simply the worst application from a large developer in history. It boggles the mind how Apple can think it's acceptable. Even scrolling through my music library runs at around 10fps, and that's on an RTX 3080 with a Ryzen 5900X. It's absurd.
 
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TheMacDaddy1 said:
Honestly Microsoft should just give up on the store. Its a collection of junk. Half the games I tried to get running from there (Forza, Halo etc) just would not work.
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Most, maybe even all digital storefronts are full of junk. Look at the Switch eShop, Steam, the iOS App Store, the Microsoft Xbox store, Google Play, PSN, you name it. They all seem to have taken the approach that quantity beats quality.

There's plenty of good stuff in all of them though, you just need to look for it. And if you can't get Forza or Halo to run then the fault there lies with your PC.
 
Kabeyun said:
I’ve found the Microsoft store a frustrating experience, but I think this is a good decision by Apple, and overdue. Expand the reach of the ecosystem. Putting iTunes on Windows helped sell a gazillion iPods.


Maybe, if all you care about is playing games. I wouldn’t know.
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There is not much in there of value. You do not even get Office from there if you have Office 365. Some apps like photoshop elements are gimped in the store compared with the non store versions.

There is a whole bunch of junk in there.
 
TheMacDaddy1 said:
There is not much in there of value. You do not even get Office from there if you have Office 365. Some apps like photoshop elements are gimped in the store compared with the non store versions.

There is a whole bunch of junk in there.
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That's one I don't understand. You can get the full 365 apps and experience from the frequent releases when downloading them from the Mac App Store.
 
SubduedTiger said:
It must be like developing software for an ATM.
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Are you implying that PCs are like cash machines?

That's an odd thing to say. You are aware of the whole PC gaming thing, aren't you? You know, high frame rates, HDR, ultrawide displays, realtime ray-tracing... that sort of thing.
 
Problem with this is, store apps can't run in the background, meaning they can't be minimized to the system tray so how would home sharing work
 
Honestly, this is great news. Over the pandemic, I've taken up a project of transforming our old, decommissioned Macs into Windows 10 machines to screw around and play old games on. I've found they make a fun, complementary, 'thin client' satellite machines. Adding Music and Podcasts would be a good strategy for folx like myself who want to remain in the Apple ecosystem but also want to have a Windows machine to screw around on. Also, the whole 'halo effect' that was touted during the iPod era is nothing to scoff at. iTunes, back in the day, was a boon for them. Now it's an albatross around their neck. They've long neglected it on Windows and never updated it to support even the basics of the 'Metro' UI. It's long overdue for a revamp and simplification.

These days Microsoft and Apple offer very different products and services targeting different use cases. As Mac users, we can only benefit from them having a friendly (but still competitive) relationship rather than being bitter, spiteful rivals.

Also, Apple taking Podcasts seriously from a cross-platform sense is really important. Leaving the market outside of their platform undefended will only lead to bigger influence from companies like Spotify that have financial motivations to destroy the open eco-system.

Hopefully this means they'll make an Android Podcasts client as well.

Have to imagine TV will be after and would not be surprised if News eventually follows suit.

A cross-platform Apple is a healthy Apple.
 
I’d been suggesting Apple breakup iTunes into separate apps for years and produce Windows versions to give users a taste of OS X. I thought iSync could act as the conduit for syncing again but Apple has done a better job with Finder integration.

Good to know they’re doing it. Now produce Photos for Windows as it needs a photo manager application.

My only issue is the direction Apple has taken the GUI with Big Sir. I really loathe the iOS/iPadOS design for a desktop system.
 
amartinez1660 said:
There was an article over here regarding a web browser based Apple Music player, that might be good enough while the app (if ever) comes out for non macs.
Haven’t tried that web one though.
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@alphaswift

Yep, the official Apple Music web player is in “beta” but I’ve found it works pretty well.


Not sure if it’s part of some beta program that I unknowingly signed up for or not, but I’ve been using it for a year now.
 
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If you ever uses iTunes on windows it's terrible for Apple Music. It will freeze up everytime I double click on a song in albums. I have to play songs by clicking the play icon.

Also after listening to a album I have to close it then wait to open as it uses nearly 2 GB of Ram.

Then there is "for you" not loading sometimes or locking up.

I can't wait for a proper AM and Podcasts app for Windows.
 
tonyr6 said:
If you ever uses iTunes on windows it's terrible for Apple Music. It will freeze up everytime I double click on a song in albums. I have to play songs by clicking the play icon.

Also after listening to a album I have to close it then wait to open as it uses nearly 2 GB of Ram.

Then there is "for you" not loading sometimes or locking up.

I can't wait for a proper AM and Podcasts app for Windows.
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It is even worse for podcasts, my only concern is Microsoft store apps are pretty much garbage also
 
I mean, they really don't need to do that. An Apple TV app (so that I have the option of streaming purchased iTunes Movies/TV shows instead of downloading them and then watching) would be nice. But past that, breaking up iTunes really isn't necessary on Windows. Hell, I'd argue vehemently that it wasn't necessary on Mac (and caused way more headache than was necessary at the time).
 
Sakurambo-kun said:
Are you implying that PCs are like cash machines?

That's an odd thing to say. You are aware of the whole PC gaming thing, aren't you? You know, high frame rates, HDR, ultrawide displays, realtime ray-tracing... that sort of thing.
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I've seen Windows Blue Screens of Death on ATMs and Self-Serve Checkout machines in supermarkets. Windows is everywhere, not just on your gaming machine.
 
There's a few misinformed people here. UWP is actually perfectly fine for a music app. WinUI is too, but lacks a lot... You definitely can have advanced management, but you'll likely run into performance issues, especially when loading a list view.

But I don't actually believe that Apple would really be making first class native apps for Windows. This is probably just for Xbox. I want to be proven wrong though.

You can't really blame Apple or anyone other than Microsoft. Microsoft's UWP apps are terrible and are dead. Microsoft still uses win32 and is a very stark difference to Apple. Microsoft doesn't care at all for Windows. All of the other music services have Electron/CEF (web) apps too.

I think the comparison to developing for UWP to an ATM is that it's like developing for a very very niche computer.
 
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