Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi Discuss Bloated Software Accusations, Upcoming iTunes Plans

[69650]

It's really very simple.

4 Separate Apps:

Music:​

• Apple Music, Radio, and Apple Music Store

Video:​

• Movies and TV Shows, and Apple Video Store

Books:​

• Books and PDFS, and Apple Book Store

Podcasts:​

• Podcasts, and Apple Podcast Store

As for the name iTunes, they could simply call it Apple Media Store, for when they are referring to the 4 individually stores.

Also, for iOS, they need to follow the same idea, and get rid of the iTunes app.

P.S can they finally give us the option to edit Movie movie meta? Its quite ridiculous to have to use 3rd party apps like Subler.​

I would prefer it if they seperated out TV and Movies into two seperate apps. One of my biggest problems is having to store my entire iTunes library on one single hard drive. If they separated the things into seperate apps with their own content and store then hopefully I could store the content for each App in a different place.

Of course it would make life a whole lot easier if they made it simple to store your purchased video content in the cloud and stream it instead of having to download it. I know you can do that to a certain extent now but they still have the right to remove items from your video library if they fall out with one of the film studios so it's safer to download everything.

I also think they should move Music Videos into the Music App.

 

[Hurache Lights]

Need to put a Book on your phone? iTunes!

Need to transfer a Keynote Presentation from your Desktop to a Tablet? you only choice is iTunes!

Want to play a video on your Apple TV thats sitting on your laptop's hard drive? Sir, you must use iTunes!

Time to back up your devices? why the natural software choice is iTunes!

oh and it does music. WTF.

 

[Robstevo]

Getting rid of him was like when they got rid of Job's. Apple's software quality and ease of use went down the toilette. I still miss iOS 6 and especially the simple and clean notification/widget pulldown.

I personally like the overall feeling of the latest IOS, for me IOS 6 and below lacked a lot of basic features, the overall design felt toyish and unclean.

The latest looks clean and simply and they have introduced a lot of great features.

Problems is the performance has suffered and they have gained a lot more bugs than usual.

If they somehow fix the performance back to ios6 level, and had more depth to the OS (Mainly the lack of features for the size of the iPad pro). Think it will be perfect.

 

[rsdotscot]

I'd just like to see the return of the cover flow view for albums. It's the one thing I really miss, despite it not actually doing much.

 

[rohithbasu]

Spotify for os x has been the best music app and service i have used on the mac or any platform thus far

 

[EwanMcTeagle]

I would like to add one thing to this: it's amazing the number of Apple users (even well educated technical users) who accept work-arounds and "it's not quite right" as acceptable functionality just because it's Apple.

Guilty here. But I'm getting fed up. I'm considering buying a used Nexus 5 to get a feel of the Android side of things.
The number of issues I've had with iTunes and iPhone in the past year has been a nightmare.
I've lost my entire music library (150GB worth of music, mostly CD rips + some iTunes purchases) three times! I've always been syncing my iPhone via iTunes to you know... add new music, because you can't just drag and drop. iTunes messed it up in a way that I had 50+ GB of ghost songs. Only erasing the iPhone and starting fresh solved the issue. it happened three times, I guess iTunes couldn't handle that much data.
But I am guilty here as well, because instead of showing Apple the middle finger, I've subscribed to iTunes match to solve my problem. It has its issues and quirks, but it's been definitely better than syncing.
Nevertheless, it's because of people like me that Apple still sells tons of stuff. But the next time iTunes or iOS (as a customer I don't care where's the fault. All I know is that my music collection, which I had been accumulating and transferring to digital format over the years, has gone the drain twice. If it wasn't for my own back up (the iPhone back up in iTunes became corrupted giving me ghost songs and phantom storage space after restore) I would've been suing Apple already, while rocking an Android phone.
Why should I spend a $1000 for an iPhone when it gives me headaches and messes up my files? And don't get me started on AirPlay, which keeps working worse and worse.

 

[colourfastt]

Guilty here. But I'm getting fed up. I'm considering buying a used Nexus 5 to get a feel of the Android side of things.
The number of issues I've had with iTunes and iPhone in the past year has been a nightmare.
I've lost my entire music library (150GB worth of music, mostly CD rips + some iTunes purchases) three times! I've always been syncing my iPhone via iTunes to you know... add new music, because you can't just drag and drop. iTunes messed it up in a way that I had 50+ GB of ghost songs. Only erasing the iPhone and starting fresh solved the issue. it happened three times, I guess iTunes couldn't handle that much data.
But I am guilty here as well, because instead of showing Apple the middle finger, I've subscribed to iTunes match to solve my problem. It has its issues and quirks, but it's been definitely better than syncing.
Nevertheless, it's because of people like me that Apple still sells tons of stuff. But the next time iTunes or iOS (as a customer I don't care where's the fault. All I know is that my music collection, which I had been accumulating and transferring to digital format over the years, has gone the drain twice. If it wasn't for my own back up (the iPhone back up in iTunes became corrupted giving me ghost songs and phantom storage space after restore) I would've been suing Apple already, while rocking an Android phone.
Why should I spend a $1000 for an iPhone when it gives me headaches and messes up my files? And don't get me started on AirPlay, which keeps working worse and worse.

I've already turned off my iPhone 5 and started using my Nexus 4 again. I've also given up on using Pages, Numbers, etc. (as well as Microshaft Office) and use the Google apps exclusively (Google has awesome collaboration built-in to their apps unlike the Apple apps). And while I've loved my Macs over the past decade, the way things are going I'm seriously considering a Surface Pro.

 

[nilk]

I think iTunes has hit the size of what it does that it should be split back out into multiple Applications

iPod - your own music library
Music - Streaming music service
iRadio - The streaming radio
etc, depending on functionality

Also: start working on web applications for a few of these, like radio / music.

And finally fix the ridiculously large gaping memory leak hole that has existed in iTunes for what feels like a decade already.

Disagree.. Everything related to music should remain in a single iTunes app. I want to be able to mix my personal, local music library with my Apple Music library.

Personally I've been happy with iTunes until the redesign that took away the multi-window interface. It was even still good enough after that change that I was happy enough. But after Apple Music, the interface has been a train wreck. My issues with iTunes are with the UI, not with it being bloated (performance is fine).

If there is anything that needs to be split out, it's probably the iOS device syncing and the app store for iOS apps. Though I don't really care if nothing gets split out as long as the UI is right. I don't do iOS stuff through iTunes that often, so it doesn't really matter to me whether it's in iTunes or not.

I wish they'd add back multiple windows, and allow you to have arbitrary things in each window. So for example, I'd have a window my main music collection, windows for any playlist I want open, a window for iOS device syncing, and a window for the store. It's trying to swap between all these things in a single window that annoys me.

And mixing your local collection with Apple Music needs to be cleaner. That includes search (you should be able to search both at the same time).

 

[Ulenspiegel]

Enough with this stupid Forstall meme. iTunes was already a bloated mess during Forstall's reign.

Forstall had never been responsible for iTunes. Only for App Store within iTunes. What a surprise... N'est-ce pas?

 

[jdawgnoonan]

These guys are kind of guilty of not looking outside of their bubble.

 

[logicstudiouser]

I will never touch iTunes 12 ever. I have an iPhone 5 with 6.1.4 on iTunes 10.7 - holding on as long as I can because both iOS and iTunes run beautifully. Who ever was involved with the designs of iTunes 10 and iOS 6 need to help the current design team.
When iOS 6 becomes completely obsolete, I will seek out an 8.3 or 8.4 iPhone so I can use iTunes 11. Anything to avoid iTunes 12.

 

[navaira]

It's very telling that the device that makes my life the simplest, when it comes to syncing music and listening to it, is this:

No problems whatsoever. It just works. With iTunes 12 as well. And battery life is still amazing.

 

[sofila]

I agree and miss "some good habits" too. I guess the question is why should a technological business model cater to people who could be dead in 1-20 years?

Because we (me) older people usually have more money to spend. And though only for the moment I decide where to spend money (in electronics, generally speaking) both in my family 2 adults 3 teens and in the business I run, 26 persons in need of phones, desktops, laptops etc.

 

[developer13245]

I'll restate my consumer WARNING:
Consumers should never forget that Apple is a hardware company. Software resources within the company support ONLY THEIR NEW hardware as the highest priority, then maybe they fix other issues later. Support of older devices is WAY DOWN the priority list. Basically if you have an older device, DO NOT EVEN CONSIDER upgrading to a new iOS Major release until X.N, where N is the number of hardware "things" released off of the iOS code base at/after the major (X) release.

So in this case: X=9 (the major release), and 3 iOS related devices (6s, iPad Pro, TV) so X.N = 9.3

Essentially:
iOS 9.0 should have been called iOS for iPhone 6s and 6s Plus.
iOS 9.1 should have been called iOS for iPad Pro.
And, in the mix they shipped Apple TV, which is basically iOS and "churns" the iOS code base - so bugger on 9.2.

I've been an active iOS developer selling apps since iOS 2. iOS 9 takes the cake for "Worst Release Quality Ever". Most of the bugs I reported on the developer previews still have not been fixed.
Apple is starting to slide back to the ancient era mindset (30+ years ago) when an Operating System was created solely for a piece of hardware (even general purpose computers) - Think TRS 80.

iOS 9.2 is at best beta quality level (for all devices, especially legacy) - (all the crash bugs I reported at least don't crash on iOS 9.2, but they aren't totally fixed either - functionality is still broken).

Maybe 9.3 will be release quality.

My everyday main use devices still are on 8.4.1
I've renamed iOS 9 to "iOS Nein".

 

[MacGod]

They need to rewrite much of iTunes from the ground up - it is to slow, needs to handle large music collections more adequately and better options to have a central repository for the music and have multiple systems point to it (i.e. NAS server).

Also would like iTunes Match and iTunes in Cloud to not affect local music files

 

[Freeks]

Why, oh why we need to use Music Player to backup phone?

Many, many people don't use their iDevice for music, so why Apple keeps pushing music in the center? I use Spotify and couldn't care less what Apple has to offer. I want simple way to backup and transfer data to apps.

 

[JohnMantooth]

"Every year we realize the things we were good at last year and the techniques we were using to build the best software we can are not adequate for the next year because the bar keeps going up," he said.

Remember when Apple used to be the ones setting the bar, not the ones trying to keep up with it?

 

[Ebenezum]

Remember when Apple used to be the ones setting the bar, not the ones trying to keep up with it?

I remember those days but unfortunately it seems current leadership in Apple has no idea.

iTunes is completely dysfunctional, last 3 or 4 major versions have added more and more features without thought to user interface.

I wonder if the suggested next month update bring any real improvements or is it only a placebo update? Interview suggest placebo because neither Cue nor Federighi seems to take criticism seriously...

I hope I am too cynical and Apple does improve iTunes in meaningful way but I have not been impressed with Apple software quality in the last 3 years (Yosemite, El Capitan, iTunes, Photos, iWork etc.) and if the new version isn't clearly better I plan to replace iTunes completely...

 

[gpatrick95]

Jobs signature was ease of use and simplicity and that criterion had changed at Apple. It's products are quickly becoming as complicated and non-intuitive as anything MS has ever produced. Just in figuring out where to make a change in iOS settings can be a "Where's Waldo" experience.

The perfect summary. Maybe our expectations are unrealistic in terms of how many things we want an iphone or ipad or imac to do these days, and yet how simple we want them to function based on past experience. Is it matter of "wanting to have our cake and eat it, too?"

 

[Pilgrim1099]

It's very telling that the device that makes my life the simplest, when it comes to syncing music and listening to it, is this:

View attachment 616781
No problems whatsoever. It just works. With iTunes 12 as well. And battery life is still amazing.

These devices are perfect for music listening and apple should've gone old school with this. I don't think a touch screen is appropriate for a music player especially when a playlist needs to be easily organized and controlled. Add in radio and it'll be much more well rounded without the stock apps.

 

[navaira]

If they left the iPod Nano exactly as it is... OK, more than 8 GB... and added Apple Music offline saving with caveat of "you need to go online once every 30 days" (like Spotify is now) I would be SO happy.

 

[Pilgrim1099]

If they left the iPod Nano exactly as it is... OK, more than 8 GB... and added Apple Music offline saving with caveat of "you need to go online once every 30 days" (like Spotify is now) I would be SO happy.

Well I have the first gen iPod from 2002 and it was the best device I had. I played the hell out of it and it still in my possession. I waited years until they came out with the first gen iPod touch and was happy with it.

But now I think they need a hybrid click wheel/touch screen version and strip out the crap. I don't trust the iCloud to play off my music due to some horror stories I hear and don't want to cram my iPhone memory. So I prefer " off the grid " music players to do just that: play music with a dedicated sound chip for better quality.

They need to focus on that without cramming everything into the phone.

 

[RobFog]

He went on to explain that Apple is continually re-evaluating iTunes, and there are plans to release a refreshed version alongside OS X 10.11.4 next month.

But right now, we think we've designed iTunes and you'll see we've got a new refresh with the new version of OS X that's coming out next month that makes it even easier to use in the music space."

Then this:

Tunes 12.3.3: This update adds support for syncing iTunes with iPhone SE and iPad Pro.

So where exactly are the changes that make iTunes "even easier to use"?

 

[dk001]

Then this:
So where exactly are the changes that make iTunes "even easier to use"?

Either still on the drawing board or in someone's inbox.

 

[macmyworld]

Either still on the drawing board or in someone's inbox.

I was thinking how my use of iTunes has changed. I used to visit every week or so and add a few songs to my iPod and eventually iPhone. Then the thing became to convoluted that I stopped buying music on iTunes.

The final straw was when Apple broke "Skip when shuffling". Nothing more fun now that turning on shuffling and hearing ring tones and Christmas songs mixed in with my other 1500 songs.

I miss the days of a pure music player and the simplicity of it. Really pathetic Apple.