Home sharing has never been reliable, on neither version of the Apple TV or on any of the iOS versions.
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Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi Discuss Bloated Software Accusations, Upcoming iTunes Plans
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Eddy needs to go, and go now. Beats, AppleMusic, iTunes Bloatware..... Steve kept Eddy in check for a dam good reason. Thank's Tim. You'll be out as CEO within a year. 
iTunes is the best. Been using it for years and years. I could have gone with something different but I've always used iTunes. Tried Amazon for a minute, tried manual music in Windows, tried Spotify, etc. Stuck with iTunes. Due to that fact, it just doesn't feel right to say that it sucks. I really don't think it sucks. I think it's actually quite good at what it does.
iTunes is still decent if your multimedia collection isn't too large (less than 3000 songs, say) and your iDevice(s) doesn't have too many apps on them. Some pre-2010 iDevices sync very slowly with iTunes and Wi-Fi syncing drops or stops working completely for many users. Apple Music, which works only through iTunes (rather than a web interface like Spotify), can arbitrarily remove music files. Also iTunes hog system resources in the background. For iTunes Store, it loads at a less than satisfactory speed and search works horribly (no advanced search for album, artist and song title, for instance). The list goes on.
Because all multimedia content is distributed through the same store. That's just how iTunes Store was set up originally. Now people can buy music videos off the Store, there is even less reason for Apple to want to split iTunes into separate applications.
i wished, they wouldn't try so hard to add new features and complexity and focus more on polishing and refining the core functionality of their devices. they do, eventually, but still, the days when you could sit someone fairly computer-illiterate in front of a mac or give him an ios device and tell him to "figure it out yourself" didn't last very long. they now require too much prior knowledge for the dumbphone-windows-at-work crowd, who are probably still in the billions.
it's fairly obvious that every new feature and more (kinds of) devices communicating with each other or syncing via the cloud adds another extra layer of complexity to the software. The resources needed to tackle this and maintain quality won't scale up linear and the old apple way of creating small, flexible teams won't be very helpfull as well. It's a bit like a reversal of the challenges Microsoft or Google face with lots of different hardware and a huge install base, both of them coming from the software side of things. Apple has probably reached a limit where every new service or hardware added requires exponentionally more ressources and becomes unprofitable and unmanageable pretty quickly unless something other suffers. They could maybe delay the inevitable by restructuring and optimizing processes, but i'd guess that this has already happened, and when those changes have finally reached their potential, the "bar" will allready have risen again.
so, again, i think they should slow down, focus, and care more about satisfying their existing customers rather than staying the tech press' (and thus, the wall street's) darling. everyone wants the core functionality to work reliable (e.g. if a change in the "contacts" on one device takes two days to sync to the other devices, that's a bad experience), and most will eventually stay loyal to the brand that provides them with that - even if they act brand-agnostic when buying other gadgets for extra gimmicks.
it's fairly obvious that every new feature and more (kinds of) devices communicating with each other or syncing via the cloud adds another extra layer of complexity to the software. The resources needed to tackle this and maintain quality won't scale up linear and the old apple way of creating small, flexible teams won't be very helpfull as well. It's a bit like a reversal of the challenges Microsoft or Google face with lots of different hardware and a huge install base, both of them coming from the software side of things. Apple has probably reached a limit where every new service or hardware added requires exponentionally more ressources and becomes unprofitable and unmanageable pretty quickly unless something other suffers. They could maybe delay the inevitable by restructuring and optimizing processes, but i'd guess that this has already happened, and when those changes have finally reached their potential, the "bar" will allready have risen again.
so, again, i think they should slow down, focus, and care more about satisfying their existing customers rather than staying the tech press' (and thus, the wall street's) darling. everyone wants the core functionality to work reliable (e.g. if a change in the "contacts" on one device takes two days to sync to the other devices, that's a bad experience), and most will eventually stay loyal to the brand that provides them with that - even if they act brand-agnostic when buying other gadgets for extra gimmicks.
I am always fascinated how people can get so much satisfaction out of an insult that they know is a lie. If you can make other people believe the lie than you gain the satisfaction of those other people now also hating (and insulting) your target person. And this is already a sort of cruelty (manipulating others for personal satisfaction).
But what I have trouble understanding how this works if the lie is so obvious that nobody will believe it. I guess that is banking on the cruelty of others: Let's just collectively 'torture' somebody with made-up accusations. I think the term 'mob' is still a fairly polite word for this group behaviour.
Apple keeps making new software so fast and can't keep up cause they glitch up the old software so bad every year and don't test it nor care to test it. Consumer software and internal software. Still better than Windows but close now in terms of bugs. They got away from keeping it simple and making it for themselves and their own personal preferences.
Books are already off iTunes. Apple won't split iTunes along audio/video lines as that would put music videos at an awkward place. They can do that on iOS because people don't usually put all of their collection on mobile devices but iTunes is as much a jukebox as a nerve centre of all of your media collection. So multimedia content should be in one place (Music, Movies, TV Shows, Ringtones, and Podcasts) and Apps and Syncing on the other. They should also put audio books on iBooks rather than within iTunes (like how Amazon does it).
I think the Photos app is an example where more syncing actually improved things (though they had to remove features from the application or at least hide the functionality).
What happened over the last years? Whenever I hear Apple redesigns one of their apps I fear the worst. For me each recent version of iTunes became worse and worse. Similar for the new music app or Photos as a non-replacment for iPhoto and Aperture or how about the iWork suite?
To me it seems they're just removing features and redesigning the software so it looks and feels dumber, but that doesn't make it easier. Maybe it is easier for people who never had music or photos on their computer or for people who never used a computer before. But seriously, how many people with such a past are there still? Is this really Apple's target group? (They argue completely different when it comes to the reasons behind "flat" design.)
I am also not sure if separating iTunes into many different apps is THE ONE solution. It's not like iTunes is doing any rocket science in terms of functionality right now. It's basically a (actually quite simple) database application, that also syncs data with devices and has a web browser for an online shop and streaming website included. Other apps are doing a lot more without really feeling "bloated" – whatever that means. Personally I believe most people refer to "bloated" when they mean the application feels slow, sluggish – which iTunes definitely feels. And then there are a lot of bugs not being fixed for ages. But the problem behind this cannot be the current feature set of iTunes but rather how these are implemented.
If separation is really needed to make iTunes be faster, my preference would be:
+ make iTunes's main purpose to handle music library organization, listening and buying
+ videos, movies & tv shows never made much sense and organizing them in iTunes always felt worse than just organizing them in Finder. So maybe make this an own super fast app, just like iBooks.
+ bring back the name iSync for a new app that handles all syncing of your stuff (sources can be iTunes, Videos, iBooks whatever…) between your devices. This can also organize backups of all your apps, the App Store, because seriously, it never made sense to have a list of Apps in iTunes. They're just there, you can delete them and sync them but not do anything with them all. iTunes should be for enjoying your music.
To me it seems they're just removing features and redesigning the software so it looks and feels dumber, but that doesn't make it easier. Maybe it is easier for people who never had music or photos on their computer or for people who never used a computer before. But seriously, how many people with such a past are there still? Is this really Apple's target group? (They argue completely different when it comes to the reasons behind "flat" design.)
I am also not sure if separating iTunes into many different apps is THE ONE solution. It's not like iTunes is doing any rocket science in terms of functionality right now. It's basically a (actually quite simple) database application, that also syncs data with devices and has a web browser for an online shop and streaming website included. Other apps are doing a lot more without really feeling "bloated" – whatever that means. Personally I believe most people refer to "bloated" when they mean the application feels slow, sluggish – which iTunes definitely feels. And then there are a lot of bugs not being fixed for ages. But the problem behind this cannot be the current feature set of iTunes but rather how these are implemented.
If separation is really needed to make iTunes be faster, my preference would be:
+ make iTunes's main purpose to handle music library organization, listening and buying
+ videos, movies & tv shows never made much sense and organizing them in iTunes always felt worse than just organizing them in Finder. So maybe make this an own super fast app, just like iBooks.
+ bring back the name iSync for a new app that handles all syncing of your stuff (sources can be iTunes, Videos, iBooks whatever…) between your devices. This can also organize backups of all your apps, the App Store, because seriously, it never made sense to have a list of Apps in iTunes. They're just there, you can delete them and sync them but not do anything with them all. iTunes should be for enjoying your music.
I really hope someone has reported this and that Apple is working on it. Seeing iTunes jitters like that has the potential to ruin someone's day.
fortunately, itunes is not as important as it used to be - i now only use it to wirelessly sync offline videos to my idevices and to update itunes match with offline music.
but it has been pretty bad from the beginning, from it's huge-window to full screen design to it's handling of duplicate songs, metadata and file management. it has always been one of the main sore points of windows-mac switchers who were used to proprietary software like winamp. and it was even worse on windows.
but it has been pretty bad from the beginning, from it's huge-window to full screen design to it's handling of duplicate songs, metadata and file management. it has always been one of the main sore points of windows-mac switchers who were used to proprietary software like winamp. and it was even worse on windows.
I remember the first time I downloaded iTunes back in or around 2003. It was crisp and to the point. iTunes today is a bloated non intuitive mess. I hate using the desktop and the mobile versions. Dear Apple, please go back to the basics of Apple's user interface/user experience principles.
Because you know, if the problem is that iTunes does too many things, then the more radical a solution is the better it must be, and the larger the number of parts you chop up iTunes into, the better the solution must be. Seems to be applied in politics as well at the moment (at least in terms of proposals).
I know this has already been quoted and replied to, but I couldn't help myself. It's quite a forehead slapper. These statements have now gone beyond where they're meaningless cheerleading into the future and are firmly planted in the "we don't pay any attention to what we've ruined in our software. We're too forward thinking" realm that doesn't work for their actual users. He's confusing his stockholders' speech with the one where he explains how Apple's software will get back on track.
That's a kind way of putting it : )
Sorry - but iTunes is an awful experience. Still a memory/resource hog. And while it's nice that they think music needs to be front and center - let's not forget about video boys....
I would say for many things Apple is great at (hardware, OS for the most part, etc). Their actual software however....
I would say for many things Apple is great at (hardware, OS for the most part, etc). Their actual software however....
Hopefully that indicates a solid improvement (though as the post I was replying to indicates, things are not at 100% yet). My point was mainly that home sharing has been problematic over very many years and software versions and that the new Apple TV definitely didn't break something that was great before.
There are many 'normal' Apple employees that also think software quality has improved. Because it has in the metrics they are looking at (which outright crashes seem to be an important part of). It is just that their metrics don't include all areas and it is those areas they don't include that have caused grief with users.
I have had apple devices since the first iPod... This music app now is really great in my opinion. I can reliably hold all 20k of my own music, and store locally anything I listen often to. I can tell one of my smart playlists to be cached offline and when anything is added to it? It is automatically downloaded.
I have all of my smart playlists auto updating when I star a song, and organized into genres. And when I add music it is filtered into a new music playlist.
And when a brand new album comes out? I have access to it immediately.
Apple Music had its rough spots at launch and for a while. This last update has cured all of my gripes and it is BY FAR better than any "iPod only" interface for people who refuse to come up to date with technologies.
All of this for the price of an album a month. Easy. I feel like you might need to try a bit harder to use what you have.