Eight Months Later, Apple Music Connect Still 'Fails Miserably' at Social

[oneMadRssn]

this shouldn't be about original content, it should be reposts from all other connected accounts, twitter, insta and Facebook. a curated connection rather than an original one.

I agree. I really don't see why they needed to create a new feed. Seems totally superfluous.

All in all, they really ruined the music app with all this mess. What was once Apple's strongest feature, the iPod, is now one of it's worst apps.

 

[yaxomoxay]

Steve would never have released such problematic software. Tim?

MobileMe ?

 

[YourAgain]

the library is great, the interface is garbage.

 

[Rogifan]

Shocker. When is Cook going to get rid of that clown Cue?

 

[Kaibelf]

Apple Music isn't a slave to the twitter and instagram crowd, and yet somehow the sun still rises. Amazing, isn't it?

 

[jayducharme]

Maybe they could just rename the service "Disconnect". Problem solved.

 

[jumanji]

I swear to God. Since subscribing at the very beginning, I have NEVER used the feature.

agree...i use apple music when i drive so i don't have time to fiddle with my phone. useless feature but i wouldn't say apple music is a failure

You can turn off Apple Music Connect in Restrictions. Then you get a "Playlists" Button instead

good to know! this will be useful for me

 

[topmounter]

The iTunes experience is an unsatisfying mess that only seems to get worse and never better. Apple should really consider publishing an iTunes API that enables third-party app development and innovation.

 

[wigby]

I'll say this again - create SEPARATE apps. Having all of these things bunched up in ONE iTunes is a disaster. Having one for your library, one for Apple Music, and one to purchase songs/videos/movies would be absolutely perfect. More direct in the UI, easier bug fixes rather than having to deal with all of these three in one currently, and a more satisfied customer base.

The only reason companies create multiple apps that all "work" together is to capture their attention with notifications before users turn them off (think Facebook and Messenger). Apple doesn't need this as much because they already control the entire ecosystem. Introducing a separate app for Connect or any other parts of Apple Music would be a confusing mess for most users. Can you search for new music within Connect? Nope, you have to leave that app to enter another one. Can I watch a music video while I'm here? No, that's a separate app for music videos but not music or videos. See what I mean?

Apple just needs to commit to the social thing or let someone else do it for them. They don't need it because it actually has very little to do with music.

 

[Popeye206]

As much as an Apple Fan as I am, I always shake my head as to why services like this seems to sit stagnate for so long. They really need to keep the updates pushing out and show users it's growing and changing for the better. As a software product manager, I know some things are easier said than done, but even smaller incremental improvements on such a high visibility service would be better than nothing for so long.

 

[Flow39]

Connect blows. Stuff hardly gets posted on there unless you follow Coldplay who I'm pretty sure gets paid to post things.

 

[pcmacgamer]

Looked at once then never again. I do not find the value added to the music app.

 

[KidAKidB]

Removed the Connect tab altogether, and not looking back.

However, many companies leave products or features lagging only to cancel them eventually, and nobody's calling the practice "Pathetic" when it's Facebook or (typically) Google doing that. It's good old throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks.

That's because Facebook and Google actually cancel the product when it's needed whereas Apple just lets it linger on and on for no reason. Connect is absolutely useless and a UI nightmare

 

[bushido]

things are just too complicated for many people. i stopped trying to make anyone in my family understand the following:

iCloud Photo Library
My Photostream
iCloud Photo Sharing

iCloud Drive

iTunes Match
Apple Music

Family

or why "Find My iPhone" means = deactivating Activation Lock

 

[Elbon]

I have disabled Connect immediately. Apple just sucks at these things and they do not even care. I believe that some executive had this lofty idea, but no one else. Just like Ping, the feature will eventually just disappear instead of being fixed.

I think you're right. This reeks of an "executive decision". Hopefully it will go away soon.

 

[macs4nw]

disclaimer - i haven't tried apple music. but it is - as it stands - simply intrusive. just give me an iTunes without connectivity and cloud options. i'm a music purist with only 1 goal: listen to my own music in an clean organized way. not a splintered disorganized mess that tells me i have different music depending on whether i'm on wifi or cellular.

between this and photo stream/camera roll/my photos/and whatever Photos is trying to do, i consider much of apple's Cloud/Internet 'solutions' to organizing plain and simple media a pretty big bloated 'miss'

Couldn't have said it better myself. I have iTunes 10.7 on an older iMac I strictly use for music streaming, and it does everything I want beautifully and without a hitch. I've often wished I had the option of installing 10.7 on my newer machines. In their effort to be everything to everybody, Apple has created a bloated monstrosity.

I realize many may disagree, and I'm also not sure how at this stage it could be accomplished but, for desktops anyway, I think some separation of functions might be desirable.

 

[Elbon]

things are just too complicated for many people. i stopped trying to make anyone in my family understand the following:
...

Same here. Great examples of things that should "just work", but don't.

 

[bitslap47]

Some exec wants instant access to his favorite band so he can fanboi... nobody else really cares.

 

[iChrist]

It's terribly broken but it's not useless.

The trademark of everything Eddie 'no clue' Cue touches.

 

[Sandstorm]

Spotify FTW. Seriously.

 

[7evin]

As a Professional Musician in my music project "Tel Cairo", and who also maintains social media accounts for a handful of major label artists, Apple Connect is a very useful tool. It allows us to post high res content (that can't be pirated) and it syncs to our Pro Facebook page and Twitter. One post 3 places. I look forward to it linking to all other social media platforms and being easier to embed in website or Tumblr. Another advantage is I can link a video or audio to an established album in my catalogue on iTunes, so if a fan buys whole album they get extra content for free. I would love to talk with Apple on how an indie artist uses this and wishes to use it. But so far so Good.

 

[nt5672]

Its a shame Apple has made the same mistake as with Ping. How can such a great company suck so badly at services. . . . .

I used to work at one of the worlds largest consulting firms and we had 1000s of consultants running around the globe, with maybe 1500+ here in the US at the time. It turns out that there were about 20 or 30 of us in the US that really got it and were used for really hard problems or to fix screwed up engagements. Not everyone graduates in the top 20% of their class. When you get as big as Apple you get middle managers that really don't know what they are doing hiring software engineers that really don't know what they are doing. OR you get staff that are not allowed to work on really important stuff because they are not really that good assigned to projects that have little or no perceived risk. Marketing can dictate that it has to be done, they cannot dictate that the best people have to be used. To answer your question it happens because Apple is a large company and a large company has to work really, really, really hard to stay great. In fact, most don't succeed.

 

[AxoNeuron]

This is what happens when you try to do everything: You end up being good at nothing.

I don't understand why Apple feels the need to enter so many markets, like the music streaming business, the driverless car business, etc.

It's as if they keep making the same old mistakes over and over again. Seems like they didn't learn anything from the 1990's.

 

[macs4nw]

Apple Support can't revert the profile picture back to the previous one and their only solution was for the band to abandon the page and start over from scratch?! Talk about customer unfriendly.

Absolutely, if true that's a big unforgivable fail!

 

[dumastudetto]

Apple Support can't revert the profile picture back to the previous one and their only solution was for the band to abandon the page and start over from scratch?! Talk about customer unfriendly.

I'm guessing they may have needed to take the entire Apple Music service offline for a few hours to fix the band profile the way most would expect. Speaking seriously - if this somehow happened to a Taylor Swift, Coldplay or Beyonce there's no way Apple wouldn't insist their developers undo the error and clean up the database so that no data loss occurred for the artist. Because Airplane Mode are a small indie band they probably just decided they aren't worth the effort.