The Unspeakable Opinion: I miss iTunes

[SegNerd]

Even Apple admitted that iTunes was getting to be a bit of a bloated mess, which is why most people were happy to hear it was being refactored into new, simpler applications and that iTunes as an application was going away.

But after a few years with the new way, I find myself saying something that seems almost blasphemous: I miss iTunes.

Quite frankly, the new applications are just not good. The TV app doesn't give you any way to look at TV shows I've downloaded, which seems like it would be one of the simplest and most fundamental functions of the app. Yes, you can click on TV shows and see all TV shows, but this includes hundreds of shows I purchased that are no longer on my computer, which is a huge pain to sift through. Or, you can click "Downloaded" and see all the items on my Mac, but this includes tons of other movies and Home Videos that aren't TV shows, again giving me a huge list to wrangle with. You can see downloaded items, or you can see TV shows, but you can't see downloaded TV shows. This was easy to do in iTunes, and for that matter it is also much easier on iOS.

Moreover, the "Shows Recently Added" section is inexplicably STILL missing from the store portion of the TV app, and I literally have to boot into Windows to find new shows.

Music is also a major downgrade. The search bar is really unpredictable, and it seems to jump around between searching my library, the store, and Apple Music (which I'm not even a subscriber of). It is very hard to get it to search the domain I actually wanted it to search, and even when I do, often it inexplicably can't find things even though they are in my library. And the AppleScript menu is gone as well, so if you come up with a home-brew shortcut to address these issues, it will be harder to access it.

As for podcasts... I don't really have any comment because I stopped using Apple's podcasts software long ago. There are plenty of superior third-party options (both on Mac and iOS) at this point.

Syncing with iOS is also not as good. Syncing from the Finder sounded like a good idea, except that the Music and TV apps still have partial syncing controls in them. This makes it more confusing where you need to go to adjust settings and whether your settings will affect other apps.

So I'm going to say it: I either want iTunes back, or I want the new apps to have a complete overhaul, especially TV.

 

[usagora]

With the TV app, I'm trying to think why you would want to filter search results by Downloaded > TV Shows. Presumably, you're looking for a specific TV show in your library to watch, right? So why not just search for it in your library (Option + CMD + F to search within library when you have your library selected) and then you'll see if it's downloaded or not based on whether it shows the download icon (cloud with a downward pointing arrow) when you hover your cursor over it. You can then choose to download or stream it. Or, just search directly under Downloads for the show using Option + CMD + F. If it doesn't appear in the search results, then it's not downloaded.

Music is also a major downgrade. The search bar is really unpredictable, and it seems to jump around between searching my library, the store, and Apple Music (which I'm not even a subscriber of). It is very hard to get it to search the domain I actually wanted it to search, and even when I do, often it inexplicably can't find things even though they are in my library. And the AppleScript menu is gone as well, so if you come up with a home-brew shortcut to address these issues, it will be harder to access it.

I use Music all the time, and am not experiencing what you're describing. When I type in the search field, I get search results for three categories: Arists, Albums, and Songs. Make sure "Your Library" is selected at the top right:

 

[SegNerd]

I know how to use the Search feature in Music. It does change among the three tabs without me clicking anything.

 

[Fishrrman]

You can STILL USE iTUNES with new Macs and new versions of the OS.

Use the free utility called "Retroactive" to install it.

I have an external SSD set up with the Monterey beta OS, just to play around with.
I have iTunes running on it so I can listen to the free internet radio streams.
Works fine.

I'm not sure what results one gets on the m1 Macs -- that's for someone else to answer.

I realize that the "Retroactive workaround" may not work forever.
But... it works for now...

 

[Boyd01]

According to this thread, Retroactive does not work on the M1. I don't have an M1, so no personal experience.

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...na.2207898/page-2?post=29378574#post-29378574

I have a 2014 Mini that I use as an iTunes server with all my media on a 4tb SSD. Am keeping it on Mojave with iTunes since everything works very well and I don't want to "fix something that ain't broke".

Since I access all my media with home sharing, my main gripe with the TV app is that shared video playlists don't work. In other words, I have playlists of movies, tv shows and home videos in iTunes on the server. These all work as expected on two Apple TV's and another old Mac running iTunes. In the TV app, the playlists are shown and correctly indicate the number of items, but they appear to be blank and don't work.

The TV app on iOS is much worse though, shared playlists aren't even shown and it will only show videos from the server in alphabetical order, which is very awkward when you have thousands of titles like I do. You can also show videos by genre, but the genres are listed in alphabetical order too, so it can still be very slow/awkward.

The Music app on the Mac has been OK for me, but my use is pretty limited.

 

[Feyl]

I still don't know why it was needed to separate iTunes into more and even worse apps. The only bad thing about iTunes was that it wasn't exactly the best quality app in terms of responsiveness and stability, especially the Windows version. I only use the Music app but I still use it the same way as iTunes and most things are in the same or similar areas. It's almost the same app but it's not exactly faster or better or simpler. But now I have two more apps that I don't use on my computer which doesn't sound simpler to me.

 

[B/D]

I still don't know why it was needed to separate iTunes into more and even worse apps. The only bad thing about iTunes was that it wasn't exactly the best quality app in terms of responsiveness and stability, especially the Windows version. I only use the Music app but I still use it the same way as iTunes and most things are in the same or similar areas. It's almost the same app but it's not exactly faster or better or simpler. But now I have two more apps that I don't use on my computer which doesn't sound simpler to me.

That´s because the music app shares A LOT of code with Itunes. Its almost like a skin, a theme.

Is slow, is buggy, and is clunky. They need to rebuilt it from the ground. Apple Muaic only made it worse. Performance wise, Spotify put Apple to shame.

 

[jagolden]

I miss it also. Music was a change for the sake of change and to appease some tech junkies.
iTunes ran great and everything in one place was ultra convenient.
Change:just because you can, doesn’t mean you should

 

[nintendoswitch]

I agree. I miss iTunes as well. It’s been with us for many years.

 

[cardfan]

I miss it also. Music was a change for the sake of change and to appease some tech junkies.
iTunes ran great and everything in one place was ultra convenient.
Change:just because you can, doesn’t mean you should

Apple listened to all the idiot apple bloggers and groupthinkers who didn’t like iTunes because too hard for them to use. What we got was the result.

 

[Feyl]

That´s because the music app shares A LOT of code with Itunes. Its almost like a skin, a theme.

Is slow, is buggy, and is clunky. They need to rebuilt it from the ground. Apple Muaic only made it worse. Performance wise, Spotify put Apple to shame.

That’s very true.

 

[B/D]

That’s very true.

To be fair, on IOS/Ipad OS the performance is very good.

 

[Feyl]

To be fair, on IOS/Ipad OS the performance is very good.

But still not on the same level as Spotify or others.

 

[jz0309]

iTunes was the reason I stayed on Mojave til about a month ago on my iMac, I did not like what they did with the TV app in particular. Now on Big Sur it is tolerable but still could be improved, eg why do I get ATV+ section with shows when I'm in the movies tab?? But iTunes started to do the same thing ...
I'm not using music that much anymore, haven't bought a new iTunes song in years, mostly listen to a streaming station nowadays, if I ever get back into regular business travel that might change ...

So, I agree with OP, I do miss iTunes ...

 

[B/D]

But still not on the same level as Spotify or others.

Thats true, but is very acceptable. But the Mac/Windows app?. Is absolutely ridiculous. Full of impredictable bugs also, like albums added to the library from the AM catalog splitting for no reason whatsoever at random intervals. Clunky. Slow.

 

[B/D]

The funny thing is, if Apple worked hard on fixing the bugs and improving the performance, and added a "force upload" option to the Icloud Music Library settings (for avoiding mismatches) Apple Music would be the best service of all.

No other service integrates its streaming catalogue with your own content as well as AM, and on top of that you can fully edit the metadata of everything that you add to your library, something that no other music streaming service allows you to do (its vital for me, I dont use playlist, I listen/manage full albums, call me old schooled).


Also they have the best masters available for stream. The sound quality (not talking about lossless), of their catalogue is fantastic, much better than Spotify.