Why separate iTunes and iPod apps?

[mcdj]

I've owned every iPhone and both iPads, yet this has never occurred to me until last night. I'm sure it's been discussed before.

Why are iTunes and iPod separate apps? iTunes on a Mac is a one stop shop. iBooks has it's store seamlessly built into the iPad app. Why not merge iTunes with iPod, and Videos for that matter? Heck mush em all together...iTunes, iPod, Videos, AND iBooks.

I think the main reason they haven't done this is simply because it would visually reduce the number of bundled apps on the home screen. By putting an "i" in front of every app name and giving them separate icons, it creates a sense of iPad being chock full of free apps.

Who prefers separate apps? I know I'd much prefer less app switching.

 

[C N Reilly]

"iTunes" on iOS is really just iTunes Store. Plus it's in Apple's best interest to be able to say "every iPhone and iPad comes with an iPod built in!" That sounds like you're getting quite a bit more value for your money than "It comes with iTunes built in!" (And who would want an "iTunes touch"?)

Could they merge them into a single app? Sure. But it would just be more complicated to use. That's not a very Steve thing to do.

 

[mcdj]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

Why would it be more complicated? iTunes on a Mac is not complicated. iBooks on iPad is not complicated and its store is integrated.

 

[anti-microsoft]

I think that's one part of the OS that they could clean up. Look at the iOS devices' layout as it is now:

iPhone: iPod (Video, Podcasts, Audio, etc.) + iTunes

iPod touch: Music (Audio, Podcasts, etc.) + Video + iTunes

iPad: iPod (Audio, Podcasts, etc.) + Video + iTunes

It's like WTF?

- Ams.