
What the death of iTunes says about digital habits - howrude
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/01/how-death-itunes-explains-2010s/604291/
======
JMr3c376
... iTunes became a bucket of too many features, so apple split it up into
multiple applications. Apple music is pretty much exactly the same as iTunes
was without a bunch of non-music related features. It's silly to say ~"iTunes
died" it just changed names.

~~~
chmaynard
> Apple music is pretty much exactly the same as iTunes was without a bunch of
> non-music related features.

Hmm, not really. I took a brief look at the UI during the Catalina beta and
concluded that I wanted nothing to do with it. I have spent years learning how
to use iTunes well. I'm not about to throw away that investment of time and
energy on a new, untested app with a different UI. I'll stick with iTunes to
manage my music library. Catalina will have to wait, probably forever.

~~~
wwweston
> I'm not about to throw away that investment of time and energy on a new,
> untested app with a different UI.

Come on, now. Think of the poor product managers, the struggling UX
researchers and designers. How are they going to make their careers off of
minor upgrades tied down to past investments of users?

~~~
zentiggr
Jean-Baptiste Emannuel Zorg, channeled here... I'll be ready to pound your
back when you choke on that cherry :)

------
mcenedella
“(A note for older readers: More time separates us today from the debut of the
first iPod than separated the first iPod from the debut of the first Macintosh
computer.)“

Wow.

~~~
dredmorbius
Similarly, OS X is now older than Classic Mac OS (1984) was when OS X was
released (2001).

~~~
em-bee
it's much older than that if you count NeXTStep history. OS X didn't start
from scratch

~~~
dredmorbius
Fair point, though I'm satisfied at looking at Apple's marketed offerings.

You could take NeXT back to Thompson & Ritchie. NeXTStep as ur-Aqua is also a
fair argument, but again, not occurring on mainline Mac generally. By that
argument Classic Mac might be traced to the Alto and MOAD.

~~~
em-bee
i am not familiar with the history of the Alto or MOAD and how they connect to
the classic mac. i'd love to learn more though.

according to wikipedia classic MacOS was partially based on Lisa OS, whereas
OS X is nothing more or less than a full port of NeXTStep with a slight visual
update. i have used both. they are the same UI. the difference is cosmetic.
it's the same code too. i believe the kernel has changed more than the UI
layer.

the question is not the spiritual ancestors but how old the code is that is
still in use today. and i belive that if we look we'll find some Objective-C
code in OS X today that goes all the way back to the first versions of
NeXTStep.

------
Macha
While the iTunes client has been something I've directed much dislike to over
the years, the iTunes store feels like the last place I can get mainstream
music DRM free to just play on any of my devices and keep regardless of what
licensing deals change. While Spotify is great for access to music, the client
is very poor for library/playlist management, and some music I'd just like to
have my own copy of. If the store ever shuts down in favour of Apple Music
subscriptions only, it feels like I'd have to go back to buying CDs.

~~~
scarface74
You can get DRM free digital music from Amazon.

~~~
Macha
I'll have to check if it's available in my country, most of their options to
buy digital content are not.

~~~
Macha
As an update: It is not. It looks available, but attempting to pay for
something prompts me to enter a US/UK/DE payment method depending on which
site I use.

------
disposedtrolley
On a side note, that quote by Fitche is the perfect summary of refactoring
spaghetti code:

> _you could not remove a single grain of sand from its place, without
> thereby, although perhaps imperceptibly to you, altering something
> throughout all parts of the immeasurable whole_

~~~
DonHopkins
The Abelian sandpile model of software design.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abelian_sandpile_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abelian_sandpile_model)

------
matheusmoreira
> Most iPhone users, instead of tapping on a favorite app, now just search for
> it from the top bar.

Funny how "intuitive" interfaces must regress to ideas that must be over half
a century old by now just to work properly.

~~~
rosstex
Didn't expect the article to mention this, but this is absolutely true for me.
I only know the locations of some apps, and I search for the rest.

~~~
ViViDboarder
I rigorously organize my mobile apps, so this is quite rare for me. However,
pretty much everything I do through my desktop (GUI at least) is done with
search. Actually, I do the same in my terminal too with `fzf`, but to a lesser
extent.

~~~
pdimitar
With time I discovered that the muscle memory I build to do tasks on my phone
and tablet is strictly bound to the exact locations of the app icon and all
the action buttons in it.

So I am like you. I religiously arrange my home screens (iPhone and iPad) but
just use `fzf` and other similar software pieces (like `helm` for Emacs) for
pretty much anything on my Macs.

I am also pondering paying for Alfred for macOS. I hear it's a fantastic piece
with a similar search-centric idea in its heart.

~~~
rosstex
P.S. thanks for introducing me to fzf, you just saved me tons of time!

------
blihp
I wouldn't say that iTunes died of natural causes, but rather that Apple
killed it. Bit by bit over the course of years starting with the iPod Photo
when they added picture syncing, then video, etc etc. Even podcasts never
really fit in that well with the static library model that worked so well for
your music library.

It's too bad because when it was just an app to manage your music library it
was clean, easy to use and logical. When it had to manage the kitchen sink of
crap that Apple piled into it and morphed into a syncing app first and music
player/library management became a secondary (or lower) priority, it never had
a chance.

~~~
wutbrodo
> when it was just an app to manage your music library it was clean, easy to
> use and logical.

Strong disagreement here: I always found iTunes to be the poster child of
incompetent design. It's design was a good fit for stuffing a lot of
functionality into because it was never coherent or usable to begin with.

------
thought_alarm
My iTunes Library is 15 years old, contains 11,496 songs, 871 music videos,
2,418 television episodes, and 67 movies.

Only now it's split up to two different apps, once of which is laughably
unfinished but otherwise continues to do the job.

Meanwhile, after 5 1/2 years and $578, I cancelled my Netflix subscription and
have no intention to ever start it up again.

Dead, indeed.

------
wheybags
The repeated use of the word "Americans" in this piece, where what they mean
is "people" is particularly jarring...

------
cortesoft
I am confused... I still sync my phone to my iTunes on my computer. There is
no other way to add music that I get from outside of Apple.

Also, I use it to have a full backup of my phone. I have hundreds of gigs of
photos and videos I don't want to lose, and you can only backup everything if
you use your computer.

~~~
rewtraw
iCloud seems to do a fine job backing up photos and videos. When I get a new
iPhone, I don't even take a manual backup -- I just login to iCloud and wait
for everything to sync. iCloud restore populates all my apps, settings,
photos, videos, etc. Apart from having to setup FaceID and re-enter passwords,
it's like nothing changed.

~~~
cortesoft
But I can backup to my computer for free... I would have to pay $9.99 a month
for 2TBs of iCloud storage....

~~~
rblatz
You have 8 256gb iOS devices?

~~~
ihuman
If you want more than 200GB, you have to get the 2TB plan. There's nothing in
between.

------
remir
Streaming services, iCloud backup, podcasting apps on iPhone rendered iTunes
obsolete.

------
est31
iTunes is dead? Have I missed something?

------
KiDD
This article is just dumb... iTunes, while a bit bloated, worked just fine.
Music replaces it well for music stuff. Mostly seem to complain about the
removal of Apps function from iTunes, which was actually harder to manage your
home screen with then just doing it on the device.

------
unixhero
iTunes was one entire antipattern.

------
j45
iTunes was a stop-gap when Apple didn't want to have an app store at any cost
for the iPhone when it first came out.

~~~
yuliyp
iTunes existed well before the iPhone (since the first iPods, 6 years before).

~~~
j45
Yup. Remember installing it when it came out. The use of iTunes for iPhone was
because it already existed, and nothing did for iPhone

------
CharlesW
My take on the author's take is that by point 10, he's realized what a muddled
and silly thing this is.

> _So what really failed, maybe, wasn’t iTunes at all…_

At which point whatever substance he's abused to get that far _really_ kicks
in for his final point.

> _In 1940, the German critic Walter Benjamin wrote about an angel in a Paul
> Klee painting. […] It is now clear, 80 years later, that the angel is
> looking at his phone._

Sheesh.

~~~
mnemonicsloth
Walter Benjamin is the original inspiration for the postmodernists. His
writing is nonsensically opaque. If his name appears in an article, it's a
good sign that the article is about to go off the rails.

~~~
claudiawerner
Your comment is wonderfully muddled, since Benjamin was not an original
inspiration for so-called postmodernist thinkers at all. Benjamin (and his
intellectual companions, Adorno, Marcuse and others) were very much
modernists, right before the heyday of the French "postmodernists". One has to
wonder how 'opaque' Benjamin is, given that he is one of the most studied
critical theorists in philosophy and literature. He must be at least
translucent if there are knowledgable people making sense and use of his
ideas. Apparently his ideas are sufficiently clear and interesting for an
interest on HN[0].

In fact... someone on HN in 2014 claimed that Benjamin was a "postmodernist"
too, and they were quickly shut down on that claim[1].

[0]
[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=walter+benjamin](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=walter+benjamin)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8295413](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8295413)

~~~
bordercases
> given that he is one of the most studied critical theorists in philosophy
> and literature

Found your problem.

~~~
claudiawerner
I'll bite: what problem is that?

~~~
bordercases
Critical theorists aren't worth studying. They have no consistent norms of
evaluating the quality of their work and their primary purpose is to advance
literary explorations over calibration to any particular truth of the matter.

So saying a critical theorist is well-studied by other critical theorists says
very little about the value of their positions to non-literary fields. There
may have been a fact of the matter as to whether Walter Benjamin really was an
inspiration for post-modernism or if he's merely confined to modernism, but I
think a true critical theorist would leave that up to debate.

~~~
claudiawerner
>They have no consistent norms of evaluating the quality of their work and
their primary purpose is to advance literary explorations over calibration to
any particular truth of the matter.

This is patently false if you read any critical theory, in which reaching the
truth on a matter is taken much more seriously than any literary aim. You can
claim that mainstream critical theory didn't or isn't reaching the truth, but
it's a wild claim to say it makes no attempt to do so. Read the Wikipedia
article if you don't believe me.

>So saying a critical theorist is well-studied by other critical theorists

Critical theorists are studied and used by philosophers, legal scholars, and
sociologists - it's not only critical theorists in some kind of secret club
where they all congratulate each other. They are studied in literary fields
not because of the literary value of their writing, but because of their
criticism and aesthetic positions.

>but I think a true critical theorist would leave that up to debate.

They wouldn't, because critical theorists can recognize the truth and falsity
of claims. Your criticism would be better aimed at the so-called
postmodernists (and it'd still be wrong).

~~~
bordercases
> They are studied in literary fields not because of the literary value of
> their writing, but because of their criticism and aesthetic positions.

That's pretty hard to distinguish from "just" literature; of course not all
literature is fictional or journalistic. But neither criticism nor aesthetics
are particularly bounded in their ability to make negative or positive claims
due to the flexibility of interpretation of background assumptions that both
pancritical + justificationist disciplines rely on. It's inherently subversive
of any central and stabilizing intellectual tendency and I think most critical
theorists admit their goals as being such.

This is why I doubt the claim that there is a central truth that critical
theorists are attempting to discover when their methods are designed to be as
disputative or ambiguating as possible. Even if we're in a position where no
assumption can be taken for granted in the end, productive operational work
(in science in policy or otherwise) always has to maintain some initial set of
working goals and assumptions to guide and rationalize action, and perform
interventions which can maximally orient the institution towards further
action. Subversiveness stalls except in how it wants to prevent such
institutions from prolonging themselves.

> Critical theorists are studied and used by philosophers, legal scholars, and
> sociologists

Are they all trained out of the Frankfurt school by any chance? Yes they're
sometimes worth responding to, no they're not worth taking seriously except as
a means to an end.

> They wouldn't, because critical theorists can recognize the truth and
> falsity of claims. Your criticism would be better aimed at the so-called
> postmodernists (and it'd still be wrong).

I am earnestly interested in learning more about non-postmodern critical
theorists. The pragmatists of the freshwater school (Sellars and Brandom
mainly) are the only people on the top of my head that sing that note due to
the way they deal seriously with the problem of interpretation in foundations
and the way they want to internalize Hegel, while still having the aims of
scientific inquiry in mind. But that's analytic philosophy assimilating
continental philosophy rather than the other way around, which I'm more
sympathetic to precisely because analytics tend to want to bound critique
rather than produce more critique for its own sake (i.e. subversion as an
ends).

~~~
claudiawerner
>It's inherently subversive of any central and stabilizing intellectual
tendency and I think most critical theorists admit their goals as being such.

It's very hard for me to read that as anything but a good thing. It's one
thing to say that critical theory has no value, but it's another thing to say
its only value is subversion. Nevertheless, if what you're saying is true,
then there is no better critic of critical theory than critical theory itself.
There are central principles of critical theory (and Horkheimer wrote a whole
book about it), and there are results produced by critical theory that the
authors present as true (sociologists have taken up the concept of the culture
industry and Marcuse's idea of one-dimensionality, for instance). I'm
skeptical of the idea that CT is subversive of any tendency - no critical
theorist repudiated empirical investigation, for instance. When they do
criticize, they don't want to completely do away (Adorno had praise for the
enlightenment project). Habermas has been one of the loudest voices against
"postmodernism".

> productive operational work (in science in policy or otherwise) always has
> to maintain some initial set of working goals and assumptions to guide and
> rationalize action

That's true, but if critical theorists do not question these working goals and
assumptions, and the very nature of instrumental reason, who will? It seems to
make much more sense, for human emancipation and rationality, to examine what
we take for granted and against what background we're working. "Maximally
orienting towards further action" is precisely the uncritical approach CTs
stand against, where in the same breath we guide the Ministry of War
"maximally" towards "further action".

>no they're not worth taking seriously except as a means to an end.

Not only do professional philosophers of all stripes disagree, but career
activists agree - a famous critical theorist (lowercase) once said that
philosophers had hitherto only interpreted the world; the point is to change
it.

>the problem of interpretation in foundations and the way they want to
internalize Hegel, while still having the aims of scientific inquiry in mind

Scientific inquiry has many prerequisites, Hegel himself a harsh critic of
pure empiricism. The difference in prerequisites is what gives rise to the
Anglophone science and the German Wissenschaft.

~~~
bordercases
> I'm skeptical of the idea that CT is subversive of any tendency - no
> critical theorist repudiated empirical investigation, for instance. When
> they do criticize, they don't want to completely do away (Adorno had praise
> for the enlightenment project). Habermas has been one of the loudest voices
> against "postmodernism".

If the point of critical theory, which since you pointed me to Wikipedia I'll
quote "[is] to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave
them", and some class of those circumstances are the beliefs and institutions
we take for granted, why shouldn't I claim that the goal of critical theory
(at least per Horkeimer) is to be subersive of these beliefs and institutions?
Or are there self-claimed critical theorists who propose a criterion
inconsistent with this goal?

Likewise if it's critical theory best addressing critical theory then surely
we should leave the critical theorists to discuss among themselves. No need
for anyone else to get involved if the activists are right.

> "Maximally orienting towards further action" is precisely the uncritical
> approach CTs stand against, where in the same breath we guide the Ministry
> of War "maximally" towards "further action".

It isn't uncritical! What I'm pointing at is that achieving something within
the scope of both (a) clear, explicit commitments with (b) shared interests
and backgrounds establishes _together_ good-faith interlocution _and_ a line
of distinction of what possible worlds two disagreeing interlocutors _within
the same frame_ are committing to (since the frame doesn't have to be
completely specified). If there is an intervention that distinguishes which of
these sets of worlds are the actual world, then you've gained information.

Issues come when you _don 't_ decide to create commonalities between
yourselves in a debate. It gives room for at least one of these interlocutors
to not accept or gain any information due to it being possible to shift their
commitments by loosening up the interpretation of the evidence. Good-
faith/intellectual honesty is the only hedge I know against this and it means
understanding what you _won 't_ simply leave up to interpretation because it
allows _something_ to go wrong.

You're still allowed to have dialectic here but it's dialectic that advances
through the solution of problems rather than the production of non-
evidentialised counter-interpretation, which are almost always possible to
produce at the verbal level.

> Scientific inquiry has many prerequisites, Hegel himself a harsh critic of
> pure empiricism. The difference in prerequisites is what gives rise to the
> Anglophone science and the German Wissenschaft.

After the Duhem-Quine thesis it's been pretty clear to Anglo-American schools
that observations are theory-laden which is why Pragmatism caught on, and is
still being worked on to this day by the likes of Sellars, Brandom, McDowell,
Wimsatt, Laudan, Van Fraasen... I don't believe any of them are going to be
overtly spiteful of Hegel as all of them are dealing with science as a social
activity to some extent or another and the
structuralist/constructivist/intersubjective theses that get pulled into
there. But they all feature prescriptive programmes which are meant to enable
the solution of problems, which once again in my mind points to a standard of
inquiry that can be truth-finding versus continual deconstructions.

I'm not sure what "difference in prerequisites" is pointing to but would hope
you would elaborate.

------
soufron
Did iTunes ever had a life?

------
tus88
A someone who lives outside the Apple bubble...how Apple users listen to music
now? Spotify? What if you have a local library?

~~~
snuxoll
The Music app handles local libraries just fine.

~~~
tus88
Is that the logical successor to itunes? If so did it really die or just morph
into something else?

~~~
dangus
iTunes did not die, no. It morphed as you described.

The iTunes Store app is used to buy music on iOS.

The Music app has an iTunes Store section as well.

You can disable even being shown Apple Music (the subscription service) to
both of those apps.

You can sync locally just like your iPod, but on Catalina that functionality
has been moved to Finder. But I believe you can initialize a music or photo
sync in the respective apps as well.

Audiobooks have moved out of iTunes (music) and into the Booms app.

Not really that much has changed besides organization. And the changes have
been a good idea, IMO.

------
mgleason_3
Or maybe, it’s just that iTunes sucks, hard.

...and has for 10 years.

...so Apple - let us manage our own digital media.

~~~
LeoPanthera
I'm not sure you understand what iTunes is.

