
Apple starts cutting the bloat from iTunes by removing iOS App Store - mrzool
https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/12/16298988/apple-itunes-desktop-update-removes-app-store
======
jakebasile
All I want for Christmas is a standalone native Apple Music application for
Mac and Windows (and Linux, why not?). I'd accept an Electron "native"
application, even.

I own a 2016 MacBook Pro and a custom built Windows gaming machine with an
i7-7700, GTX 1080ti, 32 GB DDR4 RAM, and a 1TB SSD and on both systems iTunes
lags terribly. I sometimes can't even drag the window around without slideshow
rendering. Updating takes 2-3 minutes and sometimes requires a restart (for a
media app!). It's time to rewrite - maybe this is the start of that?

~~~
brandonmenc
I simply do not believe this.

I have a loaded 2017 13" MacBook Pro (i7, 16GB RAM) and iTunes is fine.

A few months before that my machine was the least-powerful 2015 MacBook Air
(11", i5) and iTunes was fine on that too.

~~~
mikestew
_I simply do not believe this._

Your profile implies that you write software for a living, and you're going
with "resolved: works on my machine"? Especially with something that has the
breadth of iTunes, along with the vast number of users, I'm most certainly
willing to believe that there are cases of iTunes not running well on powerful
machinery.

~~~
kfriede
> write software for a living

> resolved: works on my machine

Haven't we all thought this at least once in our careers?

~~~
mikestew
Thought it? Hell, I've got the sticker: [https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-
works-on-my-machine-certif...](https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-works-on-my-
machine-certification-program/)

------
peterburkimsher
I still use iTunes 10.6.3 because it's the last version with Miller Columns on
the top, playlist folders (with a Library view), a miniplayer that I can use
to fast-forward, and sync.

Syncing music. Contacts. Calendars. Safari Bookmarks. Notes. Apps. Ringtones.
Videos. Photos.

The killer feature of the Apple ecosystem was the way the Digital Hub worked
together. It's all gone by now. They demand always-on Internet to connect to
the cloud.

I'm trying to rewrite my own ecosystem one app at a time (I've done Notes and
Maps, halfway through contacts & calendars, and still need to start music &
photos). It's going to take years of on-and-off work, but I don't trust Apple
to keep providing that, so I must make my own. Some shell scripts linking
other apps just won't cut it for me - I want a scriptable, syncing ecosystem
that Just Works.

~~~
Osmium
> They demand always-on Internet to connect to the cloud.

It's interesting, you're talking about a syncing system (syncing requires
connectivity) and have an issue with requiring access to one of the most
convenient sources of connectivity, which is the internet.

We're in a transition time right now. Access to the internet is not always
available. It is not always fast. But this time will pass. It makes sense, to
me, to design for this future.

> I'm trying to rewrite my own ecosystem one app at a time [...] I must make
> my own.

I sympathize with this (and good luck!). But I could spend a lot of effort
organizing my digital life, but (for me) it feels like I would be a slave to
this effort, and what does it get me, really? I spent a long time organizing
my digital movie collection; now most films I want to watch are on streaming
services. I spent a long time organizing music; now Apple Music and Spotify
are much more convenient.

There was an essay from a while back floating around online about the ever-
increasing burden of organizing our digital lives. I wish I could find it now,
but it really summarized a lot of what I feel about this.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
_We 're in a transition time right now. Access to the internet is not always
available. It is not always fast. But this time will pass. It makes sense, to
me, to design for this future._

Sometimes, internet is also expensive and metered. It might be where things
are going, sure, and I'm all for that. But I think forcing this stuff with no
other option is either elitist or disconnected from reality.

~~~
PopsiclePete
Having an internet connection as a requirement is "disconnected from reality"?
In 2017?

I travel the world quite a bit and it's quite difficult to be offline, in any
populated area of non-trivial size. Whether it's South-East Asia or Europe or
South America, I'm never far from some kind of WiFi access point.

Where the heck do you live ???

------
ahakki
At this point it is pretty clear that, at least on the Mac side, iTunes has no
future. The Mac is clearly moving towards an iOS-like setup where there are
seperate Apps for Videos, Music, Podcasts, and so on. Now that Apple has
discontinued all non-iOS based iPods (so everything except the iPod touch)
this raison-d'être has also disappeared.

What remains to be seen is how this plays out on Windows.

~~~
CharlesW
> _What remains to be seen is how this plays out on Windows._

My bet would be that iTunes/Win32 will be replaced with web apps, requiring
Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) for DRM.

iTunes for Windows currently relies on QTML ("QuickTime Media Layer"), which
is the porting layer that the QuickTime team created to bring QuickTime (and
QuickTime Player, etc.) to Windows. I'm sure that Apple would love to kill
QTML as soon as they can.

I'm also reasonably sure that Apple isn't interested in Universal Windows
Platform (UWP) development. That leaves web technologies as a likely solution,
which (based on iCloud's web apps) Apple's pretty good at, and seems to be
betting on in earnest.

~~~
mschuster91
> My bet would be that iTunes/Win32 will be replaced with web apps, requiring
> Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) for DRM.

That does not allow managing your iDevices... while I believe there is some
html5 way to access Bluetooth, I rather hope they won't ever implement USB...

~~~
Someone
Well, there is [https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/03/access-
usb...](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/03/access-usb-devices-
on-the-web).

Luckily, they aren’t _that_ insane:

 _" Attacks against USB devices

The WebUSB API does not even try to provide a way for a web page to connect to
arbitrary USB devices. There are plenty of published attacks against USB
devices that makes it unsafe to allow this.

For this reason, a USB device can define a set of origins that are allowed to
connect to it. This is similar to the CORS mechanism in HTTP. In other words,
WebUSB devices are associated with a web origin and can only be accessed from
a page from the same origin."_

------
roflchoppa
Damn, I liked the iOS feature to sync applications, back in the day when Apple
was blocking Bitcoin applications it was the only way to get Coinbase back
onto your phone.

~~~
Synaesthesia
Yeah I found it somewhat annoying when they moved all the apps to the cloud
and off local storage because my internet is metered and expensive. But that
happened quite a while ago.

------
jacquesc
So... how do I get my iOS .ipa files onto my phone now without submitting it
to the iOS store?

~~~
radicaldreamer
XCode organizer

~~~
vbezhenar
And if I don't have Xcode (or macOS)?

~~~
Synaesthesia
Then you can’t publish iOS apps, or develop them. You need macOS. You can run
hackintosh if you really need it.

~~~
vbezhenar
I don't need to publish or develop them. I need to install them. It's
frequently needed for testers.

~~~
dbbk
TestFlight

~~~
vbezhenar
TestFlight is not usable. The real alternative is something like diawi, but
it's still less convenient than manual installation via iTunes.

------
jotjotzzz
They should also address the crap Music app on iOS/iPhone.

------
jameshart
Interesting. What will be the flow for users who click on 'Download on the App
Store' links in desktop browsers now? Will Apple enable purchase in browser on
itunes 'preview' pages like this [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/monument-
valley-2/id11872657...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/monument-
valley-2/id1187265767?ls=1&mt=8) ?

~~~
jakebasile
Clicking that started a loop for me. Safari attempted to open iTunes, which
showed a blank screen for a moment and then opened the link in Safari, which
attempted to open iTunes, and so on. I had to quit iTunes to stop it.

~~~
nodamage
Wow, same here. This is actually pretty appalling from a user interface
perspective.

Edit: must be something related to the query string, as this URL does not have
the same issue.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/monument-
valley-2/id11872657...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/monument-
valley-2/id1187265767?mt=8)

------
amysox
Any ideas how to get custom ringtones onto an iPhone now?

~~~
kintamanimatt
Plug the phone in with a cable, and drag them into te Tunes folder on the
device. There doesn't seem to be any way to delete them now though!

~~~
amysox
I'll have to give that a try. I just moved phones, and I want to get the
custom ringtones I've already created onto the new phone. I don't particularly
_want_ to delete them. :)

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Alex3917
This is super annoying. Having to use the tiny phone screen to scroll through
apps and read reviews is a terrible user experience.

~~~
gumby
I assume the store will still work on the web (including the purchase by
fingerprint if you have a recent MBP); after buying your app you would then
download it from your phone.

------
kgc
Good move.

