
Apple's iTunes Is Alienating Its Most Music-Obsessed Users - adam
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/itunes-alternatives/
======
FussyZeus
iTunes as an application is by far the worst UX present on a Mac or a PC,
which is especially surprising considering how nice the vast majority of OS X
apps are to use. You can go down the list of the recommendations Apple gives
out to developers on how make what they consider great apps for OS X and
iTunes breaks every single one almost as if it were intended as a use case for
terrible UX.

The navigation and structure changes with every movement, there are
occasionally two seperate back buttons present that can either do the same
thing or completely different things, the "background activity" or as I like
to call it, "What you need to know is happening to your iPhone" is constantly
buried beneath the currently playing track, and is not readily accessible
unless you click a 8pt square down arrow, on and on...

Not to mention, as an owner of multiple machines I prefer to use ownCloud to
sync my various libraries. Windows and Linux this is absolutely not an issue.
Because iTunes insists on owning the directory and file structure though, I
can't just point it at the folder or it will literally ruin it, I have to
instead keep two copies of my library on my Macbook, and occasionally use an
rsync alias to move over new stuff. Thankfully I usually do all my purchasing
(on Amazon MP3) on the Macbook anyway so it's of little consequence, but it's
just one more irritating thing to add to the list.

I'm an Apple fan, I admit, but iTunes is a fucking train wreck.

~~~
hellofunk
Totally agree. I love Apple's products but iTunes is an abomination. One
anecdote notes that U2's Bono complained to Jobs that it was no different than
a spreadsheet... well, I'd be happy if it were halfway as useful as a good
spreadsheet. Instead it has zero flexibility. There seems to be a trend in
some software to prefer search functionality over other basic UI techniques
for presenting information. When I have a big music library, I don't always
know what I'm looking for explicitly. I want to browse my music based on my
own strategy, but doing this in iTunes has never really been possible. And
it's not better on the iPhone's own music app. For a company that led the
world in music-listening technology, their software for it sure has always
been downright awful.

~~~
FussyZeus
It's weird too, if you're looking at Playlists it looks like Excel, the only
way out is to view your entire collection, but then you can't find sh!t
because it gives you NO information as opposed to ALL information.

Also, on the topic of playlists, removing a song from a playlist is labeled
"Delete." Are you f!cking kidding Apple? This is UI Design 101!

~~~
hellofunk
It blows my mind how Apple has let this atrocious product represent such a
core part of what the company has always stood for: music. How did they let
this happen in the first place, and more importantly, why in tarnation has it
never been improved?

~~~
zeveb
> such a core part of what the company has always stood for: music

Ummm, until the iPod (2001) Apple didn't stand for music. Apple's been around
since 1976, 39 years; it's been a music-related company for fourteen of those
years.

Indeed, Apple Computer had to assure Apple Corps (the Beatles' record label)
that it wouldn't enter the music business, which was the subject of lawsuits
over the years (c.f.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer)).

Years ago, before I discovered Unix and freedom, I was a huge Apple fan. I
loved Macs (understandable, when one compares them to Windows and DOS
machines). Apple stood for user-friendliness, for ease of use, even for
happiness or pleasure. It never stood for music back then.

~~~
hellofunk
I should have said, what Apple 2.0 has stood for. Because music was very much
the foundation for what led to the modern Apple Inc after Jobs return.

------
tptacek
iTunes is a tire fire. But purely in terms of content, Apple Music is probably
the best streaming service, and their recommendation system is getting better.
Apple also has the benefit of iTunes/Apple Music being closer to a first-class
citizen on things like car bluetooth audio systems.

I would be thrilled to hear that Apple is totally revamping iTunes; I swear at
it at least a couple times a week. But I'm probably not going to be able to
stop using it any time soon.

I'm not sure I really understand the people who use alternate music player
software on OS X; huge collections of downloaded music files accessed through
file player software doesn't seem like where digital music is headed. I had a
gigantic collection of purchased music on my computer, and it's more an
annoyance now than anything else.

Hating iTunes so much you can't use it makes sense to me. But then, why not
just use Spotify?

Anyways: predicting where this thread is inevitably heading, here's a list off
the top of my head of shit that drives me nuts about iTunes:

* Purchased tracks randomly grey out and become non-playable.

* I'm a "Match" customer, and iTunes/iCloud/whatever doggedly insists on retaining the file-based metadata from my old MP3s, despite me not having had those MP3s in years.

* Ridiculous incoherent "Playlists / For You / New / Radio / Connect / iTunes Store" menu. "For You"?

* Playlists that contain both Apple Music tracks and purchased tracks flake out and vanish, which means that if you have a large collection of purchased music, playlists just don't work.

* Sometimes you can link to a playlist to share it and sometimes you can't.

~~~
ryanmonroe
Most people who have large collections of music have a lot of files that
aren't available on any streaming service. Not sure if the sound quality of
these services is on par with 320kbps MP3 files either.

~~~
Nicolechen
Maybe there are some ways to convert Apple music to unprotected format and
then we can enjoy them on any players as we want. I just learned about
Notebunrer recently launches a Apple music converter, I prepare to try this
and perhaps buy a license during black friday. I am waiting for a big deal.

------
jordanlev
Here's my dilemma with iTunes: I have about 50GB of music on my computer, an
early 2007 iMac. If I want to upgrade my iPhone to iOS9, I need to update
iTunes to the latest version. But the latest version doesn't run on Mac OSX
10.6... and my computer is too old to upgrade to 10.7 or higher. So if I want
to have ios9 and sync music to my phone, I need to buy a new computer? Pretty
upset about that.

~~~
gambiting
If you are looking for an actual solution - I guess you could start Windows 10
in a VM(MS provides free images for testing purposes), install latest iTunes
on it so you could upgrade your phone to iOS 9, then continue using your mac
and its version of iTunes.

By the way - El Capitan supports mid-2007 iMacs:
[http://www.gottabemobile.com/2015/10/04/os-x-el-capitan-
on-o...](http://www.gottabemobile.com/2015/10/04/os-x-el-capitan-on-older-
mac/)

~~~
carlob
For the love of god don't update an old computer that works perfectly fine on
10.6 on anything starting from Lion. All you'll get is bugs and confusing
UXes.

~~~
gambiting
Meh, I'm running my mid-2009 MacBook Pro on ElCapitan and everything works
fine. I put an SSD in so it's actually quite usable,no complaints really.

~~~
protomyth
"ElCapitan and everything works fine"

Finder went from broke in Yosemite to really broke in El Capitan. I'm getting
sick of filing bugs (like Finder not saving place in folder when going up /
down hierarchy).

El Capitan's Finder now crashes if you have a window showing a lot of files
and execute a mv of some of those files in a Terminal. Its getting worse and
worse. They need to pull a Snow Leopard again.

------
mattdotc
Is iTunes responsible for this trend I'm seeing more of where the Seek
Forward/Backward (Fast-Forward/Rewind) symbol is being used in place of 'Next
Track' and 'Previous Track?'

All other complaints aside, this, to me, is iTunes' worst offense. I don't
know if there was some official standard ever, but it was at a very minimum an
unofficial standard for DECADES. Now some asshole designer has decided to
muddle and confuse everyone by redefining the symbol. This idea has infected
PowerAmp on Android now, too.

I have not seen anyone discussing this before (but I haven't looked very
hard). I refuse to buy into this new definition. Am I the only one bothered by
this? I can't take a music application seriously if it can't get the symbols
right.

~~~
FussyZeus
I've never actually noticed this. I'm pretty sure if you hold the button it
still does the scrubbing though.

~~~
mattdotc
You're right, it does seek if you press and hold. Thanks for that info.

I don't meant to shoot the messenger and this isn't directed at you, but this
behavior makes no sense and is not intuitive to anyone who's ever listened to
music on a CD (which is still A LOT of people).

I couldn't care less about scrubbing; I'd do that with the little progress bar
because it's quicker and more precise than guessing how long to hold a button.
I really just hate that one arrogant (or ignorant) person/group decided to
change the meaning of a well-understood symbol as if they were the decider for
everyone else.

~~~
kobayashi
I disagree. It's pretty intuitive for me, and I've listened to music on CDs.
Personal opinion vs personal opinion.

~~~
mattdotc
The confusion/misdirecting part for me is that I would expect to hold down a
'Seek' button to seek through the track.

However, as a user, I was just trained to recognize the 'Seek' button as
'Next' or 'Previous' track.

So there are conflicting messages in their design. Why would I want to hold
down the 'Next Track' button to seek ahead in the song? I would never think to
do that.

~~~
epmatsw
While I kind of agree, it seems to be pretty common behavior for software
audio players. VLC for example has the same UI and behavior.

------
tezza
I am writing an iTunes replacement ( the music and library management part ).
Any feature requests from HN ?

Current alpha features:

* Playlist resume - if you interrupt a playlist 3278 entries in, you can resume at 3278

* Music diary - track what tunes played when & where ( occasional GPS polling optional )

* Powerful music list filters

* Keep track of recently played items and do not replay them for a while

* Works with Spotify thanks to Spotify API for premium users

* mobile app on iOS and Android

Suggestions beyond this ?

~~~
brandonmenc
Music library spanning multiple disks.

This is my #1 desired killer feature, and no one has done it right (or even
attempted it.)

I have 100s of gigs of music, but my MacBook Air can only store a portion of
it. I want to connect the external drive and have the player see it all
without changing the library pointer. I also want to be able to select which
songs to mirror onto my laptop - a "checkout" feature.

~~~
codyb
I'll second that. Surprised it hasn't been solved by this point.

I use to use iTunes quite a bit, probably gave it a chance until 2010 or so
even. But then it just became too little of a music player and too much of
everything else that it was.

So I just use physical CDs, and more recently Spotify.

------
OSButler
I made the switch to iTunes on OS X after finding out that some of the
international artists I was looking for actually had a decent catalog on
iTunes. Nowadays it's more of a balance act between the features I like and
the annoyances it throws at me.

The most recent issue, which appears to be the result of one of the last
updates, is that iTunes keeps on connecting to the store in the background for
some reason, even when you're just on the normal Music view and not doing
anything with the store. This wouldn't really be an issue, if it wouldn't
complain every 1 to 2 hours with a popup message that it's unable to fulfill
the store request.

However, iTunes on OS X is still only mildly annoying for me compared to the
disaster that is the redesigned Music app on iOS. It took me a while just
trying to figure out how to navigate it and then its features no longer match
the iTunes on OS X behaviour, making it even more difficult trying to figure
out how to use it. The search feature is the one I've been fighting the most
with, as it no longer allows you to play the listed results like in the
desktop version, so that you have to resort to custom playlists, if you are
trying to play music that is not from the same artist or from the same album.

~~~
dkonofalski
Just FYI, if you have the Genius or Recommendation features turned on for your
library, iTunes will connect to the store to grab that information. If you
don't want it to do that, just sign out of the store and turn those options
off (but maybe not in that order). That should stop it from trying to connect
in the background.

~~~
OSButler
Thanks, I was hoping this might be it and just checked, but those settings are
already disabled in my account. I would report it as a bug if I knew what
caused it or had a way to reproduce it directly, but it's just a stock error
message without any kind of additional information that occurs maybe once
every 1-2hs.

------
acomjean
I use itunes daily. I really like it, they made it better recently with the
miniplayer up next and such. I"m able to queue up music into a list easily
anytime. Maybe its my usecase, but I find it pretty sweet.

That being said, itunes match, which I pay for and is supposed to sync all of
my music between machines/ iphones somehow forgot a bunch of my songs. It
might be part of iCloud now. I never could figure it out, but it just worked
for the longest time. I turned on iCloud match and it seems to have brought
most of them back. (Come to think of it maybe it was only cloud streaming
songs I bought from itunes before...)

Itunes on the iphone turned into Apple Music nagware till you dig into
settings and turn it off. searhing for a song would show you the Apple Music
version. It was odd and jarring when your itunes match wasn't working right,
but for some money you can play the song you thought you had...

Actually mac osx reminds me to "upgrade my keynote by upgrading my os" every
time I open it. I've been using macs a long time and this new sell to me is
getting grating.

~~~
Shivetya
If iTunes would remember my last view I would be happy. I tend to wanting my
playlists on the side and the songs in list format on the right. Yet each time
I open iTunes its in cover format or large icons or whatnot, never rhyme or
reason.

------
cgriswald
Match. Match activated itself I don't know how many times. Removed all music
from my phone so I was streaming everything. I honestly didn't notice at first
except some of my music was missing (because it wasn't available on Match),
and my music would inexplicably stop playing in certain areas. It screwed up
all my tag edits/album art (on ~7K songs!) and because of some duplicate
problem, which I have yet to resolve, my music doesn't sync properly onto my
iPhone. (Among many, many other complaints about iTunes.)

My only question is, if I switch to something like Swinsian (which looks
nice), how do I get the music and playlists onto my iPhone? (I've also been
thinking about switching to Android since iOS 9 and its updates have turned my
very expensive iPhone 6 into a slow, buggy POS.)

------
stevetrewick
Them and everyone else. I suspect iTunes' major problem is that it
encapsulates all (most?) of the code for communicating with iOS devices, hence
XCode upgrades requiring it to be shut down and vice versa. Hence the amazing
feature bloat. This plus its age probably make it a scary ball of mud.

Not sure that's enough to explain some of the UX choices - a few updates back
I had to turn to google to find out they hadn't actually removed the mini
player and then again to find out how to get back to the full window.

Maybe it makes sense to keep all the media management functions in one place,
but then there's iPhoto/Photos, iBooks and the MAS, and then the Windows
version.

It's like the app level equivalent of a god class.

------
Luc
Its casual users too. I suppose there's no point in me explaining why, since
it's such a common thing.

This morning I clicked a downloaded MP3 file expecting it to simply play, but
nooooh...

------
brandon272
iTunes generally works great for me for maintaining my collection and
playback, especially when combined with my home entertainment system. Where it
falls apart is Apple Music, iTunes Match and iTunes Store.

\- iTunes Match is too unreliable when it comes to actually matching songs.
The syncing is unreliable. I have songs in my collection now that were
manipulated by iTunes Match and now have incorrect artist/title entries for
some reason. I routinely have an issue where a song will be purchased in
iTunes Store but never shows up on other computers without me having to go
through a whole process of checking for available downloads (never works),
signing in, signing out, etc. which often doesn't work until a week later when
the song magically shows up or just doesn't show up at all.

\- iTunes Store is fine for buying music, if you know what you want to buy.
Apple Match and iTunes are both terrible (in my opinion) for discovering new
music that actually matches my own tastes.

Right now I am using both Spotify and iTunes. I use Spotify to discover new
music which I then buy through the iTunes Store so that I can have it in my
official iTunes-based collection. I know people who have started using Spotify
as their main source of music but I have an existing collection of about 4000
songs made up of MP3's/purchased files which I wish to maintain as a single
collection. Using Spotify doesn't allow me to do that. Adding songs from Apple
Music to my music collection seems unpleasant because then it creates a mix of
existing transportable MP3's that I can move around and Apple Music files that
I have no control over.

It would be great to have a "single solution" that allowed me to discover new
music, purchase it and maintain/listen to my collection but I've accepted that
I will probably never find that solution.

------
jdlyga
I've been looking for a better alternative to iTunes for years, like Google
Music. But nothing I've used has the same features like powerful smart
playlists, ratings system, and the ability to change the start and stop times
of songs. But iTunes is just a mess that's getting worse and worse. I might
just have to suck it up and start over.

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
I find itunes to be just fine for dealing with a decade-old library with 20k+
songs that's been transferred between a half-dozen different computers, and
it's certainly better than the terrible mp3 players I tried on linux in the
last 18 months or so (banshee was the least horrible but it's random album
shuffle was incredibly broken).

------
Karunamon
I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that I am one of a very small number of
people on the planet that has literally no issues with iTunes' day to day
functionality.

This despite abusing the hell out of it:

* My library is on an NFS volume,

* ..accessed with two different copies of iTunes on two different OSes

* ..with north of 20k songs

* ..and a library that's been backed up, restored, migrated, multiple times

*..all the way since ~2002 when I got the HP branded iPod and started using it to manage my music

The only conclusion I can come to, computers being deterministic machines, is
that a lot of people have broken computers. Perhaps iTunes needs to be more
error tolerant?

There's not a whole lot of ways to say "it works for me, and I don't know what
you're on about" without being straight up dismissive but.. it Just Works, at
least for me. Just another data point I suppose.

~~~
smackfu
You don't use iTunes Match or Apple Music, so you aren't _really_ abusing it.

~~~
feld
Yeah iTunes library on a network drive sucks balls in my opinion. SLOWWWWWW.
And whenever my library gets horked and I try to re-match again it takes ages.
It's just stupid.

------
Eric_WVGG
I’m willing to bet that iTunes (as we know it) will get phased out in OS X
10.12.

Apple has a clear pattern now where they debut big ecosystem-wide changes in
iOS first, and Mac about a year later. Apple Photos, the “Flat” aesthetic,
Maps, etc.

A proper Apple Music app for iOS replaced the old iPod app last summer; Apple
Music support was wedged into iTunes because Apple couldn’t afford to punt
that feature all the way out to next year. But it seems in keeping with the
pattern that an iOS-style Apple Music app for OS X, which would lack iOS
syncing (works against the cloud strategy), iTunes University (deserves its
own app), Podcasting (ditto, and one exists on iOS), etc.

------
tammer
iTunes isn't designed for the type of users this article discusses. The real
issue the author should have focused on is there is no ecosystem as
progressive or stable which is still focused on users who need/want to listen
to their specific copy of a song rather than a generic hosted one.

I have a feeling this type of user will slowly fade out, and eventually
looking at a HD filled with music (on a laptop less!) will provoke a reaction
similar to the anachronistic feeling one has looking at a wall of CD's or
DVD's.

------
mark_l_watson
A decade ago, I loved iTunes. I agree with other people here that it seemed to
get a little less good over time, but it is still nice.

About 5 years ago I switched to Amazon Music because the songs were a little
less expensive and I could also play my music on my Android phone.

Recently I started using Google's $10/month no advertisements on Youtube
option. I then started using Google Play Music Premium and I find it good
enough so I am making yet another switch in managing my music.

Fortunately, changing music hosting is not that time consuming.

------
bohegeek
Of course iTunes is bad, each version since 6-7 years adding layer and layer
of half baked functionalities and a list of new bugs on previously working
features. Unfortunately all the other music software are nowhere as good!
That's really the sorry state of the music playing/managing software industry,
if such thing exists.

------
o_nate
Still a happy Zune 30GB user. One nice thing about using a discontinued device
is that the manufacturer doesn't keep bloating up the software. (Also you can
get refurbished replacement units cheap.) I guess at some point it won't run
on the latest OS, but as of Windows 10, it still works fine.

------
hackaflocka
It's 2015, and I can only load MP3s from a single Mac/PC into the music app on
my iPhone. If I load MP3s from one of my other Macs/PCs, it wipes out the
prior MP3s from my iPhone. Not user-friendly.

------
rocky1138
I tried iTunes back in 2004 or so and promptly killed the process and
uninstalled when it started converting my MP3s to some Apple-only format.
What's with that?

~~~
Xixi
AAC [1] has never been an Apple format, though in 2004 it was less ubiquitous
than it is now.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding)

~~~
rocky1138
Okay, but my point was that iTunes should have just played and organized my
MP3s instead of trying to re-encode them to a different format.

------
banku_brougham
I am one of those alienated users, and I eagerly pressed the link to discover
the alternatives. To no avail.

Are there viable alternative music players that can sync to iPhone?

------
KasianFranks
It always has.

------
seivan
Using Ember.js as a front-end for their Music services as massive downer. Slow
on a Macbook Pro 2014.

React or native would have been a better choice.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
If it is that noticeably slow, I seriously doubt the framework for the front
end is the sole issue.

