iTunes Expected To Be Retired After Over 18 Years (macrumors.com) 82
While it was initially reported that iTunes would live on in macOS 10.15, it now looks like the app will be retired, over 18 years after it was introduced by the late Steve Jobs at Macworld on January 9, 2001. MacRumors reports: Apple will be replacing iTunes with standalone Music, TV, and Podcasts apps in the next major version of macOS, expected to be unveiled at WWDC 2019 next week, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman: "iTunes has been the way Apple users listen to music, watch movies and TV shows, hear podcasts, and manage their devices for almost two decades. This year, Apple is finally ready to move into a new era. The company is launching a trio of new apps for the Mac -- Music, TV, and Podcasts -- to replace iTunes. That matches Apple's media app strategy on iPhones and iPads. Without iTunes, customers can manage their Apple gadgets through the Music app."
This information lines up with a recent report from 9to5Mac's Guilherme Rambo, who claimed that iTunes will be renamed to "Music" on the Mac. In other words, iTunes is going away and will be replaced by the new Music app, which is expected to become the new utility for syncing and managing Apple devices.
This information lines up with a recent report from 9to5Mac's Guilherme Rambo, who claimed that iTunes will be renamed to "Music" on the Mac. In other words, iTunes is going away and will be replaced by the new Music app, which is expected to become the new utility for syncing and managing Apple devices.
Here it comes (Score:1)
Nearly everyone hates iTunes and wishes it was gone. And after it is gone we will hear about how much they miss it.
I hate the internet.
Re:Here it comes (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course they'll miss it, Apple is replacing one bloated, buggy piece of shit with three bloated, buggy pieces of shit. How does this sound like a good idea?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Here it comes (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Crackalackin
Hey, my cousins are crackalakers from Georgia and they resent your implied insult!
Re: (Score:2)
Crackalackin
Hey, my cousins are crackalakers from Georgia and they represent your implied insult!
FTFY
Re: (Score:3)
As someone who predominately likes western classical music, it would perhaps not be a good to get me started on how poorly itunes and most other music databases handle tagging. Like the back-end schema is in place and then no one fucking bothers to use it. And any attempt to fix it isn't going to be duplicated or observed as authoritative because the big databases that applications use won't follow any better standard.
But anyway iTunes is my absolute poster child for the worst mainstream software most com
Re: (Score:2)
Agree completely on both of these counts. iTunes has for years be a stunning disaster in terms of usability and even function (which is saying something - normally you get one without the other).
As an aside, it seems Apple has never been any good at software design.
Re: (Score:2)
I have plenty of ancient mp3s without id tags and iTunes hasn't a clue what to do with them. Other players like Winamp were smart enough to look at the filenames. Yes I used Winamp on my Android phone. Now I have an iPhone though. Love the hardware but fuck iTunes.
Re: Here it comes (Score:2)
Agreed. Hardware is good but iTunes sucks donkeyballs
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It can be done; it just takes time.
Re: (Score:2)
I like it. But I only really use it for podcasts. There really is not equivalent that I've found for this on Windows. Ie, updates your podcasts; copies the new ones to your ipod and removes the ones you've listened to already. Now that my ipod seems to have died last week I went to an mp3 player and it's highly painful (ipods are amazingly expensive). I have to drag over the podcasts manually and clean them up manually. (and the damn mp3 apparently doesn't work in my car so I'm going to have to use a
Re: So iTunes essentially will be rebranded Music (Score:2, Funny)
TL;DR: You're holding it wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
TL;DR: You're holding it wrong.
That's what he said.
iTunes on Windows? (Score:5, Insightful)
So what happens to all the Windows folks who have iTunes on their machines and own a library of music on the service? SOL?
Re: iTunes on Windows? (Score:1)
Apple is really bad at making Windows applications. Unlike Microsoft, who actually made some of the main software that the Mac a viable system, with Microsoft Word and Excel (which first existed only on the Mac).
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple is really bad at making Windows applications. Unlike Microsoft, who actually made some of the main software that the Mac a viable system, with Microsoft Word and Excel (which first existed only on the Mac).
Honestly, I've never understood all the hate towards iTunes. I started out with an HP branded iPod and syncing everything from a Linux desktop somehow, but later used iTunes on Win XP, and gave up on iTunes not liking how the other sync software left things, so I let iTunes take over and own the thing. This was on a 2000s office computer, and it worked fine.
I've also used the iCloud for windows deal to sync photos, and then Safari for windows while it lasted in the early iPhone days, because before chrome
Re: (Score:2)
iTunes is far from the crime against humanity that a lot of people try to present it as. But it is hardly one of Apple's finer software moments either. IMO, the problem is that it grew over the years into a swiss-army chainsaw; doing too many things. Its ability to do any one of them the best it could be done suffered. And you needed the whole damn thing running and taking up RAM to do any of them. If *I* were running that team, I would have long-since had it broken up into five separate programs/servi
Microsoft 1.0 (Score:2)
It is also fair to say that the Microsoft of 2019 is a far cry from the one that existed 'back in the day'.
But that early version of Microsoft [let's refer to that variant of the company as "Microsoft 1.0"] did lots of nasty stuff...
See this slashdot post from 2005 for just a handful of examples [slashdot.org]
Is it possible that at least some of the issues with iTunes stem from the fact that Windows is pre-programmed to "dislike" it?
Re: (Score:2)
The problems with iTunes boil down to three things:
1. It became a bloated mess very early on, with too many different services. It's a music library manager, an app store, an iPod manager, an iPhone manager, a music store, a video store, a media server...
2. It sucks at most of those things. There is no decent way to manage a large media library, for example. The way it handles moving stuff to your iDevice is awful. The video store is DRM-infested crap. And it only works properly with Apple hardware.
3. The W
Re: (Score:2)
If you're using the windows version of iTunes, you are SOL to begin with.
Re: (Score:2)
One of my relatives carries an iPhone SE. What tool to back up an iPhone and load new music onto an iPhone would make an iPhone user not SOL?
Re: (Score:2)
No, they're building a new app that doesn't try and do all the things. The new app will thus be a clean start and way smaller than iTunes. Also, creating separate apps for the other stuff decouples all those features going forward, which also means update overall will use less bandwidth: updating some features of a large app usually requires you to also change a lot of files that wouldn't need to be changed if the system was split into smaller apps.
These apps will load quicker and use less memory, since you
Re: (Score:1)
Welcome to the 21st century! You want 48 cores on a die the size of your pinky nail? You got it! Stream 4k UHD video? You got it! You want an application that can both play music AND video? HOLD YOUR HORSES PAL.
Re: It's about bloody time (Score:1)
When I first got my iPod Touch iTunes was really the only way to get anything onto it. It was tethered to my Windows PC. Only later did it become possible to browse and install apps and music and video onto the thing on it's own. But I ditched that Apple stuff fairly soon after affordable non-Apple mobile stuff became viable. iTunes is just a fading bad memory. When I want to move my music to a new device I just pull the SD card from the old and put it in the new.
Re: (Score:2)
And you think the new Music app will be better because . . . . why?
Re:It's about bloody time (Score:5, Insightful)
My wish is for iDevices to act just like Android. They appear as a drive and I copy things myself. Fuck all that other bullshit.
Re: (Score:2)
As long as your player digs out the metadata and lets you search for songs by genre, year of release, bpm, that sort of thing.
I've seen some people stuck in their ways who have meticulously organized music libraries which is cool until they want some other sort criteria. Tags and metadata are far superior to a hierarchial folder tree. Both methods should complement each other though not force one or the other on the user.
Re: (Score:2)
android can't make full offline backups with all your settings and apps. and their cloud backups just sucks. your app's data isn't saved, just redownloaded from scratch
Music is the new sync app? (Score:4, Insightful)
So now in iTunes I use it to sync my music and my podcasts to my iPod and iPhone.
But Apple will split iTunes into Music, TV, and Podcasts. And that Music will become the new utility for syncing and managing Apple devices.
Soooooo .. how do I sync my podcasts? Using the Music app instead of the Podcast app? Or will the Podcast app be used just to sync podcasts?
Methinks someone left something out somewhere.
Re: (Score:1)
Through the Cloud, of course.
It seems fairly clear to me that Apple has basically given up on podcasts as this point. The podcast app hasn't seen any real updates in years and has some rather noteworthy bugs (settings revert randomly, subscriptions to podcast randomly cancel for no reason, downloaded podcasts will stop halfway through for no reason, etc.).
So I'd imagine that they just assume everyone downloads podcasts directly to their phones and has no reason to ever want to sync them from their computer.
Re: Music is the new sync app? (Score:1)
As designed. What's this "syncing" you speak of? The future is the cloud! Streaming from the cloud. Get with the times!
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody seriously gives a shit about podcasts. There's no money in it, so there's no market for businesses to push the envelope.
Finally (Score:2)
Finally the beast has become too unwieldy to manage even by Apple. I can only think of this as a good thing.
The way it's worded (Score:1)
... over 18 years after it was introduced by the late Steve Jobs at Macworld on January 9, 2001.
Surely he wasn't the late Steve Jobs at that Macworld event? Did the audience scream and try to run away?
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re: The way it's worded (Score:2)
Apples ARKit amd RealityKit was in advanced beta testing even then and no-one noticed
Any idea why (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Probably because it's a brand that is associated with a bygone era rather and isn't really useful today. I'd bet the only reason they didn't make this decision sooner is because they were afraid to let go of the brand and they were waiting for marketing research to show that the brand no longer holds much sway.
They also want to compete with Netflix, Amazon, and Disney. "iTunes" is more closely related to streaming music, not video. Apple always goes for simple—if they can make "I'm watching TV" mean "
Re: (Score:2)
"Probably because it's a brand that is associated with a bygone era rather and isn't really useful today."
So, if you don't want to use cloud backups, what options do you have? I can currently sync across several devices, and not have any of my shit (music, photos, apps, etc.) floating around someone's cloud that I don't trust.
Dumb question time (Score:3)
At work, we install iTunes for people who want to backup their iPhones to their Windows machines, specifically things like pictures and files.
How will this change affect them? Will the iTunes they already have installed cease to work? What will replace this backup feature? Please don't say it goes to Apple's Cloud because that defeats the entire purpose of having your files where you want them.
Also, we inform people they are not to use Apple's Cloud due to security issues.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't think too differently... that's hard, like using one of those Android-PCs. Ugh!
Good Consumer / Bad Consumer (Score:4, Insightful)
If you've been a GOOD Apple consumer, iTunes will have organized your music collection inside many deep layers of folders. If you now want to remove those tunes and put them all into one folder, you're out of luck. You will face many hours of work. Apple has done the same thing with your photo collection.
And if you've been a GOOD Apple consumer and bought all those tunes at the Apple store, no problem. They'll make it easy to recover them if lost or move them to new Apple hardware or Apple software. It's just those BAD Apple consumers who will have difficulties. People who added their own music to iTunes. They are locked into Apple's proprietary file system which may still work if they are lucky. If not, their personal collection may evaporate.
It is possible to store tunes and photos outside of Apple's proprietary system if you adjust your Preferences. The indexing system is convenient in many ways, but you can still play music from any normal folder you choose. BTW, some professional photo programs also use proprietary filing systems- think long and hard before you let them take control of your work.
Re: (Score:2)
iTunes > Preferences > Advanced > iTunes Media folder location
Mine is under /Volumes/myBook/iTunes Music/Music
A few years ago I moved it from another external drive. Moving it was a matter of copy and pasting the root folder.
Am I the only one who doesn't find this difficult?
Re: (Score:2)
Hyperbolic nonsense. They're organised in a "Artist name/Album name/track name" format with the artist name being "Compilation" if it's, well, a compilation. This is not many deep folders.
More nonsense. You just open up the folder where your music is stored and co
translation.. (Score:1)
the itunes code has gotten so fucking scrambled over the years, and there is nobody left in our entire company that can make sense of any of it... so we're starting over from scratch.
where to physically backup phone (Score:2)
Although the cloud service is pretty good, I do hope they have an easy path to saying "back up this device"
Also that the concept of local itunes libraries, with smart playlists, survives :-/
if they really screw the pooch on this one, they will loosen the lockin they have for some people who have been reasonably happy with music stuff since the iPod days -- I always knew there were some android-y things to manage my playlists but nothing I knew I'd be able to trust...
Re: (Score:2)
The concept of the local music library is something they would like to kill outright. They don't make any money off your MP3 collection, they do make money from your Apple Music subscription.
It was good once (Score:2)
They provide free music to force you to listen to ads that will ensure you shun the advertised products. The business model is perfectly awful. And the artists get pretty much nothing, well, except for the ones pushed in ads a
Not Gone —Just Renamed (Score:2)
Two points : i) iTunes is not gone, just renamed. they have followed a strategy of cutting the cruft off their product branding — they have been stripping the 'i' prefix from things (e.g. iBooks has become Books). the biggest pain about iTunes was that it was grown too monolithic — now they are decomposing the monolithic app (itunes) into its singular components: music + podcasts + video. this is consistent with improvement of the overall sense of design clarity throughout iOS and macOS.
ii) iTun