Apple Officially Splits iTunes For Windows Into Apple Music, TV, and Devices Apps (macrumors.com) 31
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: The Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple Devices apps that Apple has been testing for Windows machines have officially launched, ending a long preview period and bringing an end to the iTunes app on some computers. The Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple Devices app are part of Apple's effort to split iTunes on PC into multiple platforms to mirror how these apps work on Macs. On Windows 10 and later, PC customers can download the three separate apps to manage devices and access Apple Music and Apple TV content. Microsoft first announced plans for Apple Music and Apple TV apps for the Microsoft Store back in October 2022, so the split from iTunes has been in the works for more than a year.
The Apple Music app gives Windows users a way to listen to and manage music from their iTunes library, including iTunes Store purchases, while the Apple TV app allows users to watch and manage movies and TV shows from iTunes. Both of the apps also give access to Apple's streaming services, Apple Music and Apple TV+. The Apple Devices app is designed to allow PC owners to update, back up, and restore and manage their iPhones and iPads, and sync content from their PCs. Using the standalone apps requires Windows 10 or later, and all three apps must be installed to transition away from iTunes. After the apps have been added to a PC, iTunes is used only to access podcasts and audiobooks. The iTunes library should not be deleted, because it is used by the Apple Music and Apple TV apps.
The Apple Music app gives Windows users a way to listen to and manage music from their iTunes library, including iTunes Store purchases, while the Apple TV app allows users to watch and manage movies and TV shows from iTunes. Both of the apps also give access to Apple's streaming services, Apple Music and Apple TV+. The Apple Devices app is designed to allow PC owners to update, back up, and restore and manage their iPhones and iPads, and sync content from their PCs. Using the standalone apps requires Windows 10 or later, and all three apps must be installed to transition away from iTunes. After the apps have been added to a PC, iTunes is used only to access podcasts and audiobooks. The iTunes library should not be deleted, because it is used by the Apple Music and Apple TV apps.
Re: SAT (Score:2)
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Is iTunes seriously Still A Thing (SAT) in 2024? Like fr fr no cap? Surely they now let you transfer files to and from a device without installing their bloatware.
Well, I've been generally-satisfied with a tool called iMazing, which has way more functionality than iTunes did for shuffling data from iPhones and iPads.
iTunes definitely had its sore spots; it still shocks me that in all the years it did full device backups, that it never let users pick a custom folder or separate drive...the ONLY way to put backups on another drive was to create a symlink.
It sounds like they're still going to have some variant of the iTunes Media Store, but there are a number of movies
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Props to Apple that, although they kept a lot of the bad legacy code in there (the aforementioned Symlink thing), iTunes still rips CDs and still syncs with old iPods.
Props to Apple for not implementing USB mass storage support ? You fruit users are weird.
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I'd probably say part of the reason is buried in the early parts of the iPod. All iPods could be used as disks in a disk mode, although that wouldn't allow for copying music to the device. However, to make the RIAA happy, Apple did their own music protocol, initially allowing for music to be transferred to the iPod, but not back (of course, one could fetch the files in disk mode, rename them by ID tags), but it was better than what other MP3 players did at the time, such as the Toshiba Gigabeat which encr
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You know, that was a whole lot of talk to cover for Apple while ending with:
What would be nice is a mode where an iPhone could just enumerate as a drive.
Which is pretty much what the GP post said: "Props to Apple for not implementing USB mass storage support ? You fruit users are weird."
USB Mass Storage support _IS_ allowing an iPhone/iPod/iPad to just enumerate as a drive.
Any historical reasons for not doing so are just covering that they didn't do so, and, for some reason, they're still not doing it.
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Eh? What's wrong with symlinks?
I use them extensively to put various things where I prefer versus the expected defalt locations... everything from symlinking my .bashrc and the like to ~/Repos/dotfiles and using mu github as the source of truth (Makes it real easy when setting up a new Macbook, doing spring cleaning on an old one, or keeping my bash environment on Linux as similar as possible to the Mac.) to moving the folder under ~/Library/ where Steam wants to install all its executables out of my home
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> Like fr fr no cap?
Huh?
Maybe you should sober up and try again. Or at least let autocorrect take care of the gibberish. Even if it guesses wrong, it'll be more intelligable than just smashing at the keyboard with fat fingers.
EU Lawsuit (Score:2)
The EU has announced another lawsuit against Apple, concerning this latest product announcement. Details to follow....
Re: EU Lawsuit (Score:2)
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You're delusional.
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really (Score:1)
And no offline playback (Score:2)
Still crippled. Just crippled x3 now.
Re: And no offline playback (Score:2)
What do you mean: no offline playback?
Iâ(TM)ve got thousands of hours of music that plays back just fine offline in iTunes.
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Have to download these apps from MS Store? (Score:2)
Can't download from the web site like old iTunes? :(
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In a way, that is a good thing. Having stuff on app repositories generally means it is from a cleaner source than from a web page, and it can help with fake apps, moving the fake downloads from anywhere on the Internet to fakes on MS's Store, which in theory, Microsoft should be terminating with extreme prejudice.
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It's the opposite of a good thing.
The internet should be democratizing software, having users expecting that software will only come from an app store controlled by a multinational corporation is a huge problem.
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Seems functional enough (Score:2)
I've used iTunes on Windows for over a decade. No other music player offers the same features (5 star rating system, dynamic/smart playlists, organizes files for you), and I happen to have some iPads that I used to sync with. iTunes is just really solid. It led me to actually subscribe to Apple Music over Spotify and the rest.
On first try, the new Apple Music app seems to retain all the features I want. Haven't tried whether it still supports automatically exporting the library to XML.
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iTunes has had its issues, but I've found it good enough to use for almost two decades. It had good music management tools, is able to organize stuff well, supports ECC checking of CD ripping (which works well enough, although Exact Audio Copy on Windows is arguably the best), and isn't too tough to keep backed up, although the library indexes seem to be easily corrupted.
I'm sure there are other programs like MediaMonkey and others which do a good job if one is on Android, but because I have a lot in the i
1 Gripe about iTunes/Apple Music is... (Score:2)
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I have a vague recollection of migrating straight from Soundjam to iTunes with no losses. If I recall, Apple bought Soundjam and its developer, both of which formed the nucleus of the first version of iTunes. Long time ago....
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Curious about dev tech (Score:2)
What is most interesting about these new apps Apple released is the question of how they were built. Were they built in C# with MS tools? Or are we seeing the emergence of Swift/SwiftUI on Windows? I have been using SwiftUI for a few years, and these apps looks suspiciously like they were built with it. The icons clearly are from the SFSymbols systems. Swift is now officially supported on Windows, so it would seem logical to build the apps using their own proprietary UI framework rather than the ever changi
iTunes always used Cocoa for Windows (Score:2)
iTunes and Safari for Windows always included an implementation of a subset of the Cocoa (Foundation and AppKit) frameworks and other Mac OS X baggage. I expect it's no different now. They'll be ports of the macOS versions with just enough of the frameworks ported to get them running on Windows.
A good thing (Score:2)
I need it to do a backup that's it.
The rest of that awful GUI can die a slow death.
On the other hand.... (Score:2)
...on the Apple TV combined their TV, movie, and AppleTV+ apps into one app, making it huge, clunky and borderline unusable.
Nothing like consistency....