Examined: Apple's iPhone-centric Music app refresh in iOS 10.2

AppleInsider

With nearly every version of iOS since Apple Music rolled out in 2015, the company has been tweaking the user interface in a bid to make things easier for users -- and iOS 10.2 is no exception.

Rather than needing multiple screens for "Now Playing" in Apple Music, users can now swipe up while listening to a track to invoke the shuffle, repeat, and up next display. Apple helpfully points this out in an early launch of the app after the update.

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The Library feature has been modified, giving the user more clear options to select and sort albums and songs, as well as playlist modification.

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Apple didn't make a big deal about one feature re-addition, however -- star ratings have returned. Users wanting to utilize ratings again can turn on the feature in the main Settings menu, under Music.

After the option is toggled, users can rate songs on the action sheets for the track in question, by invoking the menu with Force Touch, or tapping the "..." button, and scrolling down on the list to "rate song"

Work in progress?

Overall, the new Music app is a bit faster in every regard than its predecessor on an iPhone SE and an iPhone 7 Plus on both Wi-Fi and LTE -- but a hair slower on an iPhone 6 and 6s on the same networks.

Regardless of the speed benefit or loss, it appears, at least on the surface, that Apple has listened to complaints about the Music app, and by association, Apple Music's functionality on iOS. It just takes a few minutes to adjust to some of the new, and sometimes optional, changes that the new version of iOS brings.

slurpy

Apple have really made some fantastic improvements since launching the Music app, and listened to customer feedback. Pretty much all pain points have been addressed. Kudos to them, this is now a really, really solid app. I expect them to keep gaining subscribers at a fast rate.

schlack

Long time apple investor and apple music user from the start (had beats music before that, and spotify before that), but i recently setup a 4 month free trial of google music...and am surprised to find that it's much better designed than apple music. will probably switch back to apple music after the trial just because of apple music integrates better with the apple ecosystem, but hope apple continues to make their offerings better.

voodooru

It's cool. However, I've been using 8tracks dot com since 2009. IMHO the best service. All human-user curated playlists. 

stanhope

The new music approach did at least one thing terribly wrong. All of those music videos I spent a fortune on are no longer easily aggregated in the videos tab. What was the wisdom of that?

dewme

The updates are nice small improvements. One small ask: I'd like to see the entire Music application updated to take advantage of the added screen real estate on the "Plus" model iPhones when in landscape orientation. That's all. 

rogifan_new

Is anything designed for the iPad anymore?

sh1ny

Despite some improvements have been made, ‘loving’ a song is still too much of a hassle. I liked it when I just could mark a song as ‘Loved’ on a lock screen. Probably 2nd tab of Control Center is the right place to sport the music controls, but there’s no Love either. Show me some love, Apple!

anantksundaram

Lately, I've been getting music app (and iTunes) whiplash with Apple's music-related updates. I am tiring of the constant nitpicky changes with seemingly little aggregate design logic or overall purpose. 

anthony patton

I really don't understand this "update"... Yes, the re-add of the rating system is "new" but all of the other stuff was already there? Swiping up for repeat, shuffle, and Up Next controls were already available since the initial release of iOS 10, they just redesigned them (made the repeat and shuffle buttons larger). What I don't like is how Up Next controls changed after the iOS 10 update, it became much less intuitive. I also agree with Sh1ny's comment about Loving songs. It takes much more effort to Love a song now, especially if the device is locked. I know it's not a ton of work, but it was still much easier before and was something didn't need to be replaced with the download button.

Finally, I really wish that Apple can fix the album art issue when iCloud Music Library is turned on. At the very least, they can add an option in Settings.app > Music which disables album art syncing from iCloud for songs synced from iTunes when iCloud Music Library is enabled. I have songs that I purchased from Bandcamp which have their album art replaced with completely irrelevant album art after enabling iCloud Music Library. And I won't even go into the annoying process one has to go through if you want to add music from iTunes if you have Apple Music/iCloud Music Library enabled (but this needs to be changed as well!!!).

lostkiwi

Great piece.  I use the app everyday and had no idea many of these features had been added recently.  
Cheers!

BTW if anyone at Apple is reading this, I also would like to request adding the 'Love' back to the primary screen it was previously. 

markmacbook

Still no "Clear Up Next" button or History list, though. When are they coming back?

webmaestro

What happened to the ability to Create Genius Playlist from current song. It's similar to Apple Music's 'Create Station' but created a Playlist from your own library of music?

This was my favorite iOS Music feature, and it's gone. A great time saver Apple's barbarian hordes submitted millions (billions?) of playlists to create.

Apple, bring back Genius Playlists in iOS 10.12.3 please!

holyone

Mike, couldnt help noticing that's some seriouse rock you've got there

hmlongco

Updated music, but the new TV app on iOS is a mess. For some reason they decided I needed huge posters for the movies, and so on my iPhone 7 Plus I only see four movies on the screen at a time. Four. Thing is, over the years I’ve accumulated over 400 movies, so that means a LOT of flipping and scrolling.

And of course there’s no navigation aids. No quick A-Z picker on the side of the screen like in Contacts. No way of filtering by genre or ratings or anything else. No search capabilities for your library (search button searches the store). No sorting. No way to make the icons smaller so I can go through the list faster.

In typical Apple fashion, they’ve "simplified" the interface to the point of making the app useless, and it will now take them another four years to gradually add back in all of the functionality they've removed.

ike17055

schlack said:

Long time apple investor and apple music user from the start (had beats music before that, and spotify before that), but i recently setup a 4 month free trial of google music...and am surprised to find that it's much better designed than apple music. will probably switch back to apple music after the trial just because of apple music integrates better with the apple ecosystem, but hope apple continues to make their offerings better.

When Apple took soooooo long to launch a music service, I also decided to try Google's music app.  It is very, very nice, and I can find no reason, despite having multiple Apple devices, to make a switch. As usual, the Google apps play very nicely with Apple hardware, and they also keep bringing improvements to the service. I like the fact is offers web service so i can access my music on work computer, and the music locker is free, so i can put my entire iTunes library there anyhow. One nice side benefit is that by subscribing to the Google paid service, I also get YouTube Red, the commercial free version, which is a real plus. 

bestkeptsecret

The one thing I really want is the ability to manually add tracks to my iPhone via iTunes on the Mac when I have iCloud Music Library and iTunes Match turned on.

It seems pretty silly that I have to rip a CD that's not available on iTunes/ Apple Music then wait till it is matched and uploaded to my iCloud Music Library and then wait for it turn up in the "Recently Added" section of my iPhone's Music app and then download it.