Examined: Apple's iPhone-centric Music app refresh in iOS 10.2
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.
The Library feature has been modified, giving the user more clear options to select and sort albums and songs, as well as playlist modification.
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"
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.
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.
The Library feature has been modified, giving the user more clear options to select and sort albums and songs, as well as playlist modification.
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.
Comments
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!!!).
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.
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!
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.
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.