While I agree that the analysis of the iTunes ecosystem is spot on, I cannot agree on the positive take on the technical execution of Apple Music. Just like any previous release of a web service, Apple has managed to make this a complex and unreliable experience. I'm having issues with iCloud Photos, iTunes Match and now with Apple Music.
I'm surprised at how many bugs and usability issues the new iOS Music has. The attention for details and intuitive has gone out of the window, and there are several obvious bugs. I hope iOS 9 will bring back some software quality.
Also, a new updated iCloud 2 would be appreciated. More robust data management, version control, speed (iCloud is slow as a turtle in Europe) and a coherent vision for users. Ask 100 people what iCloud is and most still won't know.
A few years back, iCloud would have been a great mechanism to lock users and developers in. But as it has largely failed as a syncing service because of bugs, all mayor developers have created their own syncing services that are compatible with Android.
So, no, iCloud is not a positive Apple story. Not yet.
I've said before I think Eddy Cue has too much on his plate and in some ways his plate seems like a hodgepodge of stuff that don't neatly fit elsewhere. I personally think Cook should bring in someone to run iCloud, maps and Siri. And poach someone from Microsoft, Google or Amazon that has a lot of experience with the cloud to run it.
I wish there was a way to do family sharing just for Apple Music. $14.99 is a fantastic price but once you set up family sharing it includes all iTunes purchases. Great for parents and children but not so much for anything else.
Instead of "opening" things up like Google--using inferior formats to sell content from hostile media companies it didn't respect to its Android demographic of customers who don't pay for things
Daniel, I love and respect your editorials every time. But I don't understand how you can proclaim Apple Music a success when I almost lost my entire 4TB library and all my 20 years of playlist building just because there was no warning that when you turn ON iCloud Music Library, it may destroy your iTunes Library and all your playlists. Thank God for Time Machine backup.
It's not perfect and that is stupid of Apple. But I found so many new songs to listen to I hardly know how I live without it for so long. On a past week I almost solely use my iPhone as an iPod. This is a testament of how good it is. Like the article said, if Apple continue to improve it intelligently, like Beat 1 has improved over the past week, music will be one of the main selling point of iPhone again.
I love Apple Music already, and I see it as yet another significant draw for more switchers to the Apple ecosystem.
For me, it's served to remind me of a lot of music I'd forgotten about over the years which I can now enjoy again without having to purchase outright. And I can sample whole tracks and albums of new stuff.
As a long time Apple crusader, I had a horrible mobile me experience with duplicated contacts so I would never subject my poorly currated iTunes library to Match.
And I was dubious about Apple Music because I have so many CDs & records in my life.
But because of the free trial, I tried it...AND NOW I AM CRAZY ADDICTED. And my wife tried it independently and feels the same way.
Now we are enrolled in a family plan that we will continue (along with HBO Now) and I now an contemplating an upgrade to an iPhone 6S+ this fall for improved battery life.
Apple Music is buggy and has serious usability issues. For me it is on par with the downgrade that Photos was compared to iPhoto. Although I have to admit both were on downward paths before their rebrandings.
How do I get back to the mini player after I close or kill apple music app??? There's no way to get it back unless I start a new song. Major UI issue. When you do start another song your history, up next is destroyed. Also say I go to new section click on the song and staring playing it. Decide wow this is a good song what other songs does this band have. Click name of band, nothing happens. Click ... No link to the band or any of there music. Only thing you can do is save the song. Launch the mini player, same thing no way to get to the band/album page or any other songs by the band. Moronic UI
Updated to iOS8.4 the other day. Apple Music seems fine. Turned off all the new features including Connect. Don't need it. Between my music and the stations I created on Apple Radio, I am fine. I am glad that Apple let's you turn everything off on their devices. However, there doesn't seem to be a way to turn off Connect in iTunes for Windows.
Also say I go to new section click on the song and staring playing it. Decide wow this is a good song what other songs does this band have. Click name of band, nothing happens. Click ... No link to the band or any of there music. Only thing you can do is save the song. Launch the mini player, same thing no way to get to the band/album page or any other songs by the band. Moronic UI
Google apparently expected its paid on-demand streaming music service to be quite popular among Android users, but instead got a taste of what its Android developers had already been eating: the platform does not attract people who want to pay for things, particularly not anything that can be pirated. Google Music mostly demonstrated the weakness of Android as a platform for supporting commercial apps and services.
This more than anything. The dirty little secret the fAndroids won’t admit to. It makes me wonder why Apple is brining Apple Music to the Android platform. Let the Googlers listen to their crappy mp3s.
Content wise Apple Music seems rather OK. The offer is price competitive and Apple understood that it will need an Android client if it really wants to dominate the music streaming market.
But I am much less impressed with the features and the UI of the Music app, Apple has a long way to go before the app wil reach a maturity level comparable to Spotify or even Google Play Music. If the app does not improve, I'll stay with the easy of use of Spotify
Yeah, I can't get myself past the darn UI of Apple Music. It's just plain bad.
Daniel, I love and respect your editorials every time. But I don't understand how you can proclaim Apple Music a success when I almost lost my entire 4TB library and all my 20 years of playlist building just because there was no warning that when you turn ON iCloud Music Library, it may destroy your iTunes Library and all your playlists. Thank God for Time Machine backup.
Are you sure iCloud Music Library "lost" your music? When I converted my Beats Music account to Apple Music, at first my music and playlists didn't appear on my iPhone. But a quick check of Music's settings revealed that iCloud Music Library was turned off. After toggling it on, all my music appeared just fine.
I can't say whether this explains what happened on your end, but I think you should consider the possibility that the situation was not as dire as you thought before you did a restore from backup.
"Initially a rough competitor to QuickTime for playback, by the late 90s WMP became part of Microsoft's strategy to deploy global, proprietary DRM"
"Microsoft developed state of the art media formats with difficult to crack DRM and cozied up to media companies with promises of locking up their content so customers couldn't even rip songs they bought to their own CDs as personal mixtapes."
"Microsoft was building solutions for its partners that didn't solve problems for consumers..."
"Microsoft built software for big media companies with the hope of squeezing end users..."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton
I remember WMP. I made the mistake of ripping some CDs using Windows Media Player (before I understood what it would do) and it created DRM that was so tightly locked up, the files would only play on the PC that ripped the tracks; copying it to my Windows CE PDA only created unplayable files, and Microsoft Windows was like: please obtain a license from the copyright holder, kind of like how the non-OEM Windows XP and Vista would tell you to go and buy your own license for the DVD MPEG codec when you inserted a DVD into your PC. Pathetic user experience. For anyone who claims Microsoft got better, I offer another example of UX fail: Games for Windows Live. And it didn't end there. Microsoft needs to be smothered until its lifeless, user-hating corpse stops twitching.
It's stories like these that are too often glossed over when people applaud Microsoft's role in the history of the PC. It's important that they be remembered when speaking of its billionaire founder, Bill Gates, who now seeks to varnish and embellish his legacy through highly publicized charitable donations, while spouting free market nonsense about declining world poverty at a time when wealth inequality in his native country is at an all time high, careening towards a second coming of the gilded age.
What a dark world we'd live in if Apple had not triumphed and Microsoft had not sunk into irrelevance.
Comments
I've said before I think Eddy Cue has too much on his plate and in some ways his plate seems like a hodgepodge of stuff that don't neatly fit elsewhere. I personally think Cook should bring in someone to run iCloud, maps and Siri. And poach someone from Microsoft, Google or Amazon that has a lot of experience with the cloud to run it.
LOL. This one is so accurate it's very funny.
"Apple's inviable position of not needing to make money on Apple Music".
"inviable"? I think you mean either "enviable", or "invaluable". Great article btw!
Daniel, I love and respect your editorials every time. But I don't understand how you can proclaim Apple Music a success when I almost lost my entire 4TB library and all my 20 years of playlist building just because there was no warning that when you turn ON iCloud Music Library, it may destroy your iTunes Library and all your playlists. Thank God for Time Machine backup.
It's not perfect and that is stupid of Apple. But I found so many new songs to listen to I hardly know how I live without it for so long. On a past week I almost solely use my iPhone as an iPod. This is a testament of how good it is. Like the article said, if Apple continue to improve it intelligently, like Beat 1 has improved over the past week, music will be one of the main selling point of iPhone again.
For me, it's served to remind me of a lot of music I'd forgotten about over the years which I can now enjoy again without having to purchase outright. And I can sample whole tracks and albums of new stuff.
I stop reading when it said iBooks is not a verb.
As a long time Apple crusader, I had a horrible mobile me experience with duplicated contacts so I would never subject my poorly currated iTunes library to Match.
And I was dubious about Apple Music because I have so many CDs & records in my life.
But because of the free trial, I tried it...AND NOW I AM CRAZY ADDICTED. And my wife tried it independently and feels the same way.
Now we are enrolled in a family plan that we will continue (along with HBO Now) and I now an contemplating an upgrade to an iPhone 6S+ this fall for improved battery life.
That is the way Apple rolls.
I was going to post the same comment. Love the article, but AI needs a proofreader.
Updated to iOS8.4 the other day. Apple Music seems fine. Turned off all the new features including Connect. Don't need it. Between my music and the stations I created on Apple Radio, I am fine. I am glad that Apple let's you turn everything off on their devices. However, there doesn't seem to be a way to turn off Connect in iTunes for Windows.
Also say I go to new section click on the song and staring playing it. Decide wow this is a good song what other songs does this band have. Click name of band, nothing happens. Click ... No link to the band or any of there music. Only thing you can do is save the song. Launch the mini player, same thing no way to get to the band/album page or any other songs by the band. Moronic UI
Nothing to do with UI. It's one of those bugs.
It's a design flaw. The ones that people with applesause won't admit.
What flaw? You can go to the artist page but sometimes you click on it and nothing happened because there is still bug.
Google apparently expected its paid on-demand streaming music service to be quite popular among Android users, but instead got a taste of what its Android developers had already been eating: the platform does not attract people who want to pay for things, particularly not anything that can be pirated. Google Music mostly demonstrated the weakness of Android as a platform for supporting commercial apps and services.
This more than anything. The dirty little secret the fAndroids won’t admit to. It makes me wonder why Apple is brining Apple Music to the Android platform. Let the Googlers listen to their crappy mp3s.
Content wise Apple Music seems rather OK. The offer is price competitive and Apple understood that it will need an Android client if it really wants to dominate the music streaming market.
But I am much less impressed with the features and the UI of the Music app, Apple has a long way to go before the app wil reach a maturity level comparable to Spotify or even Google Play Music. If the app does not improve, I'll stay with the easy of use of Spotify
Yeah, I can't get myself past the darn UI of Apple Music. It's just plain bad.
Daniel, I love and respect your editorials every time. But I don't understand how you can proclaim Apple Music a success when I almost lost my entire 4TB library and all my 20 years of playlist building just because there was no warning that when you turn ON iCloud Music Library, it may destroy your iTunes Library and all your playlists. Thank God for Time Machine backup.
Are you sure iCloud Music Library "lost" your music? When I converted my Beats Music account to Apple Music, at first my music and playlists didn't appear on my iPhone. But a quick check of Music's settings revealed that iCloud Music Library was turned off. After toggling it on, all my music appeared just fine.
I can't say whether this explains what happened on your end, but I think you should consider the possibility that the situation was not as dire as you thought before you did a restore from backup.
Quote:
I remember WMP. I made the mistake of ripping some CDs using Windows Media Player (before I understood what it would do) and it created DRM that was so tightly locked up, the files would only play on the PC that ripped the tracks; copying it to my Windows CE PDA only created unplayable files, and Microsoft Windows was like: please obtain a license from the copyright holder, kind of like how the non-OEM Windows XP and Vista would tell you to go and buy your own license for the DVD MPEG codec when you inserted a DVD into your PC. Pathetic user experience. For anyone who claims Microsoft got better, I offer another example of UX fail: Games for Windows Live. And it didn't end there. Microsoft needs to be smothered until its lifeless, user-hating corpse stops twitching.
It's stories like these that are too often glossed over when people applaud Microsoft's role in the history of the PC. It's important that they be remembered when speaking of its billionaire founder, Bill Gates, who now seeks to varnish and embellish his legacy through highly publicized charitable donations, while spouting free market nonsense about declining world poverty at a time when wealth inequality in his native country is at an all time high, careening towards a second coming of the gilded age.
What a dark world we'd live in if Apple had not triumphed and Microsoft had not sunk into irrelevance.