Apple Music minisite gets 'Guided Tours' page to explain basic tasks
Apple on Monday introduced a "Guided Tours" section to its Apple Music minisite, demonstrating some of the service's core functions in a series of videos.
Five of the tours concentrate on the tabs in the iPhone's Music app: For You, New, Radio, Connect, and My Music. The remaining two deal with playlists, whether curated or user-created.
None of the clips address the iTunes or iPad interfaces for the service, or the app for the fourth-generation Apple TV shipping in October. Third-gen Apple TVs will not support the service.
The videos may be meant to address complaints from some people that the service has a confusing interface. In both iOS and iTunes, for instance, Apple Music controls are mixed in with those for locally-saved content.
This week marks a critical period, as Apple is just two days away from the end of the initial trials for Apple Music. Starting on Wednesday, Oct. 1, subscribers will have to pay at least $10 per month for the service, and the company is expected to lose a number of people who are either dissatisfied or simply wanted to take advantage of the trial offer. The number remaining could be a sign of the service's prospects.
Because subscriptions are set to auto-renew, listeners must delve into settings if they want to cancel.
Five of the tours concentrate on the tabs in the iPhone's Music app: For You, New, Radio, Connect, and My Music. The remaining two deal with playlists, whether curated or user-created.
None of the clips address the iTunes or iPad interfaces for the service, or the app for the fourth-generation Apple TV shipping in October. Third-gen Apple TVs will not support the service.
The videos may be meant to address complaints from some people that the service has a confusing interface. In both iOS and iTunes, for instance, Apple Music controls are mixed in with those for locally-saved content.
This week marks a critical period, as Apple is just two days away from the end of the initial trials for Apple Music. Starting on Wednesday, Oct. 1, subscribers will have to pay at least $10 per month for the service, and the company is expected to lose a number of people who are either dissatisfied or simply wanted to take advantage of the trial offer. The number remaining could be a sign of the service's prospects.
Because subscriptions are set to auto-renew, listeners must delve into settings if they want to cancel.
Comments
Music is still a horrible app, and they've yet to address the forced cloud storage and streaming model if you simply wish to listen to Apple Music offline...I have to upload 40 gb of music to Apple, only to stream it back to myself? It is moronic.
Oh really? You do know the first generation iPhone had guided tours don't you? I guess that was a poor UX then?
Oh really? You do know the first generation iPhone had guided tours don't you? I guess that was a poor UX then?
Agreed, but the iPhone was revolution 1.0 in the world of phones - it was all very new.
Music has sort of devolved from an iTunes that was easily understandable years ago to something that is not well thought out now...its a bit of going backwards, despite all its polish...
I'm not a huge fan of it, especially the New tab. Just way too many options. They also need to fix 3D Touch implementation. On the home screen if you 3D Touch an app that doesn't yet support it you get specific haptic feedback and a visual indicator on the screen. In the Music app 3D Touch isn't supported everywhere and if you hard press on something that isn't supported it does nothing. They should fix it so you get specific feedback like you do with app icons.
I'm not defending the music app. I think that is one app where it feels like it was designed based on a list of marketing features and one where Apple should've followed their own a thousand noes for every yes mantra. But in general I don't think guided tours mean the UX is poor. Apple did guided tours for the Watch witch I though were very helpful.
Why do you have to upload 40 gb of music?
Just curious, what are the other options? You can't listen to offline music unless you do the iTunes Match. That's one thing Apple needs to change. You shouldn't be forced to upload your music to Apple if you want to listen to offline music. I have a huge music library. The last time I turned on iCloud music, my library was destroy. I know Apple fixed some issues, but I'm hesitant to turn on iCloud music again.
EDIT: I haven't tried this but I guess one option is turning on icloud music with my phone. I'm not sure about this, but I think if you try to download on say my iMac, it will require me to turn on icloud music there as well. That's where my whole music collection is.
Since cellular and wifi simply aren't ubiquitous (and cellular streaming will not be cheap if you do it all the time), there are plenty of reasons to want to listen to Apple Music streams offline. But if you try to download them, you are not allowed unless you turn on iCloud Music library (why? Who knows...)
Now, when you turn on iCloud music library, you can no long sync your music locally from your computer to your iPhone - so you must enable iCloud music library on your computer, upload your entire personal library to Apple, and then stream your own music back to yourself. Not only is it asinine and potentially very expensive, I'd like apple to explain how well that works when you're in a car, bus, subway, tunnel or train, or in large buildings, or in a plane, or out of country....
I am sure I'll eventually figure it out, but the layout and icons in the new iOS Music app suggest it is not exactly the most intuitive piece of software from Apple. It's not terrible, but it's not impressive either.
Add: It's a bit distressing that fifteen years into iOS, it still does not offer an equalizer setting instead of the cartoonish little categories. People really know how 'jazz' is supposed to sound relative to 'hip hop' relative to 'classical' relative to 'rock'? I'll best 90% pick 'bass booster' and get on with life....
I'm not a huge fan of it, especially the New tab. Just way too many options. They also need to fix 3D Touch implementation. On the home screen if you 3D Touch an app that doesn't yet support it you get specific haptic feedback and a visual indicator on the screen. In the Music app 3D Touch isn't supported everywhere and if you hard press on something that isn't supported it does nothing. They should fix it so you get specific feedback like you do with app icons.
I'd really love to see a renewed commitment from Apple to cleaning up this service/app. AFAIC, it's the least "Apple" service they've ever created.
I use iTunes Match only for my AppleTV. It's always on wifi, so not a big issue. On my iPhone and iPad (both 128GB), I store about 60gb of music. As a result I am not dependent on the constraints of connectivity and data caps to listen to my music.
You're correct Apple is moving into a confusing Windows style nightmare with this app.
I too bought into the 200GB per month of space, not for backups or photos storage it was so I could put my music in a place I too could stream. What's wrong with that picture? And before you guys jump all over me for having a 128gb iPhone... I am using my iPhone for other stuff and can't trash the whole phone just to have a $949 iPod.
Hell you can't even get just a 160GB music only iPod they killed that off too
Please take Jonny off the music ap division and put someone that Steve would scream at until he'd say, "there, now THATS simple and easy to use!" (you know he would hate this hot mess and heads would roll it's not that I'm too old it's just not good!)
I signed up for Apple Music and even decided I don't need a trial. "Let that bitch get her money so she'll shut up" (not that I'd play her after her rants that was like a South Park episode). But after several months - it's the guest prided apple has released in 30+ years that I don't want and want a refund.
Waters up with turning Apple Music on destroyed your pen personal collection? Bi don't mean that bug that wiped it put. I mean why can't they coexist without mine disappearing or at the very most very difficult to access unless you ho yo setting and just turn Apple Music off
I'll stay positive. Maybe these videos will explain why my 172 IQ doesn't help in this situation of Apple Music and I'll be the first to come back and point out why I must just be airboutn idiot even though I've run this record company for the past 32 years so I know music guys. . Lol
I agree with you. I've been a huge fan of iTunes. We're a record company and I liked the "ease of you" feature but seriously the first thing I do now when I click the MUSIC app is quickly click MY MUSIC -> PLAYLISTS. The rest is just a big hot mess. I was glad to see they made videos to explain the hot mess but the fact that a video is needed??
You're correct Apple is moving into a confusing Windows style nightmare with this app.
I too bought into the 200GB per month of space, not for backups or photos storage it was so I could put my music in a place I too could stream. What's wrong with that picture? And before you guys jump all over me for having a 128gb iPhone... I am using my iPhone for other stuff and can't trash the whole phone just to have a $949 iPod.
Hell you can't even get just a 160GB music only iPod they killed that off too
Please take Jonny off the music ap division and put someone that Steve would fight till he said "there's now THATS simple and easy to use" ( you know he would hate this hot mess!
FYI: The term you meant to use is "ease of use"... And not that it matters, but his name is spelled "Jony".
Yes, but for people who want to pay and subscribe to Apple Music and listen to playlists offline, which, for all the reasons I noted above, will be a very real need, you are painted in a corner by this model. My wife and daughter constantly complain about being cut off from their music when commuting to and from New York, not to mention traveling to Europe and Asia.
It's crazy dumb. Make it an option for those that want it, but enable offline Apple Music listening while still preserving local sync. It's an easy fix, but this seems like an approach that was taken for business and profit first, not user experience, which is not like Apple...
It's bad. I can't believe Eddy Cue signed off on it. Telling too that there was zero mention of Apple Music at Apple's last event.
I'd like to see four sections of Apple Music, each of them may be individually disabled:
1) "Discover" containing "For You", suggestions from Apple Editors/Curators as well as your social network and "Top Hits", based purely on industry charting by date and genre;
2) "My Music" containing "Up Next" (cached streaming) and "Library" (permanently stored); and
3) "Radio" including "Beats 1 ,2, 3...X Radio" and something like "My Stations", comprising stations created in Apple Music alongside bookmarks of your favorite pre-existing internet radio stations.
4) "Connect". I might be an outlier in liking Connect. It allows me easy access to all of the Apple music by artists I listen to. (I have "Automatically Follow Artists" toggled on, although it sometimes toggles itself off for some crazy reason.) What I like most about Connect is that if I want to hear more from Sonny Clark, I can look him up in Connect and get his discography. Furthermore, when I click his name, I get a few similar artists like Lee Morgan and Kenny Dorham.)
And he's not even responsible for Apple Music, Eddy Cue is. iTunes has its own software UI team so it's entirely possible that Alan Dye was not involved in that app. The only things we know for sure his team has worked on are ios OS X and watchOS.