(BTW: I don't know why there is all the hate for the video around here... I thought it was good. It was quick and showed the relevant new features with a decent voice over. Can't please everyone I suppose!)
The Music App looks better.. but Apple still has a long way to go to catch up to Spotify. I was a die hard iTunes user. Literally purchased music only from there since about 2005. Late last year I decided to give Beats a try. I enjoyed having access to a wider selection of music, but after paying for about 4-5 months the limitations of the interface and service just started to annoy me. In particular: music discovery was difficult. I would listen to suggested playlists and try to spawn off from there... but the suggested playlists were never that great (I tend to listen to Indie with a bit of Alt).
A couple of months ago I tried Spotify and I was blown away! Their Top 100 Indie list is awesome... and the fact that I can subscribe to it and always have it downloaded on my phone is awesome (I spend a lot of my commute in the subway where I don't always get great reception). I have found TONS of new artists... and the ability to easily share them with my wife is awesome (the social features in Spotify really work well). In addition, "following" artists works really well, with a lot of the bands I follow releasing new singles all the time on Spotify... really helps me keep up with what's going on out there.
In short: just changing the look of menus is a far cry from the massive overhaul that the service needs.
How many taps/swipes did it take to play a song? I lost count after 2.
I hear ya. It seems like the first few iTunes GUIs way back when worked great in both iOS and OS X. Then they felt the need to keep updating, tweaking, updating, redesigning, tweaking, and updating the GUI to the point where ease of use has become secondary to "look what we can do". Same thing with the App Store search. It used to work fine with a simple, straightforward GUI. Then they felt the need to mess with it and now it takes many more swipes and taps to find what you're looking for.
One of the primary things that historically separated Apple from Windows was how quickly, easily, and intuitively you could navigate a program, even if you never used it before. It seemed like every aspect of the GUI was considered from the user's point of view. You rarely, if ever, had to refer to a user's manual because things just worked in the most obvious, intuitive way. With ever OS update I keep seeing a little bit less of that, and it's disappointing.
given the deletion of cover flow, i predict apple is adding a more fully functional music player in landscape mode. with the larger iphone 6 and 6 plus most apps gain functionality when flipped into landscape, but for ages, the music player just got less useful. I feel like it's time for that to change with near 6 inch screens and the fact that you've got two hands on the phone when it's in landscape. They deleted cover flow to make room for something new and better that will be released with iOS 9, which helps this earlier 8.4 release of these basic features (some of which have been available on the desktop application and Remote app for a while now) make more sense.
Comments
The Music App looks better.. but Apple still has a long way to go to catch up to Spotify. I was a die hard iTunes user. Literally purchased music only from there since about 2005. Late last year I decided to give Beats a try. I enjoyed having access to a wider selection of music, but after paying for about 4-5 months the limitations of the interface and service just started to annoy me. In particular: music discovery was difficult. I would listen to suggested playlists and try to spawn off from there... but the suggested playlists were never that great (I tend to listen to Indie with a bit of Alt).
A couple of months ago I tried Spotify and I was blown away! Their Top 100 Indie list is awesome... and the fact that I can subscribe to it and always have it downloaded on my phone is awesome (I spend a lot of my commute in the subway where I don't always get great reception). I have found TONS of new artists... and the ability to easily share them with my wife is awesome (the social features in Spotify really work well). In addition, "following" artists works really well, with a lot of the bands I follow releasing new singles all the time on Spotify... really helps me keep up with what's going on out there.
In short: just changing the look of menus is a far cry from the massive overhaul that the service needs.
How many taps/swipes did it take to play a song? I lost count after 2.
I hear ya. It seems like the first few iTunes GUIs way back when worked great in both iOS and OS X. Then they felt the need to keep updating, tweaking, updating, redesigning, tweaking, and updating the GUI to the point where ease of use has become secondary to "look what we can do". Same thing with the App Store search. It used to work fine with a simple, straightforward GUI. Then they felt the need to mess with it and now it takes many more swipes and taps to find what you're looking for.
One of the primary things that historically separated Apple from Windows was how quickly, easily, and intuitively you could navigate a program, even if you never used it before. It seemed like every aspect of the GUI was considered from the user's point of view. You rarely, if ever, had to refer to a user's manual because things just worked in the most obvious, intuitive way. With ever OS update I keep seeing a little bit less of that, and it's disappointing.