It looks pretty, but that's not enough to get me to pony up $120/year, unless it comes with some must-have features, and I didn't see anything particularly compelling on their site, but maybe I'm missing something.
It costs as much each year as a Apple Music or Spotify membership AND you need to buy music on top of it? I don’t get it. Maybe for $20.
In my life I have never advised my friends or family to get iTunes. However I have advised them to get Apple Music. Isn't iTunes being broken down into three apps: Podcasts, Music and TV? Won't that cause a little confusion? Apple Music vs just Music?
I know the story is focusing on the migration from iTunes to separate apps for Mac, but Apple's decision to offer iTunes for Windows was arguably the single most important decision they ever made. By doing so, they sold a bazillion iPods to people who otherwise wouldn't ever have bought one because they didn't have a Mac. Those iPod customers became iPhone and then Apple customers.
I've still got mine. 5GB, a new battery and 1000 songs in my pocket. Of course my iPhone has 70GB of music on it.
i remember SoundJam and had a lot of skins for it. I was a little disappointed when Apple bought it. I'm still looking for a simple music player app. I'm not happy with Apple's Music apps for iOS or macOS. For iOS, I've tried Cs and Vox, and neither are nearly as clean, simple, or intuitive for my liking.
I loved loved loved Soundjam so much, the skins were awesome and the trippy screensavers were great. Apple did do a great job both simplifying it and later complicating it a bit, not sure about making it too complicated. Ping was just a dumpster fire.
I know the story is focusing on the migration from iTunes to separate apps for Mac, but Apple's decision to offer iTunes for Windows was arguably the single most important decision they ever made. By doing so, they sold a bazillion iPods to people who otherwise wouldn't ever have bought one because they didn't have a Mac. Those iPod customers became iPhone and then Apple customers.
This is my story in a nutshell. In 2003, I installed iTunes on my Windows machine, and slowly began converting my CDs to AAC files (albeit at only 192kb/s). I then started buying some tracks here and there, but my personal library was growing fast. So, I bought a 40GB iPod. In 2005, I bought my first Mac, and have been a loyal Apple customer ever since.
You don't mention the whole backup iceberg, that was also folded into iTunes at some stage.
If you had music from the mp3 days, you'd likely have folders of albums containing track1, track2, track3 etc. iTunes still can't handle this, so many years later. It has to decide where to put so-called 'unknown artists' and 'unknown albums', so quite often your trackx tracks are orphaned and detached from the other tracks; grouped all together or some other ridiculous thing.
Is there a better music app available now? iTunes is an overweight mess.
I am not sure Apple has realized that:
some people don't want to stream music that they might have already paid for;
some people want to decide where to store their tracks;
we don't need multiple copies of the same album on one drive;
many people don't even store all their music on a local drive.
Have you used iTunes lately? It has allowed you to do all the things on your list, for years.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been using iTunes since 2003, and while that started out on a Windows PC, I migrated to a Mac in 2005. I've been using the Mac version since then, and while I personally have never found it too problematic, I can understand where many of the complaints come from.
One of the most frequent problems I've had over the years IS iTunes/Music's baffling inability to find cover art when absolutely all the metadata of a given album is correct. At one point, I had correct covert for my entire collection of over 1,200+ CDs. The majority of it was correctly found by iTunes, but a small percentage had to come from other sources (download, scan, etc.). Then, after one of the updates, things started to go awry. Now when I look at Album view, it is littered with missing covert. And good luck trying to automatically find cover art for an album that doesn't exist in the iTunes Store. Am I missing something, or did iTunes (or does Music) not have a fallback when the primary source doesn't have the cover art for a given title. It seems to find the correct artist/title/track info from Gracenote, but no cover art.
Another issue I had was iTunes' handling of Audiobooks, and despite having meticulously accurate metadata, it can never seem to sort the list of audiobooks in any consistent way. Most of the books by a given author would be together, and but then you'd have a straggler or two somewhere different. And before you comment, yes, I had all the "sort by" information consistent.
More recently, the current version of Music has a really irritating habit of stopping playback of an existing track when another track is added to the queue as "Play Next". And it seems to happen on the Mac and iOS versions. Not sure what is going on with that. I've submitted feedback, but the problem is unresolved as of this past Saturday.
I know the story is focusing on the migration from iTunes to separate apps for Mac, but Apple's decision to offer iTunes for Windows was arguably the single most important decision they ever made. By doing so, they sold a bazillion iPods to people who otherwise wouldn't ever have bought one because they didn't have a Mac. Those iPod customers became iPhone and then Apple customers.
This is my story in a nutshell. In 2003, I installed iTunes on my Windows machine, and slowly began converting my CDs to AAC files (albeit at only 192kb/s). I then started buying some tracks here and there, but my personal library was growing fast. So, I bought a 40GB iPod. In 2005, I bought my first Mac, and have been a loyal Apple customer ever since.
iTunes should check out Roon! It's what iTunes should have been 5-10 years ago....It's the most incredible playback software ever made.....iTunes could not carry Roon's Jock strap!
I respectfully disagree. I am no longer using Roon.
It looks pretty, but that's not enough to get me to pony up $120/year, unless it comes with some must-have features, and I didn't see anything particularly compelling on their site, but maybe I'm missing something.
It costs as much each year as a Apple Music or Spotify membership AND you need to buy music on top of it? I don’t get it. Maybe for $20.
I checked out the Roon website, and it sounds a lot like Plex Music to me, just with MQA support and proprietary hardware. Still, $120/year (or $700 lifetime) seems like a lot for a glorified music player IMO.
I still have SoundJam MP on my QuickSilver G4 running OS 9.
iTunes was not a disaster. Not sure why anyone thought it was hard to use. Simple to use the Library drop-down and switch between Music, TV Shows, Movies, Podcasts. How hard is that? Also, you had access to the same iTunes Store for Music, TV Shows, Movies, and Podcasts. Not so anymore. The new apps are a disaster.
Music 1.1 has improved with Big Sur as Apple added back iTunes features that they stripped in version 1.0. You can now view album artwork in any list view, finally. The Music app still has access to the same iTunes Store for Music that it had before. Unfortunately, not true for the awful TV app and Podcast app.
The TV app is a UI disaster. Scrolling through TV seasons is a nightmare, especially with a long-running series. Taking forever to scroll to get to later seasons. With iTunes, you could click on the season you wanted to only display those episodes. How does Apple think the new TV app is easier to use when you cannot even select a TV season? The iTunes Store for TV Shows and Movies in the TV app is a stripped down mess that is geared to rip people off and allow Apple to make the most money. Not sure why Apple is using a stripped down version for the TV app. You cannot locate, search for, or buy movie bundles, box sets, or complete TV series box sets in the TV app. You can only locate them and buy them in iOS, AppleTV, or iTunes for Mojave. Once you buy them from those sources, you can play them in the TV app. So if you search for a 'Complete TV Series Box Set' on sale in the iTunes Store, you won't find it in the TV app. Apple only lists the full-price individual seasons in the TV app. This has been reported to Apple multiple times, since Catalina, but they still have not fixed it.
The Podcast app is a joke. You can't access your saved Podcasts that were previously in iTunes, such as video Podcasts. They won't play and there is no way to access them in the app. The Podcast app does not have an 'Add to Library' feature. QuickTime Player and the Finder is the only way to play them.
So the TV and Podcast apps are pretty much useless in macOS.
So, I’m still using iTunes (12.9.5.5) on my Mac mini (2018, Mojave) media server. I regularly use several AppleScripts, and for the classical music in my collection, I use the “work name” and “movement” fields in track info.
I really don’t want a dumbed down music player with functionality stripped away.
iTunes should check out Roon! It's what iTunes should have been 5-10 years ago....It's the most incredible playback software ever made.....iTunes could not carry Roon's Jock strap!
It looks pretty, but that's not enough to get me to pony up $120/year, unless it comes with some must-have features, and I didn't see anything particularly compelling on their site, but maybe I'm missing something.
Agreed. Roon is OK but yeah, not really worth the money to me. Plex does nearly everything that Roon can, for free. Add remote download/sync use for a third of Roon's cost.
Pure nostalgia, but this is probably the sexiest Apple product that I've seen (probably because it was the first Apple product I ever saw). The hardware, UI and concept just blew me away.
I never could get the first gen. iPod, but I did get the 3rd gen. one. It still gives me a buzz when I see it now. Everything about it screamed luxury, from the Origami style packaging, to the included remote, to the belt clip and the dock.
It very well deserves its place in history as Apple's breakthrough product!
My last iPod was the 160GB iPod Classic. However, there was something very appealing about the monochromatic screen that the colour screen iPods couldn't capture.
iTunes should check out Roon! It's what iTunes should have been 5-10 years ago....It's the most incredible playback software ever made.....iTunes could not carry Roon's Jock strap!
Do the math, and imagine how much you would’ve paid Roon for the last 10 years.
Comments
Can't trademark "Music"
I've still got mine. 5GB, a new battery and 1000 songs in my pocket. Of course my iPhone has 70GB of music on it.
i remember SoundJam and had a lot of skins for it. I was a little disappointed when Apple bought it. I'm still looking for a simple music player app. I'm not happy with Apple's Music apps for iOS or macOS. For iOS, I've tried Cs and Vox, and neither are nearly as clean, simple, or intuitive for my liking.
One of the most frequent problems I've had over the years IS iTunes/Music's baffling inability to find cover art when absolutely all the metadata of a given album is correct. At one point, I had correct covert for my entire collection of over 1,200+ CDs. The majority of it was correctly found by iTunes, but a small percentage had to come from other sources (download, scan, etc.). Then, after one of the updates, things started to go awry. Now when I look at Album view, it is littered with missing covert. And good luck trying to automatically find cover art for an album that doesn't exist in the iTunes Store. Am I missing something, or did iTunes (or does Music) not have a fallback when the primary source doesn't have the cover art for a given title. It seems to find the correct artist/title/track info from Gracenote, but no cover art.
Another issue I had was iTunes' handling of Audiobooks, and despite having meticulously accurate metadata, it can never seem to sort the list of audiobooks in any consistent way. Most of the books by a given author would be together, and but then you'd have a straggler or two somewhere different. And before you comment, yes, I had all the "sort by" information consistent.
More recently, the current version of Music has a really irritating habit of stopping playback of an existing track when another track is added to the queue as "Play Next". And it seems to happen on the Mac and iOS versions. Not sure what is going on with that. I've submitted feedback, but the problem is unresolved as of this past Saturday.
Me too.
iTunes was not a disaster. Not sure why anyone thought it was hard to use. Simple to use the Library drop-down and switch between Music, TV Shows, Movies, Podcasts. How hard is that? Also, you had access to the same iTunes Store for Music, TV Shows, Movies, and Podcasts. Not so anymore. The new apps are a disaster.
Music 1.1 has improved with Big Sur as Apple added back iTunes features that they stripped in version 1.0. You can now view album artwork in any list view, finally. The Music app still has access to the same iTunes Store for Music that it had before. Unfortunately, not true for the awful TV app and Podcast app.
The TV app is a UI disaster. Scrolling through TV seasons is a nightmare, especially with a long-running series. Taking forever to scroll to get to later seasons. With iTunes, you could click on the season you wanted to only display those episodes. How does Apple think the new TV app is easier to use when you cannot even select a TV season? The iTunes Store for TV Shows and Movies in the TV app is a stripped down mess that is geared to rip people off and allow Apple to make the most money. Not sure why Apple is using a stripped down version for the TV app. You cannot locate, search for, or buy movie bundles, box sets, or complete TV series box sets in the TV app. You can only locate them and buy them in iOS, AppleTV, or iTunes for Mojave. Once you buy them from those sources, you can play them in the TV app. So if you search for a 'Complete TV Series Box Set' on sale in the iTunes Store, you won't find it in the TV app. Apple only lists the full-price individual seasons in the TV app. This has been reported to Apple multiple times, since Catalina, but they still have not fixed it.
The Podcast app is a joke. You can't access your saved Podcasts that were previously in iTunes, such as video Podcasts. They won't play and there is no way to access them in the app. The Podcast app does not have an 'Add to Library' feature. QuickTime Player and the Finder is the only way to play them.
So the TV and Podcast apps are pretty much useless in macOS.
I never could get the first gen. iPod, but I did get the 3rd gen. one. It still gives me a buzz when I see it now. Everything about it screamed luxury, from the Origami style packaging, to the included remote, to the belt clip and the dock.
It very well deserves its place in history as Apple's breakthrough product!
My last iPod was the 160GB iPod Classic. However, there was something very appealing about the monochromatic screen that the colour screen iPods couldn't capture.
I must admit though, I struggled to find my way around iTunes 12.