neoncat

(chuckle) Fair enough. I clearly touched a nerve, and AI made the right editorial decision publishing this piece, then. It generated valuable clicks and pageviews fed into the ad tracking/profiling beast on a day when otherwise there would be few. I still think "content" like this is beneath adults, as is "fandom" for multinational corporations in general, but it's OK if I'm an outlier in that regard.

I'll stand by my broader point, however: The entire tech sector—Apple, Spotify, and everyone in-between—would benefit from the discipline that focus brings. Fewer features, fewer promises. Deliver what you can intelligently and shut up about the rest.

The concern trolling among the Apple fan sites about a throwaway feature is top-notch. Both AppleInsider and 9to5 Mac dedicated above-the-fold space on a Sunday morning to this. Like, someone got out of bed on a day off to write this nonsense.

To be clear: As a Spotify Premium subscriber, I certainly wish they wouldn't promise features they're unable to deliver. However: Glass houses and all, given Apple's inability to deliver its full menu of promised features in iOS 15 or Big Sur, even months after their launch. Software development is incredibly difficult. The push-pull between what marketing wants to tease and what engineering can deliver is real, and present at any company, whether Apple or Spotify or a 5-person app shop. Difficult, under the best of circumstances.

Maybe be better, AI? You write some great articles and often cut through the junk that passes as content elsewhere. Kudos. Stuff like this is not up to standard, IMO (Offered respectfully. Obvi, I'm one reader among thousands. Take my comments within that context.)

Merry Christmas (or whatever you celebrate) to the entire AI staff. I appreciate all you do.

winstoner71 said:

dix99 said:

Oh no, it’s probably gonna be assigned to the Zune team. Oh wait, it can’t get any worse than it is, so maybe it’s a good thing. 

Never got all the whining about the Apple Music app. Whatever issues I’ve had with it were always addressed, but I mostly use it on iOS. It does several things Spotify doesn’t, namely I can play all of hundreds of gigabytes of bootlegs and live music. Something you’ll never see on Spotify. Just odd to see all the crap people give it. 

You can sync local music to Spotify's iOS clients, and you can incorporate a local library into the desktop client. It's not a particularly obvious process (see? It's not just Apple, UI/UX is hard for everyone), and there is no equivalent to the 'iTunes Match' function of Apple Music where you can sync your own music/bootlegs/etc. to the cloud, but the two services are far more alike than they are different. Spotify's recommendation engine is so far beyond Apple's it's not even a contest, which is valuable to me, but not everyone is into new music discovery. Totally fine, use the service that makes sense to you. But judge them fairly on real information, not conjecture.

rob53 said:

Shows how dumb the judge is. No way Apple can reconfigure the App Store that fast. Plus there will be plenty of lawsuits against Apple for changing it. If Apple is forced to open it up I’m filing a lawsuit against Apple for damaging a secure system, putting my devices at risk. 

Cool, who are you represented by? Where will you be filing your suit?