Their upselling techniques are so annoying, I deliberately cut all Apple subscriptions a few months ago and they still pop things up every day telling me to resubscribe to iCloud Pro Plus nonsense.
Idk who they think needs or wants any of this trash but I am fairly certain I can come up with an arbitrary number of things I want in life that are not more useless software subscriptions from an entity that has been extremely hostile to its professional userbase for years. In the last week I also feel like my MBP has been artificially hindered in performance and battery life after an OS software update, which doesn't feel like the first time.
It will be difficult but I see myself switching to one of the Ubuntu laptops that are on the market, like system76 or something. Apple just doesn't deserve my money anymore
I have a local music library, and it's annoying how everything I use has been shoved into a small part of the UI on the iPhone. Plus it occasionally pops up asking me to subscribe to Apple Music. I just don't need it. I discover new music through YouTube usually.
But iTunes/Music has supported that library since 2003 for me, so I trust it. 19 years, that's like 19 Google service lifespans! Even most software hasn't lived that long.
There's a toggle in Settings to disable most of the Apple Music features in Music. The Radio section (whatever it is, I don't know) still shows, but everything else is hidden, and I never received any advertising popups with that toggled.
Yeah, that helps, but overall the Music app is worse for me than it was in the iPhone 3GS days when it was centered around iPod features. Not a big deal.
I adopted Apple Music pretty early in its life and actually liked it in the beginning. But I've noticed the quality is deteriorating.
The UX is slow. It takes 5 seconds to add a song to my library now. Half the time images don't load - so I have a bunch of black squares with words underneath. Sometimes music just doesn't play. 5G/4G handoffs confuse it, forcing me to force quit and restart. The shuffle/repeat options are buried in a weird location. Should be right next to the play button. These are all relatively new problems (the last 6 months or so.)
I don't mind paying for software. But I'm not going to pay for half-baked efforts like Apple Music is quickly becoming, especially if the price keeps increasing.
On my iPhone Apple Music seems to be fine, but Music.app on desktop is hot garbage. I believe music.apple.com in a browser works better, but how... how can a website be better than a "native" app?
The same way that I believe the web version of MS Teams to be superior to the (what is really just an Electron web app) Mac desktop version: I'm assuming the web version that will later be turned into a desktop app has to work. How is it going to work as a desktop app if it doesn't work in the native container it was designed to work in? Then throw it at Electron, and profit???
Having never written a web-based desktop app in my life, this is all out of my butt. But at some point I think it reasonable that there are assumptions once the web app is working that don't cleanly port to Electron or summat, and no one cared to check or cared to fix it.
Yeah, they somehow manage to break the app more and more despite recent rewriting efforts(?), moving to more native views, etc.
I’d love to use and support a music streaming service that allows me to incorporate my own files in a good way, but there doesn’t seem to be any great solution. I’m close to just migrating to a file-based approach and just keeping a big local library of mp3s/flacs (and Spotify as a fallback for stuff I don’t own yet or want to check out temporarily).
The (desktop) Music app suffers from such stupid UI omissions that I hate rewarding it with money.
Example: You discover a "radio" show you like because it is suggested on the Browse page. Well, there's no way to save that. There's no way to bookmark it. You seriously have to essentially WRITE IT DOWN if you want to come back to a show later. WTF?
Or you're on the Browse page and you play something. There's no indicator in the UI of what's playing. If you click on an interesting-looking playlist or show and 20 minutes later you've decided you like it... you come back and look and there's no way to find out what you're listening to. There's not even a little "playing" icon on the thing that's playing, let alone a proper highlight or selection. It's unbelievable. And of course, there's no way to bookmark that, either.
This is why I switched to Spotify 3+ years ago and I'm sad to hear nothing has changed. I was on Apple Music prior for years and it just seemed so stagnant features-wise.
Apple needs to apply the Safari treatment to Apple Music and create a dedicated team that regularly releases updates detached from OS updates. This team needs to have a strong UX lead associated.
I agree with your reaction of dumb UI omissions. Spotify isn't perfect by any means, but they are doing a better job at looking at how people expect the app to work and responding to those needs with features.
The fact is that Music is still iTunes, a terrible jukebox app that Apple bought.
For years after iTunes launched, you could be listening to Internet radio (REAL Internet radio, not Apple's BS "radio"), and there'd be artist and song metadata displayed in iTunes. But could you click on that and say "buy song from iTunes?" NO. I mean... WTF, I wanted to spend money on iTunes but Apple didn't allow that.
No, Apple should lay off half the Apply Music team, and double the prices. They'll realize much more profit that way, because 95% of subscribers will happily continue to pay, no matter how bad the service is.
Apple Music seems always assumes you have good network connectivity.
There was one year I upgraded my phone's iOS at work (probably 2016 or 2017), when heading home that night, the Music app no longer loads but a blank screen, even I have all the iTunes music on device locally.
Later I found that first load of that upgraded Music app has an Apple Music pop up for "free trial", that requires data connection, which my company's garage happen to be a cellular dead spot. Before you dismiss that offer, you cannot even use the Music app.
My favorite part of the Apple Music UX is that if you're connected to a wifi network that doesn't have internet, some UI actions like playing or skipping a song are delayed by 60 seconds until whatever network operation the app is trying times out (at least on the Android app)
Last week I cancelled Apple Music. I found that my previously large music collection, which I had before joining Apple Music and its convenient web upload, was in tatters. Most albums were gone, and of the few ones still there, many had missing songs. Is that progress? Luckily I found the missing music as part of the backup of a laptop I decommissioned in 2016.
I jumped ship off Apple Music when I noticed that songs would just silently disappear from my library. I've heard it's gotten even worse now that the streaming wars are on.
Probably Apple has to increase prices because there's so few paying users left.
Too many services with too much mediocre content. I liked some TV+ content but when it’s just me using a service in a family of four, it’s the first to go. If I’m in the mood to watch “something” I can find something to fill that need.
Maybe the pandemic wore me out or maybe it’s age related (40’s) but it feels like everything has been done and once something new is successful-ish they just beat it to death. So if I want a recent comedy or action movie it doesn’t matter much what a streaming service offers, they will have something that fits the bill.
22 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 52.9 ms ] threadIdk who they think needs or wants any of this trash but I am fairly certain I can come up with an arbitrary number of things I want in life that are not more useless software subscriptions from an entity that has been extremely hostile to its professional userbase for years. In the last week I also feel like my MBP has been artificially hindered in performance and battery life after an OS software update, which doesn't feel like the first time.
It will be difficult but I see myself switching to one of the Ubuntu laptops that are on the market, like system76 or something. Apple just doesn't deserve my money anymore
But iTunes/Music has supported that library since 2003 for me, so I trust it. 19 years, that's like 19 Google service lifespans! Even most software hasn't lived that long.
-Steve Jobs ectoplasm'
-Tim Cook
The UX is slow. It takes 5 seconds to add a song to my library now. Half the time images don't load - so I have a bunch of black squares with words underneath. Sometimes music just doesn't play. 5G/4G handoffs confuse it, forcing me to force quit and restart. The shuffle/repeat options are buried in a weird location. Should be right next to the play button. These are all relatively new problems (the last 6 months or so.)
I don't mind paying for software. But I'm not going to pay for half-baked efforts like Apple Music is quickly becoming, especially if the price keeps increasing.
Having never written a web-based desktop app in my life, this is all out of my butt. But at some point I think it reasonable that there are assumptions once the web app is working that don't cleanly port to Electron or summat, and no one cared to check or cared to fix it.
I’d love to use and support a music streaming service that allows me to incorporate my own files in a good way, but there doesn’t seem to be any great solution. I’m close to just migrating to a file-based approach and just keeping a big local library of mp3s/flacs (and Spotify as a fallback for stuff I don’t own yet or want to check out temporarily).
Example: You discover a "radio" show you like because it is suggested on the Browse page. Well, there's no way to save that. There's no way to bookmark it. You seriously have to essentially WRITE IT DOWN if you want to come back to a show later. WTF?
Or you're on the Browse page and you play something. There's no indicator in the UI of what's playing. If you click on an interesting-looking playlist or show and 20 minutes later you've decided you like it... you come back and look and there's no way to find out what you're listening to. There's not even a little "playing" icon on the thing that's playing, let alone a proper highlight or selection. It's unbelievable. And of course, there's no way to bookmark that, either.
Apple needs to apply the Safari treatment to Apple Music and create a dedicated team that regularly releases updates detached from OS updates. This team needs to have a strong UX lead associated.
I agree with your reaction of dumb UI omissions. Spotify isn't perfect by any means, but they are doing a better job at looking at how people expect the app to work and responding to those needs with features.
For years after iTunes launched, you could be listening to Internet radio (REAL Internet radio, not Apple's BS "radio"), and there'd be artist and song metadata displayed in iTunes. But could you click on that and say "buy song from iTunes?" NO. I mean... WTF, I wanted to spend money on iTunes but Apple didn't allow that.
To my knowledge that was NEVER fixed. Incredible.
There was one year I upgraded my phone's iOS at work (probably 2016 or 2017), when heading home that night, the Music app no longer loads but a blank screen, even I have all the iTunes music on device locally.
Later I found that first load of that upgraded Music app has an Apple Music pop up for "free trial", that requires data connection, which my company's garage happen to be a cellular dead spot. Before you dismiss that offer, you cannot even use the Music app.
Real happy with Amazon Music Unlimited, its a much better service in almost every way.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33309161
Last week I cancelled Apple Music. I found that my previously large music collection, which I had before joining Apple Music and its convenient web upload, was in tatters. Most albums were gone, and of the few ones still there, many had missing songs. Is that progress? Luckily I found the missing music as part of the backup of a laptop I decommissioned in 2016.
Probably Apple has to increase prices because there's so few paying users left.
Maybe the pandemic wore me out or maybe it’s age related (40’s) but it feels like everything has been done and once something new is successful-ish they just beat it to death. So if I want a recent comedy or action movie it doesn’t matter much what a streaming service offers, they will have something that fits the bill.