“With the launch of the iTunes store and the phasing out of the iPod in favor of the iPhone, iTunes became the unavoidable command center for managing all kinds of data, not just ‘tunes’ but photos, podcasts, apps, TV shows, and more,” Leon Neyfakh writes for Slate. “The software had become a bloated monster that wasn’t good at doing any of the things that Apple was forcing it to do.”
“At some point between then and now, iTunes became a total black hole to me. I stopped understanding what it did when I downloaded a song and dragged it into my library. I didn’t get how it related to Apple Music, or what role iCloud played in managing my data. Above all I couldn’t get my head around syncing—the mysterious and maddening process I had to go through whenever I wanted to put specific songs on my iPhone,” Neyfakh writes. “None of it made sense to me, and when I thought for too long about the impact iTunes was having on the texture and structure of my music consumption, I was overcome with a bitter sense of loss.”
“I used to love collecting music,” Neyfakh writes. “I believe that Apple—and iTunes in particular—shoulders more responsibility than anything else for how my listening habits have changed… How I got here, I’m not totally sure, except that on more than one occasion, I’ve had some kind of syncing problem while trying to transfer something to my iPhone, or trying to delete photos or podcasts or movies in order to free up space. Whatever it was I was attempting to do, I must have selected the wrong settings or checked the wrong boxes or hit the wrong buttons while doing it; all I know is that Apple has repeatedly wiped my digital collection clean of all the songs I ever downloaded, except for the ones I had purchased directly from the iTunes store. That’s how I remember it, anyway. The truth is I am a helplessly unreliable narrator in this story, because whenever I use iTunes, I find that I have absolutely no idea what’s going on, or what the consequences of my actions will be.”
“I decided enough was enough. I was going to figure out how to use iTunes and Apple Music if it killed me,” Neyfakh writes. “It almost did. To wit, here’s me after 30 minutes on the phone with an Apple technical-support person who tried her best to lead me out of the darkness.”
This has been building for years. With each new version of “iTunes” (even the app’s name hasn’t been right for many years), we’ve had such high hopes, but all we ever get are more and more appendages bolted on to the bloated mass, when it’s exactly the opposite that’s called for!
iTunes is the Yoplait yogurt cup of UIs.iTunes is the Yoplait yogurt cup of UIs. Upside-down, inefficient, messy, unusable in spots and woefully inefficient. The foil top always tears in half; it never comes off in one piece. Trying to spoon it all out of an ever-widening cup maddeningly gets yogurt all over the spoon’s handle and your fingers. And inconvenient bumps molded into the horrid thing to go along with a wide yogurt-catching lip around the top thwart even the most determined of spoon scrapers. The amount of Yoplait yogurt thrown away due to poor packaging design could feed several impoverished nations. The amount of media hidden away, seemingly inaccessible, and lost inside in iTunes is like leftover yogurt forlornly and forever stuck in that awfully-designed Yoplait cup. What a stupid waste!
Apple, take a step back and look at the iTunes app anew. Look at it as if, say, it was a piece of Microsoft software (it certainly looks and acts like one) and approach it as if you’re about to enter the market. What would Apple do? Laugh at what a POS it is and then get to work creating a coherent, easy-to-use solution.
Just like you did with personal computers, MP3 players, smartphones, and tablets make this experience for end users again. Look at what Apple did with non-linear editing via iMovie. You made something very complex into something simple, understandable, and usable for everyone. Reinvent. Simplify. Delight us. Surprise us. That’s why you get the big money.
Give “iTunes” to another Apple team, or teams, or even bring in some outside talent, and see what their fresh eyes might imagine.
Jesus… I’ve never read an article where someone complained so much about something so easy and trivial to fix. He couldn’t get his head around syncing? Seriously? Wtf… Select “manually manage” and then just drag and drop what music you want on there. It’s been like that since 2001 for god sakes. Although I do agree that iTunes is bloated and should be broken up into individual apps, most of his bitching comes off as an entitled lazy idiot.
As an addendum: he shouldn’t be writing tech pieces if he is incapable of figuring stuff out on his own. Granted a lot of people have UX issues with iTunes and Apple Music, myself included, but it takes about 30 seconds of thought to figure this stuff out. Could it be simpler? Sure. But half an hour on the phone with support? Really? C’mon.
If my 94 year old grandmother has no problems using her iPhone, iPad, Mac, and the occasional issue with iTunes? Then this guy can surely figure it out.
iTunes ia a mess. Some people will still find it easy to use because they have the right mental model, the right workflow, they use the right subset of features to avoid confusion.
But masses of people do have trouble with iTunes.
Masses of people have an incorrect mental model of how iTunes works, try to combine features that were not really mean to work together, or try to operate it with a workflow that goes against iTunes grain, and the application is terrible at giving clear feedback to correct these issues, with the result that people experience frustration and stop even trying to understand what is going on.
The blame for this is not all the people who want to use it and have trouble. It is iTunes lack of focus, massive list of features which do not all work together coherently, etc.
Never mistake something working for you as something that is well designed. Even the worst tools work well for some people, or they wouldn’t exist.
I never said it wasn’t broken. I’m just saying that someone who is a tech writer shouldn’t be a moron when trying to figure things out, and then blame it on something else when he could fix it himself. If my gram can do it so can he.
Now, I remember iSync which I thought was a much better solution than moving the multi sync feature into iTunes.
And the music should be its own app and store, the videos should be its own thing just like on iOS. So if you had an app for each of those things it would probably make more sense. Your point about having the correct brain for the workflow makes sense and may be why it’s easy for me and my family to figure out, maybe it’s genetic, idk. But still, he doesn’t come off as a sympathetic figure.
I had to drag and drop 12,000 songs worth of playlists to my iphone because iTunes totally gags on syncing libraries that large. Sure, a first world problem, but it took me days. That shouldn’t be required.
You know, it is possible that confusing, bloated software, laden with arcane warnings like “if you choose to change this setting, all of the music on this device will be deleted” does actually confuse and intimidate people from time to time.
Music destroyed my will to “collect” music. I used to listen cautiously to new music carefully deciding what was worth and what was not worth investing my $10 – $20 a month in new music. Now I just listen to anything and everything. Any song I want is at my fingertips. Streaming music really changes how to think about a music “collection”. I still have mine but now its starting to feel like a “burden” to drag from phone to phone and iPad to iPad than a treasured collection.
I agree. I don’t want to collect music, I want to listen to music.
Apple Music is awesome. It’s rekindled the passion that I had in the 80’s for listening to music. I’m listening to remixes, live albums and stuff from my favorite bands and discovering new ones on a daily basis. Truly awesome.
Good for you. I just want Apple to split AM off of iTunes and fix iTunes to be an efficient music management & syncing tool again.
I own my music, the vast majority of it is CD quality, and I already have awesome playlists that blows away anything Apple Music offers.
You say you want to have an ’80s music dance party with only live songs? Or you want to hear all acoustic music for an hour? How about songs written by Bill Withers but performed by other artists? How about all of Eric Clapton’s music from 1984 through 1988? Give me a minute and I will have exactly that playlist for you. Might have to buy some tracks, but the intelligent user can make it happen with iTunes. Apple Music can’t deliver that at all. Good luck trying.
If you subscribe to Apple music, you can download anything from iTunes and add it to your existing local content. From there you can make your own playlists including your music in addition to Apple music.
If you choose to only import lossless, there are plenty of alternatives to iTunes.
With Apple music, Apple liberated me from collecting/owning music. Instead, I listen to it. I follow my mood and guidance from the app and most of the time, it is right. When I find a gem, I use a playlist…
This article is so 2011… From another clickbaither
You have figured out a workflow that compatible with how you like to listen to music and how iTunes works.
The fact that other people want to listen to music with different workflows, including ways that iTunes used to do well, and are having trouble means here is an interface problem.
The problem with designing good user interfaces is almost always that it is easy to design an interface that works REALLY WELL for some people, but hard to design an interface that works well for a large percentage of people.
All the evidence is that iTunes does not work well for a large percentage of people.
The why’s are pretty easy to uncover:
– The “best” iTunes workflow has changed a great deal over time, and yet people want to listen to music the way they like which for many people has not changed.
– iTunes is so full of features to the point where some subsets of features work well together, while others do not.
– iTunes does all kinds of unrelated things, so figuring out music becomes harder when music issues are mixed in with app store, iOS syncing, movies, audiobooks, etc.
Simplicity is one of the most difficult things to execute, and one of Steve Jobs’ greatest strengths — the ability to boil down complexities into a simplicity. It’s the first thing to go when the leader is no longer around. And it has slipped considerably. The watch interface and hardware is too complex to be intuitive and invite optimal use. So is Apple Music — a real mess. And iTunes. These are not great signs, but Apple can turn it around. They have people like Jony Ive that understand simplicity.
I’m now convinced that Ive doesn’t understand shit other than thin aluminum boxes with rounded corners. He trashed the formerly legible iOS interface with iOS7 and made all Macs completely user-unfriendly with sealed enclosures and proprietary connectors, etc.
What’s funny is that companies that MDN attacks like Dell actually offer a very impressive array of computers, from cheap to expensive, with exactly what the user wants. You can get machines that are thinner than the thinnest MacBook, or more powerful than the mightiest Mac Pro. You can get inexpensive displays or you can get displays that put Apple’s to shame. And the user can update them easily at the point of purchase or in the future, as any self-respecting computer user would prefer.
On both hardware and software, Apple today more than ever has shunned user input. It offers such artificially limited options, dumbed-down interfaces, bloated software that has no focus, and buggy software updates that cause problems even on Apple’s limited hardware selections. And Apple goes years without a software update despite user input flooding in. Then Apple abruptly pulls the plug on great software like Aperture for no reason whatsoever, leaving many former Apple users no choice but to abandon Apple.
I understand Cook and his accountants want everyone to pay a monthly fee for the privilege of using an Apple product, but that just isn’t going to happen for the majority of longtime computer users. The insanely high cost of ISP is more than enough, thank you very much. I don’t need Apple Music, Match, iCloud server rental, or subscription-based software.
You can love or hate Apple. I love it. But iTunes is the worst thing, that Apple has ever done. In the above article he forgots to mention, import a CD, then try to align the title sequence, because all is mixed. Then try to edit all the tags with a tag editor you need to serach and download. Then throw all out of the window. I hate all library oriented apps and prefer to drag some titles right to a device. Not more. Same with fotos. The day when iTunes is splitted in seperate apps, I will get out the sync tool for my addressbook and trash all the rest of that software.
If the bloody software worked properly. I manage many Mac based advanced video editing systems with no complaints from clients, but I won’t even think of attaching my iPhone to iTunes. It is without a doubt the crummiest piece of software ever cobbled together and given an Apple brand. I am fearful of losing my entire music collection, photos and videos every time I connect to it. On to Amazon for music. Sorry Apple, you need to do better. World domination via iPhone (which I otherwise love). On my fourth. But I will fine my music elsewhere. And please pay more attention to the Mac. You are becoming blind to professionals. And Aperture replaced by that shoebox for your snapshots “Photos”. Garbage software for photography nitwits.
iTunes Syncing: The worst downfall of the the iTunes Application. Why it’s a nightmare, I cannot comprehend. My solution is bashing at it, over and over, until damned thing actually finishes a successful sync. Hate it.
iTunes Technical Support: I got so sick of them I gave up trying. My impression at the end of 2014 was that they were minimum wage dummies with no access to a decent database of customer solutions. Once, I had to go all the way up the line to Apple in Cupertino via Customer Support to get something done. iTunes Tech Support was that useless. I dearly hope they’ve improved.
You are right, iTunes syncing is nearly useless for any library over a hundred songs (only being slightly facetious). You are doing better than me, I can’t get it to work at all.
Actually they ARE miminum wage dummies working part time from their homes. Your call is routed to the next available home worker who is talking to you on a company supplied earpiece and accessing a company supplied iMac and iPod. The worker pays for their landline service and min 20Mbps Internet service. (They are discouraged from having pets or children in the background where you can hear them. The people are trained to access the Apple database and try to sell you extended services. They do try to hire experienced Apple people, but these days that means they know how an iPhone works. Most have never tried to manage a music collection with a bloated piece of duct taped software that cannot manage to complete a sync even overnight.
btw, I do drag manually but that leaves me with no playlist copy backed up. That being the case I just use iMazing to drag and drop and avoid the bloatware altogether.
Complaints are nor absurd, they are an indication that there is a problem, especially when one of the company’s selling points is that the product “just works”. For many people, it doesn’t.
Have you ever considered that you are not trying to use iTunes for the same things that the “complainers” are? Please see nevermark’s post above at 1:27, as it raises relevant points for consideration.
There is only one thing, however, that I find to be truly annoying and that is the issue with burning tunes to other media because of DRM. I do not share media with others (being a former working musician, I don’t like the way that people want the tunes but are not willing to pay the royalty. This is destroying the small artist who, because of the piracy, is not able to make a living and has to quit).
What I have to do is go through the desired tunes, use certain tools to convert the DRMS to MP3s, create an MP3-only playlist, and then import that to my portable media. I don’t share it. I just plug it into my car. Frankly, it would be better just to buy a dedicated Apple device – an iPod or used iPhone just for tunes in my car. A thumb drive costs virtually nothing. An Apple device costs more (even the midget iPod costs $50.
Seems to me his complaint is really about Apple Music than itunes. Admittedly the line is blurred, but as long as you stick to plain itunes I don’t see any problem.
Wow lack tech this dude ..what’s the big deal you have a your finger print all the music you want,
Silly article and the guy…..
Just subscribed to ITunes Glory……Simple Words Be Practical…you use a empty spaces for decorating your house.
Jesus… I’ve never read an article where someone complained so much about something so easy and trivial to fix. He couldn’t get his head around syncing? Seriously? Wtf… Select “manually manage” and then just drag and drop what music you want on there. It’s been like that since 2001 for god sakes. Although I do agree that iTunes is bloated and should be broken up into individual apps, most of his bitching comes off as an entitled lazy idiot.
As an addendum: he shouldn’t be writing tech pieces if he is incapable of figuring stuff out on his own. Granted a lot of people have UX issues with iTunes and Apple Music, myself included, but it takes about 30 seconds of thought to figure this stuff out. Could it be simpler? Sure. But half an hour on the phone with support? Really? C’mon.
If my 94 year old grandmother has no problems using her iPhone, iPad, Mac, and the occasional issue with iTunes? Then this guy can surely figure it out.
iTunes ia a mess. Some people will still find it easy to use because they have the right mental model, the right workflow, they use the right subset of features to avoid confusion.
But masses of people do have trouble with iTunes.
Masses of people have an incorrect mental model of how iTunes works, try to combine features that were not really mean to work together, or try to operate it with a workflow that goes against iTunes grain, and the application is terrible at giving clear feedback to correct these issues, with the result that people experience frustration and stop even trying to understand what is going on.
The blame for this is not all the people who want to use it and have trouble. It is iTunes lack of focus, massive list of features which do not all work together coherently, etc.
Never mistake something working for you as something that is well designed. Even the worst tools work well for some people, or they wouldn’t exist.
I never said it wasn’t broken. I’m just saying that someone who is a tech writer shouldn’t be a moron when trying to figure things out, and then blame it on something else when he could fix it himself. If my gram can do it so can he.
Now, I remember iSync which I thought was a much better solution than moving the multi sync feature into iTunes.
And the music should be its own app and store, the videos should be its own thing just like on iOS. So if you had an app for each of those things it would probably make more sense. Your point about having the correct brain for the workflow makes sense and may be why it’s easy for me and my family to figure out, maybe it’s genetic, idk. But still, he doesn’t come off as a sympathetic figure.
I had to drag and drop 12,000 songs worth of playlists to my iphone because iTunes totally gags on syncing libraries that large. Sure, a first world problem, but it took me days. That shouldn’t be required.
“just drag and drop what music you want on there”
On what device? On what screen? Where is “there”?
You know, it is possible that confusing, bloated software, laden with arcane warnings like “if you choose to change this setting, all of the music on this device will be deleted” does actually confuse and intimidate people from time to time.
Music destroyed my will to “collect” music. I used to listen cautiously to new music carefully deciding what was worth and what was not worth investing my $10 – $20 a month in new music. Now I just listen to anything and everything. Any song I want is at my fingertips. Streaming music really changes how to think about a music “collection”. I still have mine but now its starting to feel like a “burden” to drag from phone to phone and iPad to iPad than a treasured collection.
I agree. I don’t want to collect music, I want to listen to music.
Apple Music is awesome. It’s rekindled the passion that I had in the 80’s for listening to music. I’m listening to remixes, live albums and stuff from my favorite bands and discovering new ones on a daily basis. Truly awesome.
Good for you. I just want Apple to split AM off of iTunes and fix iTunes to be an efficient music management & syncing tool again.
I own my music, the vast majority of it is CD quality, and I already have awesome playlists that blows away anything Apple Music offers.
You say you want to have an ’80s music dance party with only live songs? Or you want to hear all acoustic music for an hour? How about songs written by Bill Withers but performed by other artists? How about all of Eric Clapton’s music from 1984 through 1988? Give me a minute and I will have exactly that playlist for you. Might have to buy some tracks, but the intelligent user can make it happen with iTunes. Apple Music can’t deliver that at all. Good luck trying.
If you subscribe to Apple music, you can download anything from iTunes and add it to your existing local content. From there you can make your own playlists including your music in addition to Apple music.
If you choose to only import lossless, there are plenty of alternatives to iTunes.
With Apple music, Apple liberated me from collecting/owning music. Instead, I listen to it. I follow my mood and guidance from the app and most of the time, it is right. When I find a gem, I use a playlist…
This article is so 2011… From another clickbaither
You have figured out a workflow that compatible with how you like to listen to music and how iTunes works.
The fact that other people want to listen to music with different workflows, including ways that iTunes used to do well, and are having trouble means here is an interface problem.
The problem with designing good user interfaces is almost always that it is easy to design an interface that works REALLY WELL for some people, but hard to design an interface that works well for a large percentage of people.
All the evidence is that iTunes does not work well for a large percentage of people.
The why’s are pretty easy to uncover:
– The “best” iTunes workflow has changed a great deal over time, and yet people want to listen to music the way they like which for many people has not changed.
– iTunes is so full of features to the point where some subsets of features work well together, while others do not.
– iTunes does all kinds of unrelated things, so figuring out music becomes harder when music issues are mixed in with app store, iOS syncing, movies, audiobooks, etc.
Simplicity is one of the most difficult things to execute, and one of Steve Jobs’ greatest strengths — the ability to boil down complexities into a simplicity. It’s the first thing to go when the leader is no longer around. And it has slipped considerably. The watch interface and hardware is too complex to be intuitive and invite optimal use. So is Apple Music — a real mess. And iTunes. These are not great signs, but Apple can turn it around. They have people like Jony Ive that understand simplicity.
There are certain aspects of Apple Music that are a mess, but really, for day to day listening it’s not difficult to use at all.
I’m now convinced that Ive doesn’t understand shit other than thin aluminum boxes with rounded corners. He trashed the formerly legible iOS interface with iOS7 and made all Macs completely user-unfriendly with sealed enclosures and proprietary connectors, etc.
What’s funny is that companies that MDN attacks like Dell actually offer a very impressive array of computers, from cheap to expensive, with exactly what the user wants. You can get machines that are thinner than the thinnest MacBook, or more powerful than the mightiest Mac Pro. You can get inexpensive displays or you can get displays that put Apple’s to shame. And the user can update them easily at the point of purchase or in the future, as any self-respecting computer user would prefer.
On both hardware and software, Apple today more than ever has shunned user input. It offers such artificially limited options, dumbed-down interfaces, bloated software that has no focus, and buggy software updates that cause problems even on Apple’s limited hardware selections. And Apple goes years without a software update despite user input flooding in. Then Apple abruptly pulls the plug on great software like Aperture for no reason whatsoever, leaving many former Apple users no choice but to abandon Apple.
I understand Cook and his accountants want everyone to pay a monthly fee for the privilege of using an Apple product, but that just isn’t going to happen for the majority of longtime computer users. The insanely high cost of ISP is more than enough, thank you very much. I don’t need Apple Music, Match, iCloud server rental, or subscription-based software.
You can love or hate Apple. I love it. But iTunes is the worst thing, that Apple has ever done. In the above article he forgots to mention, import a CD, then try to align the title sequence, because all is mixed. Then try to edit all the tags with a tag editor you need to serach and download. Then throw all out of the window. I hate all library oriented apps and prefer to drag some titles right to a device. Not more. Same with fotos. The day when iTunes is splitted in seperate apps, I will get out the sync tool for my addressbook and trash all the rest of that software.
To hold in your hand every song, every movie, every book you ever loved or will love is a modern miracle.
Yeah. I love that part of it all.
If the bloody software worked properly. I manage many Mac based advanced video editing systems with no complaints from clients, but I won’t even think of attaching my iPhone to iTunes. It is without a doubt the crummiest piece of software ever cobbled together and given an Apple brand. I am fearful of losing my entire music collection, photos and videos every time I connect to it. On to Amazon for music. Sorry Apple, you need to do better. World domination via iPhone (which I otherwise love). On my fourth. But I will fine my music elsewhere. And please pay more attention to the Mac. You are becoming blind to professionals. And Aperture replaced by that shoebox for your snapshots “Photos”. Garbage software for photography nitwits.
iTunes Syncing: The worst downfall of the the iTunes Application. Why it’s a nightmare, I cannot comprehend. My solution is bashing at it, over and over, until damned thing actually finishes a successful sync. Hate it.
iTunes Technical Support: I got so sick of them I gave up trying. My impression at the end of 2014 was that they were minimum wage dummies with no access to a decent database of customer solutions. Once, I had to go all the way up the line to Apple in Cupertino via Customer Support to get something done. iTunes Tech Support was that useless. I dearly hope they’ve improved.
You are right, iTunes syncing is nearly useless for any library over a hundred songs (only being slightly facetious). You are doing better than me, I can’t get it to work at all.
Sync? What’s Sync? I’m driving and loading my devices purely and always on manual, and then I’m never surprised or aghast.
Actually they ARE miminum wage dummies working part time from their homes. Your call is routed to the next available home worker who is talking to you on a company supplied earpiece and accessing a company supplied iMac and iPod. The worker pays for their landline service and min 20Mbps Internet service. (They are discouraged from having pets or children in the background where you can hear them. The people are trained to access the Apple database and try to sell you extended services. They do try to hire experienced Apple people, but these days that means they know how an iPhone works. Most have never tried to manage a music collection with a bloated piece of duct taped software that cannot manage to complete a sync even overnight.
btw, I do drag manually but that leaves me with no playlist copy backed up. That being the case I just use iMazing to drag and drop and avoid the bloatware altogether.
Wow, a deep behind the scenes look at the decay of technical support. Much appreciated! I too find iMazing to be AMazing. Apple should buy them. 😉
iTunes is like windows XP. They should’ve died years ago.
There are other ways of managing your iphone media on your mac. Take a look at PhoneView
Best 30$ invested to get back in control!
Sorry, I have a collection of ~40000 tracks from years of collecting and converting.
If you cant figure out iTunes, you’re as dump as a stone. Complaints about iTunes are absurd.
Complaints are nor absurd, they are an indication that there is a problem, especially when one of the company’s selling points is that the product “just works”. For many people, it doesn’t.
Have you ever considered that you are not trying to use iTunes for the same things that the “complainers” are? Please see nevermark’s post above at 1:27, as it raises relevant points for consideration.
Well, iTunes is a bit of a mess.
There is only one thing, however, that I find to be truly annoying and that is the issue with burning tunes to other media because of DRM. I do not share media with others (being a former working musician, I don’t like the way that people want the tunes but are not willing to pay the royalty. This is destroying the small artist who, because of the piracy, is not able to make a living and has to quit).
What I have to do is go through the desired tunes, use certain tools to convert the DRMS to MP3s, create an MP3-only playlist, and then import that to my portable media. I don’t share it. I just plug it into my car. Frankly, it would be better just to buy a dedicated Apple device – an iPod or used iPhone just for tunes in my car. A thumb drive costs virtually nothing. An Apple device costs more (even the midget iPod costs $50.
Have iTunes 10 on a Snow Leopard partition for organizing music.
Bought an old iPod touch with iOS 6 to use as a music server for my home stereo.
No problems!
Seems to me his complaint is really about Apple Music than itunes. Admittedly the line is blurred, but as long as you stick to plain itunes I don’t see any problem.
I got lost when they ditched overflow.
Went to an AppleStore to get refamiliarised with iTunes and Music. Result: can’t be bothered.
In any case, I’ve got ‘000s of tracks to play, so I’ll play those and listen to BBC Radio 3 for new stuff. Result: OK.
Wow lack tech this dude ..what’s the big deal you have a your finger print all the music you want,
Silly article and the guy…..
Just subscribed to ITunes Glory……Simple Words Be Practical…you use a empty spaces for decorating your house.