“The arrival of iTunes 12.2 and Apple Music, welcomed by some, proved to be a nightmare for others,” Gene Steinberg writes for The Tech Night Owl. “It wasn’t just about the interface, although the individual reviews for Apple’s music subscription service were somewhat mixed. The complaints were mostly about clutter, but I am more annoyed at the inconsistencies between how you handle suggested albums in For You in iTunes compared to Music for iOS. With the latter, you have a context menu option labeled, ‘I Don’t Like This Suggestion,’ which doesn’t have a direct counterpart in iTunes.”
“Worse, it doesn’t seem to work, as suggestions that I specifically unliked still show up in For You after nearly two weeks of deliberately selecting, tapping, holding and selecting,” Steinberg writes. “But that’s a feature, or the lack of a feature, not necessarily a bug. When it comes to bugs, some are pretty serious. One involved having DRM mistakenly attached to content from iTunes Match. So it prevents you from playing those songs on ‘unauthorized’ gear. Messy.”
“The release notes for Monday’s iTunes 12.2.1 maintenance update claim that Apple has fixed the problem and ‘Provides a way to correct a library problem affecting former iTunes Match subscribers,'” Steinberg writes. “The document I located provides guidance that could require a lengthy manual process… [Why] wouldn’t Apple set up a process to rescan your entire library and just fix the problem at its source? Why force users, who did nothing wrong, to have to go through a manual removal/download procedure?”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, there are myriad issues, but Apple Music is still amazing. Here’s hoping Apple has an answer in the works. Maybe Apple is waiting for the Internet TV launch to be resolved and has some new software that will help us make more sense of all of this disparate media?
SEE ALSO:
Apple releases iTunes 12.2.1, fixes iTunes Match issues – July 13, 2015
Apple Music, both on iOS and OS X, is an embarrassing and confusing mess – July 10, 2015
iTunes 12.2 is mangling network-shared libraries – July 6, 2015
Serious iTunes Match issues for some users ahead of Apple Music launch – June 26, 2015
Ever seen those infomercials where they completely “mishandle” an existing product to show how their “new product” is so much better?
This is kind of the same same thing. It shows how some “analyst” uses iTunes with brain disengaged and then says how utterly messed up iTunes is.
I have used it with brain engaged, learned how it works and it is wonderful.
If you don’t think iTunes has serious issues, you’re kidding yourself. It’s Apple’s worst piece of software, and has been more some time. A bloated UI-disaster.
What can I say, only that you are wrong. I look forward to the day you change your tune, like people always do when they they finally realize their stupidity.
What the hell do you mean “Bloatware”. Do you actually know what it is you are complaining about or are you just a blind repeater? Tell us something more meaningful than just banding around that label.
Bloated: iTunes used to do nothing but manage music and iPods. It did this very well. Now, it handles music, movies, apps, books, internet radio, iTunes Radio, Apple Music, Genius, and iOS devices. Am I forgetting anything. I probably am.
So effing what? It does all this without any annoyance. In fact it is downright convenient. If ll these were different apps you would be the first to cry about how everything needs to be unified.
Sorry Paul…by the votes cast…seems you are in a very small minority around here.
Now that I’m home and can look at iTunes, here’s what else I missed:
– Podcasts
– Ringtones
– iTunes U
– Connect (I guess technically part of Apple Music)
It really is amazing, you think Apple couldn’t possibly make iTunes any more buggy or counterintuitive and they come out with a new version that digs a hole to find new depths in which to sink.
Here’s something more: Once iCloud Music is enabled it totally takes away your ability to manually sync music to your devices. That might not be a big deal to some, but if you have over 25,000 songs it means that you have no way of getting new music onto your devices without deleting something else from the cloud. If it had simply allowed you to manually sync playlists/genres/bands to the devices, it wouldn’t matter.
Something else. Songs are still greyed-out for no discernible reason and no amount of deleting/re-uploading seems to make a difference.
Also, if there is a remastered/re-recorded version of an album and an original album and Apple only has one or the other, you’ll most likely end up with two of the same album in the cloud and no way to get the other one uploaded (and, if you’re over 25,000 songs, no way to sync it directly to a device).
It also has a tendency to change genres and artwork on the fly.
That’s off the top of my head…
Worse, when I turned of all music sync to my 4S (64 GB) it still wouldn’t allow me to go back to manual selection.
I finally deleted Music and reloaded everything after struggling with it for an hour.
Newest iOS problem I noticed today; every time I plug the iPhone into my truck for playback, it automatically checks the ‘repeat’ and ‘random’ buttons, which are buried so deep it’s hard to find when you are driving.
So thanks, Apple. I nearly killed a busload of blind kids today because of y’all!!!
The 25K limit was always there with iTunes Match. The difference was that with iTunes Match, a library over 25K simply couldn’t turn Match on. Given the (record label imposed) option between the two, this is better.
The good news is that this limit is likely to increase to 100K soon.
I know the 25,000 song limit was there with Match. That’s why I didn’t have Match. I also knew it was still in effect with Apple Music. What I didn’t know is that in order to make streaming playlists I would have to implement Apple Music, and that by implementing it, I would lose the ability to sync music directly to my mobile devices and that there would be no easy way to decide what does/does not go to iCloud Music.
The 100K limit would be a great change, but until there’s no limit at all, they need to give back the ability to sync directly with our mobile devices like we used to be able to do. And they need to give us an easy ability to decide what goes into the cloud and what doesn’t.
These are the reports that happily keep me on Spotify.
You are missing out.
Spotify is inferior to Apple Music. If you are happy to use an inferior service, you must be an Android settler.
I’m using both. My first machine was a Performa 6205CD, although it would have been a Color Classic 2 if I’d had my druthers.
Please don’t be brainwashed by MDN’s take on Spotify. It’s *the* reason Tim is competing in this space. We need competition. Monopolies are only bad. Even when it’s Apple’s.
Apple Store management issues
Maps fiasco
Myriad problems with product launches
Late to market with a larger phone option
Destroyed an entire 30-pin product industry for nothing
New lightning cables fraying and prematurely wearing thin
Using Apple to promote personal issues, like gay rights
Holding onto a 16-GB iPhone to squeeze even more money out of consumers
Releasing verisons 7 & 8 of iOS with hundreds of bugs
Releasing a Macbook with a single port and slow, dated processor while still charging a premium price
Releasing the most expensive wearable in history that is half-baked at best, and utter garbage at worst
Releasing Apple Music with various bugs
What’s the answer to this jeopardy question… Tim Cook.
Any other CEO would’ve been removed for one-tenth of the damage.
Hey Wow,
I think your house under the bridge could use airing-out.
He actually rents part of the outhouse that my son lives in under the bridge . . . that is, the basement suit of it.
Typo . . . suite not suit.
Your unreasonable and unjustified criticisms and hatred of Tim Cook indicates that you have problems with him totally unrelated to technology. Let me guess, what might they be…?
And let me guess what your ‘problem’ is:
If you disagree with Tim Cook you are a homophobe.
And if you disagree with Obama, you’re a racist.
And if you disagree with Hillary, you’re a sexist.
But if you hate George Bush, love the new peace treaty, oppose closed borders, and think we shouldn’t be energy self-sufficient, then you are a patriot…and a genius.
How am I doing?
tempest in a teapot.
iTunes has become anti-intuitive, harder to use than before.
Maybe the Apple designers are so used to the software, they don’t know how bad it looks and behaves.
But the iTunes Store is pretty good, so that’s the exception to the rule.
Pretty much this.
Apple needs to rethink the solution from the ground up. iTunes should be MUSIC. and there should be a different App altogether for VIDEO, with it’s own store, and the two apps work together. iTunes videos that come with a purchase their are stored in the video library, and show up in the Video App.
What about podcasts that may be audio, video or a combination?
Podcasts are a separate (but still very screwed up) app in iOS. There is no reason that ALL podcasts can’t be better managed as a standalone app on the Mac as well.
Nobody manages podcasts in the same manner they manage their music collection, nor how they rent media. Podcasts need to be a separate program ASAP.
We’ve done this before. Remember how it ends?
We start with saying iTunes should be one app for music and then one for videos. Slowly you start to realize that other areas would need to be divided too. Do apps go into videos, music or podcasts? Looks like another app manage apps then.
What about ringtones? They’re not really music… make another app!
What about audiobooks? Make an app! What about iTunes U… you get an app and you get an app, everything gets an app!
And of course you need an app to sync all of this.
So you end up with a bunch of apps that you’re opening and closing and consuming space in your dock.
What if you want to have a playlist that combines both music and videos? Sorry you can’t if they must be in separate apps. When adding videos to an app on your iPhone, do you use the new video app or the app manager app? All of this is much easier with one app, iTunes.
What exactly is the purpose of this? It doesn’t reduce resources as iTunes consumes resources only as the components require. It doesn’t make anything less complex or confusing as each app would still need an interface suitable for its use… which is either going to be similar, in which case why bother, or different, in which case it will be confusing.
Apple is on the right track with iTunes. My biggest complaint about it is that people are too lazy to spend the time learning it.
People complain about “bloat” without really understanding what the term means and people complain that it should be broken up or completely redone without ever providing any sort of model or mockup of how it something different would work better.
Well said. Thank you!
Remind me again . . . what was the name of that software that was better than Apple Music?
. . . . . only the sound of crickets are heard . . . . . . .
THERE ISN’T ANY!!!!
yes, itunes sucks
The fix is in, you morons. Cook had Krew are screwing up iTunes to get people off the servers/cloud to go to a full-on streaming provider. No more songs, movies, or books. A couple years or so down the road they’ll give everybody sixty days to download purchase and it will transition to stream only.
iTunes used to be simple and elegant and it’s only got more cluttered, ugly and plain dysfunctional. That’s not like Apple to totally screw up software unless they want out of the business (let’s see, didn’t they have a killer film editor…?
Yeah, but they axed it….;-)
Apple Music is not for everyone it should have a separate app and not clutter up the music player in iOS. There is some serious brain fade at Apple with regards to software.
A piece of advice to Apple would be “Slow Down morons, there is a curve ahead”.
MDN take was hilarious had tears in my eyes laughing at it.
So, I think we have now moved on so perhaps I should let the matter drop. But I did want to observe that Radio is *much* better. My stations were *really obscure* (Django Reinhard, Leonard Kwan, Rebecca Kilgore) and I can say, fairly, that since the remake, the stations deeper and richer. In the past, in order to add more music, they had to stray from theme. Now, they have much more music and still stay closely to theme. A huge improvement, in my book.