“Last year saw Apple take its streaming music service to Android,” Ewan Spence writes for Forbes. “This week’s update has seen the long-requested feature of offline listening arrive in the Android app, and with it comes a curious quirk between the platforms. Apple is finally using microSD on a smartphone.”
“Apple’s latest release of Apple Music for Android adds in the ability to download tracks, albums and playlists for offline listening. That means using external storage – a first for Apple on a smartphone – and audiophiles should be able to cram a ridiculous amount of music onto the latest 256GB storage cards supported by devices from LG and Lenovo (under the Moto brand). Which puts the maximum storage of 128GB on the current iPhones into the shade,” Spence writes. “There’s going to be a lot of iPhone fans looking at Apple’s utilisation of microSD on Android and wondering why Apple won’t consider the storage expansion for its own smartphones.”
“Once more I have to ask, what is Apple trying to achieve in spending resources on Apple Music for Android? Yes, it gets to own the last few feet between a device and a users ears, and yes it can land the $10 subscription that has to be shared out to the contracted parties, but where does this fit in with its overall strategy?” Spence writes. “Google wants eyeballs, and if it can’t get them on an Android device it’ll be happy to take them through an iOS application. Google is also strong enough to make those apps look like Android apps, to show users what the other platform can offer. Apple Music for Android could have taken that approach – should have taken that approach in my opinion – and use it as a lead generating app for future hardware sales. Instead it’s making a play to get users signed up to iCloud and… then what?”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Perhaps it’s as simple as lodging the “Apple” portion of “Apple Music” into Android settlers’ minds, so that when it comes time to upgrade their phone, they actually take a look at Apple instead of ignoring, and ultimately make the quintessential upgrade to iPhone?
Those who settle for fragmandroid are notoriously cheap. Good luck convincing them to pony up $9.99-$14.99/per month, Apple. Regardless, it was an exceedingly nominal amount of effort and cost to port the app to wannabe iPhones. Tipping the relatively few Android settlers who’ll bite — and who are likely the most probable to be considering an upgrade to a real iPhone anyway — is the main motive for offering the app. — MacDailyNews, November 25, 2015
Or maybe, hopefully, Apple has other, even better ideas not yet revealed?
SEE ALSO:
Increase in users dumping Android to upgrade to iPhone bodes well for Apple – December 15, 2015
Apple Music’s Android assault – November 25, 2015
Apple CEO: Android to iPhone upgraders will help us smash our own 74.5 million smartphone sales record – October 28, 2015
Tim Cook: 30% of buyers last quarter upgraded from Android to real iPhones – October 27, 2015
Apple’s new Android app helps people upgrade to a real iPhone – September 17, 2015
Apple iPhone sees highest switching rate from Android ever recorded – August 10, 2015
Apple Retail Stores now pay Android settlers to upgrade to real iPhones – March 30, 2015
Dump that Android phone and upgrade to a real iPhone – February 2, 2015
Apple’s 64-bit iPhone 6/Plus fueling mass upgrades from Android – September 18, 2014
That’s actually a very good question. Didn’t Steve Jobs swear to never develop any music software for Android anyway? Let them have their pirate BitTorrent software, and keep Apple Music for the true techies. Fandroids are cheaper than Wal-Mart on Black Friday.
Steve did develop music software for a competitor before when Apple provided iTunes for Windows.
Yes, Steve did develop iTunes for Windows to lure Windows users into buying iPods, which got them thinking this iPod thingy is pretty cool, I wonder how nice and efficient other Apple products are” Soon those wanderers, were buying iMacs as their new computers of choice, and then they were telling their friends, “After you go Mac, you never go back!”, which got the friends wondering what is it with this Apple stuff? and then they might buy an iPod, and the process started all over again, until they, too, were telling their friends “Once you go Mac, you never go back!”
Steve was known for being stubborn when others wanted him to go down another road, and was often right when I was wrong. But Steve would also change his mine when situations changed, sometimes situations change.
What if Apple was to make and Android phone? That would really drive a stake into Samsung’s heart. Not as daft as it seems, Macs can run Windows after all.
This will never happen because no one cares about Android OS they only want an alternative to the iPhone – They could give a shit about that OS – Windows on the other hand is used still by many corporations so it makes since to support it on the best hardware made. These are not even the same comparisons.
Here in Poland the base model 6s costs $800, while Huaweis and Samsungs with dual SIMs and micro SDs are $200-$400. The choice is easy when you make $750/month. It’s a shame to see Apple ignore the Eastern European market. The cheapest 5s will set you back $440, it’s simply not competitive.
How is 5s not competitive if it is almost the same price as the Huawei or Samsung? If those prices are as you say, then you get a much better device (5s) than the $440 worth of any current Android.
Apple is NOT “using a SD card on a smartphone”. After using an Android for a few years, with a micro-SD card, I don’t see Apple ever doing this for the iOS on the phone.
The ability to expand storage of one’s phone practically indefinitely may be quite appealing, but in practical use is a colossal hassle. First, figuring out where to install the apps takes quite a bit of learning; some apps perform better when installed on the internal storage, others can work fine when installed on the card; quite a few don’t even allow the option at all. Same thing goes for user data: some apps won’t let you store it on the card, and performance may suffer if data is stored on the ‘wrong’ side. Keeping track of available storage adds another layer of hassle (for example, 800MB free on internal partition, 2.4GB on the card; you’re installing a 1.2GB app that won’t fun from the card, so you have to find out if any of the apps on the internal storage can be safely moved over…).
And the most serious of all the hassle is when you need to take that card out. You first must unmount it (like any external storage device on a desktop computer), then icons begin slowly to disappear (or get replaced by a generic app shortcut icons), and from now on, you simply have no idea which apps are going to function properly, and which aren’t. It’s a safe guess that those whose icons were replaced with generic shortcuts were on that card, but even the ones installed locally may have active storage set on the card, and all the data is now gone. Some of them will, in the absence of the active storage medium, default to internal storage, but if there is not enough space on the internal storage for that (after all, this is why you selected the card as active storage medium for such apps), the app will freeze, or crash, or refuse to launch….
On a mobile OS, management of external removable storage is a massive, colossal hassle. If you need storage on your iPhone, take some time to save enough money and buy the 128GB model. Forget about dealing with removable medium; it is simply not worth it.
At least other phone makers give users the option to add memory. Apple’s lack of onboard memory — or overcharging for it — is just a tactic to force people to rent iCloud space.
I know that’s not popular with the echo chamber, but ability to add or hot swap memory is a huge attraction for many heavy data users.
Apple knows this, which is why they added the awkward Camera adapter for the iPad, so professional photographers could at least work offline in the field. There are a million iOS users who would LOVE to have an SD slot or a real USB port for file transfer.
History shows that Apple mercilessly omits, or removes features that are actually used by a very small percentage of their user base (well below 5%). From floppy, to optical, to PCMCIA card, to analogue modem, to Ethernet connector, to removable battery, to user-installable memory, hard drive, video card, etc, and on and on. For every one of this, there is a small vocal minority that is affected, and is put in a challenging position: give up an Apple solution in order to meet these needs, or sacrifice / compromise / work around it. Neither choice is optimal, and unfortunately this groups ends up legitimately displeased no matter what they choose.
Unfortunately, there will always be such a group of users — those who truly need and miss a feature Apple had left out in order to streamline the experience for the their mainstream user base. I don’t have a good answer for you and those like you, other to tell you that this isn’t new and it is something you either hope it won’t affect you, or when it does, that you’d learn to live with it.
As for the reasons behind Apple’s not allowing the option of adding external storage, I’m pretty sure they have nothing to do with renting iCloud space. Apple has never really been about nickle-and-diming. They develop and support some spectacular free software (from iLife, to iWork), they offer many other things at no charge (don’t forget; this isn’t Google; they aren’t making money on these free offerings by selling ads), so the possibility of getting $1 per month from user is NOT a reason to remove the option of external storage.
As I explained above, the colossal hassle of dealing with external media on a mobile device goes against every principle of Apple since their first Macintosh. The current Android experience when dealing with external media is simply out of the question for Apple’s UI. Until Apple develops a way to intuitively and seamlessly integrate removable media into the iOS, without the annoyances and hassles one experiences today on Android, we’ll have to live with expensive internal storage.
I agree with Predrag. It has nothing to do with iCloud. It has to with the fact that the way that the lack of a visible “file picker.” It would be very difficult to navigate without a normal file browser.
Yes. The underlying cause is the lack of direct user access to file system. The fundamental difference in UI between a mobile device and a desktop one is that we all get trained to use desktops, while no such training is expected, implied, or should be needed for mobile. File system is a big layer of complication, especially when mounting/unmounting of external volumes is added to the mix. This is simply too abstract for an average user to understand; majority of them still just yank out the USB flash drive without unmounting and end up perpetually puzzled by the warning they receive afterwards.
Check out lightning storage options on Amazon. I just bought an external flash drive with a lightning connection on one side and USB 3 on the other. Works great and makes limitless expansion possible.
Apple is an industry leader who provides software platforms in addition to making their own hardware.
If Apple releases a software product on another largely used platform why shouldn’t they cater to feature requests from those users?
Eddy Cue, no Clue.
Why?
Because Apple (for better or worse) has made the decision that Apple Music is in of itself a strategic business endeavor. Meaning the goal of Apple Music is to be a success in of itself. The goal isn’t to solely support the Apple ecosystem.
This is very different from when Apple first developed iTunes for Windows, where the goal was to support a larger ecosystem such that they could sell more iPods.
Apple is going to try to make Apple Music the best music subscription service regardless of platform. My guess is that this will lead other similar endeavors (movies, tv, etc…).
And Android isn’t alone as a non-Apple platform for Apple Music. In addition to Windows, there’s also Sonos, and Apple is just getting started.