“On April 28, 2003, Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, saving the music industry from the scourge of piracy while creating a large and steady source of revenue for Apple,” Om Malik writes for The New Yorker. “Thirteen years later, however, what started as a simple and intuitive way to find music has become a cluttered festoonery of features.”
“As Apple begins competing with focussed streaming services like Spotify, the company’s strategy of tacking new services, like Apple Music, which became available last year, onto already bloated software has made the experience of using the application more and more unpleasant,” Malik writes. “So when Apple said that it would release a new streamlined version of Apple Music at its developers’ conference next month, it seemed as though the company was finally reckoning with the confusion in its music services.”
“Apple may, in fact, clear up some of the mess and present a simpler solution, but its struggles in the delivery of music are merely a symptom of a deeper problem: how to provide Internet services,” Malik writes. “[Apple’s] hardware-centric approach is extended to software, with big-bang releases once or twice a year…. But, when it comes to Internet services, a yearly release cycle feels dated. To perform well, these services need constant tinkering based on how people are actually using them.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote in January 2015:
Frankly, we don’t need a new Mac or iPhone/iPad operating system every year and Apple Inc. doesn’t need it, either. Annual OS releases shouldn’t be mandated. What we all really need, customers and Apple Inc., are operating systems that are rock solid and do what they’re supposed to do when they’re supposed to do it. Why not just add new features/services to existing OSes with continued point releases that refine and extend the experiences and services you want to deliver? Why not just release new operating systems only when they are rock solid and ready?