“During the ‘It’s show time’ event in late March, Apple announced that the TV app would be coming to the Mac soon,” Guilherme Rambo reports for 9to5Mac. “This naturally sparked discussions about whether Apple would be bringing its other media apps to the Mac, finally splitting up iTunes into distinct applications.”
“Fellow developer Steve Troughton-Smith recently expressed confidence about some evidence found indicating that Apple is working on new Music, Podcasts, and perhaps Books apps for macOS, to join the new TV app,” Rambo reports. “I’ve been able to independently confirm that this is true. On top of that, I’ve been able to confirm with sources familiar with the development of the next major version of macOS – likely 10.15 – that the system will include standalone Music, Podcasts, and TV apps, but it will also include a major redesign of the Books app.”
“With the standalone versions of Apple’s media apps coming to the Mac, it’s natural to ask: what about iTunes in macOS 10.15? According to sources, the next major version of macOS will still include the iTunes app,” Rambo reports. “Since Apple doesn’t have a new solution for manually syncing devices such as old iPods and iPhones with the Mac, it’s natural to keep iTunes around a little longer.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “The new Music, Podcasts, and TV apps will be made using Marzipan,” a process which, hopefully, has come quite a bit further than we saw with Apple’s initial ports of the News, Voice Memos, Stocks, and Home apps from iOS to macOS.
Regardless, breaking apart iTunes into individual apps is an excellent idea! Nearly four years ago, we wrote:
Apple, especially under Steve Jobs, has shown a great and admirable willingness to cannibalize themselves. They obliterated their iPod business with the iPhone, for one example. But, when it comes to iTunes, they seem paralyzed by fear of change. Apple paralyzed by fear is not a pretty thing and it doesn’t yield pretty things. It yields hot messes like iTunes.
iTunes screams to be broken up into separate, streamlined apps. It’s been screaming that for years. But Apple seems to be scared silly to do so — perhaps 800+ million credit cards have something to do with it — so they’ve tinkered around the edges, making questionable tweaks here an there and bolting on even more bloat.
Grow a pair, Apple, and do what needs to be done already. — MacDailyNews Take, July 17, 2015
SEE ALSO:
It looks like Apple is finally about to kill iTunes – April 9, 2019
No App application?
So when anyone needs to research Apps for corporate use, they have to do this on an iPhone or iPad that does not let you save data and bookmarks easily. Not to mention much smaller screens. Great.
Would want it too!
Marzipan is not a Mac app. It’s an excuse for Apple to continue to ignore the power and capability of the Mac by forcing lame ass little iOS apps onto the Mac, while simultaneously making it more difficult for 3rd parties to get their apps onto the Mac.
I see you and your “What’s a Computer” company, Mr. Cook.
It’s come to Mac owners being asked to be happy to get slightly gussied up hand-me-downs from a small device OS…
Just give us a music app to manage our own ripped and locally stored music. I don’t want anything that involves Apple Music being pushed on me. I hate opening the music app and have all I downloaded purchased that are not on my iPhone for a reason. Having to always hit “Show only downloaded music” is stupid. Using my old iPod Classic is faster than this abomination. And it’s only what I put on it. I love using the “Maiden Audio App” from Onkyo. Just shows the music you put on your iPhone/iPod and that’s it.
Plus, it’s the coolest app icon and opening screen of them all.
Hey Manco,
Want the finest Music Player application for streaming your digital Music Files? Go get Roon! It blows every other player in the weeds…yes it costs money every year , $120 or $500 Lifetime (bargain of the Century)….But it so much better than iTunes it’s embarrassing to Apple to even compete with Roon at this point. How many music playback components do you have that cost $500 and is consistently being upgraded with improvements for Free?
If it means I don’t have to stare at a spinning beachball for 30 seconds every time I launch the app and again when I go to Podcasts then bring it on.
What this probably really boils down to is Apple’s glacial move toward combining Mac OS & iOS as ARM tech becomes more realistic on a desktop…or a switch to AMD.
Well, I hope that the Podcast App works better than it did for me on the iPhone/iPod Touch. I went back to playing them on an iPod Classic because I hated stupid things that App would do. I could start a podcast while on WiFi and then it would play when I had no connectivity, unless I paused or stopped it. Then it could not restart unless I had network. And this was for podcasts that I had subscribed and should have been downloaded to the device. It was infuriating. It was nice to be able to grab new episodes while on network, but not enough to make it worth using. I just hope that they work to make these apps work well and be flexible. Plus build a good migration from iTunes to them so as to not break a bunch of stuff in the process.
As long as they still support Home Sharing, I’m in.
While they’re at it they could make separate apps for music and rap.
I wonder if the macOS TV app will act as a server for a local shared library of videos, or (I hope) the TV app on whatever Apple device (Apple TV, iOS or Mac) will be able to be simply pointed at a folder on the network. Somehow, I doubt the latter will happen – it may not even be possible due to the need for the apps to process the video. I can wish though… I’d love to be able to put the library on a hard drive hanging off of a network router without having to have server software. Worse case would be that Apple no longer supports local video libraries at all (except for home videos – which they could make iCloud-based, like Photos).