William Gallagher for AppleInsider:
Now that Apple is splitting up the iTunes app, it’s time to see what a lightning bolt the original iTunes app was to music and to Apple. And it’s time to see where —or whether —it went so wrong that the WWDC audience cheered to see it be replaced by Music, TV and Podcast apps.
Just over a decade after it was introduced… Tunes was a music-playing, film-playing, TV-playing, music-buying, film-buying-or-renting, TV-buying, iPod syncing, iPhone setup and backup, podcasting lipsmacking, thirst-quenching, Facebook and Twitter app, with ringtones. And then in 2015 they added Apple Music.
If you came in cold to iTunes in 2015, say, it was a phenomenally confusing app. That’s why people cheered when Apple announced that it was breaking up the features of iTunes into separate apps.
MacDailyNews Take: Goodbye, iTunes (sort of, Windows sufferers, appropriately, get to suffer along with it for now, with no end date in sight). You served Apple well, even helping to propel the company to new heights, but, by the end, you’ll forgive us when we say, “Good riddance, bloatware!”