How iTunes Is Changing on PC

I was briefly excited to hear they had separated media synchronization from the atrocity of iTunes. I just experimented with the "Apple Devices App" for PC. Unfortunately, the experience has been poor, which is what I should have anticipated given Apple's track record for PC software.

First, the linked documentation provides no information about where to get the Apple Devices App. It turns out, it's only available from the Microsoft App Store. Fair enough, but odd that the documentation never says that. Second concern: yikes, this synchronization app is 188 Mb in size. But whatever, I have tons of storage on my PC, so let's proceed.

The final and biggest issue: the app simply never recognizes my phone. The phone is unlocked and has trusted the computer. It shows up in Windows Explorer as a storage device (significantly hobbled by Apple's needless file system obfuscation, but that's not new). The Apple Devices App never stops saying "Connect a device to proceed."

All told, a typical Apple software experience.

If Android weren't so awful, I'd be much happier. The way Android devices appear as just a standard storage device with a normal file system is so much easier to deal with.

I wanted to use Music on a windows PC that has a good DAC attached and I was politely told that they don't support security keys on windows.

No alternative. No 'get a code on another device', just PFO.

I love iTunes, in the sense that I credit it with being the thing that got me to abandon the Apple ecosystem. I don't miss the constant battle with that cursed program.

I gave up on iTunes on PC and Apple Music in general a very long time ago (iPhone 3 era).

iTunes is just a mess. It's the software equivalent of a badly executed all-in-one printer, scanner and fax. Has it improved? No clue. I haven't bothered with it other than for backups.

My complaint about Apple Music is very simple: For some incomprehensible reason they make playing an entire album or albums, in order, as recorded, impossible. Take works such as Brandenburg concerto and a bunch of classical work or most of Pink Floyd's albums. In Windows Media Player I can listen to this work as intended, in the order the album was recorded. I can easily create a playlist of albums and play them back as recorded. With Apple Music, last I looked, this was still impossible.

I own a large library of CD's. I transferred all of them to Windows Media and clan play recorded works as intended without having to handle the physical media. Again, last I looked, this is impossible with Apple Music. The couple of attempts I made over the years were nothing less than disastrous exercises in futility.

Not sure what ideological or business basis Apple uses to effectively destroy an artist's creation and refuse to deliver it as intended. It is clear that selling single songs might be one of these motivating factors. OK, I get it. And this might even make sense for much of the large body of popular music. However, there are works of art that are not one hit wonders and, in my opinion, deserve the respect, consideration and option to experience them as intended.

Foobar2000 is still working just the same as it did when iTunes came out.

Has iTunes on Windows ever been good? I think I tried it in 2003-4, and it was garbage then, so I uninstalled it. In the intervening 20 years, I've never heard anyone say "it's good now!", so I never re-installed it. I assumed that if you were a dedicated Windows user, you just wouldn't use iTunes, and if you weren't a dedicated Windows user but loved your iPhone, you'd do what Apple wanted you to do in the first place, and switch to MacOS.

I use an old version of iTunes on Windows and haven't found anything better, for the following reasons:

1. It has a taskbar player, which is a tiny strip of media controls which sits in your taskbar. AFAIK the only other player to offer this is Windows Media Player.

2. It has the best-looking (for me) GUI with the column browser etc.

3. You can use parental controls to disable all the crap like the store/videos/radio/etc. to make a very minimalist player.

The only problem I have with it is that older versions don't sync correctly with modern devices (iPod, iPhone, etc.) but there are workarounds for this using a virtual machine: https://www.tersetechtips.com/how-to-keep-using-an-old-versi...

iTunes is sticking around on Windows but will just be for audio books and podcasts? That’s absolutely bizarre.

Does it seem strange that "iTunes" is for audiobooks and podcasts?

Maybe it's time to retire the name "iTunes," or have "iTunes" be the name of a suite?

This is a shame. iTunes on Windows has been pretty good for bulk ID3 tag editing. Feels like a decent chance capabilities will be removed in the future.

From a distance: So iTUNES isn't the music app? Seems confusing :)

The phrase “everything you needed to be entertained” is indicative of the biggest problem that I see with Apple today: a focus on consumerism and passive consumption. Twenty years ago, iTunes’ emphasis was on collecting, experiencing, and enjoying an art form. It’s a very subtle difference, but it speaks to the attitude that Apple projects today. When was the last time the intersection with the humanities was mentioned, versus how sleek and desirable the technology is?

Someone local has some kind of i-device (iPod? iTouch? He doesn't remember) from which he would like to extract copies of the music on it. I'm not even sure what to do. I have heard so many horror stories of iTunes just trashing libraries ...

I'm not even sure what I would search for in terms of Windows software or what kind of cable I would need. And Apple's branding is so ... operationally overloaded, overlapping, whatever, I'm confused.

I like how they fail to mention that the Apple Music App on Windows is hot garbage riddled with bugs. A few weeks ago they broke reordering of upcoming songs, the "play next" feature and I don't know what else.

I have submitted bug reports with exact steps, reproducible on at least two accounts on five different conmputers. Haven't heared back, doubt I'll ever will.

Anyone can recommend a streaming service that isn't Apple Music, Spotify or YouTube Music? Bonus points if I can just add a plugin to my old trusty winamp to use it.

So how will iTunes now actually prevent me from playing a WAV music file? Will it first analyse the content for music-ness?

> If you don’t install Apple Music or Apple TV, you can continue to use iTunes for all your media. … so why would I install either of those? What’s actually changing if I only have iTunes installed?

Thanks, I hate it. I tried to transfer some audiobooks I have using iTunes and it didn't work. The music app is buggy as hell. I'm not sure if Apple wants me to buy a Mac or switch to Android but I'll probably go with the latter.

It's strange that Apple keep this Windows software around. Is there really a lot of people on Windows that actually use this?

No doubt the worst software for the masses

As long as I can still move pictures from wife's phone. Still, this is such an annoying change. As in, Itunes on PC always sucked, but it did not occur to me that Apple would want to actively make it worse.

edit: This reminds me. Wasn't there a FOSS project that has most of Itunes functionality?

I like how Apple's page starts with "When iTunes was originally released, it had everything you needed to be entertained. Now, there are individual apps for all your media" - yes, exactly! That's the problem!

> iTunes remains the home for your audiobooks and free podcasts.

More like noTunes then

What technology are the new Windows Music and TV apps built using?

Every PM who worked on iTunes should be cancelled from the tech industry. Having iTunes on your resume should be the Mark of Cain as far as I'm concerned. I've never had the displeasure of working on a more terrible piece of software in my life and it shouldn't be this bad. Shame on everyone who worked on it, even though given Apple stock price, they are likely 8 or 9 figure millionaires.

I tried to use this, but it appears that Apple TV and Apple Music doesn't support iCloud / Apple ID accounts with 2FA enabled on Windows?

Until iTunes gets better about specifying the exact level of quality of the music tracks I'm buying, it's still a no-go for me.

I wonder, can I sync my iPods with Apple Devices?

iTunes on PC has always been so much worse than iTunes on Mac. I was on Android for awhile in no small part due to having tried to use iTunes with an iPhone (remember when you had to do that?) and hating it.

Apple’s podcast apps have been second rate since the very early days also. So they should just give iTunes for PC the Viking funeral it deserves.

iTunes was a complex mess with too much functionality in one app, but for many years it worked really well for me. Replacing it with the new apps has been a process of removing functionality I relied on, obfuscating and making less user-friendly existing functionality, and pushing people into using cloud services. Some examples:

- Older versions of iTunes had a great "home sharing" function that allowed sharing the library with devices running iTunes on the LAN. I used this very extensively. iTunes running on my 2008 Mac Pro still runs the server, and there is kinda-sorta client functionality in Apple Music, a bit hidden, but it is not reliable (constantly disconnects mid-song). Also, there was never an iOS client which would stream from this server. There were some half-baked attempts at open-source apps that would do it, but Apple broke them by encrypting the streaming across my own LAN.

- iTunes stored podcast and audiobook files in a simple and transparent way. Now podcasts (accessed using the separate Apple Podcasts app) are stored buried in Library subdirectories with long gibberish filenames. Although they're really just MP3 files with extra tags, it's now very difficult to just grab an episode by filename and save it elsewhere or forward it to a friend.

- iTunes had best-in-class tag editing. Apple Music's tag editing is buggy.

- Don't get me started on the "iTunes Match" debacle. https://www.macrumors.com/2021/08/05/itunes-match-users-repo...

Jobs had a vision of the Mac as a media hub for managing your collection and I liked that vision. Apple even (eventually) removed DRM from iTunes downloads. Forcing me into DRM and subscription services? No thanks. What I've done instead is, gradually, buy many dozens of used CDs and rip them, to replace any lossy iTunes files I purchased years ago. My entire library is now CD + ALAC (lossless) + purchased FLAC files that some vendors offer (and which were never supported on iTunes or Apple Music, but play flawlessly from the Synology). I use rsync to sync my iTunes library to my Synology NAS, and use Synology's free iOS apps to stream the whole library on our iOS devices, or on laptops and desktops, just use the web player. It works great and I can stream to stereo receivers without any difficulty as well using an AudioEngine B-Fi. No streaming services, no monthly bills.

Funny how you never read a thread about iTunes where someone states „hey, I am from iTunes dev team“

So can I buy and download music from Apple Music, or is purchasing songs going away entirely?

So what is the best app these for listening to your own music collection? VLC?!?

This is one bit of software I've always refused to install.

Me with the old version of itunes that has an app store

TIL iTunes is still a thing, even on Windows

I recently tried Apple Music and then gave up because it didn’t support podcasts and the podcast apps that exist in the Apple ecosystem aren’t as good as Spotify

I'm still waiting for a new Amarok...

iTunes makes the crapplets that other companies (including Microsoft) look great.

iTunes? What is that?

I guess by PC they mean Windows, or they also support BSD now?