Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

75 points by dzohrob 8 years ago

Hi HN—

I've been chewing on different side project ideas and I've become fixated on creating an alternative Apple Music player.

I spend ~10h a day (or more!) at my desktop, mostly coding and listening to music. And iTunes, my primary music player and browser, is awful -- bloated, slow, and tied to an ecosystem of hardware music players that's basically irrelevant to how I listen now.

I want to build a new, minimal Apple Music client that lets you play everything from AM with a clean, attractive interface, and consumes minimal resources.

Some potential features/additions: - Daily/weekly links to reviews from AllMusic, Pitchfork, NYTimes, etc, so you can listen to albums alongside the reviews - Better sorting and organization of albums in iTunes -- eliminate duplicates/remasters, categorize into "real" albums vs EPs and compilations, etc - Social features that don't suck, based on your existing social networks (email, twtr, fb, etc) - Better recommendations by artist, album, genre, etc - TimeHop-style features for music from different years

Anyone else have this problem with iTunes? Any thoughts/feedback?

epistasis 8 years ago |

After 15 years on iTunes, and much devotion towards keeping a clean library of music that I ripped or purchased, Apple Music ruined it for me.

Especially in iOS, where it did not understand the concept of not having a constant internet connection, like it was implemented by some 21 year-old newb that had never made any production code in their life. This made Apple Music completely useless for my primary use case; driving along the coast on Highway 1.

And that's not even getting to their poor aping of Spotify's UI, without even understanding what makes Spotify work, and mucking up everything in the process. And the atrociously non-functional and ugly flat UI with no communication about what you can tap and what is not tappable.

Never again will Apple Music get any of my money, and never again will I trust Apple with my music. It was a major turning point in everything I do with them; I've always had easy escape routes for all my data to leave the Apple ecosystem, but it was the first time I had to use one in practice.

I've switched to Spotify, abandoning all my investment of time and money into my music library. I don't have time to invest in that anymore.

Building an app on top of anything Apple Music is folly, you'll always be fighting against their changes in formats, and you can be locked out at any moment.

SnowingXIV 8 years ago | |

Spotify has also made me completely abandoned any type of local music library (it even offers to save for offline use which I do often for road trips or flights). I do buy vinyl and spend money there but can't imagine ever going back to any other structure besides paying a streaming service for digital music. It's been great not having to constantly configure foobar or figure out syncing between devices.

crankylinuxuser 8 years ago | |

Everything you said also applies to closed source software, along with SaaS offerings.

We are only 1 change from having our house of cards toppled, if we depend on their being consistent. And that can change for them, say, if making X change makes them a fistfull of dollars, they will to the detriment of users.

Sure, in your case, Spotify makes sense. Cool. Unfortunately, they are 1 or 2 major changes that alienate their user base. Id rather have control and ownership of my data. And yes, that does mean some growing pains in how to do that effectively. But it also means some arbitrary choice in a boardroom doesn't affect me.

epistasis 8 years ago | | |

Yep, always have an escape plan. This is as true for real life dependencies as it is for electronic life dependencies.

akhatri_aus 8 years ago |

One thing very at odds with Apple's design etiquette with iTunes is there are a lot of message dialogs that block the whole ui. Typically a message dialog that blocked things underneath it would be a last resort, and of all things in a music player app.

One example is if you have a song in your queue and press play on another song you get a message (which of course blocks the UI):

"You are about to start playback. Do you want to clear the song previously added to Up Next?" [Play song] [Cancel] [Clear Song]

dzohrob 8 years ago | |

agree, the modals are insane! iOS does better, it's pretty crazy how poorly the desktop has kept up.

astura 8 years ago |

It's pretty much universally accepted that iTunes is a giant bloated mess.

However,there's other audio players and media organization programs, why not use one of those instead? I only know of Clementine, which is open source. I can't vouch for it's features or anything - I only know it exists.

Edit: I guess the question is about Apple Music, specifically, my first read through I thought you meant you were playing raw MP3s. So disregard this post.

egze 8 years ago |

You probably meant it in a good way, but it is much better to say "Who knows a good alternative to iTunes?" or "How would you design a perfect music player?".

You wouldn't want to see a post "Who else hates dzohrob's music player?" would you?

always_good 8 years ago | |

Agreed. It also anchors all the comments in the same hostility instead of a more positive, collaborative frame of mind.

Pitchforks out.

It's also funny when software developers assume that other software is somehow the result of an organization's or developer's idea of perfection and immortality instead of the result of a long line of trade-offs and suboptimal resources.

We don't want anyone to assume that about our efforts but it seems to be the default assumption of HN comments.

dzohrob 8 years ago | | |

I agree that I should've framed my post better and I appreciate that feedback.

I do understand that iTunes is dealing with a long history of development, and that it has to support lots of use cases that probably explain a lot of the rough edges — I even allude to that in my post.

It's amazing that I can still use my decade-old iPod Shuffle with iTunes at all -- that must be a lot of work. But so much has changed since then, and iTunes as an Apple Music client is a genuinely frustrating experience.

I don't expect software to be perfect. But I want iTunes to be better than it is. I'm paying $10/mo for Apple Music, which actually has an incredible library and editorial playlists... they're just nearly impossible to find.

I'd love to have an amazing Apple Music experience that doesn't also need to manage podcasts, TV shows, audiobooks, and almost 2 decades of music players.

dzohrob 8 years ago | |

Totally fair feedback, thanks. I thought about phrasing it in a different way, but ended up letting my emotions get the better of me.

crankylinuxuser 8 years ago | |

It would be different if Apple didn't chain their mobile computer (iPhone, iPad) to this horrendous piece of software.

MTP exists for a reason, as does USB storage. But "Think Different" means doing worse and nonstandard.

hvass 8 years ago |

The only time I've felt a strong urge to write to Apple was in regards to iTunes and my complete disbelief that they still haven't figured it out decades in. It's shockingly bad.

cletus 8 years ago |

I think hatred for iTunes is pretty much universal, particularly with tech-savvy folks. But... it just doesn't matter. It seems like one of those siren projects like online dating or a better travel site.

The real problem you have is that actually owning and having mp3s (or whatever lossless alternative grabs your fancy) is (IMHO) only going to decrease and become increasingly niche.

Streaming will be the majority solution. Combine this with offline playlists on Spotify (which I've been paying for for years) and I just don't have any need for the mp3s I spent years collecting and curating.

The only problem with Spotify and the like (including iTunes) is content that holds out on streaming (thankfully this is becoming less common) and content that simply isn't on any digital format whatsoever. Sadly this includes a lot of Australian music. Oh and you also have crappy remasters rather than the originals.

The other thing that happened is we stopped backing up our iPhones by opening up iTunes and connecting the phone to a computer via a cable. Well, most people did. It's all iCloud backups now.

So what exactly do we need iTunes for? That's your problem.

beams_of_light 8 years ago | |

My sentiments in a nutshell. Having the ability to stream any songs I want, anytime has led to discovering more genres and artists I like, but didn't have exposure to previously. My Spotify playlist doesn't have much on it that most people would have heard before, at this point, thanks to Discover Weekly. I would hate to have to go back to curating my own MP3 library again, and be limited to files on a device I carry around with me.

psyc 8 years ago |

iTunes has the single worst UI of any app, of any kind, I have used in the last 20 years. The page flow makes no sense. I can never remember how to get to certain pages, or out of certain pages. There is no flow. Important functions are buried where I least expect. I can't use it without a search engine handy, and there is no excuse for this.

Worse, it is 100% guaranteed that if I use it across devices, then eventually my library will be destroyed on one of those devices, because they've made syncing about as intuitive as git.

The 'normies' in my family also cannot figure out how to use it effectively, at all, and for once I can't help them. Apple must have no incentive whatsoever to fix any of this.

ibz 8 years ago |

It used to be OK but it's gotten worse and worse, to the point where it's hardly usable - both on OSX and on iOS. I miss the foobar2000 days on windows! One thing I do like about iTunes is the ability to browse music by artist, by album, etc.

timrichard 8 years ago |

I've had a long aversion to iTunes, as well. I've been a happy Spotify subscriber for nearly 10 years now, but I've also been using Audirvana on the Mac recently to play FLAC files. It's a very lightweight player in comparison to iTunes, but still based around the album thumbnails you mention. Not stuffed with features, but a lot of attention is given to codec and playback options to get the best audio quality possible from your gear. Handles your material regardless of sample rate (44.1 to 192) and bit depth.

If you've got a collection of CDs, I'd recommend XLD [1] to rip them to FLAC.

I still use Spotify, mostly for discovery, but also have sessions with Audirvana where I listen to classic albums from beginning to end. Through some A/B testing, I noticed a modest improvement in depth and clarity over 320kbps MP3. The tradeoff is storage of course, and the growing album collection can start to take a chunk of your HD.

[1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/xld/

chubot 8 years ago |

Wow I thought I was an outlier, because I've never been able to get the hang of iTunes. I occasionally touch it with a 10 foot pole when I have to get something off my phone.

But I had assumed that almost everyone uses it now. Or maybe it's less popular than in the iPod days, because the phones/ipads are more independent.

My friend just recommended a podcast, and I didn't even realize that iTunes is where you get a lot of podcasts! I've never even tried.

Anyway, for buying music, I use Amazon's MP3 service and recommend it. You just download the album as a .zip file. Then I put it on my own music server. (I guess this is another reason I'm a dinosaur; I prefer listening to an entire album over streaming individual songs.

I switched to Spotify for awhile, but the quality was noticeably bad on my speakers. I use Sonos and when hooked up to good speakers, you can really tell. Amazon MP3s sound indistinguishable from the original recordings. And even streaming Amazon music, but not Spotify.

spsrich 8 years ago |

When your ten year old kid tells you they hate a piece of software that should be all you need to know.

It's atrociously bad.

barrowclift 8 years ago |

To offer another perspective, I prefer iTunes over the available alternatives on macOS simply because it's the only player out there that addresses my (admittedly niche) requirements:

* A nice grid view for albums, which is the only view I ever use (so the clunky UI that rightfully irritates users that need to switch views isn't a concern for me)

* A freely resizable album art player, which can still be launched by command+clicking the album art in the menu "display". Alternatively, I'd prefer something like the Apple TV's player view, but as far as I'm aware there's nothing on macOS like it.

For what it's worth, if your player supports even one of those points, it'd be an immediate purchase for me. :)

dawnerd 8 years ago |

I just want them to fix bugs that have been outstanding for the last year plus. The one that gets me the most is the box that says something about folllowing friends. There’s a close button that closes it but as soon as you go back to the page it shows up again.

Khoth 8 years ago |

I use iTunes 10. It's responsive, does everything I want and still has iTunes DJ which is the best method I've found for listening to random things from my music collection.

cfadvan 8 years ago |

I admire your goal, but my first question is, have you tried Foobar2000? You could create a theme that has most of your features, and at heart it is nicely minimalist.

dzohrob 8 years ago | |

Never heard of it, but looks interesting - thanks for sharing. I probably should've been more clear that after decades of curating my MP3 collection, I've moved towards streaming and rarely dig deep into my library for the ripped tracks that aren't available to stream.

NoahTheDuke 8 years ago | |

Foobar for interface, beats[http://beets.io/] for library organization. It's the perfect combination for any tech-savvy Windows user.

cfadvan 8 years ago | | |

First I’ve heard about Beets, and omg thank you! I’m just what it says, An “obsessive-compulsive music geek...” I’m going to have some real fun with this baby.

scandox 8 years ago |

The reason I use iTunes...have to use Itunes...is because:

* I love high quality audio books

* I use a classic iPod

* Audible is really the main game in town.

I think of ditching the iPod and using the Android App, but that makes me a bit sad.

What I'd really like is a Keyboard Kindle with 160GB of storage (I like knowing things are on the device) and some enhanced audiobook features. That's kind of my dream really. Which let's face it is unlikely to turn up soon.

Drakim 8 years ago | |

I used to have an iPod too, but the hard-drive eventually gave out.

What I did was get a dedicated android device for audible/music. One of those that looks like a mobile but doesn't have a sim card. A lot of people comment on how I could simply be using my phone instead, but you get a surprising amount of battery life out of a device that doesn't have cellphone, wifi or bluetooth active. And as a bonus, unlike my iPod I can simply flip on the wifi temporarily to sync up instead of having to plug into my computer.

scandox 8 years ago | | |

It's a decent idea and I have been tending towards it. The main reason I like the non-phone device is literally the fact that there is no internet. I like my reading devices to be offline (or at least functionally offline)...so no data is a feature not a problem.

013a 8 years ago |

All signs point to Apple revamping iTunes in the coming year/s, likely by splitting out the Music and TV portions into their own apps. This could come as soon as WWDC with the expected announcement of the unified app development framework; I seem to remember there being evidence that Apple Music on iOS is already using some of this technology, though I can't find a source right off.

rb808 8 years ago |

One thing I love about Apple Music are the Radio 1 shows - the back catalog of sessions are some of the most incredible sets of music ever. Finding them and playing is incredibly frustrating with iTunes - it sucks big time. Is the main reason I gave up on Apple Music. If you can improve this part it would be great.

mayniac 8 years ago |

Spotify has quite a few of the features you're looking for already. Why reinvent the wheel? It costs about the same as Apple Music, and I have very few complaints with the apps and desktop client. There's also quite a bit of IFTTT compatibility and a (from what I've heard) decent API.

thought_alarm 8 years ago |

I love iTunes. For more than a decade it has been the most important non-work-related software I have.

11,300 songs

800 music videos

50 movies

1100 TV episodes

80+ playlists

I would be hopelessly lost without it.

dzohrob 8 years ago | |

Thanks for the counterpoint, I appreciate it. FWIW I've generally stuck with it since 2003, but I've been more and more frustrated with it recently.

ChicagoDave 8 years ago |

Been on Spotify family plan for years. Never touch music files anymore. I see no point to iTunes anymore.

butterfi 8 years ago |

I think an easier question is "Who likes iTunes and why?" I don't mean that to sound snarky, but exactly what is iTune's value proposition? I only use it to buy media from Apple, and even then I don't buy much media from Apple because I hate using iTunes.

michaelsbradley 8 years ago | |

As a part-time group fitness instructor (full-time software dev), I use iTunes to create and organize playlists of varying lengths for the classes I teach, and to make variants of some of the playlists, i.e. for a little more variety when revisiting past material. I find it to be both a useful and frustrating tool for that purpose. On the whole, I feel the interface has gotten more clunky over the years. However, I no longer have to worry about syncing devices as I (finally) figured out the iCloud Music Library feature; now, I just create/alter/delete a playlist on my laptop and then my iPhone, iPad, and iPod automatically pick up the changes. If there's a tool with a better interface that will seamlessly integrate playlist curation across my iOS devices and macOS laptop, I'd seriously love to hear about it.

kmbriedis 8 years ago | | |

Not that ideal when you want a diversity and one of your devices is not from the same company

josefresco 8 years ago |

Out of the mountain of other issues I have with iTunes, the most frustrating has been the lack of "tooltips" which combined with the ever shifting, and bat-shit-crazy UI makes using iTunes psychosis inducing.

anentropic 8 years ago |

Are you talking about iTunes downloaded library, Apple Music Streaming, or both?

I have often fantasised about building a replacement for iTunes downloaded library

particularly one that didn't randomly duplicate and/or lose files

nkkollaw 8 years ago |

As time passed I found myself using Apple apps less and less.

They just go so ridiculously bad: form over function, buggy software, worse UI and features compared to competitors.

xedarius 8 years ago |

It's a miserable program that started off bad and never really got any better. Only thing worse than using iTunes is using iTunes on the PC.

qalmakka 8 years ago |

I honestly have stopped buying iPhones just to stop having to deal with that utter pile of rubbish that iTunes is. It was maddening riddled with bugs and just hopelessly hacked up on Windows, way beyond the amount I could find acceptable.

eknkc 8 years ago | |

I have been using iPhones since the first one and haven't had a reason to launch iTunes last 3-4 years I guess. Was this before then?

g09980 8 years ago | |

It seems like Apple has been doing away with the iTunes dependency, albeit slowly. You have been able to update without iTunes for a couple of years and more recently the awful Apps syncing was removed too.

Also, introduction of iCloud sync for files and backup vs. iTunes local sync.

dominotw 8 years ago |

sorry for asking this. Why can't you use something else?

wmeredith 8 years ago | |

Nothing else works with Siri. That's it. iTunes and Apple Music are terrible to use. But my kids can use it with Siri and I can use it in the car. Only reason I'm still on the platform.

dzohrob 8 years ago | |

Fair question. I am an Apple Music subscriber, so iTunes is the only Apple Music desktop client I'm aware of.

ibz 8 years ago | |

Good point. Maybe the question should really be [Ask HN]: Are there any decent iTunes alternatives?

neom 8 years ago | | |

Wine + Winamp. :D

JoshMnem 8 years ago |

Why not just use VLC, gPodder, or another open media player?

dzohrob 8 years ago | |

Fair question. I am an Apple Music subscriber, so iTunes is the only Apple Music desktop client I'm aware of.

sebringj 8 years ago |

it loads up when I don't want it to, music is not my kind i like, and sometimes chugs the cpu, what's not to love.

IloveHN84 8 years ago |

Everyone?

Froyoh 8 years ago |

Who likes iTunes?

anonlastname 8 years ago |

It's proprietary and full if DrM. Of course it sucks. Just pirate your music.