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Feature Request: How I hope the upcoming iTunes refresh improves Apple Music and more

All the excitement for this week’s Apple announcement for the new iPhone SE, 9.7-inch iPad Pro, and refreshed Apple Watch models has got me on the edge of my seat. Not just for the hardware, but also for the potential iTunes software changes that might be coming. Eddy Cue dropped the hint during an interview last month, saying that iTunes would be receiving a refresh this month focusing on music with the new version of Mac OS X. That’s great news, because a refresh is undeniably what iTunes needs right now.

During the interview blogger John Gruber sat down for an hour long conversation with Apple execs Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi. I previously broke down the interview where the group discussed the current state of Apple products and where they recognize areas for improvement. In the entire discussion, the part that sticks with me still is how Eddy Cue had made a passing statement of an incoming “refresh” for iTunes coming this month. Exactly what Cue meant by a “refresh” is the question I keep coming back to, and something I believe may be alluding to more than he let on.

In the conversation with the execs, both acknowledged difficulties with various parts of their platforms. They both agreed that there were areas where Apple could definitely improve and that they were constantly thinking about what they could do to improve them. The difficulties with iTunes brought up how it related with the still new Apple Music. A confusion between the different services and systems was starting to form.

Cue explained that at one point they even thought of making the entire system “cloud based” since Apple Music and iTunes for all intents and purposes already were cloud based. They acknowledged that iTunes had been built during a time when everything was being synced with a cable. A centralized place for syncing activities was key. Not having to launch multiple apps to manage a device was and is important for Apple.

The idea of a cloud-based system was soon scrapped when they recognized that they still needed a way to allow users to have the ability to upload music easily. Especially when millions of devices are still manually syncing to iTunes using a cable. They didn’t want to push all of Apple Music and iTunes into a cloud platform when users still had to manage personal libraries. Not all of the other competing music streaming services offer a way to upload music already owned to the cloud, and Apple wanted to retain that.

Cue stated that for the short term, they wanted to focus so that when you were in Music in iTunes, all you saw was music. He believes that if they had built a separate Music syncing application, it would look a lot like the current Music section of iTunes. This part of the conversation is where my ears began to perk up. Cue says, “Right now we think we designed iTunes, with a refresh coming in OS X next month, that makes it even easier to use in the Music space.”

And this is where we get to the crux of our conversation. What would happen to Apple’s Music services and sections within iTunes that could simplify it? Taking a look at iTunes’ Music section today, it’s immediately apparent how overly complicated the UI has become.

The primary iTunes Music sub-sections, and what services and systems they correspond to.

While there are multiple discussions to start iTunes from scratch, I want to hone in on the one area where I feel iTunes really needs a “refresh”: the music section’s toolbar at the top of iTunes. As of iTunes 12, there are 7 different music sub-sections in the toolbar. Two are library specific, four dedicated to Apple Music, and one for the traditional iTunes Store.

The first group of options in this section alone are already overly messy. ‘My Music’ and ‘Playlists’ both contain various types of music libraries. Under either of these, users can see music from their local on-disk library, music from Apple Music, music from iTunes in the Cloud, or even music from iTunes Match. The only way to tell and understand what is what is to enable the ‘iCloud Download’ and ’iCloud Status’ columns. Apple even created a support document specifically to help understand these icons and statuses.

The second group of options includes four options, all Apple Music specific. While these may be obvious to those who frequently launch Music on iOS, to a new iTunes user it’s not exactly the friendliest introduction to Apple Music. If a user currently doesn’t have Apple Music and clicks on these sections, they are shown a page to purchase it. It makes financial and marketing sense to do this, but it is most definitely not a good way to onboard new potential users.

The final option is just the iTunes Store. This is probably the clearest section of all. Users know when they click here they’ll be taken to see the iTunes’ catalog. Except even that catalog is becoming a massive amalgamation. Under iTunes someone can find music, movies, TV shows, iOS apps, books, podcasts, audiobooks, and iTunes U content.

Click through the gallery above to see how iTunes handles each search function depending under what section the user is under.

From these varying sections, how would a user quickly jump in and make an immediate purchase? Depending on what selection the user made in any of top three subsections, they’ll see different results and options for each view.

iTunes has quickly outgrown itself and is struggling to keep all its services together and organized cleanly. I appreciate having options and control, but I don’t at all enjoy having to think for longer than a few seconds of where I should go to purchase something.

Oversimplifying the solution, Apple could re-implement iTunes into a way that detects what services the user currently has. Are they Apple Music subscriber? Show the Apple Music section. Are they searching for music, subscribe to Apple Music, and the music isn’t available on Apple Music? Show results indicating as such, and point them to iTunes where they’ll be able to purchase the music.

I’ve done it multiple times. Searched for content on Apple Music, only to discover it doesn’t exist, and then having to re-do the search under the iTunes Store subsection. This bouncing around and having to think of where my searches are run just doesn’t coincide with Apple’s market cohesiveness.

Tom Koszyk’s Apple Music Redesign

Dribbble is full of UI redesigns, but I haven’t seen one that handles all the disorganization of iTunes well. Tom Koszyk’s Apple Music experience redesign goes through nearly all of my gripes and designs the interface in a way that drives discovery. I believe it’s time that Apple gives iTunes’ music sections an experience refresh, and I’m hoping that’s exactly what Eddy Cue had meant.

What about you? What do you think about Cue’s “refresh” comment? Do you think it will greatly improve iTunes, or simply add another bandage onto existing features. What features do you feel iTunes needs added or removed? Comment below, or let me know @gregbarbosa.

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Comments

  1. obed17 - 8 years ago

    It would be nice to be able to use the iPod nano and shuffle with Apple Music.

  2. Casper - 8 years ago

    I’d like to see a way to switch off ‘Apple Radio’ fully … For people who actually just use their products all these new features are annoying as they are an constant reminder that they want me to buy more of their stuff – in the rest of the world it’s called hidden advertisement.

    Apple should recognize that there are people who actually do not want all these new fancy shiny options….

  3. Inaba-kun (@Inaba_kun) - 8 years ago

    Having to re-do searches between iTunes and Apple Music is madenning. The whole UI is a mess. Just give me one store where I can buy or add to my Apple Music library.

  4. I would love iCloud to replace iTunes and syncing with a cable. I know my “home videos” (aka ripped DVDs) won’t every be stored in iCloud, but it would be nice to drag songs into iTunes and have them uploaded to the cloud without having to pay for iTunes Match as a separate service.

    • taoprophet420 - 8 years ago

      They are import, special edition and other music that isn’t available on iTunes and why they decided not to do iCloud syncing and not take away he ability to import your own music.

  5. Dan Rasmussen (@danrazz) - 8 years ago

    Let us not forget that Apple Music was originally Beats. It had it’s own App, i think they can easily split it out again.

    • hopefulhumanist - 8 years ago

      That would suck for those of us that make playlists with our owned music and music from Apple Music so that’s pretty much a no-go.

    • Smigit - 8 years ago

      That doesn’t make sense though. The streaming and local libraries should be managed in the one app. Both are concerned with music playback and the crossover is massive.

      It’s the stores, device management and other functions which are debatable.

  6. whodakat - 8 years ago

    I wish people would stop pissing and moaning about iTunes. Get over it. It works fine. Can everything be tweaked and made better? Sure. But the amount of whining over iTunes is overwhelming. What are you people doing that is so hard? My mother uses Apple Music and iTunes. You should be ashamed of your technical prowess..

    • Greg Barbosa - 8 years ago

      This has nothing to do with technical prowess.

    • twelve01 - 8 years ago

      I agree. Can it be improved? Surely. But all in all its a solid service, and has steadily improved since launch. for those of us with a significant iTunes library, having your music under one app is ideal. If there’s a particular feature you’re not using, then ignore it or shut it off. It’s that simple.

    • PhilBoogie - 8 years ago

      I don’t get it either. There’s really nothing wrong with the GUI. Sure, it will change with every release, and people need to take the time to see what’s what, again. But it’s hardly something difficult, it just got more features over the past 12 years that people need to learn something new. That’s all.

      The dreamed up redesign article that’s linked is most surely not a better option. Taking away the songs time duration field, having two columns on the left hand. And those are considered features(?)

      Whatever. I’m certain there will be many more artciles like this one, suggesting Apple should do this and this whenever a new version of iTunes is released. Oh yeah, and there will be bitching because someone on the other side of the globe already is playing with it while they cannot download it. Stopping to think that there may be over one hundred million others also trying to download all updates concurrently.

      • nelmat - 8 years ago

        The issue is that basic functionality has been removed or buried very deep. Losing the sidebar, losing the ability to open multiple windows, importing CDs, burning playlists to disc. Add to that the Apple Music bugs. Llatest one I discovered (after a couple of hours on the phone to support) is that smart playlist order isn’t synced across devices with iCloud music library – you have to manually update your playlist in each device – it’s a pita! Lol

  7. My biggest issue with iTunes is performance, specifically anything that deals with online content such as the store or Apple Music specific pages. Scrolling alone is horrendous and I’m using a current gen macbook pro.

  8. David Kaplan - 8 years ago

    I listened to the interview on podcast and I never heard any mention of a refresh with OS X 10.11.4 which is what would happen this month, usually they would do a beta which hasn’t been released so I don’t know, then again they may just release it as compatible with OS X 10.11.4 coming hopefully tmrw

  9. Junshu Liu - 8 years ago

    The Apple Music UI should be improved. Just find a little problem that in some place of Apple Music page, the font is Helvetica instead of San Francisco (current iTunes)

  10. pratafw - 8 years ago

    When I use iTunes I think it is just fine but this is because I’m a 6 years user that learnt how to manage it and its mess… Honestly thinking in a new user of iTunes it gets complicated to understand, and it is the opposite of Apple culture. I think that iTunes needs a very DEEP redesign and not only a refresh. It still remains with a core design though for a time where it was needed to sync our devices with cables, today it cannot turn around that concept, it must be cloud based and what about people that still uses it to sync their devices?, well.. if they forced users to just have one USB C in new MacBooks, they can think iTunes just based in cloud and that users get over it.

    • Smigit - 8 years ago

      They really should pull the device management out and make it a function of the OS instead. First it’d cleanup iTunes. Secondly it’d remove that silly limitation where iTunes needs to be running for wifi sync to work.

      iBooks has a much cleaner interface, in part because its trying to do much less. I know some people dislike the idea of managing the iPhone in anything but iTunes, but as it is now books and the like are also managed via iTunes, not iBooks, so clearly managing portable devices doesn’t have to occur in the app most associated with the file type.

  11. nelmat - 8 years ago

    Just bring back the sidebar (in all views) and the ability to double click a playlist to open in it in a new window. Building multiple playlists while easily viewing them is impossible now.

  12. Sten Wranne (@Stenen99) - 8 years ago

    Apple needs to start with blank paper for iTunes. It’s completely impossible to understand what’s in the cloud and what’s not. What’s on my Mac, what’s on my iPhone/iPod etc. It’s so cluttered i can’t even describe what I don’t understand. And the performance is really bad. Hangs happen every day.

  13. Ray Grant - 8 years ago

    I need sync that doesn’t change my tracks to album versions/other concerts/greatest hits versions/etc. The way syncing of local content works (or doesn’t) now is the sole reason I haven’t switched to Apple Music.

  14. k0jeg - 8 years ago

    Seems to me that syncing, backups and music management should be different applications. Sync and backup should “just happen” when devices are on the same network or physically connected, much like iCloud “just happens.” Music management needs a UI refresh though.

  15. modeyabsolom - 8 years ago

    I’m fine with iTunes as is actually. It doesn’t confuse me as it apparently does others. Maybe because all of my music collection is either purchased from iTunes and other online music storefronts or ripped from my CD collection. I don’t use Apple Music.

  16. Steve Grenier - 8 years ago

    If iTunes receives an update today, prepare to be underwhelmed.

  17. runhardbc - 8 years ago

    Start with fixing the present iTunes so that it recognizes and syncs to an iPod Classic! After speaking with someone at Apple a few months ago they basically told me that I was for all intense purposes out of luck when it came to syncing my iPod Classic with iTunes ever again. One day late last summer it synced fine then the next day it was like it was never there or even recognized in iTunes. The iTunes technician at Apple didn’t even know this was happening and when I told her that all the suggestions she was giving me had already been attempted that’s when she said there’s nothing that could be done. If I had known that with the next iTunes 12.1 update and iOS update I would have never downloaded the new software and as far as their Apple Music they can keep it!

    • PhilBoogie - 8 years ago

      I’ve always found restoring a previous version to be a breeze. Likely because of the lack of a Registry.

  18. iTunes and Apple Music are so awful. The classic iPod app, music-only iTunes, and Beats Music apps were easy to figure out and relatively logically organized. The kitchen sink apps we have today, along with their cryptic, maze-like user interfaces, are simply painful to use.

  19. Whenever I use iTunes I imagine that it was redesigned by the inventor of Ping, Apple’s failed music social network.

  20. Rick Hawkins - 7 years ago

    Now that iphones have decent storage capacity and i got one, it would be fantastic if they would integrate a choice on where to store backups. i cant back my phone up with the space I have on my primary drive