Why Apple’s iTunes Needs to Properly Migrate to the Web–NOW
I have this huge love-hate thing with iTunes. On the “love” side, I know how it works and does what I need it to do when it comes to my iOS devices. Plus the store has 95% of the songs I want to purchase. On the “hate” side of the equation–well, there’s a lot. Poor stability for large libraries. Feature bloat. A shitty Windows version. No support for FLAC. And the nonsense about my iOS devices being tied to one library on one machine. That sucks.
The mother of media players, iTunes is still the central hub for sending multimedia content to any Apple device you might own, be it an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. But as Apple attempts to integrate its software and services in OS X Yosemite and iOS 8, iTunes is perhaps the one major piece of the puzzle that’s still left behind.
Yes, Apple splashed a new coat of paint on iTunes last year, also giving the media player a new streaming service called “iTunes Radio,” which was essentially Apple’s bid to compete with rival services like Spotify and Pandora. But the basic architecture didn’t change much at all. All multimedia still needs to loaded onto the iTunes desktop app before it can be shared or stored on other devices. And the desktop app, as always, is still slow. (Apple really missed an opportunity to change the iTunes icon to a jar of molasses for OS X Yosemite.)
This isn’t to say iTunes is a bad application, but there is certainly much room to grow. After all, iTunes is more important than ever, especially as users add more iOS and Mac devices to their households. And as its recent purchase of Beats Electronics points out, Apple is aware that “music is dying” but needs outside help or reassurance (or both) with its own music products.
If music is actually “dying,” Apple may not be able to save it by itself — but making its heavily relied on music software the best it can be would be a great start.
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