HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Like it's broken beyond all recognition and hope with all interactions and expectations of a native app just gone. See this review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU

"unique style of content" is a strange way to describe a lackluster library. It doesn't even seem to be improving. There is not a lot of new content compared to 6 month ago (when I first checked). Unless you're very into one of few shows, it's not worth it. And it's not me speaking. They offer 1 year free trial! Who does this?

I have't tried other services, so I cannot comment. Although, Apple Music seems to be a disaster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU

In the past few years Apple has dropped the ball on HIG and MacOS.

Here's AppStore mini-review: https://grumpy.website/post/0RsaxCu3P

"Get 15 people, put them in 15 different offices with no communication between them, set them to work on one feature at a time. You will get something very similar to the App Store."

Here's Apple Music review (spoiler: swearing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU

Assuming you mean Apple Music (iTunes was an okay MP3 player/ripper, but is dead), I consider it the exception that proves the rule. Enjoy the schadenfreude of this recent Apple Music for macOS review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU

⬐ meiraleal

Still, iTunes was the apple's media center for more than a decade, and a terrible one at that.

⬐ mimixco

No, I meant iTunes. Their willingness to make that was a harbinger of Bad Things to Come, ala the review you linked.

Apple had some good UI ideas in the past. For a fleeting moment, they were the best. But eons ago they sold out the user to sell him a lifestyle/subscription system built around keeping people from leaving. This vastly compromised their UI designs to the point of making them frustrating and sometimes futile.

⬐ CharlesW

iTunes was SoundJam MP with an Apple makeover. Both SoundJam MP and Audion were the shit at the time, so I recall being thrilled at the acqui-hire.

Why specifically do you hold iTunes in such low regard? The bolt-on, beyond-music functionality has always sucked, but I didn't find it wanting from a music management POV. (Although I never used it for ripping. dBpoweramp for me, thank you.)

⬐ mimixco

iTunes was never as good as any of the free music managers out there at the time. It lacked most serious features that users with a real collection (of their own) might need. Anything related to finding, sorting, organizing, naming, changing metadata, moving, sharing, re-ripping, ripping at all, etc. were severely crippled. Perhaps that's because SoundJam didn't build those features. But they stayed unbuilt because Apple didn't want them.

As far as the raw UI, they were shown to the door by Zune which was a massive failure! Couldn't Apple with its money and music business success have made Zune or something even better? Of course they could. They had an early lead. My point is they chose not to because openness and control in music (or anything else) is antithetical to their business model. This adversarial view of users is also what lead to terrible iTunes bugs like eating your music, which others also recall well.

⬐ loup-vaillant

I once read a composer complaining that iTunes has deleted his master records and "helpfully" replaced them with compressed files (lossy compression of course). I tried to find it to prove your point, but found this instead:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250315803

Software that loses data it fetched or produced is an accident. Software that actively search for and deletes data it has nothing to do with (in backups!!), is malware. People went to jail over such things.

⬐ mimixco

There are many iTunes stories like that. A friend of mine who is a composer and singer had his original songs erased from his library, irreplaceable live recordings, because of Apple's open hostility toward files they didn't create.

⬐ abvdasker

The broad decline in software quality from Apple has been gradual but steady since Jobs’ death. MacOS has deteriorated severely as the video shows, but even iOS has some serious problems. As someone who switched from Android about 6 months ago it’s safe to say Android is a much, much better operating system in its current incarnation (I plan to switch back). iOS still has better apps, but I doubt that will continue to be the case in a couple years.

⬐ rbrbr

It is fascinating, just like Microsoft. Both companies have basically infinite resources but they build software that has the quality of cheap low budget third party company products.

⬐ sebastien_b

This is comical, and sad, to watch, as it perfectly summarizes everything that’s wrong with Catalyst (iOS-ification of macOS apps) on the Mac.

⬐ bouke

Music.app is so bad. Every interaction is sluggish on the fastest hardware and even on fast networks. I dread using it. iTunes had its problems but at least it wasn’t trying to be an even slower version of some Electron app (well except for Apple Music).

⬐ garrepi

Notable mention: the Apple TV app for macOS. Truly one of the worst experiences I've ever had on the desktop.

⬐ systemvoltage

This is not the fault of the software engineers. This is the fault of the PM. They talk to the design team (which is totally incompetent) to come up with a story board. This storyboard then gets dumped into the laps of software engineers - "Go program this".

Can you imagine the reaction from Steve Jobs if he was alive? Owner of this product should be fired. Instantly.

This is also a result of "soft" culture in Silicon Valley. No harsh criticism, everything is positive and good. No dictators, no one telling them the truth, everyone is sailing along in happy path land. No one can exclaim "This is shit" because someone is going to get offended.

⬐ michelb

Plenty of times designers and coders have worked around Steve’s warped ideas as well. I’m pretty sure this is still a systemic issue inside Apple with teams not knowing what they are working on.

⬐ browningstreet

Are any of the music platforms iterating the music experience? Seems like so many of them are distracted by podcasts and clubhouse cloning. I can’t think of a significant new “organize music” or “listen to music” feature, thinks like playlists of albums, album tagging, etc.

⬐ rnantes

It's not the worst, but doing anything network related is very slow. Apparently it's uses html5 in the browse section under the hood, not even a true native app.

⬐ CREwert

the music player has problems even if you dont subscribe to "apple music", too.

⬐ Rebelgecko

The Apple Music app on Android is incredibly infuriating. What's even more fun is that Apple doesn't have anywhere to report bugs for it, and what's extra fun is that their bug reporter doesn't work on mobile (at least not with Firefox or Chrome).

My favorite bugs:

When connected to wifi that doesn't have internet access (like on a plane), some UI actions have a 60 second delay. So you tap a song to play it, wait 60 seconds for some network thread to timeout, and then the song plays

There used to be a bug where certain "smart" playlists would auto add every song you listened to (this has since been fixed)

Adding an album to a playlist straightup doesn't work

The button for downloading a playlist for offline listening doesn't do anything, you have to get each song manually