What should Apple do with iTunes?

Telchak

Strange... OS X and iTunes are on an ssd and it's the only application that's like that Must something like Songbird later to see if that's slow also, could be that my storage HDD is slow or maybe I've just a corrupt iTunes/Quicktime install...

conor.hogan.2

Could be. But you can ask others I don't think anyone would say they have iTunes lag for even 1 second between songs.

Sad Professor

I've never had lag problems like that with iTunes.

I assume your iTunes library is on the HDD, yeah? Check it out in Disk Utility and make sure it's not failing. Also repair permissions and check that it's formatted correctly (Mac OS Extended), etc.

Telchak

Sad Professor wrote: »

Also repair permissions and check that it's formatted correctly (Mac OS Extended), etc.

Come to think of it, it's an NTFS drive I'm using with Paragon-NTFS. Will hopefully have a spare hard drive soon that I can use to migrate my current drives to Mac OS extended Will test when I get home if it works ok with songs on my OS drive.

Thanks for the idea

Sad Professor

Yeah that's the problem. I'd imagine iTunes is having difficulty indexing the library and/or Paragon is slowing it up.

maccored

I think the itunes store and the app store should be one app, all video bits (including apples quicktime player as well) should all be combined into one app for viewing visual things and music should be left with itunes. Basically bring back SoundJam.

squonk

I think iTune's biggest problem is the xml method they use to store library information. If anything happens to your library or there is some form of update to be made to the information, you're faced with the 'Updating iTunes Library' dialog that goes on, and on, and on.... before eventually letting you work on iTunes again.

XML is good in general and no doubt it was great when iTunes was released. Libraries back in the early noughties weren't that large but I've about 10K+ songs in my library and I know a few friends who have far more. When you're dealing with modifications for that number of items, the overhead of parsing and changign XML becomes quite high.

I'd prefer to see them replace this system with a lightweight database of some sort. In the past I'd have said MySQL but not now since it's become an Oracle product, or they could design something of their own. There are a few open source very lightweight candidates they could use if needs be.

conor.hogan.2

13,400 songs and iTunes runs very very smooth.

Do not open the xml file in most text apps though as it will crash them because it is so large but that is not iTunes fault. I had to use Vim to see the file.

Sad Professor

It looks like the long speculated splitting up of iTunes into separate apps is finally happening. Sort of. 9to5Mac reports that Apple is using Marzipan to port the iOS Music, Podcast and TV apps (with minor code changes) to the Mac. iTunes itself will remain for users who still manually sync music to their devices via cable.

Next major macOS version will include standalone Music, Podcasts, and TV apps, Books app gets major redesign

maccored

bring back SoundJam!

DubDJ

DubDJ wrote: »

I wouldn't really like the idea of iTunes split up into lots of apps. I like having it as the centre of all my devices. Maybe if they took the player feature from it I wouldn't mind too much. And had all download, syncing devices, as one program. And the iTunes player as another.

My opinion on this has definitely changed in 7 years I used to rely heavily on iTunes but since iCloud has become so far reaching and I don't have multiple devices anymore there isn't really a massive need for iTunes for me personally.

Right now the only reason I open it is for Apple Music and occasionally to restore a family members device. A standalone iOS manager app would fit the need. With all the other functionality being pulled out I can imagine it being slowly deprecated. It'll stick around for a good few more years id imagine for legacy support.

Sad Professor

DubDJ wrote: »

My opinion on this has definitely changed in 7 years I used to rely heavily on iTunes but since iCloud has become so far reaching and I don't have multiple devices anymore there isn't really a massive need for iTunes for me personally.

Right now the only reason I open it is for Apple Music and occasionally to restore a family members device. A standalone iOS manager app would fit the need. With all the other functionality being pulled out I can imagine it being slowly deprecated. It'll stick around for a good few more years id imagine for legacy support.

If they are going the Marzipan route then iTunes may be around for a very long time indeed as it will presumedly still be needed for library management as well.

calum

Sad Professor wrote: »

If they are going the Marzipan route then iTunes may be around for a very long time indeed as it will presumedly still be needed for library management as well.

I wouldn't bet on it. I can see them eroding any "management" features pretty swiftly, and pushing everyone to their cloud-based streaming services.

calum

There’s also a good discussion in this week’s ATP about how bad the Marzipanifcation of iTunes could be:
https://overcast.fm/+CdQwKWV0/30:00

Sad Professor

Which is why I think iTunes isn't going anywhere soon. If Apple had any real appetite for eliminating iTunes and its library management/syncing functionality then they would have spent the last several years developing proper Mac versions of the Music, Podcasts, etc apps like they did with Photos. Instead they are just porting over the iOS versions. Even if they are planning to expand the functionality of the iOS apps, they are still going to need iTunes for a long time after for people with older devices.

calum

Sad Professor wrote: »

Which is why I think iTunes isn't going anywhere soon. If Apple had any real appetite for eliminating iTunes and its library management/syncing functionality then they would have spent the last several years developing proper Mac versions of the Music, Podcasts, etc apps like they did with Photos.

Photos is still missing stuff that iPhotos could do, which is why I haven't switched yet... and it's a horrible looking app to boot

The Apple of old would certainly have kept iTunes around, as they were more inclined to provide consumer and Pro versions of everything in those days (GarageBand vs Logic -- both still around, I know, iPhotos vs Aperture, QuickTime vs QuickTime Pro...)

These days they generally don't, and they're not even very good at writing Mac apps themselves any more (what was the last good, new, mildly-sophisticated macOS app that Apple wrote?). And it seems clear their direction is to write iOS apps that also work on the Mac from now on. So I think they'll improve the multi-platform Music and Podcast apps just enough (but not really enough) over the next couple of years that they can justify ditching iTunes. I'd say the reason they haven't so far is simply that the Marzipan framework doesn't do enough for a full-fledged Mac app yet... hopefully we'll see how much progress they've made on that at WWDC.