The Unbearable Heaviness of iTunes

Vlad Savov at The Verge asks how many Apple engineers does it take to fix iTunes?:

In the ranking of unpleasant life experiences, using Apple’s iTunes lies somewhere between filing your taxes and having your wisdom teeth pulled out. It’s not good even at the best of times, but two weeks ago it was downright harmful to one James Pinkstone of Atlanta, who found 122GB of his own musical creations had been deleted by Apple’s renegade software. The response from Cupertino has been swift and decisive, with two engineers being sent out this weekend to diagnose the cause of Pinkstone’s agony and try to fix it.

Excellent fucking question!

The problem with iTunes is that iTunes does waaaaaay too many things now. It manages not just your tunes, but your movies, podcasts, apps, and, if you like, your iPhone/iPad syncing (I rarely use iTunes to sync my iPhone).

Originally, iTunes handled your music, and then syncing your music to your iPod. It’s actually doing the same thing now, only with many more different media types for multiple devices.

Something clearly has to change, whether it’s rebuilding iTunes from the ground up, like they did when they scrapped iPhoto for the new Photos app or breaking iTunes up into discreet applications for different tasks/media types.

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Human Experience

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If you hand over the keys, you hand over the money, control, and responsibility.

Over the weekend The New York Times published a piece, Podcasts Surge, but Producers Fear Apple Isn’t Listening.

Marco Arment, a prominent iOS developer and podcaster, responded:

And if that ill-informed New York Times article is correct in broad strokes, which is a big “if” given how much it got wrong about Apple’s role in podcasting, big podcasters want Apple to add more behavioral data and creepy tracking to the Apple Podcasts app, then share the data with them. I wouldn’t hold my breath on that.

By the way, while I often get pitched on garbage podcast-listening-behavioral-data integrations, I’m never adding such tracking to Overcast. Never. The biggest reason I made a free, mass-market podcast app was so I could take stands like this.

Big podcasters also apparently want Apple to insert itself as a financial intermediary to allow payment for podcasts within Apple’s app. We’ve seen how that goes. Trust me, podcasters, you don’t want that.

It would not only add rules, restrictions, delays, and big commissions, but it would increase Apple’s dominant role in podcasts, push out diversity, give Apple far more control than before, and potentially destroy one of the web’s last open media ecosystems.

I agree with Arment. Be careful what you wish for.

You don’t hear these complaints from less popular, underdog podcasters, like me. I’ve been producing my (sometimes) Weekly Exhaust podcast for over a year with my co-host Bryan, and it’s hard work, but that’s how it goes. Anything worth doing takes hard work. It takes me having to figure out how to market and advertise my podcast to get exposure.

If I hand that responsibility over to Apple I also hand over money that could go in my pocket. I also hand over my relationship with my listeners. I don’t want to do that.

Categories:

Podcast

“Siri, replace yourself with Viv.”

For the last four years the creators of Siri have been working on a next generation AI called Viv:

The major difference between Siri and Viv is that the latter is a far more open platform. One of the biggest frustrations with Siri is that it has only a small number of tasks it can complete. For the vast multitude of requests or queries, Siri will default to a generic web search. Viv’s approach is much closer to Amazon’s Alexa or Facebook’s Messenger bots, offering the ability to connect with third party merchants and vendors so that it can execute on requests to purchase good or book reservations. The company’s tagline — intelligence becomes a utility — nicely sums up its goal of powering the conversational AI inside a multitude of gadgets and digital services.

Sounds awesome. I wonder if Apple will just buy Viv like they did Siri or if they’re going to be take Siri to the next level on their own.

There were negative reviews of Amazon’s Alexa when it came out but more and more I’m hearing positive experiences with it (from Apple nerds too).

Update: Here’s a video of Viv in action from TechCrunch Disrupt

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Technology

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Apple Diversity

Apple launched a new page breaking down the diversity across the company:

This kind of reporting and transparency is great, but as CEO Tim Cook admits in his message, there’s a lot more work to be done.

Let’s take a look at the executive board, for instance:

Not many brown people up there. Wait! There’s a black woman VP of HR. Yay!

So yeah, I would agree with Cook. There’s a lot more work to be done.

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Career

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Geez, LG

I remember when tech news sites were mocking Apple when they introduced gold color finishing on iPhones, and then on the ‘new’ MacBook.

Seems the mocking is over as Samsung and LG continue to copy Apple’s product designs.

Check out the web page for LG’s new, ultra-thin laptop, the ‘gram’ (really? the whole product name is lowercase?)

And as David Barker noted on Designer News, they even pasted in a shot from Final Cut Pro on OS X.

And here’s the new MacBook Apple debuted in 2015:

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Product

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The Post-Retail Landscape

Interesting holiday retail facts from L2 on Youtube:

An unlikely winner? Malls – at least high-end ones, which are flourishing. The top-rated malls of 2015 all had upscale department stores, luxury brand stores and high-tech electronics stores.

An Apple Store increased mall revenue per square foot by 13%. Think about that. Apple is going to start charging malls to be tenants.

I’ve lived most of my life since 2000 in cities (Manhattan, Miami, Los Angeles, and now San Francisco) so I’m not aware of how dire the retail situation is in suburban areas—that is— until I went home to visit my family in New Jersey this past holiday.

It was hard for me to find something as simple as a pair of Chuck Taylors. Back in the day there a Foot Locker about 10 minutes from my parents’ house, but no more.

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Business, Consumer

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deliberately radical without regard for traditions

Timm Romine responding to Sean Geraghty’s criticisms that Apple has thrown out discoverability and usability in their products:

Sorry, Sean, and Don, and Bruce, but The Future won’t have buttons whose functions can be achieved without buttons, and it definitely won’t look like iOS 6. And you can argue it won’t look like iOS 7–9. But what’s certain, is the future of UI is minimalistic, sleek, simplistic — according to the sci-fi movies we revere.

Back in 2009 I wrote about the future of iconography. I speculated then—and Siri is now showing us now— that the interface of the future is no interface (I’m not suggesting I’m a genius, the writing was on the wall).

Just like learning any new language, learning the language of an interface takes varying degrees and practice before one is accustomed to it.

I’ve been maintaining this blog since 2006 so I’m used to the endless stream of doom-and-gloom pieces on Apple.

We, and Apple, are going to be ok.

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“If journalists reviewed Macs like iPads”

In response to all the tech reviewers asking if the iPad Pro can replace the MacBook Pro, Fraser Spiers cleverly goes flipmode:

Firstly, consider the hardware. The huge issue with the MacBook Pro is its form factor. The fact that the keyboard and screen are limited to being held in an L-shaped configuration seriously limits its flexibility. It is basically impossible to use a MacBook pro while standing up and downright dangerous to use when walking around. Your computing is limited to times when you are able to find somewhere to sit down.

Not that you would want to use a MacBook Pro while standing anyway. The sheer weight of these devices means that your shoulder is going to take a beating if you switch from iOS to OS X. The current 15″ MacBook Pro tips the scales at 4.49 pounds – or three iPad Pros – despite having a lower-resolution screen and one less hour of battery life.

This reminds me of people who travel from one part of the U.S. to another and are upset that the exact same food options are not available to them. Every city has its strengths and weaknesses.

The same goes for our devices. Expecting an iPad Pro to have identical features to a MacBook Pro is an exercise in futility.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t compare the two devices, I’m just saying don’t be surprised when you discover their differences.

Categories:

Product

The Apple Way is Now Microsoft’s Way

Tim Bajarin on Microsoft admitting with their actions Apple’s way is the best way:

But if you look at Microsoft’s new strategy, one can’t help but see this is an acknowledgment Apple’s business model of owning the hardware, software and services is ultimately the best one that assures Microsoft’s control of their destiny. At the moment, it looks like Microsoft will only have three serious PC partners — HP, Dell, and Lenovo — doing any volume. Some are asking how long even these vendors will continue to support PCs given shrinking margins.

Yep. I said as much a few weeks ago.

On that last point regarding partners, I’ve said this before but I think Microsoft needs to proactively drop it’s partners and go full in on the Apple way.

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Technology

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PC Does Bad Ads

Speaking of Lenovo, Ars Technica on the new ‘PC Does What?’ ad campaign to take on Apple:

You’ve got to feel for the PC. While there’s no denying its practicality or gaming chops, ever since IBM dropped the first beige box of PC joy on the world over three decades ago, the PC has never really managed to be cool—and for the likes of Intel, Microsoft, HP, Dell, and Lenovo fighting against a declining market that’s a problem.

So the five of them have teamed up to take on Apple and make the PC cool again, or at least encourage people to upgrade from their five-year-old PCs—of which Intel says there are over 500 million out there—to shiny new laptops with touch-screens, and thin metal enclosures, and longer battery life. The result of their collective marketing prowess is the “PC Does What?” campaign, a collection of short TV ads set to run in the US and China in the coming months.

They’re as cheesy as I expected.

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Advertising

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Microsoft: We Finally Get It

I finally got around to watching Microsoft’s Windows 10 Devices Event (nope, they’ve haven’t shaken their addiction to long names). What i saw is a company just discovering all the amazing things that that are possible when you design hardware and software together. The presenters seemed drunk giddy with excitement showing off all their products. And why shouldn’t they?! Proudness is what happens when a team comes together and makes something great. Check us out. We made this. Together. And it’s awesome.

The Only Way Out Is Through

I wonder how many current and former Microsoftians are kicking themselves for not owning the full hardware/software stack sooner, like Apple. You know what? Scratch that. Probably very few. Hindsight is 20/20.

The truth is Microsoft had to go through this journey of licensing a powerful yet tasteless and derivative operating system, and robust office suite, to corporations for decades—leveraging their weight and muscle when necessary—until the day they realized they were not equipped to make truly “personal” and mobile computing experiences people would love to use inside and outside the office.

Once Microsoft had this realization—this is after Ballmer dismissed the original iPhone as a threat—Apple’s iPhone and iPad trojan horses had already infiltrated corporate America. I saw it firsthand as a design consultant for Bloomberg in Manhattan in 2008-9. I watched senior VPs roll into meeting with iPads on their laps while we presented our work. In the past (pre-iPhone) corporate IT departments could shoo off the occasional request for pesky Mac assistance, but you can’t pull that shit when C-suite men and women are ordering you to, “get my iPad and iPhone on our network. NOW.”

Hey Guys, They Get It!

It’s taken Microsoft 40 years to realize the true potential of their software. They’re not turning a blind eye and hoping OEMs make the best hardware they can possibly make.

Microsoft now understands why Apple has been spending all these years monkeying with stupid bezels, clickwheels, and aluminum finishes, and designing not just thoughtful but beautiful software experiences. Microsoft now wants to make their own multitouch screens and keyboard cases and styli that communicate and integrate seemlessly with their operating system. If I had to give Microsoft a new tagline it would be: We Finally Get It (hat tip to The Motherfucking Editor).

Panos Panay did a great job as the main presenter. You could feel how genuinely proud he was of all the hard work that went into their Bands, Lumias and Surfaces and the how well the software was integrated into the hardware. Seeing him on stage bragging about the thinness of the new Surface and the feel of the new keyboard covers, I felt as though I was watching a company graduating from Apple Boot Camp. He showed off their new ads throughout the presentation, just like Apple has been doing for decades. He held up his Lumia phone to the audience. When he handed out Surface Pros, I was reminded of Steve Jobs handing out empty, unibody MacBook Pro shells in 2008 (jump to the 24:50 mark).

I don’t follow sports but I but shamelessly consider myself on Team Apple and I indulge in any and all Microsoft schadenfreude I can get. I despise the old, 800-pound gorilla version of Microsoft but I am slowly coming around as I see them taking product design seriously and not muscling their way into market segments just because they can.

It feels good to see your team on a winning streak, but it’s even better to see them up against a worthy opponent who gives them a run for their money. 

We’re seeing a glimpse of that with the new Microsoft.

Sometimes Enough Is Not Enough

Despite all the huge strides Microsoft has made in the last few years to reinvent itself and adapt to the changing tech landscape I’m not convinced it’s enough get what they want.

Actually, what do they want?

Do they want to regain the size and influence they once had in the software world? Highly unlikely. The world was much smaller when Microsoft ruled to the roost. There was no Google, no Apple and none of the numerous small-to-medium size technology companies all over the world creating amazing hardware and software. Can and will they continue to contribute? Absolutely.

If they’ve come to terms with the fact that they’ll never be the giant they once were, are they truly committed to building amazing, integrated software and hardware experiences, potentially at the expense of unit sales?

This last question is tricky to answer because although they’ve graduated from Apple Boot Camp and fancy themselves newly minted product design Jedis, they don’t live in Apple’s world. They’re still licensing Windows to OEMs like Dell, Lenovo and HP.

This is akin to Porsche building the best cars they can possible make and also licensing their engines and name to Kia, Hyundai and Toyota. 

This last, very minor point around Windows licensing tells me Microsoft hasn’t pushed all its chips in.

Microsoft finally gets it.

Or do they?

Categories:

Product, Technology