Bye iTunes, Hello Apple Music, Podcasts and TV Apps
iTunes has been cancelled. Apple announced that it would be breaking up iTunes into three different macOS apps: Apple Podcasts, Apple TV and Apple Music. The update will come with macOS 10.15.
The change isn’t that surprising to anyone who has ever used iTunes. As its popularity has grown, the app swelled to behemoth proportions, with easy navigation and user experience suffering.
Not to mention that the change has already occurred on iOS. For example, Apple Podcasts has been on iPhones and iPads for years.
In the end, iTunes was outpaced by a different kind of user. In the past, people used to store their music in a single place. Nowadays, people stream, share and save music to listen to across devices and platforms. iTunes was too clunky to keep up.
The new Music, Podcasts and TV apps feature clear menus and colorful sidebars which are easy to navigate, obviously learning from the iTunes mistake.
Apple Music is focused on just music, and offers personalized recommendations, taking a note from popular music recommendation platforms such as Spotify and 8tracks.
Podcasts, as the name suggests, focuses on the podcast experience.
The Apple TV app will include Apple’s exclusive content along with shows from Showtime and HBO. Apple TV supports Dolby Atoms audio and 4K HDR.
Apple has been focusing the bulk of its marketing toward service sales, in addition to hardware sales. So, it makes strategic sense to offer new subscription services to not only one big app (iTunes) but three different apps which are tailored to user experience.
Those who still use iTunes for syncing will no longer see an app pop up to do so. Additionally, iPods and iPhones will sync through Finder sidebar.
Hopefully, the three new Apple apps will honor iTunes gift cards.
