Hallelujah. iTunes slowly became so intolerable that after using it for 20 years, I switched to my own cobbled-together system of mpd, ncmpcpp, Decoupled (for iPhone), scripts, and a folder full of audio files. A pain, but better than iTunes was.

IM somewhat torn.

Within the apple ecosystem it does okay. I dont like that i cant play FLAC but otherwise its mostly fine for my use. I dont really stream, everything i own outright and have on a NAS, which syncs to my phone.

With the said....outside of the ecosystem its nonexistant.

For example. Working on my linux partition....no music. Can will browse my library and make a playlist in say....audacious, but nothing Ive used before.

Same with windows.

I have strongly been considering just spinning up a VM and using navidrome and maybe play:sub on my iPhone or something.

But then thats another VM i have to tend to, even if i automate like 99% of tasks.

iTunes/Music syncing while my phone is on network also means i dont need my VPN or to DMZ navidrome...which is nice i guess.

It seems like the author of this post isn't aware of the History feature built-in to both desktop and mobile Music.app (formerly known as iTunes). I don't imagine they care that it exists, or that it invalidates the example they used in their rant about Apple software quality, but for whatever it's worth, mine goes back for weeks or months across many device restarts.

I do care, thanks for bringing it up. However that feature doesn’t work if you’re airplaying to a device or if another non-iPhone is playing your music (like a HomePod).

This makes it inconsistent at best and useless at worst, and doesn’t make me feel any better about Apple software quality.

Oh. FYI, those circumstances aren't in the post.

The post doesn’t go into detail about the circumstances that trigger the bug, but that also shouldn’t really be the user’s job in this case.

It’s the post author’s job to describe them, or else the rant can be easily misinterpreted as PEBCAK and disregarded by others, or spawn unnecessary threads such as this one I started. It is of course their right not to do so, but I assume with screeds like this that the goal is to convince others to be outraged, and it doesn’t do a good job of that.

I couldn’t find a history feature in my app on iOS but I did find the following on Apple Support: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/iphone/ipha4521ef7d/14... (at the bottom it talks about how to view recently played songs)

I haven’t played music in awhile and I can’t seem to get that list to appear on my phone. It would be nice if Apple would document how this works or if they could integrate with Last.fm the way Spotify does.

When you find the Playing Next screen (the bulleted list icon next to the AirPlay icon), scroll up from the words "Playing Next".

Tried it worked perfectly , just had to scroll up. There’s also a recently played playlist in the listen now section.

Wow so much anger in this thread!

Nobody is forcing OP, or anyone, to use Apple Music. You are all aware that you can cancel and choose another service or go back to WinAMP or whatever your music stack is. If Apple Music sucks, go elsewhere. Why is a rant newsworthy to the rest of HN? My guess is you’ll find something wrong with all music service apps after awhile.

So for the rest of us we of course will have to just deal with it all while look forward to your bugless, perfect service that makes everyone happy.

Maybe try Calm for the anger bit, mates? ;) let’s lighten it up a bit here.

> Nobody is forcing OP, or anyone, to use Apple Music

The promise of ecosystem integration kind of is. Apple, sometimes softly and sometimes very aggressively wants to keep people inside their garden. Since they keep raising the walls it‘s increasingly an all or nothing proposition - which increases the pressure for Apple to do better in areas in which they‘re not doing well.

I think for the ecosystem & its customers it‘s ultimately a good thing.

I was happy to see it when I spotted the first (non-commercial) online radio station that was sending out the artist and track name as each song played. Because I missed the days when DJs did that before/after every track.

That was many years ago. Most (non-commercial, at least) online stations still don't do it, dammit. Seems to me that, if you're going to use artists' music to hold on to listeners, you should and had oughta detail it. But no ... nor do they have online playlists. KEXP managed that 10 years ago.

This is why you should have a blog: Because when you throw your reddit comments onto your own website and show a "post archive" on the sidebar, you're a blogger worth being submitted to Hacker News.

The point is valid, but the presentation and profane clickbait are lower tier.

What a pointlessly elitist take. People shouldn't have a blog, or submit their content to hacker news, unless it's "worthy"? As if being "worthy" of hacker news is some mantle everyone should strive for.

If you don't like it, don't vote for it. But I didn't quite feel like writing a long-form piece about my Apple Music woes and submitting it to the New Yorker this time.

It's as much a commentary on HN itself. If this exact post were a comment on /r/apple, it likely would have been flagged and deleted.

I didn't flag this or report it. Hey, I write lots of reddit comments and some blog posts, too. I even said it made a good point!

Yes but that is because /r/apple is a bunch of apple worshipers that believe apple does no wrong...

HN on the other hand is ... ohh nevermind :)

You put more effort into this comment than in the article

It cannot be fixed until you replace the current product managers at Apple. They've created the worst possible app by any standards - Apple Music app on the iPhone is a complete and utter disaster.

This is not a software engineer's problem. This is the oversight committee and product owners that puts priorities together.

I ran into this exact problem myself. In the end, my only option was to request a download of my Apple ID data and look through the CSV files to finally find the track.

Your Apple ID data has a complete track listing? That's fantastic!

It could not be more convenient.

I think the point of this post is that yes it actually could be

Apple music is absolutely a piece of shit app and has been getting worse over time.

Angry posts about UX like this one are something making the Apple ecosystem uniquely worth it to me. These are often influential people pointing loudly at fairly obvious (or non-obvious) issues and Apple (kind of) have to respond.

Meanwhile Android (and other) products are so fragmented and people are so used to things not working that nothing will ever change.

More people should be angrier about bad UX to make companies start to care. Fix your damn glaring issues. Test your stuff. I am aware that this is hindered by people primarily looking for cheap- instead of reliable products.

FWIW, Spotify recently fixed this after the feature was taken out for several years. So now you can view every song that has been played, in order.

Seems like such an obvious feature to have!

The needs of the business often outweighs the needs of the orf.

How do you do that? I see search history, some recent tracks, but not the extensive feature you list.

Clock/timer icon on the top right

I think the biggest problem is that the app is geared towards cellphones. It’s just like Spotify desktop app around 3 years ago before the revamp.

I don’t want their stupid text selection UI either.

Why not use a different music player and maybe also write about problems that actually matter? This is quite honestly a very silly post to write, let alone to actively advertise.

Why comment on this post?

anyone seen amazon's audio? cancelled free trial within 2 days