Just did this ⬆️⬆️ 🎉 trying Big Sur on an Ext attached to my MBP let me roll back to Classic iTunes and got the beloved MiniPlayer window Back!!
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Why is Music app on the Mac so awful?
- Thread starter MajorFubar
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Apple has definitely made some seriously questionable UI design choices the past few years. Music is darn bad and the new settings app is inexcusable on Mac OS. I wonder sometimes if it is design/engineering teams making up new projects to justify their existence.
A big problem I have with Apple Music is the automatic playlists it makes. I have no control over them. If there is a setting to stop this I don't know what it is.
While we're complaining… 
It has always seemed monumentally dumb to me that Apple use the same name for many different things. In many posts in this topic, I have no idea if the poster is referring to the Apple Music app, or the Apple Music service. Apple TV similarly can mean an app and a service and even worse, also a piece of hardware.
Do they think it's cool to make everything so confusing? Surely marketing rule 1 is to make your products identifiable from any others. 🤨
Maybe it's just me and everyone else also thinks it's cool. The ultimate is of course that every single product that Apple makes is simply called an Apple. Not confusing at all. We'd just have to find a new name for that round green piece of fruit.
It has always seemed monumentally dumb to me that Apple use the same name for many different things. In many posts in this topic, I have no idea if the poster is referring to the Apple Music app, or the Apple Music service. Apple TV similarly can mean an app and a service and even worse, also a piece of hardware.
Do they think it's cool to make everything so confusing? Surely marketing rule 1 is to make your products identifiable from any others. 🤨
Maybe it's just me and everyone else also thinks it's cool. The ultimate is of course that every single product that Apple makes is simply called an Apple. Not confusing at all. We'd just have to find a new name for that round green piece of fruit.
I don't think anyone at Apple uses AppleScript. It's been riddled with bugs (features that don't work despite still being in the AppleScript "dictionary") for over 2 years. Feedbacks are ignored. Unfortunately, I think AppleScript is just being left to slowly die, so it's very unlikely you'll get any performance tuning done in new OS releases.
Just to pile on with the bad UI, no way to adjust column lengths in playlists. You just need to keep expanding the window until you see everything... </grown>
I've never seen this happen before, but I just hit Pause and it cleared my filter. How in the world...?
I still use iTunes 10, 11, and even 7 on my devices, and 12 if I *have* to. Ditched that Music App almost as fast as I opened it (not quite, well I gave it a chance but it underperformed to the point where I just ditched it and installed iTunes 12 back onto my M1 MBP). It's so unintuitive, and the whole opening and adding songs in finder annoyed me so much, I couldn't wait to get rid of it. And it wouldn't even sync my iPod properly, so that was an added gripe.
I am somewhat confused here. When people are complaining about music in relationship with iPods I must be lurking in an antediluvian age of Apple that has nothing to do with Apple Music. My only experience with iTunes was the cow flop app it was on a PC, which acted like it was slumming.
So, you've never tried to sync your iPods with your APPLE MUSIC collection on the APPLE MUSIC APP then I take it? I don't see how this is irrelevant to the conversation about APPLE MUSIC and how much it sucks.
Except for the fact I have never owned an iPod. I have had 3 iPod Touches but they are a different type of device. With that said my experience with iTunes on a PC was pure suckage. Never used the music app have had Apple Music since day one. I keep my personal music on a app called Equalizer Pro which cannot be loaded on a iPod.
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For those of you with iPod "classics", and some iPod Touches here is a sweet alternate OS for them. It works in a dual boot system so you still have the original OS you can switch to. I used it for years until Apple managed prevent it from loading in later machines. Great price too, free. They also versions for many other players. I used it on a SanDisk Sansa it really improved it.
www.rockbox.org
Rockbox - Free Music Player Firmware
www.rockbox.org
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Sorry, my bad. I assumed pretty much everyone used iTunes/Music to sync their iPod (Touch) music collections. I use it for all my iPod devices that can hold music. My iPod Touch 2nd, 1st, and 4th Gen all have small music collections on them but nowhere near as big as my iPod Classic ones.
Today, I learned something new. But yeah, I agree with you. I have iTunes on my gaming laptop and it's not as fluid an experience as it is on a Mac. I don't use it much on my Windows Laptop at all. Only when I want to play a game and want different music to it.
Technically the service is Apple TV+, but yes, your point remains. They probably think they're simplifying things.
One thing you might consider is jRiver Media Center. It syncs up with older Apple devices like the iPods. I have run it for years I first loaded it because of how badly iTunes handled my multiple TB's of media files, it does everything. I have the Mac version running on my Mac Studio without any hitches at all. You have a 30 day free trial with it so you can use it and see if it will work for you. Just checked and as expected is does not see My iPhone 14 pro Max.
Many, many thanks for that recommendation, and thank goodness for the archive that this site is. I just hate the Music app, but with Retroactive I was able to get a version of iTunes working that I like, and which keeps all my vintage iPods functional too!Remember...
You can STILL USE iTunes, if you wish.
The free (and nifty) app named "Retroactive" makes this possible:
GitHub - cormiertyshawn895/Retroactive: Retroactive only receives limited support. Run Aperture, iPhoto, and iTunes on macOS Sonoma, macOS Ventura, macOS Monterey, macOS Big Sur, and macOS Catalina. Xcode 11.7 on macOS Mojave. Final Cut Pro 7, Logic
Retroactive only receives limited support. Run Aperture, iPhoto, and iTunes on macOS Sonoma, macOS Ventura, macOS Monterey, macOS Big Sur, and macOS Catalina. Xcode 11.7 on macOS Mojave. Final Cut ...github.com
Just so there's no confusion, the Apple Music app on Macs still syncs with iPods. I have a client (singer) who stores all her backing tracks on an iPod Classic because the headphone output (sorry if that's swearing Apple) makes it a piece of p*ss to rig it up to a venue's desk. I have a specific Apple Music library on my Mac for it to sync with. I just use the usual trick of holding down Alt when I start Music to have it point to different libraries (yet another reason why I couldn't run my studio from one of those crappy overpriced iPad toys.)
I'm sure that's all true, but I couldn't get Music to recognize two of the three iPods that I have, and I couldn't see how to create any new playlists on any of them. With the version of iTunes I just installed, they're all easily recognized, and creating new playlists is as easy as it ever was -- I can just drag and drop into the playlists, reorder the files in them by dragging, etc. It's easy and intuitive.
Both iTunes and Music are a non-standard interface disaster. It was one of those few ported apps from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X that never became a full Mac OS X OS X macOS citizen. Even Music hasn't been a full rewrite even though Apple said on multiple occasions they've "rewritten" the app. Rewritten to what exactly is unclear to me. The Music preferences settings window has confirmation buttons, which is still a leftover from its Mac OS Classic iTunes days.
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Or for the official Apple artwork when auto-add fails: https://bendodson.com/projects/itunes-artwork-finder/index.html
It's just an unintuitive and convoluted clutter monster. That's where I miss the old iLife suites from eons ago. Those were simple, yet powerful.
Judging from Sequoia beta reviews, Music has been forgotten again. At this point I have given up all hope.
I don't want to go back to iTunes either, when I take off nostalgia rose colored glasses, I find it lacking too.
Dammit Apple, how hard can this be?
I don't want to go back to iTunes either, when I take off nostalgia rose colored glasses, I find it lacking too.
Dammit Apple, how hard can this be?
Nope. I never had an iPod. I did have a large collection of CDs, and added the "ripped" files to iTunes years ago, but when Apple Music came out, I sold off/dumped all my CDs, and started fresh, adding only music I now want to listen to to my library. I can pay for Apple Music for the rest of my life and not come close to how much I spent back in the day on LPs, cassettes, and CDs, and now I have access to a lot more music, including new albums released after I stopped buying physical media.
To add to how much of a weirdo I am, I also don't understand all the complaints people have about playlists. Never use them. I'm an album listener. I add entire albums to my library, don't add individual songs to playlists. Just the way I am. Everybody uses software differently, and I'm sure there are ways to improve Apple Music, but it actually works just fine for the way I use it.
Back in the day "it just works" iTunes was pretty good. Those that recall the days of "cover flow" or as some call it a jukebox view. Though I didn't much use that feature, the software in general was easy enough for most to use and for those need a bit more, there were reasonable settings and some third party tools. Today's "Music" seems more like a vehicle to get you to buy than to play back first. For now, I let Music organize some of my files and have other software that I prefer for playback.