Featured in this episode of Chaos Lever
In this, the year of our lord 2023, I was shocked [SHOCKED] to discover some people still use music programs on their computers. It’s like finding out someone still has a pager. But amazingly, yes, people are still using iTunes on Windows even though the app always ran like a drunken cow in a swamp, and received about as much attention as the fourth child.
A while back, Apple wound down iTunes for macOS, choosing to break the app’s functionality into four separate apps for Music, TV, Storefront, and Device management. Windows is receiving similar treatment with dedicated apps for Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple Devices, the last one is for updating and synchronizing devices. [Ed. don’t forget Podcasts! That needed to be it’s own application too, apparently.]
What baffles me is that the iPod touch was discontinued last year and there hasn’t been an iDevice that required wired syncing since the Nano and Shuffle were discontinued in 2017. I suppose there are still Nanos and Shuffles out there, but it’s safe to say most people have moved on to streaming and wireless devices.
And I guess that’s what this announcement is all about. Apple doesn’t want to even pretend to support iTunes anymore. Instead they’d like dedicated apps for the streaming stuff (read: money-making) and if you have a device that needs to be reset, there will be a separate simple app for that.
For those who used iTunes as a media library management tool, I’ve heard good things about MusicBee and of course there’s always WinAmp, llama and all.