Daring Fireball‘s John Gruber recently shared a brief but poignant review of the standalone Apple Music app for macOS, from a 2020 review by YouTube channel Your Product Sucks:
“It is like a little kid wrote this… while being on drugs.”
After a rumoured break-up of iTunes into standalone apps for macOS back in 2019, Apple went ahead and actually replaced iTunes with standalone Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and Apple TV apps with the release of macOS Catalina.
However, according to Gruber (and others in the Mac community), the decision was nothing more than a butchering of iTunes.
The Apple Music app that macOS users now have to make do with lacks in a number of different areas, and doesn’t even have a few essential and excruciatingly simple quality-of-life features like the ability to drag-and-drop.
“Music on Mac is just an utter embarrassment for Apple. Truly an ignominious fate for iTunes, which started 20 years ago as an exemplar of a great Mac app,” criticized Gruber.
When you compare the Apple Music experience in iTunes on macOS, versus other dedicated streaming apps such as Spotify, it’s night and day. Spotify’s standalone app is far superior, as it’s easy to navigate, faster and just overall a better experience.
Apple needs to release a dedicated Apple Music app and give paying subscribers the experience they deserve. iTunes remains slow and looks outdated in 2021.
