Apple Music ruins my train journey...

Yeah, ****ing poxy phone (or more to the point, me not checking what I'm posting! )

 

I’ll always take managing my music and device libraries manually, which is trivially easy, over any form of Apple sync. I don’t trust Apple to automate any aspect of my iTunes library, ever. And sometimes you have to briefly turn off Apple Music on your phone to move files over to your iPhone or whatever. (I also use a cool Mac utility called Waltr to add files to my phone.)

Again this is all easy.

 

Apple Music is inferior to Tidal, and that's really saying something.

 

I used to manage a toy store and if we were out of stock on a toy I got accused of "ruining my child's Christmas."
Similar sentiment here.

 

I could relate... once upon a time. Now I have ditched all portable music players, I can (try) to enjoy the outside world as it is, without any poxy malfunctioning device to spoil things.

 

I didn't find TiDAL so horrible. Apple Music and Deezer were the clear losers for me. Spotify, Rhapsody and (on Windows Phone) XBox Music were the only ones I found robust enough.

 

...and two people bought it. Microsoft's issue lately is that it's...well...late. They jump on things after people have already settled on a standard. The Surface is late, Zune was late, and most everything they've done over the last ten years has been late.

Apple Music is totally configurable to work and doesn't deserve the ragging it gets. Just bother to configure it and it'll play nice. I haven't had any issues with it on my iPhone 6 Plus since it debuted. No clue why others are having so many insurmountable problems.

Ed

 

This is exactly my situation and my workaround, and it has worked pretty well so far. But it does mean that, when I travel, I bring at least two devices.

 

I really like my Apple products and I had hoped that Apple Music would be great, but the it's completely useless because you can't save music for offline use without turning on "iCloud Music Library" which is deeply flawed.
For the most casual listeners it's probably ok, but for anyone that cares about which version of an album or song they listen to it's a disaster. Whatever mix, mastering or version you have in your library, it'll just get matched to whatever version is in the Apple library. It'll even mismatch studio and live versions from time to time.
If they make an iron wall between the songs I sync from iTunes and the streaming service and make it possible to save music from the streaming service without mixing it with my personal music then I'll switch, because I like the interface in the app better than Spotify, but for now it's Spotify for streaming and Apple/iTunes for my local music.

 

having used streaming audio products for five or so years now, it's not so much that Apple's product doesn't work (because it does), but that its competitors do a better job of doing what Apple tried to do with AppleMusic, and in most instances at a superior price point.

 

Unfortunately, if you want to have both your files mingling with those rented from Apple Music, you cannot do this. Period. So unfortunately, there is no way to configure Apple Music to work the way every other music subscription service does. They really messed up here, I feel.

And in regards to Microsoft... agreed. Regardless of the quality of anything they do, it doesn't matter. They are very much jumping on trends after they peak.

 

The mono albums aren't available in the itunes music store or via apple music.

Google Maps, been on the App Store since day one.

 

I mostly agree about MS. More often than not they have failed in their attempts to sell cutting edge personal computer developments to the masses. Even when they have been ahead of the competition (there were Windows based tablet devices in the early to mid 2000's, but there was no real tablet market before Apple's iPad).

The Windows OS, which really popularised graphical user interfaces, is the honorable exception*. Talk about a tree that grows money...

*Yes I know, Apple got there first with the LISA and the first mac. But Xerox and SGI released GUIs before that. Anyway, I am going waaaaaay off topic here.

 

not entirely accurate. there was a brief period after the release of the iPhone 5 (and Apple Maps) that there was no Google Maps app for iOS6. in essence the release of Apple Maps was so terrible that it forced Google to port its maps app over to iOS6.

 

Sid, I don't think you're understanding the issue here.
I had 4 ' 33 on my Ipod for train journeys and when I re-downloaded my library from the cloud, Apple Music had replaced it with The Sound Of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel. That's just not a laughing matter.

 

Yeah I remember that. Good times.

 

It was indeed...nothing to do with Android though, more me posting at Kraków airport and not paying attention

 

Apple Maps was hilarious. Turn right at the gigantic gaping depression that dips into Hell at the next right.

 

I accept that the mono versions of the Beatles stuff aren't on the iTunes Store, but neither are the various homemade rips/bootlegs/soundboard recordings that are in my iTunes library, and I've never had a problem downloading those as far as I can remember. That's what rather confused me. If it can correctly match and download the rips I made from the 1+ Blu Ray, none of which are in the correct running order because I ripped them track by track from the STREAM folder of the disc, why can't it match the monos?

For the record, it didn't really ruin my train journey (nor is my enjoyment of future Xmases and birthdays remotely at risk); perhaps the thread title was mildly histrionic, but that hard panned stereo as heard on the Beatles material is incredibly jarring via headphones when you're not expecting it!

Also for the record, i'm not remotely an Apple hater or novice. I just started a thread on this because it rather surprised me, and I was bored on the train. Seems a bit unfair for a few posters to tout this as evidence of my ineptitude / immaturity etc.

 

Agreed. It's also ridiculous for some to try to turn it into an all-purpose and I'll-informed "I hate Apple" thread. Some of you seriously need some new material.

Ed

 

My 160GB IPod serves me quite well. All of my Audible books and all of the playlists I need for road trips. I prefer to control my listening....

 

I find Amazon to be even worse then iTunes with downloading music. They sometimes have the wrong version, new remasters are the old first generation version. Also skipping problems with some songs.

 

Might be a good opportunity to dig out my elderly iPod video from 2005 for the next train journey. It now sports an SD card reader and 128GB SD card. If I'd got round to filling that with music...

 

Amen. Dedicated DAPs are the only way to go if you want full control over your music collection on the go.

Far too many DAPs now are coming out based on Android and I have no interest in that.

 

I haven't downloaded from Amazon in years. Is their encoding still woeful?