Apple’s iTunes software turned 18 this year. But while it’s just become old enough to vote in US elections, Apple has decided to replace iTunes and divide up its features into a series of separate apps.
Of course, iTunes used to do a lot of things including managing and playing music, movies, and podcasts and syncing your iPhone or iPad.
Now Apple says you can sync your iPhone with a Mac by plugging in your mobile device and opening the Finder app to view sync settings.
Want music? Apple Music has you covered. Movies and TV shows? There’s the Apple TV app. And how about podcasts? There’s Apple Podcasts.
The last one shouldn’t be a huge surprise to anyone who’s been following the podcast space for the past few years… because after years of hearing podcasters ask listeners to leave reviews on iTunes, you may have started to hear people ask you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts recently. That’s because Apple has changed its advice to podcasters, ostensibly to promote the separate Apple Podcasts app… but apparently to also prepare for a future without iTunes.
What does this mean for iTunes for Windows? That’s unclear at the moment. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple Music, Podcasts, and TV apps hit the Microsoft Store in the future.
Update: Ars Technica reports that iTunes for Windows is still a thing… for now. It’s not clear what Apple’s long term plans for Windows may be, or if it has any.
iTunes aint dead. The Store might be but the program will still run on your computer if you use it to play your music.
To be honest, this is long overdue.
This should’ve happened back in 2015 when we were getting larger and more standalone iPhone’s.
I think this means it will become mostly Plug’n’Play, and you can use the iPhone’s storage like a USB flash drive… though you cannot actually open the files you put in there from your iPhone, and this is because they’re still trying to make a pretty profit from the iCloud subscription services. Another place where Android uses common sense, and makes this look downright stupid.
(If you thought OS X iTunes is bad, you don’t know how bad the Windows 7 implementation is)
I have a company-issued iPhone Xs and, on Windows at least, I can only copy/move videos and photos from the iPhone to my computer with windows explorer, with varying success rates.
I cannot transfer any file to the iPhone without first having to install an app on the iPhone which will allocate its own space, which I can then transfer files to but only by using iTunes. Don’t have Admin privilege to install iTunes? Tough luck.
What Apple should implement is the option from within iOS to allocate a certain amount of storage which I can then use as USB storage with the ability to directly transfer files to it with at least usb2 speed. I have no issue with this allocated storage not being accessible from within iOS as I understand Apple’s focus on sandboxing everything.
And can they please stop with the weird naming convention for iPhone backup, at least for videos and photos. I don’t want to gues what ae36580w95214bhidg147896325 file type is. Just transfer photos and videos with their extensions and original names, please.
How about an option to use my whopping 256gb iPhone as a make-shift usb drive to which I can transfer files directly without a middle software? No? Thanks Apple.