This version of the Music player software in iOS has got to be the worst version of iTunes ever made.
Let me qualify all of what is essentially just a rant by saying that, yes Tad, I understand that this is entirely a first-world problem. My sense of entitlement has reached Icarian proportions as I sternly evaluate music playing software and I’m sure to fall to Earth soon.
Most commonly when I am listening to music on my phone, I’m in the truck. I have a bluetooth enabled stereo system so that I can broadcast the music from my phone into the cabin of my truck. I do this with two primary understandings:
- The music that will be played is “my music,” stuff that I know that I enjoy listening to.
- When I make stops, frequently, I expect that the music that I will hear when I get back into the truck will be at a minimum, vaguely familiar and similar to what I was listening to when I shut the motor off.
Previous versions of the Music.app (jesus how do we even discuss this with the proflaguration of names bandied about all containing the words Tunes and Music… I digress) were rock-solid. As late as iOS 6 I could expect nearly without fail that albums would continue where they left off; my data usage would be easily controllable from the device without turning on airplane mode, and generally my otherwise moderate disposition would be maintained through the persistent application of misters Henry Rollins and Michael Muir.
Version 7 of the operating system and the subordinated music player software were where the problems began. Albums would no longer repeat themselves when finished. Instead, the album would simply stop, leaving me to fish my phone out of the console to cue up something else. Rather than having the visual location indicator in the app leave me on the album I was previously listening to; starting Music.app was as if for the first time, looking at the long list of poorly organized “Artists.”
Selecting an album from this set was equally frustrating because there was no way to single out a specific album from a single performer without browsing instead to the “Albums” view. Instead you would hit play on the first track in a list of albums and the music playing software would consume your data minutes as it sucked down albums for the thirtieth time to your device for playback (because storage of said media is now “managed.”)
The latest version of the music playing software application on iOS 8 is even worse. This time, in addition to things being difficult to find and or locate visually, when you shut the car off and turn it back on again the music playing software reconnects to your stereo system and rather than picking up where it left off on “How Will I Laugh Tomorrow…” you are instead treated to any of the fifty thousand million albums available in the Apple Music service.
When it’s downloading tracks (presumeably, there is no visual indicator of what’s going on) instead of having the track simply queue, the player is PAUSED.
So let’s recap:
- Music you probably don’t want to listen to.
- Not the music you thought you were going to be listening to.
- No music if you don’t have the music that you probably didn’t want anyway.
I’m not feeling the love. ~