Apple Music: F*** off. I don't want you on my iPhone.

[Kazukian]

Can iPeople really only use one music player? Seems like a huge pain.

Other than a few album art issues, I've had no problems with Google Music.

I primarily use Spotify, sometimes it gets wonky and says no connections, so my backup is Pandora.

Damn, forgot I have over 1K songs in Google Play Music, added.

 

[quikah]

And why the hell did they hide that shuffle button? That's gotta be the stupidest placement of a shuffle button in iOS history. It makes perfect sense in iOS 4. In iOS 10, it makes absolutely no sense at all, and there is no indication on how to get to it either. No grey chevron, for example.

This has got to be a future case study on how not to design a UI. It's completely fucking braindead.

Meh, iOS is filled with these undiscoverable navigation quirks. How do you get back to the homescreen of the youtube app?

It all boils down to their stubborn insistance on having only a single navigation input. So they need to add all these swipe gestures that you cannot discover unless you read the manual. Same with MacOS (though I haven't used Mac in a very long time, so that could have improved). This is the primary reason I cannot stand using Apple products, they are very user unfriendly to me.

 

[Anubis]

do phones even come with a manual anymore?

 

[Eug]

Meh, iOS is filled with these undiscoverable navigation quirks. How do you get back to the homescreen of the youtube app?

It all boils down to their stubborn insistance on having only a single navigation input. So they need to add all these swipe gestures that you cannot discover unless you read the manual. Same with MacOS (though I haven't used Mac in a very long time, so that could have improved). This is the primary reason I cannot stand using Apple products, they are very user unfriendly to me.

I agree on that YouTube thing. It was fine before and then they changed it to be obscure. It's stupid and doesn't make it nicer in any way.

However, you can blame Google for that one.

However, it is not because the OS is limited in inputs. It's because the people designing the apps decide it's time for a change. It worked fine and was intuitive before but I guess the design leads decide they must show they're doing something so they change it... and make it worse. In the case of YouTube it's mainly that one thing. But for Music, maybe they should just start again from the drawing board.

 

[Sushisamurai]

i use the free "Denon music player app", it has includes a graphical equalizer if you want (for an additional $2), but I stopped using it because the power drain was much higher than apple's music player. Then again, I usually use the music app/listen to music when connected to my car.

Note, the denon music app interface is a lot more cumbersome and not very streamlined.

Edit: it integrates directly off your itunes music library. I'm not sure if it includes purchases not downloaded (IIRC, it doesn't)

 

[Midwayman]

Man I hate apple music and the default player keeps sticking me on these advertisement screens that are hard to back out of. I'm running Cesium. It uses the default library and has been pretty good so far.

 

[Aikouka]

I had never looked for the shuffle option as I've always had Repeat One turned on almost all the time. (I'm one of those people that plays the same song over and over... and over.) It only took me about 5-10 seconds to find it and the repeat button. Of course, if you just select the album or whatever, there's a "Shuffle All" right at the top of the list of songs.

Although, I do agree that Apple tends to hide way too many features or make changes without telling users. They should take some cues from Amazon in that they recently redesigned their app, and when you first load it up, it points out where everything is now. I think the biggest thing that Apple glossed over was probably the Messaging app. There are a crap ton of effects and stuff that you can add to messages simply by holding down the send button, which was awkward changed to an up arrow. Although, I found that I now have to hard press (3D Touch) to get it to work instead of just holding it.

 

[Rifter]

Power Amp FTW

 

[Eug]

Great. I am having big problems with BT music playback in my car - Toyota Prius Plug-in 2012. Sometimes works, sometimes doesn't.

It seems I'm not alone, as it is affecting multiple brands of cars, specifically with the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus.

Phone calls work though. So again they've fscked up something specifically with regard to music.

Edit:

Come to think of it, widespread BT problems started to occur with cars when iOS 8.4 was introduced. And guess what? 8.4 was when Apple Music was integrated into iOS.

They fixed the problems later but it looks like they're back to their old ways with the iPhone 7/7+ in iOS 10.

I'm not saying Apple Music per se is responsible but the temporal association is too clear to just be coincidence. Whatever they did to revamp Music and iOS to integrate Apple Music also meant some under the hood changes that screwed up their implementation of BT for music playback.

 

[Eug]

Another how-to article to get around the limitations of Apple Music:

Download all Apple Music on iPhone or iPad locally using iTunes

Downloading your complete Apple Music collection to your iPhone or iPad is surprisingly difficult, even on the redesigned and simpler iOS 10 update. There’s no obvious ‘download all’ button and iCloud Music Library moves all syncing to iCloud, not iTunes, so you can’t just shuttle your library from your Mac to your iPhone or iPad.

If you like to keep a local music library, this is a problem you will likely face when you upgrade to a new iPhone even if you restore from an encrypted backup using iTunes, which is considered the most efficient method. There are a few ways to work around this issue using iTunes. I’ll share my method below …