Apple is the master of planned obsolescence. with a caveat

We have talked in multiple threads the topic but I’m going to address Apple specifically.

On the plus side, it’s quite impressive compared to the rest of the tech world that a device I bought in 2010 (on release date) will actually connect to and function properly with a system that Apple released in 2023.

But…

I’ve noticed that with each subsequent release of Apple music, the ability to manage music on the device is getting progressively harder to do, especially deleting music previously loaded.

Prior to ventura , the iPod had a drop down menu that had a music tab, which if you clicked on it would show all the music you had previously downloaded to the iPod including various sorting options for the view

With Ventura, they moved that functionality to a “storage” setting buried in the menu tree. And even when you find it, the only option is an alphabetic by song name list which you can click on to delete. :slight_smile:

Adding new music is only slightly easier in that you can click select individual songs in your library to then drag and drop to the iPod. But even there, it’s impeded a bit as it takes about three times as long as it does(did) with an intel based Mac. Yes the code is likely running in Rosetta, but still.

And knowing Apple, Rosettas days are numbered and when it goes, my shuffle will be truly orphaned.

So the TLDR is that Apple is sneaky and subtle about getting users to move forward, by making the old stuff progressively harder to use.

Which is too bad, as my two shuffles are still my jogging and hiking companion :frowning:

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I can see this. Software-wise they do tend to be a forward looking bunch. I am hoping my M1 iPad Pro 12.9” and M1 MBA both last that long!

It’s even worse trying to use iTunes on Windows.

(The bigger issue might be my bizarre obsession with Surface Pro unity over two devices…but if I can avoid that, ten years on these two devices, baby!)

Yes they have already moved on so to speak as the iPod support software is apparently incompatible with WOA which I discovered when I got my Pro 9 5G.

And Apple flat out told me they don’t intend to provide support period.

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I feel like this is everyone with music. The days of owning a library of your own music are fading away. Streaming is everything now. Google Play music, aka YouTube music now, used to be much easier to use, and it’s progressively turned into streaming first, and harder to manage your personal library. I doubt it’s as bad as Apple, sure, but it’s just another example of this.

And maybe Apple has changed for the worse over the years overall, I can’t say for sure, but my wife’s Macbook pro she bought somewhere around 2005-2006 lasted her a good 10 years before we finally replaced it with a Windows laptop, which while technically still going, it not in great shape and has been moved to the kids’ school computer and we’ve already bought her another Windows machine. Meanwhile, my 2020 Macbook pro, which is my first foray into Apple computers (along with my 2020 IPP), is still going strong with no signs of slowing down.

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Thta is a very underhanded way of deprecating the older devices. In the same vein, aren’t we suffering from the LOOOOONNNNNGGGGG train of coal cars that the “new” Windows electric engine is dragging behind it for “compatibility purposes” (do we really need RS 232 anymore). Your registry is calling Microsoft…

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I’m not a google play music user, but my son is and he’s said almost the same thing. Major loss of functionality between play music and youtube music, and then incremental losses with each new version of youtube music for user libraries, though if you are a paid subscriber it’s gotten better with each increment.

In their slight defense the “free tier” model has gotten more and more perilous across the board and I think it’s a matter of when not if most of them will go by the wayside.

The problem I have with it is the music I have uploaded is not available on most streaming services, if any. At least a good portion, because it’s things like live recordings, indie bands, or bands that have since broken up before streaming services ever became a thing. All I need for them is a cloud music player. Streaming is great for a lot of things, but this is the instance where I still need a decent cloud music player, or I suppose just a music player if I want to store all my music offline, but it’s quite the large library.

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My son is similar with a lot of stuff being either his own stuff or from friends.

A long way back, several companies were developing what they were terming media lockers where you could upload the various audio and video files and then have access to them from connected devices. I saw several demos of them at the time.

But alas, that all you can eat for one price model apparently was much more attractive to the money folks, so here we are.

EDIT: the closest you can come to that is a service that Apple seems to be their darndest to hide/bury which is iTunes match. I think the current price is $25 a year and I think the song limit is 50,000 songs.

It does allow playing of your own library content through the various apple music clients. Be aware though that if you have any stuff of “questionable” origin, they are quick to flag it and may ban you.

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Outside of Spotify, I mostly listen to music on my Pixel 6, hence YouTube music. I’ll stick with it for now since I already have all my music uploaded to it. I may look for a better option if YouTube gets worse. I tried the paid version at one time, but its interface is even worse than Spotify’s for me, and there were a few key artists notably missing, so I’m sticking to Spotify for now for streaming and YTM for cloud music.

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Have to give Apple credit here, I sync all my MP3s using sync library. It understands the difference between those I download between Apple Music and the ones I owned before. I can even download all 30 GB to a new macbook and it just grabs them all—even the ones like Garth Brooks, which doesn’t exist in Apple Music.

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Interesting, I didn’t know some of those caveats…but I am not even close to 50k LOL. I have some “vulgar” songs so I am not sure what their limits are on that…

From what we’ve been able to determine it’s geared toward piracy and not objectionable content per se. The last one we know about was a group of Coldplay songs that were shared on multiple torrent sites and they identified them by their unique hash.

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