It’s loopy to assume that we’re already solely about two months away from WWDC 2024. But right here we’re, and like everybody who will get hyped about this occasion, I can’t assist however dream about what Apple may need in retailer for us with iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and now visionOS.
While there are many different goals I may discuss, there is one dream that has adopted me via years of updates to macOS — and that dream is for the corporate to lastly abandon the design ethos of iTunes for good and launch a reimagined Apple Music app.
I’ve been an Apple Music consumer for years now. As a Spotify convert, I’ve seen the evolution of Apple Music because it launched again in 2015 to what it has turn out to be at this time. The expertise has actually improved in a ton of the way, from navigation to design, in addition to a superior listening expertise with each Lossless Audio and Spatial Audio. The Animated Art on the Now Playing display screen is additionally far more lovely on Apple Music than what Spotify gives.
I’d additionally argue that Apple Music’s iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV apps are superior to what Spotify gives on these units. However, there’s one system the place Spotify at present destroys Apple when it comes to a greater app: the Mac.
Apple Music is languishing on the Mac
This isn’t even attributable to Spotify making an excellent Mac app for its music streaming app. While the app has actually gone via some notable design updates and feels extra fashionable, Spotify’s mission to pack music, podcasts, and audiobooks into one super-app has, at the least for me, began to make the Mac app really feel a bit cluttered. They’ve additionally tried to work a few of the iPhone app’s redesign into the Mac app, making it really feel much more chaotic.
Where Spotify beats Apple Music on the Mac doesn’t must do with how good the Spotify app is however the truth that Spotify has at the least up to date the app in any respect. The Apple Music app on the Mac has felt just like the red-headed stepchild for the corporate — languishing with little consideration paid to it. If you examine the Apple Music app on the Mac to the final model of the iTunes app, you received’t discover a ton of variations in the way you navigate or expertise your music.
There’s at the least one different individual on this planet who agrees with me. One consumer on Reddit posted final yr, “I don’t perceive how everybody appears to be positive with the UI on Mac. It’s an completely horrendous design to have my library appear like iTunes from the early 2000s whereas my playlist acquired the up to date fashionable look. Is there one thing I’m lacking as a result of I’ve not been capable of finding any point out of this?”
Agreed. Even this idea from years in the past from artist Juanjo Guevara seems to be like a notable replace because it at the least has some concepts on the way to reimagine that left sidebar.
Apple has made such nice strides with the music-listening expertise on the iPhone and the iPad that the Mac deserves some risk-taking as nicely. Get nuts with it — go all-in on some dynamic widgets like Spotify is doing. In reality, simply copy what Spotify is doing at this level…to a degree. We don’t want litter, simply an app that resembles what Apple Music is at this time quite than what iTunes was.
Whatever occurs, I simply need Apple to attempt one thing. I get it — the Mac is most likely one of many least-used units in relation to music listening in comparison with the iPhone and iPad, however that doesn’t imply it doesn’t deserve some TLC! We’ll discover out for positive when Tim Cook and the workforce take the stage at WWDC 24 in June.
