Journal damn_registrars's Journal: How Did iTunes Turn Out So Badly? 9
But my job requires me to interact with my work iPhone more often than a lot of people in my age bracket would otherwise do voluntarily. My work provides me with both an iPhone and a Chevy Equinox (both of which are due to be replaced in the next 6 months or less). Using the two together has been
For reference I'm complaining about a 2021 Equinox, and an iPhone 12. This is more about the latter than the former.
I will argue that iTunes is a mess in two important places. First, in the car it is worthless. Second, on my work laptop (which runs windows) it is awful when I most need it to be useful.
In the car, I would think that iTunes would be a competent music player. I am sorely disappointed on that expectation. I imagine it does a good job playing music, but in the car is has no index or search function. I can't even call for Siri to play music for me. If I start iTunes in the car (simply as "Music" in the car through CarPlay), it shows me the 10 tracks I listened to most recently. I have thousands of tracks that I took the time to copy to my iTunes library, and it arbitrarily tells me about the ones with the most recent time stamps. If I don't want to listen to those, I don't get any other options in the car.
By comparison if I instead put all that music on a USB stick and plug it in to the USB port on my dash, my car will let me search through it all I want. It tragically does a completely horse-shit job of playing tracks in order from an album, but it at least lets me seek them out however I want while I'm driving.
Second, iTunes makes one really terrible assumption on the laptop. This assumption has bit me twice now when I've been away from home with my phone and my laptop. I've tried to install an IOS update on my phone through my laptop, which should be straightforward. Connect to iTunes, start the install. Great. Then it reboots the phone to continue. Then it downloads more stuff to complete the download, or it checks something against something else online, or it sends money to the upkeep of the Steve Jobs museum, or it does some other internet stuff.
Not great.
Why is that not great? Because I'm using my phone as my hotspot. And now the phone has been rebooted into a state that it can't escape from until that next step is completed online. And my laptop can't get online because it has no hotspot available. Around and around we go, until the phone gives up and eventually reboots to only show an address:
support.apple.com/iphone/recover
Which, for reasons already mentioned, I can't load. Eventually I find another way to get online where I learn the secret code to reboot the phone, which doesn't help. Then I drive to some place with good WiFi and try again, with a different secret gesture on the phone. I "update" - which means recover in a non-destructive manner in this case - my phone and then it's working again.
Yeah, yeah. First world problems. I expect smitty will respond telling me that Barack Obama is behind this, presumably trying to slow down senior citizens from voting in Florida to help Biden's reelection chances. Fusta will respond telling me that if I voted all third-party in 2024 this problem would be guaranteed to go away by November 12th.
"while I'm driving" (Score:1)
You shouldn't be fiddling with your media players while you're driving.. just put on the radio
Re: (Score:2)
Two, it's no different - and very likely safer - than thumbing through CDs or cassettes to change an album.
Three, my argument here is that there are ways to make it possible to browse this safely that the software isn't doing. My son could be in the passenger seat with an iPad and say "Hey Siri, play Weird Al Yankovic Amish Paradise" and it will play that track f
Re: (Score:1)
There is no car interface to Siri
Looks like you got something to do then
The car can pull in Sirius/XM but I'm not interested in paying for that.
Too expensive? Just use the USB then
And don't you have a second phone to use as a hotspot during updates?
Re: (Score:2)
There is no car interface to Siri
Looks like you got something to do then
Because Apple is so famously synonymous with third-party development?
The car can pull in Sirius/XM but I'm not interested in paying for that.
Too expensive? Just use the USB then
Which I already described using, and pointed out it is a better way to browse the music than iTunes. Though if you say it's too much of a distraction to use iTunes through the infotainment in my car, how would the interface for the USB drive be any better?
And don't you have a second phone to use as a hotspot during updates?
My personal phone is on a different cell network. Both times that this happened I did not have sufficient signal on that other network for it to be usable at a hotspot.
Re: (Score:1)
Because Apple is so famously synonymous with third-party development?
Did I say it was easy? You're getting soft
how would the interface for the USB drive be any better?
Well, then just put the thing on random shuffle before you set off and let it play.. almost like the radio
Both times that this happened I did not have sufficient signal on that other network for it to be usable at a hotspot.
If you want good service, I guess you'll just have to vote third party :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Both times that this happened I did not have sufficient signal on that other network for it to be usable at a hotspot.
If you want good service, I guess you'll just have to vote third party :-)
IIRC the top service by subscriber base is Verizon. The second is AT&T (which my work phone is). The third is TMobile (which my phone is).
:P
I'm pretty confident you're going for a joke there, but in this case the third option didn't help my cause.
Re: (Score:1)
Guess you gotta roll yer own
No way, man (Score:2)