While Digital Music News has reported that Apple is considering removing music downloads from iTunes and pivoting the app toward Apple Music entirely, Mark Gurman reports Apple will forgo that option and instead adopt minor design changes in line with previous updates.
Digital Music News is doubling down on iTunes downloads going away. I’m again told Apple isn’t planning this (yet). https://t.co/ZgcGsRb1Er
— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) June 8, 2016
But..Apple will show off a redesigned iTunes for Mac app at WWDC. Will launch in the fall with 10.12. Coincides with redesigned Apple Music.
— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) June 8, 2016
Apple has denied Digital Music News’s report flat out, but Digital Music News claims its sources with “close knowledge of the company’s plans continue to share credible details that music downloads may be phased out in just a few years.”
At the moment, iTunes is a behemoth of a nightmare of a music management app, containing bugs — that Apple can’t find — capable of deleting an entire user’s library without warning. iTunes’s issue is the same problem iPhotos had before it was axed in favor of its successor, Photos: it’s a legacy app, with bolted-on modules that started cluttering the program as years went by.
ITunes was never designed to handle a streaming platform like Apple Music, and the issues go back for years: even the iOS App Store was bolted onto the iTunes store, mostly because where else was it supposed to go.
The end result is a bloated piece of software, avoided by users at all cost. Looking for an alternative? Check out this article about iTunes alternatives.
