iTunes and the journey plummeted from the popular music player to an outdated remnant of the past

iTunes, the digital music library introduced in 2001, was officially dead.

At WWDC in June, Apple announced that it would remove iTunes on Mac after doing the same thing on iPhone. On macOS Catalina, released earlier this week, iTunes has been replaced by three separate apps: Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and Applt TV.

Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced iTunes at Macworld Expo in January 2001, calling it " the best and easiest to use entertainment software in the world". In 2003, iTunes 4 came out with a new feature called the iTunes Music Store, the first brick in Jobs' vision of a digital entertainment center where all your digital content is stored.

iTunes has changed the way we buy and listen to music, but it has also become a source of frustration for users. There are dozens of reasons why people hate iTunes and why you should leave this app.

Here is a brief history of iTunes, from the shocking launch to the hated years, then finally say goodbye.

Apple launched iTunes in 2001. This is a "jukebox" (digital music) software that allows Mac users to import songs, convert them to MP3s and store them on a computer.

" iTunes is ahead of every other jukebox application, and we hope its simpler user interface has brought more people into the digital music revolution," said Steve Jobs.

In October 2001, Apple released its first iPod, automatically syncing with iTunes. " With the iPod, listening to music will never be the same again," Jobs said.

In a press release, Apple called the iPod " a groundbreaking MP3 player that can hold up to 1,000 CD quality songs in a super-convenient, 6.5-ounce design that fits in your pocket".

The iTunes Music Store debuted in 2004, with thousands of songs priced at just $ 0.99. " Consumers don't want to be seen as criminals, and artists don't want their precious work stolen. The iTunes Music Store provides a breakthrough solution for both," Jobs said.

The iTunes Music Store makes iTunes a model in legal music buying and downloading, according to TheVerge. "The iTunes Music Store offers revolutionary benefits so you can burn an unlimited number of CDs to your personal needs and put music on an unlimited number of iPods to listen on the go" - Steve Jobs to speak.

Apple dominates the online music sharing market, so much so that musicians like Thom Yorke of Radiohead have accused the company of making " everything, including music and newspapers, worthless, in order to bring billions of dollars to them. "

iTunes was also brought to Windows in 2004, making it accessible to users of the world's largest operating system for the first time. Jobs called it " the best Windows application ever written".

iTunes 5 and 6 are mostly bug fixes, but they also added podcasting and video playback functionality in 2005 and 2006.

In 2006, iTunes 7 launched, introducing more features to the game, uninterrupted music playing, and more. This is also the year Apple launched the first iPhone. At the time, iTunes supported iPod Classic, Shuffle, Touch, Nano, and iPhone.

After iTunes 7, the software became more complex and received much criticism as it evolved from a music player to a multimedia platform. Sometimes iTunes was home to Ping, a social network for music that only existed for less than a year!

Ping is supposed to support connecting with Facebook, but users say it is too difficult to use, and it also does not display notifications so you know when your friends interact with you.

In 2012, iTunes 11 was redesigned, confusing users about how to access and organize their content. This content includes music, podcasts, TV shows and movies.

Apple also launched iTunes Match, a streaming service, along with Genius Sidebar, which is quite confusing. When he first introduced iTunes, Jobs once said other music apps were " too complicated, really hard to learn and use", but now that has happened with iTunes.

In 2014, Apple redesigned iTunes 12, confusing users, and tampering with carefully selected music collections because of the iCloud Music Library feature.

Apple finally got into the streaming game in 2015 with Apple Music, a standalone service, but fully integrated into the iTunes app on Mac. It has a separate application on iOS, and this application is separate from the player of the device.

In a press release, music producer Jimmy Iovine said that " online music has become a complex set of applications, services and websites. Apple Music brings the best features together to create an experience." experience that people who love music will love, " but Apple did not respond to complaints that the iTunes application was too cumbersome and confusing.

Some critics say that iTunes has gripped death since that time. " People can't understand this hybrid app like Frankenstein. What are their songs stored in the cloud? Why do they need to re-enter the Apple ID every time they want to play an album? where?" - Kevin Roose writes in The New York Times so.

Apple-focused blogger Marco Arment called Apple Music a "hell," and The New York TImes called the new version "iTunes a" nightmare of errors and confusion. " Issues with Apple Music have affected the iTunes experience because they are linked together in a single application.

Across the Internet, it is agreed that Apple has put too many features in iTunes, but none of them work really well. Verge called it " Apple's most hated application," and Farhad Manjoo wrote in 2012 that " Apple's horrible program needs to die."

Now, iTunes is in the past. Customers switched to streaming instead of buying music, and even the disc sold out better than iTunes sales earlier this year. Ebooks and Podcasts can be downloaded directly on the device and iPhone settings no longer require a link to this software, so iTunes is no longer a comprehensive hub like it used to be.

Reference: BusinessInsider