The iTunes app for Mac and Windows seems to be on the chopping block.
According to a report Friday from Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman detailing expectations ahead of WWDC 2019Â which kicks off with a keynote on Monday, June 3, the iTunes app will be retired this year following its public debut eighteen years ago at the January 2001 Macworld expo.
iTunes has been the way Apple users listen to music, watch movies and TV shows, hear podcasts and manage their devices for almost two decades.
This year, Apple is finally ready to move into a new era.
The company is launching a trio of new apps for the Mac – Music, TV and Podcasts – to replace iTunes. That matches Apple’s media app strategy on iPhones and iPads. Without iTunes, customers can manage their Apple gadgets through the Music app.
But why do we still need an app to sync our iOS devices, especially in this day and age? It’s been quite some time since I last connected my iPhone to a computer via USB and I honestly don’t recall syncing any of my iOS devices with iTunes for several years now.
Instead, I’ve been using iCloud Backup and couldn’t be happier with it.
In the video above filmed at the 2008 All Things D conference, Steve Jobs likens iTunes to ice water. When asked to sum up what using the then new iTunes for Windows app was like, he responded by quipping, “It’s like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell!”
Recent reports suggested that Apple would keep the iTunes app around even after splitting out functionalities like Movies and TV Shows, Apple Music, Podcasts and more into standalone apps. The reasoning was, iTunes would become this thin syncing client for iOS device.
The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that iTunes as we know it must be killed off. Don’t get me wrong — it’s had a big role as the engine for iPod growth back in the day. iTunes is what you exclusively used to sync music with your iPod. And with a built-in music store, it was the key app that single-handedly popularized 99-cent song downloads.
But as Apple continued to cram additional functionalities into the app—a video store, ringtones, books, podcasts and what not—something eventually had to give. Nowadays, iTunes is a bloated mess of gross UI inconsistencies, a bloated app that is no longer snappy, universally hated and requiring several hundreds of megabytes of storage space to install.
What’s your take on this rumor? Is it time for iTunes to be retired, do you think?
Leave your comment down below.