[NewsPoster]

As we typically do after major Apple releases, MacNN has gathered some of its staff to consider the implications, long-term effects, potential fallout, mis-fires, and triumphs of the new release -- this time, Cupertino's new Apple Music. Apple gave us all a lot to think about, both during launch week, as well as this week dealing with the public fallout of a launch that could be called only mostly successful. Read on to see what we thought one week after the craziness that was launch day of the service, in addition to simultaneous software updates to nearly everything Apple offers.

It appears that there are significant problems with iTunes and customers' libraries. Is your personal collection having any problems? What was your solution?

Charles, MacNN editor: Yes, I am having some of the reported issues with messed-up artwork (wrong art for the track) and the occasional misnamed track -- I'm also seeing a lot of tracks claimed to be "duplicates" of stuff already on iCloud, but I haven't had an iTunes Match library before, so I'm not sure what's happening there. I haven't seen any DRM-related issues, however.

William, staff writer: I've been confused sometimes about where things go -- I downloaded a lot of music to listen offline, and until we did that Pointers telling us to create playlists and save them to there, I would get a bit lost. I suspect this is why I appear to have two copies of certain Beth Orton tracks but, hey, I only knew one song of hers before, and as of this week I'm a fan, I'm okay with having tracks listed twice whether that's my mistake or not.

Charles: These issues are, I suspect, temporary -- so I'm not worrying about them at the moment. I don't have any time to listen to my own library anymore anyway: Apple Music is filling my day with too much great stuff. Right now I'm listening to a playlist composed of bands who influenced U2 that is solid gold stuff, ranging from Gang of Four to BB King.

Mike, managing editor: None here, but -- our home network has a Mac mini as the server, and we haven't updated iTunes in a few revisions. We don't have Apple Music access, but I suspect as a result, our library is untouched. However, we've got some testing going on here at MacNN labs, and we can clearly see that there are problems with Apple Music's matching -- and we know that there are more than just network share mangling that we haven't even looked at yet.

Charles: I have a feeling iTunes 12.2.2 or whatever will sort out the issues -- I fixed them once myself by replacing the iTunes.itl file from a backup, but the corruption has started again. It's annoying, but not showstopping. My biggest issue with iTunes at the moment is due to a new arrangement I'm trying out -- putting my system and apps on an SSD but keeping the Users folder symlinked to the spinning platter drive (because my media libraries are huge). Apple's DRM portions of Apple Music -- adding songs to my own music library, the "For You" playlists -- do not like this. Everything else works fine in regards to Music and my collection. We're working on a solution, and if we find one, we'll get back to you!

Given the problems, is the service still working out for you? Are you planning on doling out the $10 a month for it?

Mike: I'm going to invoke the "get off my lawn" card, and declare right now that I'm not going to renew after the three month trial is over. This said, technical problems ignored for the sake of decision, I like generally the direction that Apple is taking. I'm in an ideal situation to use it right now -- I'm away from home, under duress, and in need of distraction, and I'm just not using it. I'll still pay for iTunes Match, though.

Charles: Let's be clear about this -- Apple Music isn't having problems -- iTunes is having problems, and that is mostly back-end database stuff caused, as near as I can tell, by the problems of trying to integrate DRM laden songs one retains from the paid music service with the non-DRM'd existing library, and having to integrate that with existing iTunes Match cloud libraries and the changes in Home Sharing. I plan on getting a family membership when the trial is over, as I expect my wife will have an upgraded iPhone and she will need this.

William: The service is working out very, very well for me. Thirty seconds before you asked, I created a new playlist called "Finds on Apple Music" just to group together all the great tracks I'm hearing that I never knew about before. It will be very hard to give this up, and it is very easy to think that the UK version's £15 a month is great -- I would certainly go for the more expensive family version, not one question about that -- but I am conscious that it's £180 per year in the UK. That's going to take some thinking about, and I don't know yet. Except I am certain that come the end of the trial, my iTunes will feel barren and denuded without it.

Charles: I recall that during beta testing, the iCloud Library concept had to be wiped-and-rebooted a few times, so the current issues -- which seem to center around iCloud Music Library -- are likely similar to that. It will get sorted, though of course one wishes it had been tested more thoroughly -- and Apple had issued more warnings about backups -- beforehand.

Apple Music itself, however, has launched very strongly in my opinion -- I am really loving the human-curated genre stations and in particular the human-curated recommendations in the "For You" section. Apple hit that part of Apple Music absolutely out of the park, and the rest of it is pretty nice as well. Yes, I want the teething issues resolved ASAP, but this is hardly the first bold new service that needed a shakedown. At least it didn't sit in beta for three years like some rival companies have done.

In response to complaints about the lack of music Home Sharing on mobile iOS devices (but no problems on the Apple TV) Eddy Cue tweeted that "we are working to have Home Sharing in iOS 9." First of all, why was the feature left out of iOS 8.4 and iTunes 12.2?

Charles: We don't fully know and shouldn't pretend to know. One thing we do know is that this was deliberate -- the iOS 8.4 beta listed Home Sharing as "currently unavailable." This is very different wording than would have been used if the feature was always planned to be permanently gone, so I don't believe it was intended to be so. It may have something to do with the idea that nobody at all is paying for Apple Music right now -- we're all on the trial. Most people won't be by the time iOS 9 launches, so I wonder if these things are connected.

William: Apple knows we like having things to complain about. Plus, what would Android fans do without something to criticize?

Mike: I don't even pretend to know, being merely a humble tech writer, but I think that this is a willful omission. I think that the music industry foisted it on Apple. Apple's sin here is not of redaction of the feature, but of badly communicating the removal to the public.

Charles: Cue also didn't say that everything would be back as it was. I think they may simply be rebuilding Home Sharing to accommodate this new infrastructure (which probably runs a lot deeper than it looks on the surface), and needed to take the AM stuff out of the equation for a while because of that, or record company demands, or whatever. Not worried about this long-term.

Is the absence a big deal? Do you use the feature?

Mike: I've used it a few times, but its absence isn't a major crisis to me. Before Home Sharing was really a thing, I started using Stream to Me, and didn't even realize that Apple could do something similar, so ... that said, the feature does have a significant user base, even if it's cranky sometimes.

Charles: We're a small household with just the two of us, so no, we don't really use Home Sharing. Consequently, the absence wouldn't be a big deal to us anyway, but if we did use it, it would be for Apple TV -- where, as I understand it, the service still works. So not a big deal.

William: I used to stream from my iMac to my iPad and then have that plugged into my TV set. But I haven't done that since buying an iPad Air and replacing the TV: I'd have to go buy more wires and anyway, I got an Apple TV too. I don't think I have ever Home Shared anything else at all, so I'm not fussed.

Mike: I think the irritation about the feature's removal is more of a "we used to have it, and now we don't" thing.

Charles: Yes, there's a mix of righteous annoyance and unmerited entitlement in the boisterousness of the complainers, it seems to me. I definitely encourage them to keep on Apple for clarity and answers, but with a better understanding that this stuff generally works itself out and is, at most, a first-world problem.

Cue's Tweet is pretty vague. Is this going to happen?

William: I don't think his tweet was all that vague at all: I'm surprised people are taking him to mean that it will be back in iOS 9 when I think he is announcing that they don't know. If it weren't ever coming back then I think he'd be saying that -- or at least finding some way to say "users just don't use Home Sharing and so we're really improving iOS by removing it".

Mike: I believe that they're working on it from a diplomatic standpoint, for lack of a better term, but not from a programming standpoint. FairPlay hasn't changed much, and the feature still works from iTunes 12.2 to the Apple TV! It's pretty clear to me that this isn't a codebase or incompatibility issue.

William: The man says they're working on it: I believe him and I don't read anything more into it. Certainly nothing whatsoever approaching a promise of a deadline or even a certainty that it will ever be back.

Mike: Cue wasn't shy about specifically announcing on Twitter that Apple was going to pay artists after Taylor Swift with absolutely no uncertainty. There is no way that Cue is a loose cannon here -- his tweet was carefully vetted by Apple public relations.

Charles: Yes, it will be back -- but probably with a twist. It just wouldn't be Apple otherwise. :)

Mike: The thing about this is, Cue's tweet is fully true! Apple is dealing with the situation, but this wasn't a promise to resurrect the feature. It was merely a statement, and it means all it means, and nothing more. Why press is jumping on this and saying that for sure this is coming back, yay in response to the tweet, I have no idea.

Charles: Masochism? But seriously, Apple has a vested interest in you spreading the music around your personal space, so they will put something up to make that possible. It just might not be the same thing you had -- and if history is a guide, will likely be something overall better.

[Steve in Seattle]

iTunes 12.2 killed my music library. I've completely given up on Apple for music. It's too complicated and unreliable. Rdio is where it's at for me now.

[mgpalma]

No Home Sharing until iOS 9? I'll wait for it and then consider updating. I used to update things as Apple rolled them out but after reading about the issues glad I didn't do this one. One of those contributors in the article is clearly an Apple apologist which is not helpful, btw.

[Flying Meat]

I like the discussion format as an occasional respite from simple reporting or opinion peice. It's a nice touch.

Thanks!
(dang it. Hey! Has anyone seen my petulance?!)

[Charles Martin]

mgpalma: I assume you mean me, since I'm the least bothered by the problems. I'm not really an Apple apologist -- I'm unhappy about the glitchiness of the introduced iTunes database issues, and SUPER displeased that my brilliant SSD plan got put asunder by the reintroduction of DRM -- but I'm just generally an optimistic person by nature, and that tends to spill over into dealing with the Apple rollercoaster, since I have (ulp) nearly 30 years experience with Apple and the way this cycle repeats itself.

I have suffered (and I mean SUFFERED) through many, many transitions with this company, but over the years I've opted to take (buoyed by my experience) a hopeful and perhaps more mature longer-term approach now rather than the whiny, visceral approach I would have taken as a young freelancer in the 90s. This shouldn't be confused with letting Apple off the hook for its screw-ups: the fact that this article exists at all is plenty of proof that we're willing to pick over the company's faults, and present various views on it. We could easily just pretend these issues don't exist and not mention them, as some sites and well-known commentators do.

Heck, I helped write an entire series -- The Feature Thief -- complaining about how Apple will often take away features I relied on (and occasionally whole programs) and replace them (sometimes temporarily and sometimes permanently) with less or inferior (though generally -- over time -- this gets made right).

I have a track record with Apple that tells me that while change can be irritating and disruptive, *broadly speaking* the end result is usually worth it. Sometimes Apple drops the ball -- but more often they come back (way too much later) with a better ball. We'll have to see how this particular misstep turns out, but its just too early to issue a final judgement on the matter.

I remember back when Final Cut X came out and oh the sturm and drang. A couple years later, its back to being the industry standard and everyone uses it again -- with occasional grumbles about "the good old days."