Goodbye, iTunes: App gone in Mac update
SAN FRANCISCO — It’s time to bid farewell to iTunes, the once revolutionary program that made online music sales mainstream and effectively blunted the impact of piracy.
That assumes that you still use iTunes — and many people no longer do. On iPhones, the functions have long been split into separate apps for music, video and books. Mac computers followed suit Monday with a software update called Catalina.
Music subscription services like Spotify and Apple Music have largely supplanted both the iTunes software and sales of individual songs. For anyone who has subscribed to Apple Music, the music store will now be hidden on the Mac.
Sidelining iTunes in favor of separate apps for music, video and other services will let Apple build features for specific types of media, and better promote its TV streaming and music services to help offset slowing sales of iPhones.
In the early days, iTunes was a way to get music onto Apple’s marquee product, the iPod music player. Users connected the iPod to a computer and songs automatically synced — simplicity unheard-of at the time.
Apple launched its iTunes Music Store in 2003, two years after the iPod. With simple pricing at launch — 99 cents a single, $9.99 for most albums — many consumers were content to buy music legally rather than seek out pirated downloads.
But, over time, iTunes software expanded to include podcasts, e-books, audiobooks, movies and TV shows. In the iPhone era, iTunes also made backups and synced voice memos. As the software got bloated, iTunes lost the ease and simplicity that gave it its charm.
And with online cloud storage and wireless syncing, it no longer became necessary to connect iPhones to a computer — and iTunes — with a cable.
The Mac’s new Music app, which gets the old iTunes icon, is the new home for music, including songs previously bought from the iTunes store or ripped from CDs, as well as Apple’s free online radio stations. It’s also home to Apple’s $10-a-month music subscription.
(On iPhones, iTunes Store remains its own app for buying music and video.)