Apple Stole My Music

https://blog.vellumatlanta.com/2016/05/04/apple-stole-my-music-no-seriously/

by panic • 10 years ago

1259 445 10 years ago

blog.vellumatlanta.com

buserror2• 10 years ago

To be fair, they probably came up with that in a way to reduce the /other/ army of people coming to see in the 'genius' to restore the laptop they've never backuped EVER and have accidentally wiped, containing 10+ years of their digital life...

nrinaudo• 10 years ago

If it's the case, somebody at Apple is seriously incompetent.

- Copy files that don't belong to them without the owner's explicit permission: some people call that piracy. I believe individuals caught doing that with movies have been faced with some hefty fines.

I understand the purpose, but it needs to come with a big, massive, Allow Apple to pirate your data, trust us, it's for your own protection checkbox. Who knows, it might even initially be true.

- do you know of any good backup solution that forcefully deletes the files it's backing up? Do you think there might be a reason why not?

I find this entirely unacceptable behaviour from Apple, and I say this as someone who has been using OS X almost exclusively for 10+ years now.

coldtea4• 10 years ago

I believe individuals caught doing that with movies have been faced with some hefty fines.

I doubt it. The only hefty fines were for redistribution, not mere copying/download.

DanBC5• 10 years ago

In that case they should copy, but not delete, the files.

And they should have better content matching so they don't destroy user data.

buserror2• 10 years ago

Seriously, how can that post get -3 karma; why the hate, I have a lot more sympathy for Mr Clueless without backups than this.

The user in question committed his data, his 'life' as he calls it, to a service that is made for mom+pop, without reading the EULA, and he complains?

The guy's a composer and keeps his masters into.... iTunes? Seriously?

He discovers /after the fact/ that his special recording he care so much about has been replaced? Hasn't he tried google, or perhaps do a bit of due diligence about it before committing 120GB of his precious data to a cloud provider?

... To a service that is /meant/ to be able to replace songs automatically? What's not clear about 'automatic'?

Now I don't mean apple is /right/ here, it's very likely done so that apple can sell machines with less flash, for more -or something like that- there's no doubt that there is a reason why they delete the data.. a reason that doesn't need to benefits the user ultimately.

However I don't have a lot of sympathy for that particular user; he comes as someone who should know better.

I'm a mac user since 1984, and I don't use Apple Music, iCloud, or any of these fancy subscription services. I'm also a musician, and a photographer, and it wouldn't cross my mind for a minute to just commit my stuff to a place that might decide the data is 'theirs' in their next update.

onion2k• 10 years ago

I can't think of a single reason why Apple would want to delete the files from the user's computer apart from an intent to lock the user in to the service by making it tremendously hard to leave. That's the black hole of UI dark patterns.

delinka2• 10 years ago

"I can't think of a single reason why Apple would want to delete the files from the user's computer..."

Well, to save precious local storage space of course. Apple's just being helpful here.

But seriously, sounds like a "good idea" gone wrong - "I know! Let's save the user some space by serving all their music from the cloud!" The moment that file deletion came up in the design, the option to opt-in should have been added. Unless someone at Apple did indeed intend lock-in ...

dingo_bat11• 10 years ago

Well, to save precious local storage space of course. Apple's just being helpful here.

Yeah, storage that was made precious by apple by not supporting an SD card slot. Very "helpful".

NoGravitas• 10 years ago

My phone has very limited local storage, so I can't keep photos on it. Fortunately, ownCloud implements this "good idea" basically right. I have "instant upload on WiFi" turned on for photos and videos. It uploads them to my ownCloud server, and then moves them from the system photos directory to its own directory if successful. It doesn't delete them from there, but I know that if something's in the ownCloud directory on my phone, it's backed up and available online, so I can clear it out periodically.

jlg23• 10 years ago

The funny thing is: Disk space is only worth more than bandwidth in a few select 1st-world countries. I've been traveling in rural areas of South America for about 18 months now and regularly I had to turn off my MacBook because its automatic update "features" were consuming all of the available bandwidth, making it impossible for anybody to actually work.

Kadin3• 10 years ago

On what devices is that really a good tradeoff? On mobile, sure (at least, on mobile devices like Apple's that don't have SD cards), but on a regular computer? I find it very hard to imagine that most people are more constrained by storage than bandwidth. Internet access just isn't that good. I can barely stream music over WiFi in many public places (coffee shops, airports, etc.).

If that's really the rationale, I think they're either optimizing for a use case that I find personally very atypical, or they didn't do their research.

Lawtonfogle2• 10 years ago

But seriously, sounds like a "good idea" gone wrong

Don't contribute to stupidity what can adequately be explained by malice, especially when dealing with a massive company who hires quite intelligent individuals.

Lock-in was intended, and then some smart people found not just a way to sell it, but make it look more acceptable even if they were called out on it.

danielweber• 10 years ago

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20061101-03/?p=...

I often find myself saying, “I bet somebody got a really nice bonus for that feature.”

“That feature” is something aggressively user-hostile . . .

SyneRyder2• 10 years ago

I imagine their thinking (as flawed as it is) is that it frees up local disk space for the user. If you've got a base level MacBook Air with just a 128GB SSD, maybe it seems beneficial to have a 40GB iTunes library stored entirely in the cloud on demand, and suddenly have 30% disk space freed up.

Apple have a similar philosophy with Photos, where the photos on your device are just low resolution versions, with the original hi-resolution versions kept on iCloud, if you choose the Optimize Device Storage setting. [1]

Not a philosophy I agree with. I like to keep my data local so I can use it offline. It's one reason I bought a 2012 MBP - I could get 1TB of storage cheaply, and I can upgrade it to a 1TB SSD myself for half the price of what Apple charges (Apple charges $800 for a 1TB SSD in Australia).

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT204264

junto• 10 years ago

I'd seriously been considering a Macbook, for home use, mainly due to the iPhoto app, since on Windows there is only Google Picasa, and they've killed it.

If there anyway to turn off that syncing and keep files locally only? Your comments have made me rethink my upcoming purchase!

pmontra• 10 years ago

People shouldn't buy a computer with only 128 GB nowadays and have to use the network as storage. Ok, they want to sync across devices, still having at least one of them with a large storage makes sense.

SSDs are getting cheap http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-75E1T0B-A...

That's $320 for 1TB. Still 4x than a HDD but the difference in absolute price is getting down.

givinguflac3• 10 years ago

This article is total BS. Maybe this one guy ran into an issue, but everyone I know uses Apple Music and has not had a single file deleted.

code4life• 10 years ago

I imagine it's intended to be a feature. You can instantly listen to any of your songs on any device.

They should have just left it on the local drive as well. Terrible.

ambulancechaser• 10 years ago

I uploaded all of my music to Google Play and deleted it off of my computer. When I get a new computer I only really need my google credentials and then between google drive and google play music I'm up to speed. I install a few packages and I'm at home. I have no need to keep my music there.

Thus there certainly is a reason to do this. Its how photos work on iphones and androids as well. You take pictures, they are put on the cloud, space can be freed up. Its not a malicious workflow

jpindar• 10 years ago

That's not how photos work on any of my Androids. The original files are on the phone, and if I need to make space I can move them to a computer via USB (or dropbox, email, etc.).

You must have the Google photos sync option (or something like that) enabled.

Too• 10 years ago

Ransomware at its best.

Olap84• 10 years ago

Reasons to pirate number 567839234

yedpodtrzitko• 10 years ago

Let me paraphrase it - if there's a dozen of streaming services, and one of them does misbehaves, it gives you a reason to pirate? That's a really poor excuse (or if that's a joke, then it's a poor one too).

SunShiranui• 10 years ago

It highlights a very serious issue, though - an increasing number of services use all kinds of crazy DRM that only result in great inconveniences for the paying user.

Compare that to the relative simplicity of having your music, books, etc. as a plain file, and you can see where the problem is: paying gets you less, rarely more.

coderdude• 10 years ago

You're basically trying to reason with a troll comment about pirating. They don't need 5 billion reasons. There's only one. It's free.

newjersey2• 10 years ago

That's just your opinion, man.

GP's point is perfectly valid. Look at XKCD 488

https://xkcd.com/488/

xg15• 10 years ago

It's not just one misbehaving streaming service, is that there is an incentive for streaming servicrs to do that (lock-in) and little danger they would face when doing this.

errantspark2• 10 years ago

Maybe not a reason to pirate, but certainly a reason to curate your own music and not let people fuck with it.

But let's be real, it's far easier to grab flacs from the usual places than futz around with ripping your own vinyl.

croon2• 10 years ago

Cue the Apple rationalists in 3... 2... 1...

That really sucks, but I do hope you have a local backup and/or offsite backup and not mentioning that for effect?

It's still amazingly evil by Apple, but I hope you still have your files.

d--b• 10 years ago

He did, as per the article.

croon2• 10 years ago

Heh, sorry, I actually did stop reading just at the middle finger, which was right before.

tabulatouch• 10 years ago

Nothing beats offline data.

contravariant• 10 years ago

Unless I'm misunderstanding, this was offline data, apple decided to make it 'online'.

hudo• 10 years ago

Similar what happened to me years ago - i got new iphone, installed itunes, it synced all local files. Few weeks later, i de-synced the phone or something like that, and all my local files were gone! Still not sure how or why, there were no warnings or anything. From that day, i stay as far as possible from iTunes and similar "smart music sync" apps. Spotify doesn't see my local music collection, and vice versa. All music streaming services and their apps are total crap, they try to lock you in and manage everything like you're an idiot.

IkmoIkmo2• 10 years ago

Same here... although I used an iPhone for half a decade after, I always opted out of every single update or sync or feature that had to do with iTunes. That just scarred me and made me lose all trust. From there on out it was back to manual mode.

speeder3• 10 years ago

I had an iPod that I won in a contest ( I don't think Apple hardware is ever worth its price, wouldn't buy one ).

My sister borrows my iPod, plugs on her Windoes machine that had iTunes, and it offers to sync, and she clicks "ok" on autopilot.

ITunes couldn't recognize the iPod, since it was mine, not hers, and decide thr best course of action is wipe it clean...

mapt2• 10 years ago

My mother has an iPod she bought to listen to music. She interfaces through Itunes, and doesn't know what a file is. She's bought maybe 250 tracks from Itunes, out of a 2500 track library. She is not especially emotionally stable.

We finally bought her a new computer.

She plugged it in to charge it. The iPod wiped itself clean. She had not even installed Itunes on the new PC yet. It took us a solid day and a half to get through her traumatic reaction and get the music back on with the new Itunes install through a thumb drive, using Windows Explorer and a new 'import library' pass to bypass Itunes' asinine UX decisions.

sixseven2• 10 years ago

That's one of the reasons I rarely plug my iPhone to the Mac. What does "sync" even mean? If I deleted a few songs from my phone, does "sync" means copying the deleted songs back to the phone? or delete those songs from the computer as well? or does it do nothing? I really hate that word.

dendory• 10 years ago

A long time ago I started to use the iPhone music app. Then I quickly discovered that songs sent to the iPhone could not be sent back the other way. This was just the beginning of Apple's lock-in. I got out of it right then and there. Now I store my music on my own server and use one of the many third party music apps to play them.

If a service smells of lock-in, you can be sure things won't become better, they will become worse like the issues people get with Apple Music and iCloud. You care about your files? Then you manage them, don't trust some service you have no control over.

davidhariri• 10 years ago

I believe there's a setting when you initialize your library that allows iTunes to manage your library. If this is turned on, when you drag a file into iTunes, Apple copies the file into its own local storage so you have two copies of it. If you delete a file in iTunes it will delete it's local copy. Usually digital collectors will have this turned off if they're using iTunes since they like to organize and name their files elsewhere and they don't want to have two copies of the file. If you manage the library yourself i'm 99% sure you would avoid any funny business, even with an Apple Music subscription. The interplay of Beats, Apple Music, iTunes Match, audiobooks and iTunes was definitely a blunder. In my opinion they should all be separate apps.

emodendroket4• 10 years ago

What if I want iTunes to manage the structure/location of my music, but without modifying the files themselves? That's what I thought "Manage my library" was supposed to do.

logan5• 10 years ago

I had a non-English song on my Mac and iPhone prior to Apple Music subscription. Now, my iPhone has a very different non-English song altogether.

What seems to have happened is, Apple incorrectly matched the original song to another non-English song. Later, it deleted the original song on my iPhone and gave me the incorrectly-matched version.

V-2• 10 years ago

Looks like RMS was onto something after all ;)

jordigh• 10 years ago

I want to buy a shirt that says "Richard Stallman was right :-("

edit: I'll be content with the subreddit for now:

https://www.reddit.com/r/stallmanwasright

buro95• 10 years ago

It's worth noting that Google Photos actually does something similar... the photos are "backed up" even in their "original" form... but I don't believe it's possible to actually restore (download all) from Google Photos.

I thankfully have a local backup of the photos I took, but when a phrase like "backup" is used, it is implicit and understood that there is a "restore" mechanism.

Google Photos lacks a "restore" mechanism, and it sounds like the same is true of Apple Music.

Google Play Music also does the matching/mismatching thing.

An uploaded Ladytron - Gravity the Seducer was replaced by a remix album but remains tagged as if it's the original. This is probably due to them not having the original, and this was a 90% match based on tags... but 90% is not good enough. I worked in the music industry and have so many demo tapes, master cuts that were not subject to post-production, etc. I want the version I have, and not some approximate guess at something similar-ish.

This isn't just an Apple issue.

nasduia• 10 years ago

Can you not just download all the photos through google drive in bulk?

buro95• 10 years ago

I looked, whilst photos appears as a folder in drive, there is no option to "download all", and it would require me to load them into the browser view, select them, and then choose to download them.

For reference, I have 125GB of photos since 1994 in there... it would take a very long time to select them all.

colin_jack4• 10 years ago

I am not sure it's the same, as far as I was aware Google photos never deletes the local copy.

buro95• 10 years ago

On the phone, "freeup device storage" is an option that is prompted (and sounds like a wonderful idea)... whereby the phone copy is purged if the original file has already been "backed up" to Google.

It isn't possible to restore the backup.

7sigma• 10 years ago

google takeout my friend:

https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout

buro95• 10 years ago

That is the best suggestion.

Just enabled it on my domain, will try tomorrow.

ApplePolisher2• 10 years ago

But it is an Apple issue. Whether Google does something comparable is no justification and does not make Apple any better.

piyush_soni5• 10 years ago

And no, Google is not doing something similar.

StavrosK4• 10 years ago

I didn't read it as the GP justifying Apple's behaviour, he was just warning people that Google does something similar ("I thankfully have a local backup of the photos I took").

dingo_bat11• 10 years ago

This is exactly why I use OneDrive to backup my photos along with the google photos thing. I've tried explaining my logic to several people but usual replies are "but I can still see them on the website!". "But you won't have the image files anymore." "But I can open the website and see the pics, right?" At this point I just sigh and give up. Oh there's a download all button too, but it does NOT return the original files. All the files are much smaller than the original images.

jmiserez2• 10 years ago

The Dropbox app has a camera roll auto-upload feature. It's reliable, full-resolution image file backup and works for iOS and Android.

iCloud Photos is the worst: Last time I tried to download all my iCloud Photos/Videos (~1000) from the website it turned out to be impossible: You can download a few, but after 200 or so you just get server errors. And it always chokes on videos, stopping before having finished downloading the full file. There is no bulk export option like with Google Takeout.

Now I hear that this is not a problem if you have the Photos app on you Mac (it syncs), but I don't have a Mac.

bad_user2• 10 years ago

OneDrive is horrible for backup because it doesn't keep any history of your files. Get a Ransomware on your computer, then watch in horror how your files are gone and how totally useless OneDrive can be.

This is why I prefer Dropbox. They keep 30-days worth of history so you can revert any file changes during that period. And I prefer to pay extra for the Extended History add-on, giving me 1 year worth of history. They aren't alone in doing this. SpiderOak also keeps the history of all changes from what I understand and they also do encryption. And Google Drive keeps history for 30 days, but they don't have an add-on. Note though that Google Photos can be downloaded by means of Google Drive ;-)

I did try OneDrive with a trial Office365 subscription, but I think at this point OneDrive is the worst option out of the mainstream ones. Besides the lack of version history, it also lacks a Linux client. One thing I do is to have a home machine that I keep turned on for having an extra backup, being synchronized with Dropbox. It also serves as a media box, but it's a Linux box, because Linux is the best option for servers, including home ones.

And it's not as cost effective as you'd think. If you look at Office alternatives and considering the OneDrive features you get, it's quite overpriced.

piyush_soni5• 10 years ago

Wait. I assume even OneDrive doesn't have free unlimited storage right? After a certain limit, you've to pay. Similarly, if you pay, you can store all the photos in their original size (not the smaller max 16MP versions of them - which are free & unlimited) in Google Photos as well, and download when you want.

I store my photographs in external Hard Disk as well as Google Photos - because of the amazing search and categorization features built into it.

fps2• 10 years ago

Oh there's a download all button too, but it does NOT return the original files.

It does return the original files.

Here are two files, one that got backed up off my phone by google photos, which I then downloaded from google drive, and one that I copied directly off my phone via USB:

   $ md5sum IMG_20160504_160057648_HDR*
    4bcb38a2e3869b4c769301c1664f5846  IMG_20160504_160057648_HDR (1).jpg
    4bcb38a2e3869b4c769301c1664f5846  IMG_20160504_160057648_HDR.jpg

The files are identical.

kyriakos• 10 years ago

I keep my RAW images on OneDrive for backup and use Google Photos with the free version / high quality version. I find Google Photos's client really good as a gallery on Android, (OneDrive is really slow). So when I show people my photos I use Google Photos but the originals are on OneDrive.

fpgeek• 10 years ago

There is an important difference. Google is transparent about what is going on.

When I set up Google Photos I was asked: Do you want to use Google's high quality or do you want to preserve the original photos and have them count against your storage quota?

After that, you should know what you're getting into. I certainly did.

april1stislame• 10 years ago

Google's high quality... That's some deceiving wording right there. High quality are the originals, those are at the maximum optimized.

UnfalseDesign• 10 years ago

Another way Google Photos is transparent is the app will actually let you know that many of the photos on your phone have been backed up to Photos. The app will ask if you would like those backed up photos to be removed from your phone. (And it'll ask you every time since it doesn't assume that if you said "yes" once then you mean "yes" every time.) So, there's no question about where your photos went when you can't find them.

GTP2• 10 years ago

Thanks, I didn't know about google photo's no restore issue, I'm going to check! But I recall there's a setting somewhere in the app that lets you choose if you want to delete photos from your device or not after they're backed up, but maybe I'm wrong. I'll check this evening and let you know.

GTP2• 10 years ago

I've just checked and actually you can choose if delete them or not.

don_draper• 10 years ago

Any UI that is not honest with users is a bad thing. I use this service and I know that my original is no longer there when I allow Google to delete my local files but maybe i'm the exception. I will add that it depends on your perspective as to how you see this. You can look at how easy Google makes it to take photos on your phone and then have them all backed up and available with a click of a button. And in addition you can look at how hard it used to be to do anything like that (my grandparents never had photos when they lived in Italy because the town they lived in didn't have any photographers). If you see it through that lens then it's awesome.

fps2• 10 years ago

Google drive has a switch in the options to expose a "Google Photos" folder, which contains the original versions of all your uploaded google photos. You can then download these photos with any google drive client. The photos you download have identical MD5 sums to the photos you uploaded - they're completely untouched.

xd1936• 10 years ago

The Drive client can download them, yes. You can also use Google Takeout and download all of the original files as well.

https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout

dmitrygr• 10 years ago

False.

https://photos.google.com

Select all (click first, hold shift, click last)

Click download icon on top

Enjoy zip archive of all photos

colin_jack4• 10 years ago

I unsubscribed from apple music when I found out about this and discovered iTunes would not allow me to sync music I bought from bandcamp onto my iDevices whilst using the iCloud support.

Does seem to be working times for apple, product wise they are making of decisions.

andrey_utkin2• 10 years ago

Enjoy your cloud service.

"FUCK THE CLOUD" by Jason Scott: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1717

Proud user of Linux and SELinux (mandatory access control system, which protects your data from your apps).

andrey_utkin2• 10 years ago

Oh, I should have rather said "enjoy your closed source applications". Who's next? Skype? Acrobat Reader?

Terretta• 10 years ago

Apple iTunes Match (and Apple Music) subscriber, with 23,000 hand ripped songs, only about 18,000 able to exact match by Apple, 5,000 are less common versions.

Also have enabled iCloud Music Library. Note these are three different services, and iCloud Music Library has been the most likely culprit for monkeying with your music, not Apple Music.

The combo of all three has deleted or auto-replaced exactly zero of my custom rips. I can use a series of steps (smart playlist to find matched songs, then manually delete that set) to shift to using Apple's high quality unprotected version, or not.

I wonder if the key to everything working as you imagine is the Match subscriptions:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/

If using Match, then after matching, manually deleting local, then re-downloading, you end up with a very high quality file without DRM that will continue to work fine and be portable, even after you cancel.

I'm not sure what happens if using only Apple Music without Match.

The linked article sounds a lot like the iCloud Music Library beta problems in July 2015:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/07/01/apple-music-users-...

And similar support experiences:

http://www.loopinsight.com/2015/07/24/i-got-my-music-back-at...

osi• 10 years ago

Fellow iTunes Match subscriber - been using it since the release with zero problems.

acomjean• 10 years ago

Me too. I really like iTunes match and it seems to work well. For those that are unfamiliar, it makes all your music on your main machine available from the cloud for a small yearly payment (25$?). It does this by matching your music to its own library and uploading the stuff it doesn't have.

One of the strange things is I have 2 mp3 rips from CD with skips. When I play over the internet with iTunes match the files still skip. These are common songs, so whatever they are doing to determine if that song is in their library is working (I guess).

My only complaint is sometimes it breaks up my albums if it decides that songs are by different artists. (Bob Marley, vs Bob Marley and the Wailers)

topdownjimmy• 10 years ago

I had the same thought: Is this an "Apple Music problem" or an "iTunes Match problem"? The article is fuzzy on the details as far as I can tell.

darkmagnus2• 10 years ago

Same here, never have had a problem and I use both services.

WiseWeasel• 10 years ago

I believe the trick is declining when iTunes first asks whether you would like it to keep your music collection organized, or disabling the option in the preferences.

There are two default options that should be changed for safety when configuring iTunes:

- enable error correction when importing from CDs (importing options in Preferences)

- disable "keep music collection organized" (or something to that effect, located somewhere in the prefs)

leonroy• 10 years ago

I can say for 100% certain that the combination of iTunes Match and Apple Music completely botched about 600 songs in my library.

I restored a backup, turned off Match and Apple Music and obtained a refund. Suffice to say it was the first week of Apple Music but still, it was pretty appalling that my carefully tagged library and artwork were overwritten with zero warning.

Apple do tend to release things a little half baked sometimes - especially when it pertains to cloud services - sadly the customer's data is the casualty which is a shame since it reflects a very cavalier attitude to user data.

ommunist• 10 years ago

VOX is the answer. And ... geeks backup.

gp7• 10 years ago

wavs having "more samples" is a new one to me. Neat.

ghusbands2• 10 years ago

It could easily be true, if the wav is recorded at greater than 44.1kHz. However, the author probably meant to say "more data", as the wavs will have been (lossless) PCM.

dTal2• 10 years ago

It's... a misleading statement. Usually technically incorrect. Possibly technically correct in this instance. But philosophically true for the purposes of the article.

WAVs support sampling rates up to 192khz, whereas mp3 only supports up to 48khz. However, you're unlikely to come across anything higher than 48khz anyway unless you specifically look for it, or record it yourself (as the author did).

Sampling rate has (basically) no effect on audio quality beyond the highest frequency the file can contain - you can drop the sampling rate right the way down to 8khz and it'll just sound a bit muffled but otherwise fine. The primary reason to prefer WAV files over MP3 is that encoding something to MP3 irreversibly mangles it, and the author would be justified in being extremely pissed off that Apple decided to unilaterally do this and delete the originals. It would be like deleting someone's RAW photos and providing Facebook-sized jpegs as replacement, or deleting their home movies and offering back gifs of them. Apple have committed a cardinal sin here, the seriousness of which can't really be overstated.

FilterSweep2• 10 years ago

Wav is (normally, unless already corrupted) an uncompressed, lossless, audio format. The OP's statement was a little off, but the premise is correct.

Mp3 is lossy. Many audiophiles and audio engineers argue that Mp3 actually sounds better (the compression gives the drums a "crunch" not normally present), but the point is you can go from WAV to Mp3, but you can't go back the other way around. Apple is irrevocably damaging some of his files.

thevibesman4• 10 years ago

Many audiophiles and audio engineers argue that Mp3 actually sounds better (the compression gives the drums a "crunch" not normally present)

Quote please! Don't specifically mean it as a challenge to you, but as a musician, composer, and audio engineer (I'm not sure I identify as audiophile since that has baggage, but I know friends who do) I have never heard such a thing even mentioned and have a hard time believing there are serious engineers that think this.

The data reduction in the MP3 algorithm is designed around the frequency masking principles of human hearing[1] (EDIT: Spelling and citation), this technique can lose a lot of data with a small impact on perception when applied to harmonic sounds. Enharmonic sounds (e.g. is where the MP3 algorithm falls down); as I said, I've never heard any engineer say they think this sounds better.

Again, I don't say this to argue, I'd just be curious to know what these unicorn engineers have to say about this.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_masking

dandare• 10 years ago

Am I the only one who recalled the 1984 ad an cringed?

firegrind• 10 years ago

I'm surprised that it's not the re-encoding of the victim's compositions that grab this headline.

Could I copyright a piece of unpublished music, then use the converted copy to show a case against Apple for copyright infringement ?

ghusbands2• 10 years ago

Under the terms and conditions for these services, you typically grant the host the right to do whatever actions they need to in order to perform the service you ask of them. So you'd be unlikely to have a case on these grounds. I am not a lawyer.

pbhjpbhj2• 10 years ago

in order to perform the service you ask of them //

Do they need to modify your copyright works to provide their service - is that in the user agreement explicitly?

givinguflac3• 10 years ago

I read the whole thing and all I hear is waaaahhh I don't keep proper backups of data I care about, nor do I learn about the service functions before signing up... This is ABSOLUTELY NOT the way it works, it's not a shady practice, I use it daily and have lost nothing. Sorry you ran into a bug but the is just Stupid. I would be shocked if the phone agent he spoke to is a real person.

gerbilly• 10 years ago

The author explicitly said that:

"I recovered my original music files only by using a backup I made weeks earlier."

dempseye• 10 years ago

From TFA:

I recovered my original music files only by using a backup I made weeks earlier.

rossng• 10 years ago

Every time I am asked to set up someone's Apple device, I find it incredibly difficult to:

* Get it synced properly

* Determine what is stored in iCloud/on-device

* Ensure that device contents are actually backed-up, unless done manually

* Set up simple things like email accounts

Just a month or two ago, I was helping someone whose iTunes music wouldn't sync to their iPhone. It turned out that, when they signed up to Apple Music, iTunes had silently flipped on a setting that prevents this. Working out what on earth was happening took me almost an hour.

Yet everyone tells me that their Apple devices 'just work'. I don't have the same experience - I find their behaviour to be utterly opaque and non-deterministic. Am I alone?

pjsg• 10 years ago

No -- you aren't alone. Whenever I connect my daughter's iPhone to iTunes (say to add more music) we take our lives in our hands. You get scary popups that ask you a question and provides two options -- neither of which is what you want.

I don't know whether this is deliberate on the part of Apple to discourage the use of iTunes, or whether they really think that it works well and is intuitive. For anybody from Apple reading this -- iTunes is not intuitive. It is horrible.

mtreis86• 10 years ago

Itunes is the worst.

It can, without asking, delete the music from your device or your folders, reorganize your folders, rename your songs and reset their id3 tags.

The mentality of "our users are stupid, just do everything for them" seems pervasive throughout apple's products.

kame3d• 10 years ago

Talk about scary! I managed to unintentionally delete all photos in my aunt's iPad. All I wanted to do was disable iCloud backups. And I am a postdoc in a CS department.

oneeyedpigeon3• 10 years ago

"You get scary popups that ask you a question and provides two options -- neither of which is what you want."

This! One is something like "delete all the music from my iPod" and the other is "delete all the music from my hard drive". How on earth has this situation been allowed to develop?

Shivetya• 10 years ago

is this related to Apple Music use? I have never encountered this problem with an iPhone, iPad, or iPod. I have music on each and separate settings for all four devices and never once has it asked to delete, let alone with a popup.

prplhaz4• 10 years ago

I have had a similar experience - finding out what is really going on with my iDevices always ends up being a giant time-suck. Things do seem to "just work" as long as you don't go looking too far - which, I imagine, is what most people do. I don't think this is unique to Apple necessarily, just more pronounced due to the "just works" mentality.

IkmoIkmo2• 10 years ago

Agreed on all points, but email accounts have always been a breeze for me on iOS, although it's a bit limited it always did the basic stuff very well.

yks• 10 years ago

No. iTunes is probably the worst piece of widely used software out there.

It's just a UX nightmare, hard to grasp how to do things, almost impossible to grasp what the consequences of doing things are.

vlunkr• 10 years ago

I swear iTunes used to work great. When I got my first iPod it did the syncing correctly and played music, and those were about the only jobs it had. It has since bloated more and more, I don't even open it anymore, it's awful on both windows and osx

mrep2• 10 years ago

^ 100% agree, it is literally the worst UX design ever!

I'm currently using the 3 month free trial and every time I use it i have to tell myself "it's free money, just 1 more month until I switch back to spotify".

For example, the playlists I create on my laptop don't sync whatsoever with my phone. I spent a little time trying to research how to sync them and just said screw it.

On what planet does a user not want their playlists automatically synced between devices, let alone making that the default option?

sixseven2• 10 years ago

I owned my first MacBook 3 years ago. To me, the MacBook "just work" as much as any new Windows laptops I came across. So I'm clueless as to where did the phrase "just work" came from. Maybe Windows has improved over the years, or maybe a lot of things are done of the web now, the OS doesn't really matter as long as there is a browser.

ryan-allen2• 10 years ago

You should try Windows 10, I've been Apple free for a while now. I'll never go back to OS X.

vacri2• 10 years ago

'Just works' comes from the days of XP and before, where every doodad you plugged into your computer required its own driver disk on Windows. Even if something came with it's own drivers in that era, you'd get an installer wizard that you'd have to navigate through.

theandrewbailey• 10 years ago

I remember reading "In the beginning was the Command Line" and the description of Apple products being hermetically sealed boxes sticks to me to this day. Even though the author said that the essay was obsolete within a year or so of release (due to Apple and OSX), it proves that even over 17(?) years in technology, some things never change. Almost every other ecosystem doesn't obsessively hide every adjustment knob and switch and force you into submitting to their way of doing things like Apple's does.

Sir_Substance• 10 years ago

Yet everyone tells me that their Apple devices 'just work'. I don't have the same experience - I find their behaviour to be utterly opaque and non-deterministic. Am I alone?

Apple devices haven't "just worked" in over a decade. It's a testament to apples marketing that people still think this.

oarsinsync3• 10 years ago

That's a bit of a stretch. The early iPhones 'just worked'. My Mac used to 'just work'. All was groovy in my Apple life as 'recent' as ~2011.

I wouldn't say my Mac 'just works' anymore, nor my iPhone for that matter. And this is commented on a lot by a lot of prominent Apple bloggers, to the point that it does get responded to by Apple SVPs (see Marco Arment and Phil Schiller)

EDIT: that said, my mum gave up the PC when she got an iPad 2, and was even happier when she got a hand-me-down iPhone 4S. She finds both slow now, but still won't go near the PC anymore. For her, the Apples still 'just work'.

snowwrestler2• 10 years ago

I think we need to make some distinctions here. My Macs and iPhones have proven incredibly durable, reliable, and flexible.

It's the syncing services, specifically, that Apple is screwing up. They never figured this stuff out, even under Steve Jobs.

Fortune magazine reported that during the summer of 2008, after MobileMe had launched to mostly negative reviews, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs summoned the MobileMe team to a meeting in the Town Hall auditorium at 4 Infinite Loop. After asking them "what MobileMe is supposed to do", when someone answered, Jobs reportedly shot back, "So why the fuck doesn't it do that?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MobileMe

rhinoceraptor• 10 years ago

My iPhone currently has two apps that somehow failed to install, and I can't delete them or open them. I tried rebooting the phone, signing in and out of the Apple store, all to no avail.

trvz• 10 years ago

Also try force rebooting your device by pressing the home and sleep buttons simultaneously for several seconds.

colin_jack4• 10 years ago

Yeah I had the exact same issue with syncing externally purchased music whilst using apple music, I honestly could not believe apple has delivered software that behaves in such a user hostile manner. It hurts their reputation and convinced me to give up on some music.

Yhippa• 10 years ago

I got my parents an iPad mini recently and some of the contacts on my mom's phone sync and some of them don't. I am a developer and love tinkering with computers but for the love of me not figure out how to fix this.

Bartweiss6• 10 years ago

I recently spent a good chunk of a day troubleshooting the problem "when certain people message my account on Apple Mail, I get the message twice."

Confirmed that it wasn't user error, and was common, never made got another inch of headway. My eventual diagnosis was "at least you're getting the message!"

wvenable3• 10 years ago

Yeah I got my daughter a new Mac and synced it up to the iCloud so she could iMessage from the desktop and she got an odd (incomplete) set of contacts that don't seem to match any other device.

cJ0th2• 10 years ago

These are my main qualms with software these days: Logic went out of the window. Back in the days a good deal of software had great, albeit complex menus. The typical non-techy hated these interfaces because they didn't get results immediately and by not having an interest in technology most ruled out the idea of putting in some effort to learn the piece of software at hand. (no pain, no gain - duh!)

Next, companies "figured out" that usability is soo important and that it needs to get fixed because customers were having trouble. This was generally a wrong conclusion. Getting rid of complex menus doesn't necessarily increase usability. It irritates power users to no end and doesn't help casual users when they run into special cases. Heck, even the power users can't help the casual user anymore!

Every not completely trivial app(lication) should offer at least additionally a "complex" mode that offers a good old menu bar where deterministic, to some degree "atomic" functions (if you pardon the faulty analogy) are offered, grouped in a logically consistent way.

sametmax• 10 years ago

Yet, people still buy it. They agree to pay for a product, at a bug price, and ask for people around them to do Apple's work to setup it up for them, but for free.

And they find that very natural. Normal.

Like they found normal 20 years ago we had to help them with their MS product they paid, but for free.

leephillips3• 10 years ago

I recommend Android for anyone in a position to change.

I plug my Android phone into my Linux laptop. The phone's filesystem is mounted. I move, copy, delete whatever music and photos I want. Dead simple and rational.

I put Flickr on the phone. Photos I take with the phone are automatically backed up to Flickr, and I can see them from anywhere.

bittercynic• 10 years ago

This has gotten worse over time as well. It used to be you could mount your phone's storage as a mass storage device, but now (as far as I can tell) MTP is the only option.

speeder3• 10 years ago

I make Android and iOS apps.

But only because people want me to and pay for it... I wouldn't inflict the trauma that is using these on anyone.

I had problems with every single Android I owned, here is the current one:

1. Super slow, even after reformatting everything and reinstalling, it is not even a cheap phone.

2. Terrible interfaces overall, specially as they keep removing physical buttons, and apps started to shove important buttons (like "menu") in random places.

3. The interface thread seemly is prone to freezing, for example yesterday I wanted to use youtube, and the interface froze, and then suddenly opened a video I didn't wanted, and started playing full blast volume and waking people up, and I couldn't figure how to close the damn video, and then suddenly it crashed.

4. This all applies to the actual phone parts... more than once I had to quickly dial someone for some emergency reason (not life or death, but still emergency), and the phone app decide to be slow, or crash, or reboot, and so on.

5. Had the phone app crash on me while I was actually talking to someone.

And this is just my personal phone, in other phones I had one that I had to reinstall and the phone antenna stopped working after the reinstall (it needed a custom antenna driver, that I had to track down on internet and install...), random reboots, slow, extremely fast draining of the battery, specially if you made some mistake like leave a GPS-enabled app running, nevermind the fact that the OS itself is so crap, that every manufacturer ship the phone with several third party apps to fix OS problems (memory managers and defragmenters, app killers, temporary file cleaners, and so on...)

iPhone has another set of problems, but still is problematic. I personally would never buy one (my current client I am testing his iOS code on a device he provided to me...)

Esau3• 10 years ago

Android, as an ecosystem, it horrible. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

mpswardle3• 10 years ago

It "just works" if you fully buy into the ecosystem. i.e. all content stored in iCloud nothing synced via cable etc.

I happen to do this since i tend to need a new iPhone every 2-4 months and it's just easier to pick up a new one, sign in and let it set itself up exactly as the old one.

But anything that deviates from this workflow, you tend to run into problems.

burtmacklin• 10 years ago

i tend to need a new iPhone every 2-4 months

umm... what?

badloginagain• 10 years ago

I've always been a Windows/Linux guy, and I never understood the Apple "Just works" motto, because my experience has been largely the same as the issues you've laid out.

iTunes has always been the worst user experience, both for myself and setting it up for the less technically inclined. I've been a firm "no-Apple" camper because Apple products doesn't give you the control if you need it. For an obsessive music fan, fine-tune control over how the product interacts with your library is critical.

I am not surprised at all by the disaster mentioned in the article- it validates the paranoia I've always harboured against Apple products.

Bartweiss6• 10 years ago

In my experience, Apple is the living embodiment of The Hitchhiker's Guide's "things that cannot possibly go wrong".

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.

They might be slightly more reliable in their most standard use case, but you're doomed at the smallest hiccup.

stordoff• 10 years ago

Not so much devices (rarely come into contact with them), but this is what finally pushed me away from iTunes - https://i.imgur.com/JUIXKTd.jpg

For various reasons, I have multiple Apple IDs with iTunes content linked to them (old account, new account, various region changes over the years etc.). At some point, Apple decided that you could only download past purchases with _one_ Apple ID per computer per ninety days, effectively locking me out of the content unless I had a local copy[1] and was using a pre-authorised PC (for context, this was after Apple had done the "It's all in the cloud; just stream it" push for movies etc.).

I ended up getting around it by firing up a bunch of virtual machines (one per Apple ID), downloading everything I end, striping off the DRM, and then never using iTunes again for anything other than music (and even then I favour CDs first and other download sources second).

I'd certainly been a long time coming (2010ish iTunes handled my large-ish media library fine, and the UI was fine. By 2014ish, every release was feeling slower and slower, and the UI felt more and more like the iOS interfaced backported to PC), but that was the final straw. Currently moving over to foobar2000 for music (technically I could just point it at my music folders and be done, but I'm taking the opportunity to make sure everything is tagged properly).

[1] Which of course I keep on my NAS, but a) I'm not always on my local network and b) I'm not always 100% diligence about making sure a copy ends up there.

cJ0th2• 10 years ago

I ended up getting around it by firing up a bunch of virtual machines (one per Apple ID), downloading everything I end, striping off the DRM, and then never using iTunes again for anything other than music (and even then I favour CDs first and other download sources second).

This is ingenious and also hilarious if it weren't so damn tragic.

funkyy• 10 years ago

I am surprised at people trying to rationale Apples wrongdoing by pointing at Google and bringing some crazy examples.

There is no rationale in this - this is outright breaking your privacy and ownership rights. No terms and conditions can be above law. It doesn't matter what others do - Apple is doing those crazy things here and there trying to test the ground which indicates they are not pro privacy and pro user, but rather are willing to go huge lengths to please music industry.

Only because you eating in the restaurant it doesn't mean waiter can run to your house and smash all of your food in the fridge reasoning "from now on you are covered".

givinguflac3• 10 years ago

God forbid there is a bug in software! This article is crap, maybe he ran into an issue but I've helped over a dozen people get setup on Apple Music and not once has there been file deletion. I am very skeptical that theoretical phone rep said any of these things either. Obviously there is a bug that needs fixing, but this is definitely not a platform wide attempt to delete anyone's data.

bogomipz• 10 years ago

Really? Just because you have helped over a dozen people it means that this issue doesn't exist? Did you bother to check every local file on the person's drive that you were helping? If you didn't know about the potential issue how would you know to check. The author isn't saying its intentional hs's saying this is a side-effect of this model. Incidentally this is not the first type questionable practice from Apple Music. See this:

http://9to5mac.com/2015/07/02/apple-music-vs-itunes-match-dr...

TheOtherHobbes• 10 years ago

A few years ago, after a couple of weeks of ripping my CD collection to FLAC, I decided to import it into iTunes.

What happened next was an epic fail exactly like the article describes - iTunes trashed my collection, "organised" the files in it in ways that were buggy and just plain wrong, and turned two weeks of part time effort into completely wasted time.

This was before iCloud, and fortunately I keep my own music on a separate disk, so it didn't try to trash that too.

In a sense I was lucky. Two wasted weeks is a learning experience. Two years would have been heartbreaking.

Two decades? I. Can't. Even.

Since then I haven't allowed iTunes anywhere near my FLAC collection. I've also warned anyone with a music collection to never, ever to allow iTunes anywhere near it.

rootlocus• 10 years ago

Your overconfidence makes you look like an arrogant, ignorant fanboy with no empathy. Maybe the next "obvious bug" will erase all your family photos.

StavrosK4• 10 years ago

I don't see anybody rationalizing Apple's wrongdoing here, though. Whom are you referring to?

sangnoir• 10 years ago

I'm not OP, but I'm guessing they are referring to buro9[1], who posted an hour before.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11635184

simonster4• 10 years ago

Some people in this post are assuming that this is something iTunes does to everyone intentionally. Other people are saying this is not something iTunes has ever done to them. I'm not sure it's worth debating whether this practice is ethical or not unless we know whether iTunes will actually delete your MP3s under normal circumstances. The one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that iTunes is too hard to use.

JustSomeNobody• 10 years ago

But from the article, Ms Amber said the SW was functioning as intended.

donatj3• 10 years ago

It literally only does this if you very explicitly tell it to. They're mad because their computer did exactly what they told it to. This is a simple case of user error, followed by a user lashing out over their own mistakes.

It's like being mad at Linux for letting you 'rm -rf ~/Music' it simply did exactly what you told it to.

I use iTunes Match across a myriad of devices and it is a wonderful service. It's sad to see a frustrated end user spreading such FUD.

gcr2• 10 years ago

Just to be clear, this was only with a subscription to Apple Music.

Signing up for Apple Music is what prompts iTunes to replace your local music library.

grey-area2• 10 years ago

This is part of a push from Apple to move users' data from devices to the cloud. They're doing the same thing with photos (optimised storage deletes local copies), videos, and documents on iCloud.

The advantage for users is that your data is available everywhere you have an apple device and Internet. The disadvantage is a corporation manages and controls increasing amounts if your life, private and public, and leaving them for another becomes unthinkable, and of course the corporation chooses what information it is appropriate for you to rent access to.

clapinton4• 10 years ago

Remember the U2 fiasco, when Apple decided to break into your computer and push their new album through iTunes? It seems like whenever Apple decides to take control of your files, shit happens.

Back in the day, I tried to use iTunes for a while when I bought my iPod. One of the first things that it asked me was to take control of my music, as it would reorganize it by itself. I agreed, but tested it first with a small sample. When I saw the mess it had done to the way I organized my music, specially with the files' names, I backed out of the auto-organize option and preached heavily against it to everyone I knew.

I learned my lesson: never let whatever service control your files. And always, ALWAYS have backup. Remember: The answer to life, the universe and how many backups you should keep of your stuff is 42.

VonGuard3• 10 years ago

Apple fundamentally does not understand software. A shame, as the software, really, was their original special sauce with the Mac 128k and beyond.

Today, however, the company really doesn't understand how to make, maintain, or market software. It sees software as a way to spread their control of their hardware further into your life. It's going to be the death of Apple, mark my words.

flyinghamster2• 10 years ago

Defense in depth is a good thing as well. In my case, the first line of defense would be ZFS snapshots on my homebuilt NAS. If malware scrozzles my NAS, a rollback to the last snapshot can be a quick way to fix it.

Other systems get backed up to the NAS, and the NAS drives are periodically backed up onto a second ZFS pool that is normally kept physically offline.

pavedwalden• 10 years ago

While the U2 fiasco was a bad move, I don't think that "break into your computer" is a fair characterization of what they did. They added it to your available downloads and, depending on your sync settings, it was downloaded to devices. I'm not a huge fan of having my media managed by the companies I buy hardware from, but when I found a user's manual document on my Kindle I didn't consider it 'getting hacked' by them.

Hydraulix9892• 10 years ago

I've survived for 20 years now with zero backups (across at least 10 mechanical hard drives, some of them Seagate) and have never lost data.

thevibesman4• 10 years ago

Remember: The answer to life, the universe and how many backups you should keep of your stuff is 42.

EDIT: (incomplete submission)

Oh, of course, great idea! I thought 4 was enough!

MaysonL2• 10 years ago

Or perhaps, just maybe, the situation is being mis-reported? "No, Apple Music is not deleting tracks off your hard drive — unless you tell it to"[0]

[0]http://www.imore.com/no-apple-music-not-deleting-tracks-your...

joemi• 10 years ago

If this is indeed true, then it kind of trumps most of the comments around here.

muso1999• 10 years ago

This is almost certainly not apple acting alone. There will have been lengthy contract negotiations (and probably a lot of pressure from the major labels). The auto-overwriting metadata issue is probably apple alone though, they've long been very exacting about the metadata of music in itunes. They already throw their weight around in the supply chain by demanding that metadata is correct or they won't accept music, which they can do because they control so much of the market. I'm not surprised they're expanding that to user's devices (presumably for matching purposes for igenius). The industry sucks, so many middlemen with so much power :(

bitJericho• 10 years ago

I'd sue em regardless of the EULA. But I don't use apple anything, and I run my own "cloud" and run my own backups. So nothing for me to worry about.

vacri2• 10 years ago

That EULA probably wouldn't fly here in Australia. The argument would be "you can't say solely at the user's risk, as you position yourself as a premium quality brand - you're misleading consumers". IANAL, though.

This was the reason Apple had to extend warranties on their hardware here - it was pretty funny watching Apple try to argue to the government that they made non-premium stuff just like everyone else, and therefore didn't have to have the extended warranty. To which the government said, paraphrased, "cool story, bro".

kalleboo• 10 years ago

What would cause iTunes to actually delete the music? AFAIK, it doesn't have an "Optimize Storage" option like Photos does, and it's never deleted any files for me even when my disk is down to 0 bytes free.

donatj3• 10 years ago

It most certainly doesn't and the post is a load of FUD. It leaves the originals in place unless you chose to delete them.

cscawley• 10 years ago

Buy a NAS

sleepless• 10 years ago

The power of backups! Also the power of not using cloud services...

pkorzeniewski• 10 years ago

This is ridiculous, but that's what you get by trading ownership and privacy for convenience. I keep all my music in .mp3, movies in .avi and books in .pdf, which means I can access them on any computer, using any software and I don't need to worry that one day I may loose access to them. The world is going mad, I wonder when (or if) people will realise how much control over their stuff is in 3rd party hands, and it's just the beggining - we're now entering the era of IoT, autonomous cars and so on. Fuck all of that, I'll use "dumb" stuff as long as possible, even if sometimes it's less convenient - at least I don't feel like a sheep following trends while getting more and more dependant on corporations, whose only interest is to squeeze you as much as possible.

rtpg• 10 years ago

I have my photos on Google and have easy access.

More importantly for me, no matter what happens to my devices I will have some form of backup. This is miles better than the default for people even 5 years ago. You have to try really hard to lose data now! Well, so long as you're not picky about the file size....

Granted Google has the keys to my kingdom. I have things like Backblaze but...

andremendes• 10 years ago

Wow. It's hard to believe they were capable of fooling us this long. I mean, how can we rationalize after they saying they will keep our files and if we end business with them, good bye? This should be unacceptable, things like this makes me sympathize a bit more with Stallman's hardcore philosophy about software.

nerdponx• 10 years ago

iCloud Music Library is turned on automatically when you set up your Apple Music Subscription…When your Apple Music Subscription term ends, you will lose access to any songs stored in your iCloud Music Library.

That wording does not suggest to me "all of the music in iTunes will become part of your iCloud music library." You can't sue for damages, but you can sue them for lying or concealing information in the EULA

alwaysdownvoted• 10 years ago

It is a known fact that Apple tries the same ideas more than once, sometimes years apart. If at first they fail, they will try again.

I recall an idea from the past where they wanted users to disclose to them all the user's non-itunes music in return for some perceived benefit. At the time I thought of this as a way for someone at some company to assess out how much CD-ripped, Napster-shared, or other indepedently-sourced music was still out there. Needless to day it didn't fly.

I have never in my life used itunes. I can tolerate most of today's "walled-gardens" but not one that seeks to place a surcharge on friends sharing music, which has always been the essence of how my music collection was built (pre-digital). I would give up music before I would sign on to letting Apple control my music collection.

If there were a robust, tiny command-line version of "itunes" that would run on any computer, I might reconsider. But that's not happening either. That's the true reason I have never used itunes. Strong distaste for the proprietary Apple-only graphical software.

pessimizer• 10 years ago

friends sharing music, which has always been the essence of how my music collection was built (pre-digital)

I remember how excited I used to be when friends and I would drive to an out-of-town show and stay with other friends who had big record collections. You always brought a box of fresh blank tapes; and that's the same thing they'd do when they came over your house.

mwexler• 10 years ago

As the post mentions, in most cases of mainstream media, we all agree to licensing our purchased media, not owning it, and so publishers and resellers assume that all media in our possession must be purchased, and so are under their control.

Of course this ignores user created media, or freebies, or gifts... but even for the purchased access, I always wonder about that forced (dare I say clickwrap?) licensing aspect. Why should I pay again for different format of same info (amazon format vs. epub)? Why should NYT force me to pay extra for tablet AND phone access to same content? Why should I pay extra for a digital copy of a movie that I already have on Bluray? And of course, why should I be forced to allow the publisher to control media on my drive?

We see this with books (printed books say that you have a license to read them, but not to redistribute in any way electronically without permission, even snippets or out of press books (the long running Google books issues) or Amazon revising kindle books on your device) and as the post mentions, we see it with music and movies/shows as well.

It's not as easy to distribute content these days as we may think; many book publishers tried direct to consumer ebook sales over the last few years and are pulling out of that game (the fact that o'reilly and tor worked so far is because they give flex and target techies). Libraries are shifting to emedia services like BiblioBoard and Hoopla which don't even let you download the content except in very restricted apps; instead, you read images online in a browser or stream only. The goal again is to enforce the licensing and get consumers out of the "own" mandate.

At the end of the day, content creators should have a say in how their content is consumed and sold, publishers have demanded a say, and resellers want to own the customer and their data. The current model is too adversarial; I hope we can come up with a way to reward content creators while still allowing a reasonable flexibility of consumption and appreciation.

PS: We seem ok when Netflix drops a movie because we understand we are renting access to their basket. I guess publishers want that too, only they want a higher per unit price with even more control. Sigh.

loup-vaillant3• 10 years ago

Proprietary software working against the interests of the user is not really surprising. What does surprises is how visible and immediate the effects are.

Seriously, just use free software.

preetbhinder3• 10 years ago

While free software is good, the real problem is not being in control of your data and trusting the cloud blindly.

loup-vaillant3• 10 years ago

And how do you think you lost control of your data in the first place?

Free software would never have deleted your files without asking you. Or maybe once before it would be fixed as a critical defect in a matter of hours.

g4z• 10 years ago

exactly! every time i read about someone having a problem with something, i always check to see if my friends have had the same problem. if not, then clearly the problem doesn't exist. pri.ck

dang• 10 years ago

Personal attacks and name-calling are not allowed on HN, regardless of how bad another comment is. We ban accounts that do this. Please read the site guidelines and post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11635410 and marked it off-topic.

feld• 10 years ago

iTunes has readonly access to my music stored on my NAS. This is precisely why.

PaulHoule• 10 years ago

iTunes is malware. It's the #1 reason why the first thing I do when I get a Mac is install Windows on it.

ortusdux• 10 years ago

I have a VM just for iTunes.

investinwaffles• 10 years ago

This behavior also occurs in the traditional iTunes store if a record label alters the track list of or re-releases an album.

nurmara2• 10 years ago

I sympathize with OP and I generally really hate Apple's direction when it comes to software and user experience ever since OS X Lion.

However, OP shouldn't claim that Apple 'stole' his music files. He signed up for a paid service and he should have checked how the service will affect his computer. We as users are responsible to know what software we're running on our machines and what it does to our data. I understand that a standard TOS agreement is ridiculously long and impractical to read, and I guess that's how we are trained to be lazy about protecting the integrity of our systems and our data, but that does not give OP the right to blame Apple for delivering exactly what they promised. I hate Apple but I don't think that it is intellectually honest to claim Apple stole OP's music.

emodendroket4• 10 years ago

Nobody on Earth reads the entire manual before starting up some software; it's the vendor's responsibility to not have insensible defaults like "delete my local versions of files without asking me"

nurmara2• 10 years ago

True. We have reached this level because of our complacency, and not due to Apple inherently trying to be malicious towards people like OP. The vendors are responsible to have sensible defaults, but we can't buy their products, use their software, sign up for their services, and then complain about malice when the vendors are delivering exactly what we signed up for and agreed upon. I'm just trying to say that OP should focus his energy on being more self conscious about what he signs up for rather than claiming that Apple is stealing his data. He gave up ownership of the data the moment he agreed to the TOS. What Apple is doing is counterproductive and just illogical from a UX point of view (in my opinion) but they did not steal OP's data. The title is a bit clickbait-y in that sense.

mtone• 10 years ago

Reading a TOS provides no indication of what a software will do, just what it might do. Most of clauses quoted by OP appear in almost every TOS out there. Online documentation provides no assurance of being complete and accurate either. Open source requires the ability to navigate a code repository.

It's a sad state of affairs but as a user, trust and reviews are the main factors available in the decision to run software or not.

k-mcgrady• 10 years ago

I don't see how they can say this is a feature - because it didn't happen to me. I have a huge amount of music that they wouldn't be able to match and they didn't delete any of it. Maybe this is because I'm also using iTunes Match. Your issue might be iCloud Music Library (not Apple Music).

demarq• 10 years ago

Might this also be a problem with dealing with big a provider?

If this were a much smaller smaller company you might actually get to talk to someone who can do something i.e "let me see what files we uploaded from you... oh we'll send you a link...". With larger companies you usually talk to "explainers", or people whose job is to explain to you that you are screwed rather than explore solutions to your problem.

mbrutsch• 10 years ago

Lie with dogs, you get fleas. I have zero sympathy for those who fall prey to closed ecosystem BS like this, including my own wife. People just don't listen.

darkmagnus2• 10 years ago

My flea repellant is working very well then...

logfromblammo• 10 years ago

I expressly disavowed family support for all Apple devices about 4 years ago. If my spouse has a problem with the iPhone, it goes straight to the Apple store without landing in my lap first. I'd rather be in the doghouse than use iTunes.

Tough love, people. Time to stop enabling.

msimpson• 10 years ago

I smell a lawsuit.

jjuel• 10 years ago

My real question is if you truly are a composer and making your own music why are you just storing it on your Mac? Wouldn't you want to have a NAS for that or some sort of other storage option? I would not rely on my Mac for storage of music I thought was very important. Including rare copies of songs or songs I created myself. I would have a different more reliable storage option.

However, that is really shady on Apple's part to make that mandatory, and should be looked into.

SilkRoadie• 10 years ago

He said he had a back up and restored his music. As a user I would not expect Apple Music to wipe my existing music collection.

gcatalfamo• 10 years ago

tl;dr:

"through the Apple Music subscription [...] Apple now deletes files from its users [...] iTunes evaluated my massive collection of Mp3s and WAV files, scanned Apple’s database for what it considered matches, then removed the original files from my internal hard drive. REMOVED them. Deleted. If Apple Music saw a file it didn’t recognize—which came up often, since I’m a freelance composer and have many music files that I created myself—it would then download it to Apple’s database, delete it from my hard drive, and serve it back to me when I wanted to listen, just like it would with my other music files it had deleted."

oneeyedpigeon3• 10 years ago

This is exactly why I've held onto all my CDs, and why I continue to buy the majority of my music in a physical format. I once had Apple ... iTunes match? iCloud? I can't even remember what it was called ... decide that an Eminem album I had was too racy and serve me a censored, unlistenable version instead. And the complexity involved in keeping any kind of sizeable music library in check using iTunes is overwhelming. I have two apple ids, some music on an external hard drive, some on an internal hard drive, some subset/superset/overlapping set of which is 'somewhere' in the cloud; it's a nightmare. Is there a sensible alternative to iTunes that will a) not do anything with 'the cloud' b) sync to my iPod?

marknutter• 10 years ago

I store all my music in the PirateBay

Kadin3• 10 years ago

MediaMonkey and Fidelia are the two products that seem to be tossed around most frequently as iTunes alternatives, and which seem to be reasonably close to feature-parity (at least, as music players; they obviously don't do all the garbage that Apple has stuffed into iTunes related to the iPhone). If you want to basically get back to what iTunes was originally ("rip, mix, burn" plus a good music player and organizer), those are probably the best bets.

Personally, I've been slowly moving to having my main music collection on a home server, and then distributing it out to clients via Plex. I'm not 100% pleased with the web interface compared to iTunes' thick-client interface, but as iTunes' UI has gotten worse over time and Plex's has gotten better, they're starting to approach each other in terms of usability.

The main complaint I have with Plex right now is that there's not an option to specify the quality of the streamed music. It will do realtime transcoding (so you can store lossless CD rips on the server), but the destination format is hardcoded based on the client (I think web clients get 256 kb/s MP3, Android gets something else, etc.). There's an open feature request to let the user select it as a preference, and allow different codec/bitrate combinations based on whether the client is on the LAN, on WAN, or on mobile.

Plex is, IMO, the best game in town for approximating the functionality of a proprietary ecosystem (play all your stuff on all your devices anywhere) but without the lock-in. You do need to be a reasonably intelligent person to set it up, though.

EDIT: It's been brought to my attention that MediaMonkey no longer works on recent versions of Mac OS X, but that Swinsian (http://swinsian.com/) is the new hotness anyway. Can't vouch for it, but it looks good.

6stringmerc2• 10 years ago

At first I thought the tone of the article was a bit hyperbolic, but upon reading further, no, this totally fits with the emotions that I'd probably feel upon such a situation. Shock, then horror, then anger. Then solution minded...then when hitting a wall...

When giving the above warning, however, even in my most Orwellian paranoia I never could have dreamed that the content holders, like Apple, would also reach into your computer and take away what you already owned.

It just feels dirty, and, as my Software Developer Uncle probably would've called it, "Playing outside the sandbox." I mean, sure, as the article notes, the TOS gives Apple a lot of consent, but "Loss or Damage" via incidental use vs. outright deletion via intentional coding feels...different. Maybe legally they're not...

I do remember ranting at the top of my lungs after an online jam software installed an update and crashed my Win7 PC laptop so hard it had to rebuild via a command prompt screen. By then, I already had CD backups, a USB HD 500GB full of projects, and it was a cold reminder. The laptop restored fine, but whoa, not fun. Not what I signed up for in the agreement, risk-wise, I felt, so I've essentially stopped using that software.

...and I'll close by reminding myself I'm perfectly reasonable with my Win laptop setup, not running iTunes (Winamp), and backing up to a local cloud or other media (another USB HD coming soon). Life happens, accidents happen...but there's some funky software out there.

Heck of a story, and one I will point to gladly when discussing paths for audio DAW hardware/software platforms.

Lawtonfogle2• 10 years ago

Corporations have spent decades conditioning their users to accept all ToSs and EULAs, using a combination of forbidding the software outright (often with no ability to get a refund) and applying scary language that they have limited the abuse of only as much as they thought would escape the public's notice. Now that their investment has been completed, they want their returns.

My solution to this (and to issues like this outside of software) is extreme but it will fix the problem. When one side creates a contract of any sort (ToS, EULA, phone contract, home buying contract) which primary purpose is to be signed by numerous other individuals who have little to no ability to alter the contract, the other parties are allowed to use lack of understanding to break the entire contract unless the creator can show beyond reasonable doubt (I would use clear and convincing, but that would be abused) that the signer did understand the entirety of the contract.

It would break contract law as we know it, but it would force simple, easy to understand contracts and it would penalize any robo signing practices. (Personal story: last time I went to a phone company, they gave the contract to read on a small device where I could only read 2 lines at a time and where part of the display was broken. I wasn't allowed a print out of the contract until after I signed. I walked away and have to this day not gotten a smartphone because of the downright evil practices of cell phone companies).

6stringmerc2• 10 years ago

Oh I can totally agree with you on a lot of those points - the balance of power has shifted to the point of even taking away legal recourse, a la "BINDING ARBITRATION" which I'm skeptical of, re: conflict of interest.

I've honestly kicked around a legal-ese type write-up of 'Personal Terms of Service' type disclaimers - subject to change at any time - essentially stating that by taking payment for a service there is a negotiating platform to reconcile conflicting claims. As in, I claim that I should never be subject to an early termination fee if I'm personally unstatisfied with the service, and the service provider says they alone are allowed to waive the fee. Well then, that's a conflict of terms, and by taking my money for a service, they implied they would allow my ToS to usurp theirs (e.g. it's written in my ToS that accepting money creates a binding agreement for such a thing), etc, etc.

I thought it was an exercise in basically being selfish, but the more times examples like this surface, the more it actually starts to sound reasonable. That's...pretty wild to me. I mean, I have a lot of respect for contracts and see them as the ties that hold a lot of commerce together, so they've got real, practical use that should be encouraged. But when it comes to "wiggle room" that sounds a bit like gamesmanship to tilt the power, then I also think fighting back is a natural result, childish as it might seem at first.

emodendroket4• 10 years ago

When I used iTunes Match they wouldn't delete your files unless you specifically asked for it... which seems to me like a more sensible default behavior, but I guess Apple is getting pretty aggressive about trying to change user expectations.

e: Although one very rich thing is when I wanted to cancel it was impossible to do without installing iTunes on my new computer until I contacted support to complain.

joshuaheard• 10 years ago

Not an Apple user, but I never sync streaming services to my personal collections for fear of cross-contamination. I always set up a dedicated folder for the streaming service, and if necessary, copy my collection to that. Plus nightly full backups to a separate internal drive and Carbonite.

jvagner• 10 years ago

I was going to come here to say that this was noted behavior when Apple Music Match debuted, but apparently very few people are aware of it.

donatj3• 10 years ago

Is this a setting or something? I use iTunes Match and most certainly still have all my existing local copies. I know because I regularly back them up and they are certainly still there.

Globz• 10 years ago

What is a good alternative to iTunes to manage music (not cloud related) on Windows?

wstrange2• 10 years ago

What's wrong with cloud related?

Google Music is the cat's meow - and will locally sync all of your music down to your local folders. Seems like the best of both worlds - you get a secure backup, and the ability to have local copies

ewams• 10 years ago

The old Zune music is awesome. Just don't upgrade to XBOX music. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=271...

Lots of people swear by winamp.

cha5m• 10 years ago

Stuff like this often makes me question using any DRM or platform-locked services, particularly steam. If valve decided to make a shady decision there is very little that its users could do about it.

imgabe• 10 years ago

I've had exactly one iDevice, an iPhone 3G, and the experience with iTunes turned me off to them forever.

What should be a relatively simple task, plugging in a drive-like device to my computer and moving files from one place to another is made needlessly complicated and restrictive by forcing it to slog through the tar pit that is iTunes. Never again.

musesum3• 10 years ago

"Amber relayed to me that she’s had to suffer through many calls from people who cancelled their Apple Music subscription after the free, three-month trial, only to discover that all of their own music files had been deleted and there was no way to get them back."

The Apple Music three month trial had a positive affect on my listening habits. I tried it, hoping to discover new music. But the UX was a slog. No easy pivot points on artists and songs. A DJ workflow vs listener workflow, which added complexity. No collaborative filtering.

So, I switched to Spotify. The "Discover Weekly" section that uses Echonest (I think) has surfaced new artists and songs to explore. Pivot points on songs, artists, and playlists are straightforward.

Have spent 100s of hours hours ripping and curating high 100s of CDs over the last 25 years. Barely touch em. At this point, if you'd ask me to choose between my old catalog and Spotify, I would choose the later. Heh, thanks to the Apple Music 3 month trial.

Coincoin• 10 years ago

The problem with Spotify is 25% of their library has that horrible UMG watermark on it. It makes any UMG music before 2013 unlistenable. Apparently, UMG fixed the problem on their side but Spotify don't give enough of a damn about quality to redownload the UMG library.

musesum3• 10 years ago

Wow! Just listened to an A/B test: http://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermark

Pretty awful. I wonder why Spotify doesn't correct? Have been listening mostly to electronica on Premium account. So, this is the first I've heard.

UMG. Had suggested a mobile collaboration on iOS to UMG, a few years back. But, they were focused on Blackberry, back then.

[EDIT] Just tried the example song from the above link. And, yes, the watermark is still there. Wow!

intrasight2• 10 years ago

This is not directed at anyone in particular, but:

"syncing" with a cloud service - stupid

not backing up - stupid

sotirisk• 10 years ago

syncing is supposed to leave at least two copies which is clearly not the case here. have you read the article?

intrasight2• 10 years ago

I did. And I know the article isn't about syncing - it's about Apple deciding they know best how to manage your digital media files. I'm just making a general comment.

The problem with "syncing" is if I delete a file on one device, what does sync semantics say should happen? It is ambiguous, which is why syncing is a stupid semantic. Copying files and deleting files is unambiguous.

tacos• 10 years ago

Writing histrionic nonsense like this does not advance your cause. Apple did not "steal" your music any more than "rm -rf" or 300 million poorly manufactured Seagate drives did.

"Matches found, press OK to delete [list of files] from your computer and phone FOREVER" is what 99% of customers want.

Debate the quality of the match algorithm (it sucks), argue the proper UX for a pretty basic function (it also sucks), but knock off the Orwellian sky is falling stuff. Because that's obvious bullshit.

Apple has its own view of the culture, and has a pretty obvious way of mining it for profit. You ain't changing them. You can perhaps however nudge them if you're not a total asshole about it.

noonespecial2• 10 years ago

Sounds harsh but all I read was that someone had 122 gig worth of files they considered precious to them and no backup.

Computer systems fail for all kinds of stupid reasons. What will you do when that disk fails?

I admit this is a particularly stupid and infuriating reason for data loss, but how little would it cost to have a backup of 122gb?

Freaky• 10 years ago

"I recovered my original music files only by using a backup I made"

noonespecial2• 10 years ago

Ah. I saw they part about needing 30 hours to redownload his collection and thought this was his recovery strategy.

So it all factors down to "this software didn't do what I thought it would; had to restore from backup. Careful everyone" but was then radically over dramatized with "Apple stole all my music!!!"

mjw_byrne3• 10 years ago

I've been telling people for a long time to avoid Apple because it's an organisation which has demonstrated a pattern of contempt - to its customers, to its competitors, to the developers who use its app store and to the courts. The replies I get are so depressingly apathetic: "but the iPhone is nice"; "I like how simple it is to use"; "the design is so pretty". How can people be so easily charmed into bending over for out-of-control megalomaniacs? Maybe the secret to Hitler's popularity was the uniforms, which were admittedly really snazzy (Godwin's law, I know, I know...)

zo7• 10 years ago

Yeah you can't really be patronizing to people who prefer Apple products when you're contrasting a consumer tech company with a genocidal fascist regime.

mjw_byrne3• 10 years ago

Sarcasm

FilterSweep2• 10 years ago

Don't pretend for a second that Microsoft's "Telemetry Services" (and forced telemetry updates to Windows 7 users who refused to upgrade) or even Ubuntu's search tracking for Amazon coffers is ANY different.

Or even worse, the malicious firmware code shipped with some Windows-based machines.

The entire industry is fraudulent to consumers - turning consumers into products themselves.

With this industry, you pick your poison.

Do you want your hand held every step of the way in owning a computer? Get Apple.....or alternatively use the UNIX environment it comes with instead.

Do you want all of your data tracked, shipped off and sold to a company like Commscore or Nielsen that builds a dossier on you that puts Lexis Nexis to shame? Get Windows or Chromebook.....or alternatively install a Linux distro like Debian or Mint. I wouldn't even touch Ubuntu.

mjw_byrne3• 10 years ago

I don't single Apple out (although this wasn't clear in my original comment) - there are plenty of other organisations and systems out there which are just as pernicious, and my stance is to simply not use them. Remember Sony and the rootkit stuff?

There are plenty of good alternatives out there. The price you pay for getting to use computer systems which don't betray you is the cost of learning to use Linux or BSD (these days, nothing like as painful as it used to be) and going without some "conveniences" like magical available-everywhere cloud-synced everything. In my book that's a tiny cost for the ability to keep proper control and ownership of my own shit.

jonconley• 10 years ago

I've had this same thing happen.

Not only do I have countless files gone, if you let the subscription lapse... You don't get your music back and it wasn't there when I renewed.

Also, the cellular providers have to love how much of my own music I'm downloading over their costly data services.

drbawb• 10 years ago

iTunes is the driving reason behind why I got rid of my iDevices.

First of all using iTunes for Windows has a way of making its users feel like something of an afterthought.

Secondly I was always scared to sync my devices. Is this the day it tries to undo my jailbreak? Is this the day that deleting a playlist actually removes all the songs from my device? Is this the day that it removes an app I depend on because Apple decided to kick it out of the app store?

Somewhat relatedly I never felt comfortable plugging my iPhone into my secondary computer. The whole process of authorization and syncing is just horribly opaque.

It's some of the most opaque software I've ever had the displeasure of using. How they managed to fuck up a file copy[1] so badly is beyond me.

Android isn't without it's own faults, but at least it feels like it's own independent device, with its own copy of my library. I don't want a complicated sync mechanism: I want to put this new album onto my phone.

[1] https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_dop

jasonthevillain• 10 years ago

Oh yeah. Never allow iTunes to manage your music (there's a checkbox.) In 2010 it wiped out the metadata from about 3000 songs and decided they were all united by unknown. I tried a few autotagging libraries but had to do at least half of it manually.

Sadly I haven't found a decent replacement for it.

snowwrestler2• 10 years ago

I like a lot of what Apple does. I love their computers and phones. I've posted here numerous times about that.

But I have not turned on Apple Music, or iCloud Photos, for this very reason. Cloud syncing services are a DISASTER for Apple.

I recently bought my wife an iPhone SE, and upgraded some older computers to El Cap--fresh install + migrate files so I could get a clean start. But turning on the cloud services, and configuring them to do what I expect, was so complicated and scary that I just gave up. I'm syncing Safari bookmarks and Notes, and that's it.

And even the Notes are a mess. I'm stuck with separate local and iCloud folders of notes, because I simply don't trust Apple to not screw up or delete my local notes in the course of trying to sync them.

Rule #1, #2, #3 of cloud syncing should be "do no harm." DropBox has largely figured this out. Apple has not.

It's funny to think back to when Steve Jobs said that DropBox is a feature, not a business. Well, it's a feature I use and happily pay for, and it's a feature that Apple has yet to figure out.

konart4• 10 years ago

Never understood why people use iTunes. If I'd ever had to name the worst Mac app - this is it.

Store your music, listen via http://swinsian.com (for example), back it up, be happy.

passivepinetree2• 10 years ago

As someone who can't bear to let go of his 160gb iPod classic (but still hates iTunes with a burning passion), is there an alternative like Swinsian that will still sync my iPod?

I've been handcuffed to iTunes for years because of the iPod syncing mechanism but I'd love to switch.

konart4• 10 years ago

Never owned one, so I'll have to look for a solution when I'm home (I remember Foobar2k had a pluging for this, but F2k is win-only).

After I've switched to Apple and used Apple music for a couple of months I just bougth Fiio X3 II. Great thing for a good price.

joesmo2• 10 years ago

Apple forces you if you want to get music onto your devices. But I agree. It's total shit without a single redeeming quality. Now it's just malware.

konart4• 10 years ago

Well, I'm using nPlayer for this. You can transfer music and video directly to app via wifi. Latest updates made music playing experience very satisfying (it is video player originally).

naryad• 10 years ago

Really sad about what happened to blog author. This reminds me of the South Park episode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HumancentiPad manifesting in reality.

joesmo2• 10 years ago

Once again we have criminal action covered by the CFAA completely ignored by the government because a large corporation is doing it. Serving malware knowingly? No problem. Overstepping your access and deleting files that aren't yours? No problem. But good fucking forbid an individual even types a wrong url and they're in jail. Double standard much?

MrPatan• 10 years ago

It just works ;)

minusSeven2• 10 years ago

At this point I am really glad I could never afford an apple product.

zyxley• 10 years ago

There's obviously some kind of bug here, and one that Apple should rightfully be lambasted over, but given that plenty of people, including me, have used Apple Music without anything local getting deleted, it's pretty obviously not intended behavior.

gumby3• 10 years ago

I'm a long term Mac user (primary desktop/notebook since mid 90s), but I do feel Apple is cavalier about the Hippocratic oath of data ("First: do not lose or transform the user's source data").

Since my mac is basically a unix machine it's trivial for me to make sure this rule is followed, but it's not trivial for most people.

pietrasagh• 10 years ago

use computers not apples

dwighttk• 10 years ago

This is awful and I'm glad I stayed away from the 3 month trial because I would hate for this to happen to me.

Also: I know of a few people who would love for this to happen because it would open up a lot of space in their hard drive which is almost completely full. "I subscribed to Apple Music and freed up 100 GB! Sweet!"

That being said there should definitely be a way to avoid this and I would personally prefer it to be opt-in than opt-out.

makecheck• 10 years ago

I don’t understand why deletion would even be necessary in a case like this. Are people filling up their drives that quickly? If a “service” thinks that some data has become redundant, just move the original out of the way and tell the user where it went and what’s in that stash.

boxfire• 10 years ago

All I can think of is my Wife's photography collection. She has terabytes of photos. Imagine the day "iPhoto" works like this (which is probably not too far off).

We have her do a manual backup periodically, but now I am going to automate that and make it robust. I am honestly afraid for the future of that data. This is just another part of why I am glad all of my own important data is on Linux machines that I have relatively strong control over, and backup automatically.

What a time to be alive! I can't wait until they can edit your memories out of your brain and store them on the cloud, you know for more capacity and safer recall.

Chromozon• 10 years ago

Any lawyers around? I feel like this case would be simple to win in court. Intentional property damage.

Dorian-Gray• 10 years ago

I am a published music producer, and I would suggest pursuing legal action against apple if their policy has resulted in a person's self-created music files being copied and manipulated. This is copyright infringement, and would be damaging to any artist - especially if the served self-created tracks are compressed significantly prior to their storage in apple's servers. I know that my self-created music files represent years of my life, and for those files to be permanently damaged would be a huge blow.

abalone• 10 years ago

So, let's be clear about one thing: This is officially NOT how the software is intended to function. According to Apple, original files are never deleted: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204962

I realize the blog post says an Apple rep told them otherwise, but if true, they were wrong.

Also, who says "the software is functioning as intended"? That's not the style of casual speech that Apple support reps are trained to use with real customers.

chipotle_coyote2• 10 years ago

I have complaints about Apple Music, but it's never deleted any of my files, and frankly I don't see any setting that would say, in effect, "please delete songs from my original library when you feel like it in order to save space." Yes, I have unique files that iTunes failed to match and just uploaded. No, those files weren't deleted, either. I've encountered some fascinating problems with their matching algorithms but "I am destroying your music library because that's what my evil masters in Cupertino have instructed me to do because something something DRM! Ha ha ha!" just ain't one of them.

That's not the style of casual speech that Apple support reps are trained to use with real customers.

That seemed kind of off to me, too. The whole "Oh, yeah, it just deletes your stuff, stop bitching" attitude is...not my experience with Apple. But it sure does fit the the "let me confirm your worst fears about how terrible Apple is" narrative better.

And, yes, I'm sure I'll be accused of being an Apple apologist, but really it's just a certain level of weariness at this point. I hate iTunes, too. I have problems with iCloud. I think Apple Music may be built around an irreparably flawed paradigm (trying to maintain one unified library between music you've added to iTunes on your own, bought from the iTunes Store and added with Apple Music, rather than just maintaining "Local Library" and "Cloud Library" as separate entities). But I'm just not seeing the Grand Evil that's being ascribed throughout a lot of the comments here. In practice, my Apple products still actually work pretty well. I'm not interested in proselytizing to others, but I'm also not interested in constantly being told, in so many words, that Apple products only appeal to the stupid or the incompetent.

Hydraulix9892• 10 years ago

"Apple stole my stolen music" ftfy

DanBC5• 10 years ago

I also mean original music that I recorded and saved to my computer.
As a freelance composer, I save WAV files of my own compositions rather than Mp3s.

Animats• 10 years ago

It might be worth filing a criminal complaint with the FBI, under the "exceeds authorized access" provision of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.[1] Apple's EULA [2] does not give them unlimited access to your computer. It just keeps you from suing them in civil court over it. You probably need a lawyer and a press agent. Someone really needs to take this to court.

See the Justice Department's CFAA guide [2], under "Intentionally Damaging by Knowing Transmission". Also read the section on "Exceeds authorized access", starting at page 11.

This guy was told that the software was operating as intended. That shows criminal intent. It eliminates the defense in the CFAA under "No action may be brought under this subsection for the negligent design or manufacture of computer hardware, computer software, or firmware." The CFAA has a civil suit provision: "Any person who suffers damage or loss by reason of a violation of this section may maintain a civil action against the violator to obtain compensatory damages and injunctive relief or other equitable relief." That may override the EULA, but this needs legal advice.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/criminal-ccips/l... [2] http://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/appstore...

mring33621• 10 years ago

All I can say is that I'm sooo glad to find out that I'm not the only one who struggles with and is afraid of iTunes.

dibujante• 10 years ago

Isn't this a felony under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act? It's intentionally exceeding authorized access to a computer and intentionally (not even recklessly) causing damage.

thevibesman4• 10 years ago

I rebuttal to the idea that Apple is "stealing" music was posted: "No, Apple Music is not deleting your music – unless you tell it to"

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11638308

thevibesman4• 10 years ago

s/I rebuttal/A rebuttal/

Didn't notice the typo within the edit window; didn't mean to imply I wrote that other article.

darreld• 10 years ago

I went all-in on Mac in 2001. Pretty unix and awesome hardware. I used iTunes as soon as it was available. As a matter of fact I'm actually looking at a 1st generation iPod on my desk right now (preparing it for eBay).

I have steered clear of this service from the beginning, partly because I'm old and want my own old library and partly because I am very aware that Apple can NOT do services of any kind, at all. They have botched everything they have ever tried to do online. .me, .mac, accounts (I have 3 and they cannot merge them).

I feel for this guy but, given their history, it's pretty much a slam-dunk that Apple would drop the ball if it's a service.

blurbleblurble• 10 years ago

Apple was overstepping the boundaries a decade ago. I guess this is turning out to be a multigenerational struggle.

jmh42• 10 years ago

While this is entirely unethical, it is an amazing business decision if they get away with it without any harm to their reputation. I wonder if they reputation risks were considered when they rolled out this "feature". It's a good example for Bruce Schneier to add to the next edition of "Liars & Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive".

sosadkitty• 10 years ago

Apple deleted my backups from icloud, my win7 laptop, and all copies made on flash drives. I had successfully backed up music not purchased on itunes for years but now Apple says, "Oops, sorry. Just use apple music" How can I restore my music? I'm not paying for apple music and my cds were stolen last year so I cannot reload.

Apple Stole My Music

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