Apple boasts a lot about their handoff feature, but the one place where I need it most is when I play some music on my iPhone and want to later continue listening to it on my Mac. Spotify does a great job at that and that's been the main reason I haven't switched to Apple Music yet. Is there any technical/legal limit for Apple to avoid doing this?
I’m going to be glued to this thread because I desperately want this. If you ask me, a lack of features like this is the #1 failure of the Apple ecosystem. I’d even go so far as to call it a kind of big, indirect lie. Why own a ton of Apple devices if you can’t seamlessly and easily control things on whatever Apple device is nearest? For years I feel like I was told as long as I carefully and meticulously shelled out the dough to make every device I can Apple branded I’d experience a kind of integrated device nirvana and it has proved to be almost entirely false. The killer feature that sold me on beginning to invest in the first place was the astounding seamlessness of messages across macOS and iOS. Yet I’ve seen little progress beyond this. It’s embarrassing.
I should be able to control and start playing music on my Apple watch on any Apple device from any Apple device, whether that be a HomePod (mini), iPhone, or Apple TV. Yet this isn’t possible. Bluetooth used to be just as, if not more, seamless, and it was more performant. I can’t believe I’m saying that.
Even the error messages are comical. Attempts to do this in certain scenarios will overtly claim multiple people are trying to play music and attempt to coerce me to upgrade my plan so that multiple people can play music on multiple devices at the same time. I’m single and live alone. I just want to easily play music everywhere in my apartment, easily transfer music from my TV to my bathroom speaker without losing my place in the playlist or podcast, or change what’s playing using my Apple Watch because I decided that I’d like to hear something different emanating from the other room without getting up to find my phone.
I’ll cut this short before it becomes a screed, but I’ll close with this. I just asked Siri to play music on one of my HomePod Minis to verify my claim about being unable to control devices by saying the simple phrase, “Hey Siri, play music.” And the response I got was, “Sorry, [name]. Something went wrong and I couldn’t resume.” So I said, “Hey Siri, play music from Apple Music” and she immediately started playing “a station I might like”. This whole system is broken.
>When switching costs are high, services can be changed in ways that you dislike without losing your business. The higher the switching costs, the more a company can abuse you, because it knows that as bad as they’ve made things for you, you’d have to endure worse if you left.
He wrote it in the context of Twitter/Facebook, but it fits for other 'closed' ecosystems like the Apple ecosystem.
Enshittification is a great term. Great piece by Cory too. I wrote something similar about 'UX Erosion' a few years ago about the same dynamic on social apps:
>UX Erosion, n; 1. shiny new service & concept appears with great UX that attracts creators, followed by a slow undermining of that UX, transitioning from delight-oriented to lock-in, habit, and apathy.
And it seems to be decomposing in front of us. I asked my Amazon device to play the Beatles from Spotify. The response was “I could not find a band called the Beatles”.
Of course, when I dropped the “from Spotify”, there was an app that only played the Beatles. With ads.
>Why own a ton of Apple devices if you can’t seamlessly and easily control things on whatever Apple device is nearest?
Because owning a ton of Apple devices lets you show off to other people how cool you are, and earns Apple a ton of money. Why should they bother fixing this stuff when Apple users will buy all-Apple devices no matter how badly they work together?
I haven't tried it for myself, but many comments here say that Spotify works far better, across many different devices and even with 3rd-party client software.
Sonos and Spotify both do more to make this possible than Apple is doing. I don't have to leave Apple to take advantage of these, but I don't have to stay or continue to buy their devices either. Overall, my confidence in the brand is just greatly reduced enough to seek out and evaluate alternatives next time I go looking for a device solution when previously my faith was high enough to not look beyond Apple. Heck, I could hack something together myself and get something more integrated.
You can look at it as others catching up or Apple slowing down, but the bottom line is that Apple isn't ahead of the pack anymore on this. I think they've focused so much on supply chain logistics and hardware that they've completely lost sight of the core day-to-day software user experience that originally created that die-hard Apple loyalty.
i opened the music app on my watch, clicked the airplay icon, and i see all of my home devices (homepod, apple tvs) listed. even my mac mini is listed.
AirPlay is different from the desired functionality. It basically uses your mac as a remote speaker, instead of actually opening the music app on the computer and playing music there.
You can test this out quite easily: play any audio from your mac (YouTube, Apple Music, whatever) and then try to pause it on your watch. This is not possible.
Spotify Connect allows you to do this easily on the other hand.
Apple’s “home” app allows for a bit of that. You can control music on homepods/apple tv from any device. I don’t think you can control a Mac like a speaker, though. And I actually find it buggy as heck when trying to control a speaker from multiple devices - requests are constantly timing out, the UI doesn’t update properly with the current state, etc. In practice I always just use AirPlay and control it from a single device.
That is true for AirPlay, but AirPlay 2 works differently: It controls playback on a device (say, a HomePod) and all devices on the network see what is playing on that device and can control playback.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don't. The only thing I see listed on my Apple Watch is my Airpods. I have an Apple Watch series 6 (cellular model), iPhone 14 Pro Max, three HomePod Minis, an Apple TV 4K, and an M1 MacBook Pro. All of these devices are listed under my Apple ID within macOS system settings, so I don't know what gives. I guess to Apple's credit, there are a lot of failure points that could exist beyond their control around WiFi connectivity. But the three devices I listed that can serve as Home Hubs should help alleviate this issue when, for example, my Apple Watch isn't connected to WiFi. Maybe I should dig into this more.
Since no one has actually attempted to answer your question yet I'll give my guess as to why: I think Apple generally invested way too little time and developer talent into the development of Apple Music. I think this is evident in many ways when you look at the Music apps, _especially_ the macOS one. Since the initial release of Apple Music very little has happened to the apps, leading me to the conclusion that they're not spending time to improve them either.
Recall that Apple bought Beats to acquire the music streaming platform that Beats was developing with the purpose of turning it into Apple Music. To me this always seemed like a bit of a weird move since Apple could obviously build their own music streaming service without acquiring a company to do so. My guess is that someone at Apple who's more of a business person than a product person wanted Apple to have a Spotify competitor ASAP and saw the acquisition of Beats as a quick way to get there (with means that a business person can carry out: acquisitions). The acquisition happened, Beat's tech was turned into Apple Music (probably with time to market as the key metric that management cared about), Apple Music was released. Then the business person was happy, called it a day, and moved on.
Had Apple put their own focus and top talent into Apple Music the way they did with iTunes and iTunes Store back when iPod was their main cash cow, then I think Apple Music would have been very different. But alas, "music streaming" is probably just a check mark in someones list of services that Apple should have, and it's already checked so the job is done :)
I have the same question about YouTube Music—it's actually at the point now where YouTube proper does handoff better then the music app does, but Spotify is still way ahead of any other company in this area, including seamless handoff and using your laptop/phone as a remote control for a desktop or a different phone. I think most people just don't have multiple devices tbh, so companies don't see it as worth it to invest in multiple device coordination features. I wonder what the Spotify usage stats are.
They sort of do have it. You can be playing music on your phone and "tap it" onto a HomePod.
It also works the other way, I can ask Siri on the HomePod to play something, and the details will show on my iPhone & iPad.
I don't know if there is a way to go from iPhone to computer.
EDIT:
That may not qualify as a "handoff" though.
But it does handoff from current device to AirPods when you put them in, so there's that.
I was going to stop by to post about the feature, documented on the above page, under “Play audio on a HomePod using Control Center”
If it showed up anywhere in future, it would be there, I think, in the list of AirPlay devices.
I can say I’ve had the opposite problem, where I’m on Spotify on one device and, while playing, would want to use a second device to preview tracks. But the Spotify model only lets you play in one location at a time. I do like the Spotify model most of the time, though.
Everything about the HomePods seem to be. I once asked what time it was and due to wifi problems it gave me some generic error message. It baffled me that this thing has to phone home for the time.
It's much better on the HomePod Mini, and I think it must have to do with the U1 chip that can detect proximity. My OG Homepod is frustrating to try to use Handoff on.
It's not even just continuity between devices that it lacks, most times when I plug my iPhone into my car's USB port, it always starts playing the library at track 0 (alphabetically). Normally I could avoid this if I open the Music app before plugging it in, but it would not always work.
So one of my favourite things about Spotify is that this doesn't happen.
However, unless I have the Music app still installed on the iPhone, the car's entertainment system doesn't show what's playing with Spotify and most times when I plug it in it plays from the Music app instead of Spotify and I have to switch apps. So I installed the Music app again and sync'd a single "silent" track with an exclamation icon album art and a track title saying "Switch Apps".
It's really annoying that when I had to buy a new car in 2019 after my old one was written off, that Apple CarPlay wasn't available in Hondas in South Africa except in Civics and CRVs or better, even though in other countries it was. I'd been holding off buying a new car until CarPlay was available and been telling the sales reps as much each time I'd look while dropping my car off for a service.
This is actually a problem with your car. Some cars will issue a play audio command immediately upon connection. If no songs are in your iPhone's music queue, it will dutifully start from the top.
Most newer cars won't do this, and you may be able to shut it off in your car's settings somewhere.
Except that if I open the Music app prior to plugging it in, then I almost always don't have this problem. The issue tends to occur only when iOS has closed the Music app at some point to free up resources.
It seems like my car instantly presses "Play" when plugged in, if the Music app was already loaded, then it continues where it left off, but if the Music app wasn't loaded, then iOS loads the music app but instead of making the iPod interface wait until it's loaded where I left off, it instead plays the default list of everything in your library alphabetically. It feels like a kind of race condition which was just never considered by Apple.
Then consider the problems with Spotify. If it was recently playing and I plug it in, then the radio uses Spotify, otherwise it uses the Music app and I need to switch to Spotify on the phone. If the Music app is uninstalled completely, then the iPod interface doesn't work properly, it doesn't show track names or the artwork. It seems highly unlikely to me that Spotify is using the wrong iOS APIs, so I expect the blame here also most lies with Apple.
I acknowledge that other cars may not have this problem, but I can't see why Apple couldn't make their software more robust here. Anyway, this is also why I stated my annoyance at the not having the option of CarPlay since it delegates more control to my iPhone, meaning I get innovation and bug fixes on the screen my car on Apple's timelines as opposed to "when I get a new car", and even then, the car companies have far fewer software development resources so can't possibly hope to keep up with the likes of Apple.
My iPhone doesn't even work in my car says "Device is unsupported" yet my friends iPhone which is the same model works. It worked for a good 7 years then just deviced to stop any of my devices. Aux works, but its not the same. But my friends iPhone works, I have no idea why.
I think it is for the following reason:
They don't have a concept yet. Spotify Continuity, or however it is called, is wonderful for 3 devices and less. But add more devices and it will get frustrating. What if I want to listen to multiple song on different devices (family setups)? Spotify makes it awful, actually this is one of the main reason I left Spotify. Whenever I left the living room and wanted to play my music on my Mac, the lining room would stop and the people in the living room had to start the music from one of their accounts. This is awful and annoying. Sure, as a single, this wouldn't bother. But most people are not single. So, I think it is due to a missing concept. The HomePod transfer feature was supposed to close the gab a little, but this needs more work. So maybe in the future a switch stream to device button will come, but until then, I will ask Siri to do it for me, Siri transfer to [room name]. Just wish this would work on my iPhone, iPad and Mac as well.
I feel like at this point adding more continuity features would just be drawing attention to the fact they rarely work correctly and are poorly/confusingly implemented in a variety of ways. Maybe I have exceptionally bad results and they work fine for everyone else but my general sense is Apple quiet quits features they know are a dumpster fire.
Is iTunes completely dead now? I remember when that switched, I had a ton of music but made the early investment to never touch the new Music app because the icon color sucked. I'm guessing internally a project called "Music" attracts little talent and apple considers it a good place for new employees to grow, yielding mediocre results. To this day I use Vox for music I care about and SiriusXM in the car (avoiding the phone entirely) for music I don't care about.
That's funny, because the video for Apple's new HomePod (announced yesterday) includes a very specific handoff example: https://youtu.be/oMf_i1YBuMk?t=74
(I don't use Apple Music or a HomePod, so no idea if this is new)
1. It has come a long way. iTunes really was a horrible piece of shit software for many years. It is much much much better now.
2. There isn't any viable alternatives. I don't care what people say, I've tried them all.
IMO there's two bigger issues that really prevent anyone from competing and improving the status quo:
a. You need to be friends with the music industry to be in this field, and to retain this friendship there's a lot of things you just can't do. Imagine if something like these flash widgets that you could embed in your website to stream your favorite playlists could still exist.
b. The Apple ecosystem is preventing a lot of people (I believe a majority of phones are iPhones in the US) from moving to competitors and improve competition.
I think Spotify does things a lot better and they fought the music industry a lot. These days everyone does it.
They also do multi device so much better. It take feels "Apple". If I'm playing music on my phone I can actually change the song on a third party client on my FreeBSD desktop which isn't supported by Spotify at all.
Spotify really does a lot of those things "you just can't do" and they aren't even big friends with the music industry (though I guess despite their initial battles they are now)
Last time I checked I couldn't upload all my MP3 libraries and then download it back easily, and I think I had some problem finding some Asian songs as well.
> 1. It has come a long way. iTunes really was a horrible piece of shit software for many years. It is much much much better now.
Speak for yourself. iTunes user interface was so much easier on the computer to use than the current mess that is the Music app on the computer. I'd love to get the old iTunes app back.
I loved the everything iTunes and never understood why people constantly complained about it. I knew exactly how I could get to anything.
Now, people got what they wished for: iTunes split into a million pieces, with every piece crappified in the process. Just yesterday Music automagically fetched some wrong album art for a track I added, and after adding the correct image, I couldn’t delete that wrong one for two minutes, until I suddenly could (I just kept pressing delete, god knows what was going on). Ugh.
Almost the entire thing. How about keyboards having an integrated pause play button but it only works for Apple Music if it’s the last responder in handling the event. On YouTube? Hijacked. Incoming phone call and you want to pause music? Nope, your Mac ANSWERS THE PHONE! I was finally fed up and installed a 3rd party app that forces pause play to only hit Apple Music.
I use my MBP through a USB-C dock with an external SSD attached and whenever Time Machine or CCC triggers a backup my audio starts skipping. Sure, that isn’t Apple Music’s fault, but it’s part of the ecosystem and that kind of performance should be considered when designing the system.
And then the UI. All web views with click delay.
I like exploring jazz and electronic genres but navigating and scrolling to start one sub-genre takes like 30 seconds. There’s no way to pin genres that you like or hide genres you don’t care about.
I feel like my collection of music from 2000s is gone, even though it was uploaded to the cloud or something … through some apple program 10 years ago. I still have the metadata of my collection but even that is just a facade.
Maybe it's generational because I seem to be around the same age as you and I also hated the way my music collection "disappeared" into Apple Music (and a whole host of other things I disliked, chief of which that it keeps giving options for things you almost never want or need while at the same time it's hard to just, y'know, find and play and tag the music you want)
Isn't the play button issue solved by the Touch Bar? (I don't know because I don't use Apple Music yet), but I'd assume so since:
I just started playing a Youtube video and a Spotify song, then clicked on the audio button in the Touch Bar and it looks like this, double clicking the icon opens the appropriate app (opened that through the Control Strip, enabled in the Keyboard settings): https://ibb.co/6Pr1V6x
Though I guess the point is moot since the Touch Bar seems to be being phased out, and also due to the existence of 3rd party apps...
So, I think the pause/play button problem is almost unsolvable: I want the pause/play button to always pause whatever sound is currently playing and then resume it the next time I hit it. The issue is, though, I think doing this correctly in every situation becomes an exercise in telepathy.
I think it's what I like and why I chose Apple Music. It's so dated and oldschool, it's perfect to just enjoy full albums as I mainly do. I don't care about their playlist (They are awful) and the signal to noise ratio is way better than spotify.
The sound quality is better, and you have different music available.
The app itself, though, is not that great. It's slow and inconsistent.
Moreover, if we're looking at the content itself, if you like some niche or more specific genres, you're out of luck. The music is there, but your only hope to find more of it is relying on public playlists created by the community.
I really do hope that Spotify nails it with its Hi-fi sub. The difference in sound quality is very noticeable to me.
I should be able to control and start playing music on my Apple watch on any Apple device from any Apple device, whether that be a HomePod (mini), iPhone, or Apple TV. Yet this isn’t possible. Bluetooth used to be just as, if not more, seamless, and it was more performant. I can’t believe I’m saying that.
Even the error messages are comical. Attempts to do this in certain scenarios will overtly claim multiple people are trying to play music and attempt to coerce me to upgrade my plan so that multiple people can play music on multiple devices at the same time. I’m single and live alone. I just want to easily play music everywhere in my apartment, easily transfer music from my TV to my bathroom speaker without losing my place in the playlist or podcast, or change what’s playing using my Apple Watch because I decided that I’d like to hear something different emanating from the other room without getting up to find my phone.
I’ll cut this short before it becomes a screed, but I’ll close with this. I just asked Siri to play music on one of my HomePod Minis to verify my claim about being unable to control devices by saying the simple phrase, “Hey Siri, play music.” And the response I got was, “Sorry, [name]. Something went wrong and I couldn’t resume.” So I said, “Hey Siri, play music from Apple Music” and she immediately started playing “a station I might like”. This whole system is broken.