Once more Apple Music finds itself in the headlines, once more Apple Music experienced issues, and once more Apple Music is acting like a coal-mining canary. Yes, Apple Music is good enough, but since when was 'good enough' what was expected from an Apple product?
Today's issue with Apple Music is an intermittent issue that is stopping people signing in to the service or streaming music from the iTunes Music Store library. Zac Hall highlighted the issue earlier on 9to5Mac:
If you’re having issues getting started with Apple Music this morning, you’re not alone. The iOS app started the day by asking subscribers to sign up and join Apple Music (a force quit fixed for me but the problem persists) and iTunes on the Mac is also serving up error messages for a great number of users.
I've not been able to replicate the issue on my iPhone or desktop, but the mystery arrival of the 'Why don't you sign up to Apple Music?' screen has been a common occurrence both for myself and those in my Family Sharing plan for Apple's subscription service. I signed up when Apple Music was first available in the UK and while I might have given Apple a pass in the first few days of launch, it's over six months later and I still need to reset my daughter's Apple Music account on what feels like a regular basis.
Apple Music has had a solid, some might say spectacular, run since it was announced last summer. It has surpassed ten million subscribers, putting ahead of every other streaming music subscription service bar Spotify (and its on course to overtake the Swedish behemoth during 2017). It has successfully converted iTunes users to paying every month for their music, and it has created a space where Apple can play at being cool.
But it also has a number of awkward bugs around signing on that (as we saw today) are still unresolved. It has been forced into the iTunes application on iOS and the desktop lumbering iTunes with another hastily bolted-on appendage. And it wrecked havoc across iTunes libraries and personal music collections when it debuted.
That pretty much sums up Apple at the moment. Cupertino has delivered a lot of great ideas and vision over the last twelve months, but implementation has been lacking. but average at best implementation.
Next: What's gone wrong?
To take a few examples, the Apple Watch brought Apple to the smartwatch table, and it's (more than likely) the top-selling smartwatch out there. But it remains slow in use, has poor third-party app support, and Apple's gamble to go after the luxury market has left the lower-priced Sports Editons to be seen as second-best, rather than aspirational representations for consumers to buy.
The redesigned MacBook proves that Apple can design a very thin machine, but it has sacrificed even more than the original MacBook Air. One port, average at best keyboard, and the lowest spec on the portfolio.
I talked about the iPad Pro yesterday. It's a big tablet, it does tablet-like things, and does it well. But it's pitched in the marketing materials as a laptop replacement, while Tim Cook suggests that it was never designed to do that. Either Tim Cook or the marketing is in the wrong.
Both iOS and OSX have had to deal with a higher number of bugs than in previous years. While the updates have been faster to appear, that's because they are needed faster, not because Apple has decided to keep adding more new features after launch. And do I need to spill any more digital ink on whatever decisions led to the Apple iPhone Smart Battery Case?
On their own, each of these issues can be easily parried (Apple Watch is a generation one product, the new MacBook is stripping away old ideas which is an Apple trait, the iPad Pro is a new way of thinking about mobility, the smart battery case is only meant to be used when you know you need extra power), but the issues are building up. Should it be expected that issues need to be explained away?
Apple has long been held up as a magical entity that can divine the needs of the customer, deliver a perfect experience, and have everything working in harmony. That requires a level of focus and devotion that is very hard to maintain. It doesn't take much for that image to be destroyed, and many of the issues in 2015, while small, are enough to do just that.
If Apple loses that image, if it loses that power, it's little more than a well run technology company with a high valuation that everyone is expecting to drop down in the future because that's the circle of life for a technology company.
The circle of life? That sounds catchy, I wonder if Apple Music can find a track like that...
