I Give Up: Apple Music Has Beaten Me

I tried to be diplomatic.

After a few more hours wrestling with Apple Music’s needlessly confusing layout and incomprehensible import and organization processes, and wasting even more of my time trying to create some semblance of order to my music, I gave up and am now officially done.  The indisputable fact is that the one and only reason to suffer Apple Music’s torturous interface is because it was made by Apple. Imagine just for a second if Microsoft or any other company had foisted this chaos on us.  Mac users would be having a field day crapping all over it.

In fact, many are, but the Apple-love deep within our DNA causes a lot of us to step back, put our heads down and keep trying.  After all, Apple made this.  It’s on all our Macs.  We get 3 months free.  It will get better.

And maybe it will.  I’m going to resist the temptation to wonder if tossing this confusing, disjointed mess upon us is a sign of larger problems at Apple.  I’m going to focus on how much I love my MacBook Pro and my iMac.  I’m going to assume all the display and touch issues with my iPhone 6+ are anomalies shared by the two people beside me with similar issues when I last visited the Genius Bar.  I’m going to keep on loving Apple, because that’s what I do.

But I am done with Apple Music, at least for the foreseeable future.  There were endless straws, any of which could have broken the camel’s back. But here’s the very last one.  A perfectly confusing, and unhelpful pop-up message, after I tried for the fifth time to import a playlist.

Perfectly confusing. Completely unhelpful. If I, a huge Apple fan who has been writing on tech since the 90’s, have no idea what this means, or how to fix it, or what the difference is between iCloud Music Library, iTunes Match and/or a buffalo fart, then I’m reasonably sure the typical user doesn’t either.  I want someone to do a feature-length documentary on how this message was written and who thought it was sufficient.   If it takes longer than a few seconds to figure out how to successfully import songs into your music app, your music app is not ready for public consumption.

I’m done.  I give up.  I’ve been beaten.