The Elegance of Apple

Oy vei. For the past 3-4 days I've been wrestling with Amazon's new "Amazon Music" app. Dealing with a non-Apple app really makes me appreciate Apple all over again.

First I had to download the Amazon Music App. Once downloaded I had to find it again, and then open it. It wasn't placed where I expected it to be, in either my downloads folder, my programs folder or my Amazon folder. Once I opened it I could see lots of songs I'd downloaded from Amazon over the years -- and some I hadn't. But not everything on my hard drive. Why? who knows.

I spent the better part of a couple hours looking for a way to either burn a CD from my Amazon Music library, or export the files to iTunes (...an Apple product) so I could burn from there. No luck.

Finally tonight, after retracing my steps with a fresh set of eyes, I gave up and entered an online chat with Amazon.

Turns out I needed to download ANOTHER piece of software, the "Amazon Importer." Did that. It asked me if I wanted to import music. I said yes. It scanned my hard drive and came up with about 2,000 songs. Only 250 can be downloaded with the free version of the software. To "import" (from where to where? The songs are already on my hard drive!) up to 200,000 songs I need to pay Amazon $24.99 per month. I decided to try the free version before deciding if there's any value added (Amazon Music is a fee download service, just like iTunes... with none of the convenience.) So after the importer identified some songs, I wanted to play them.

Sorry, can't do that from the Importer. Would I like to download Amazon Music?

I already have Amazon Music.

The two freaking programs are not linked in any way. Who designed this POS?

And I'm still not exactly sure what the importer does -- are the files now available to iTunes, when they weren't before? Time to check.

Answer: no.

I'm still exactly where I was last night -- Apple iTunes Library sees the Amazon Music files, but if I try to "add them to my iTunes library" it fails with no error message. The process just terminates.

So the tracks I have purchased from Amazon are apparently DRM protected or something to prevent any other software from reading them. Fucking wonderful. And Amazon chat help confirmed that there is no way to burn the tracks from within Amazon Music. You have to use an external program. Everything is designed to be used with Windows, apparently nothing was ever tested or designed for Apple.

And every page you look at is full of ads.

All Amazon Music software removed from my computer.

I will stick with programs that work, thankyouverymuch.

Sounds like really shitty software. But that doesn't surprise me. Too many programmers these days are just tool users who know little about computers or software at the depth required to provide decent programs (I refuse to call them "apps"). And there is far too little QA testing going on.

And keep in mind that Amazon is a retailer. Any software they produce is primarily for moving their products.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Apple iTunes Library sees the Amazon Music files, but if I try to "add them to my iTunes library" it fails with no error message.  The process just terminates.  [my emphasis]

This, however, does not appear to be a problem with the Amazon program. This is a problem with the Apple program. Failing without a message is unprofessional and unacceptable -- it clashes with the encomium of "Elegance" you've given Apple.

Addendum:

Have you tried eMusic.com?

They may have some albums you can't find on eTunes or Amazon.

Out of curiosity, I googled amazon's use of drm on their music downloads.
Amazon, as well as many of the customers in various forums, says they do not have any DRM on their music. There is a confusion factor, however, in that - in some cases - you must register devices to which you download their music, and you are limited to ten devices on your account. If you download the music to "the cloud" (God, I hate that phrase), the ten-device limit doesn't apply. But, in any case, the downloaded music can be transferred to as many devices as you like.

This is just what I been able the glean from google. YMMV.

This is exactly the kind of twiddly shit I hate with Windows.

Apple -- by and large -- just works.

That "twiddly shit" I described has absolutely nothing to do with Windows or with Apple. It has only to do with Amazon.

_Howard wrote:

That "twiddly shit" I described has absolutely nothing to do with Windows or with Apple. It has only to do with Amazon.

Sorry, you must've missed this:

NoCoPilot wrote:

Everything is designed to be used with Windows, apparently nothing was ever tested or designed for Apple.

And where did you get that information?
Amazon has both Windows and Mac versions available for downloading.

When a program performs in the manner you described, it is not because of the OS; it is because of the incompetent programming.