iTunes is a calculated mess.

I opened up iTunes today, and just looked at it. This is by far the strangest consumer application that lives on my Mac. Everything else does one sort of task (Logic Pro X does audio editing, Final Cut Pro X does video editing, Mail does mail, Messages does messaging, Photos does photos, you get the idea). While each app can have a lot of features that let me accomplish different tasks, each one’s purpose is obvious and its focus is absolute. This is how Apple’s software tends to work: do one thing at a time, and do it well.

iTunes doesn’t work that way. It hasn’t worked that way for a long time. The purpose that the “iTunes” name and icon convey is pretty obvious: it does music, right? Yes, music is the first thing you see when opening it up. But that’s very far from the only thing it does. iTunes does a lot of things, does some of them well, and does some of them badly.

iTunes as we know it right now is actually an umbrella for what could easily be a few different apps (and are on iOS). The Music tab? It’s kind of great. It does music. I actually really like the album view, which adds colorful flair to the various albums I’ve collected. Film and TV show tabs? Same thing for their respective categories, complete with unique iterations of the Store. The Podcasts tab is nicely competent at doing podcasts. All of these tabs, these sub-sections, are fairly good at doing their own thing and reflect their iOS counterpart apps fairly competently. iTunes as a whole feels bloated because it’s actually three or four apps stuffed together; each sub-section has a different UI design. The Podcast tab has nothing in common with the TV Show tab. Just about nothing else Apple offers (with the possible exception of the Apple Watch) is designed this way. And the reason for that can be traced back to the iPod.

The Gadgets Needed A Home

The reason more and more sub-sections have been crammed into iTunes over the years is iOS. Although these days, iOS devices can almost entirely exist independently of traditional computers, they’ve historically needed a place to come home to, where their content can be conveniently managed. Since iTunes provided that role for the iPod, it seemed the natural fit for the iPhone. And for a while that made sense. It just doesn’t make much sense anymore.

I sync my iPhone once every few months, mostly just to get videos off of it quickly. The rest of the time, it is totally independent of my Mac. A few years ago that wasn’t the case, but the simple fact is that I need to do extraordinarily little managing of the phone’s content on a regular basis. Between iCloud, Continuity, and Handoff, the iPhone has grown up. There are still hiccups- it’s not quite perfect just yet- but effectively iOS and OS X are at points where they can happily co-operate in a person’s daily usage with precious little maintenance.

The thing that’s been holding iTunes back is the need for it to be a place to manage your gadgets. But those same gadgets don’t need much management anymore, and I think the people at Apple fully understand this. The latest version of iTunes is a deliberate exercise in training us -- the iOS-using public -- to think of the media on our PCs and Macs by type, rather than by application. Forget about managing files; just know that videos are different from music, and that you go to the Videos app to buy them, download them, and watch them. Why do you think each content type in iTunes now has a unique Store tab? It’s to prepare us for the day iTunes dies and gets split into Music, Videos, and Podcasts on the Mac.

The device management functionality that has strangled iTunes for so long is going to disappear just as soon as Apple thinks it can get away with it. They’ve already torn out photo management; it’s only a matter of time until the other dominos topple over. They are driving towards a day when the gadgets don’t need to check in with the mothership, and automatically look after themselves. That day isn’t quite here yet, but it’s not terribly far off.

iTunes is living on borrowed time. If it seems like a convoluted, inconsistent mess right now, that’s because the current design is a stepping stone to where Apple seem to really want to go. It is effectively a collection of related but distinct apps forced under a single umbrella, and despite its familiarity that doesn’t fit particularly well with how Apple works.

Until they get rid of it though, I’ll keep putting up with it. And I really do think the album view is snazzy.