If there’s one thing I’ve learned in nearly 30 years using Macs, it’s that Apple will be Apple. They will change things for the better. They will change things for the worse. And they rarely change their mind.

I’ve already shared my thoughts on the way Apple abandoned .Mac and then MobileMe in its march toward iCloud. As someone who still uses OS X 10.4 Tiger once in a while and 10.5 Leopard regularly, this means I can’t sync contacts and calendars between those Macs and my Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook (running OS X 10.9 Mavericks) and my iPhone 4S using Apple services.

My solution is to use Google instead. They use open standards. They won’t abandon me.

Apple Music

My latest frustration with Apple comes from losing use of the radio stations I created in Music on my iPhone without signing up for three free months of service with Apple Music. I don’t want to do that. I don’t trust Apple not to charge me, nor do I want to pay for what had been a free service.

I am not a big fan of the radio stations in Music on the iPhone. The playlists are not as good as those on Pandora. They are geared toward tracks that you are likely to want to buy from iTunes. But there is some content, such as music by James Ward, that I can’t get on Pandora. So for that I suffer with Apple’s formerly free radio service.

I don’t care how much it costs. I’ve already purchased quite a few James Ward tracks through iTunes, but much of the time I prefer the variety of streaming radio over playlists or using shuffle on my own music collection. Pandora does a great job of this, and Apple did a decent job – but not one I’m willing to pay for.

Thanks, Apple, for sticking it to your users once again.

Keywords: #applemusic #appleradio #pandora #jamesward

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