Your Product Sucks
Apple shipped an unpolished desktop application that abandons decades of core Mac conventions like drag-and-drop and navigation history while trapping paying subscribers in looping interface errors.
AI-assisted summary of Your Product Sucks — Apple Music macOS review — original source. Check the original for full context.
Source published:
Key ideas
- The Music app on macOS Catalina suffers from critical playback loops, where attempting to play tracks without an active subscription causes unhandled errors that continuously cycle through playlists instead of halting. (0:01)
- Core desktop usability patterns are broken, including the complete absence of drag-and-drop support for adding songs to playlists and a navigation stack that drops back buttons or traps users in loops. (7:16)
- Basic visual synchronization fails across the application, leaving sidebar selections mismatched with the content displayed in the main window. (12:37)
- Despite Apple's immense resources, the host criticizes the company for shipping what feels like an unpolished internal developer build as a public stable release for paying customers. (16:48)
Detailed notes
## Background This review was published on YouTube by the channel 'Your Product Sucks' on October 30, 2020. The video description concisely summarizes the content by noting that the Apple Music app on macOS Catalina is 'not so great.'
## TL;DR The host documents his deep frustration with the desktop Apple Music app on macOS Catalina, demonstrating on camera why he considers the software fundamentally broken and unusable. After re-subscribing for $10 just to show its flaws, he encounters infinite playback error loops, broken billing entry points, and onboarding screens that reset unexpectedly. Across his testing, fundamental desktop features fail entirely: navigation history vanishes, drag-and-drop does not work, contextual menus display contradictory options, and the playback queue interface creates persistent confusion. He concludes that shipping software in such an unpolished, buggy state to paying customers is inexcusable for the wealthiest tech company in the world.
## Atmosphere & style The video carries an exasperated, darkly comedic tone, driven by the host's disbelief that basic operating system standards have been utterly abandoned. What starts as a measured critique quickly turns into an emotional, unhinged journey through UI hell, where every click unearths a new bug or dead end. Watching the host cycle between biting sarcasm, pure bewilderment, and genuine exasperation creates a palpable feeling of secondhand frustration that perfectly captures the ordeal of dealing with broken desktop software.
## Bulletin - [00:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=1s) The Music app on macOS Catalina suffers from critical playback loops, where attempting to play tracks without an active subscription causes unhandled errors that continuously cycle through playlists instead of halting. - [07:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=436s) Core desktop usability patterns are broken, including the complete absence of drag-and-drop support for adding songs to playlists and a navigation stack that drops back buttons or traps users in loops. - [12:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=757s) Basic visual synchronization fails across the application, leaving sidebar selections mismatched with the content displayed in the main window. - [16:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=1008s) Despite Apple's immense resources, the host criticizes the company for shipping what feels like an unpolished internal developer build as a public stable release for paying customers.
## Key takeaways - [00:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=1s) The host argues that calling the macOS Catalina Music app 'not so great' downplays the reality that desktop software has become fundamentally unusable. - [00:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=1s) The sluggish webview shoehorned into iTunes for Apple Music was the real problem with iTunes, rather than the core application itself. - [00:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=1s) Without an active subscription, attempting to play a track triggers an uncontrollable loop that rapidly skips down the playlist, ignoring pause commands. - [02:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=166s) Onboarding and subscription renewal paths are broken; promo banners fail to launch billing flows, forcing users to dig into deep account menus to pay. - [02:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=166s) Completing the initial genre and artist onboarding preference flow fails to save state, immediately resetting back to the selection screen upon song playback. - [07:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=436s) Navigating into a newly created playlist destroys navigation history, leaving no back button and forcing users to manually guess where they came from. - [07:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=436s) Context menus present contradictory options, such as showing 'Delete' for songs that were never added to the user's library. - [10:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=604s) Playback history frequently loads blank 'Unknown Title' metadata entries that only resolve erratically, occasionally routing to incorrect artist pages. - [10:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=604s) Standard macOS desktop conventions like dragging and dropping a song onto a sidebar playlist are completely unsupported. - [10:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=604s) Duplicate track additions to playlists fail silently with no confirmation modal or notification to explain what happened. - [12:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=757s) The left sidebar fails to update its selection state, remaining locked on an unrelated personal playlist while the user browses an entirely different store album. - [12:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=757s) Navigation stacks duplicate screens when selecting 'Show in Apple Music,' causing the back button to cycle endlessly on the exact same view. - [12:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=757s) Adding tracks to the playback queue triggers confusing modal warnings asking whether to clear hundreds of previously queued songs. - [16:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=1008s) The queue layout is so unintuitive that users easily confuse playback history for upcoming tracks, with no clear indication of what will play next. - [16:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=1008s) Months after launch, these glaring usability issues persisted in Apple's stable production build rather than being addressed before general release.
## Detailed walkthrough ### [00:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=1s) The Abomination on macOS Catalina
The reviewer introduces the premise after seeing a comment on Reddit claiming that the Music app on macOS Catalina is “not so great.” To him, calling it “not so great” implies that it is tolerable or acceptable, when in reality he considers it completely unusable. He clarifies that his anger is directed entirely at the desktop macOS version rather than the iOS app, observing that tech giants seem to have abandoned desktop software altogether. While people spent years complaining about iTunes, the reviewer maintains that iTunes itself was never the core problem; the real issue was the sluggish webview shoehorned into iTunes for Apple Music. Despite his frustration, he genuinely wants to love Apple Music over Spotify. He dislikes Spotify's aggressive push of podcasts and Facebook-style algorithms, preferring Apple Music's record-store aesthetic—at least when it functions.
Having recently canceled his subscription, the host decides to spend $10 to re-subscribe on camera just to document how fundamentally broken the software is. Launching the application immediately triggers an alert stating, “You are no longer subscribed to Apple Music.” Dismissing the alert leads to a welcoming prompt that leaves the app in an ambiguous state: it still displays personalized "For You" recommendations, yet clicking on recently played items either does nothing or reveals empty screens. When he attempts to play a song from a playlist that was updated only the day before, the app displays a "No Apple Music Subscription" dialog. Instead of halting playback, the app enters an uncontrollable loop, rapidly skipping from track to track down the list. Attempting to pause playback merely triggers the app to advance to the next song.
> “Do you know how much money they have? It's like the wealthiest company in the history of the planet, can they just like put an if statement or something?”
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Playback Failure Loop without Subscription accDescr: Diagram illustrating the unhandled error loop when playing music without an active Apple Music subscription.
Start["User plays song without active subscription"] --> ErrorPopup["Display error dialog: 'No Apple Music Subscription'"] ErrorPopup --> Skip["App automatically skips to next track"] Skip --> ErrorPopup Skip -.->|"User hits Pause"| Skip ```
---
[02:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=166s) The Ordeal of Trying to Give Apple Ten Dollars
Curious about how far the application will push this skipping behavior, the host wonders whether starting an endless song radio will crash his computer. Selecting "Create Station" produces an upbeat prompt reading "Get on our wavelength" with an invitation to join Apple Music. Clicking "Join Apple Music" completely fails to initiate an onboarding or billing flow; instead, it immediately triggers the "No Apple Music Subscription" error again and resumes cycling relentlessly through tracks.
Desperate to just hand over his money, the reviewer embarks on a convoluted hunt across the interface to find a working subscription button: - Clicking on his profile avatar only surfaces a "Music + Friends" social setup prompt that requires accessing contacts. - Context menus and account menus offer irrelevant options like "Upgrade to Family," leaving him wondering what plan he would even be upgrading from. - Navigating deeply into "View My Account" brings up an obscure list of active and past subscriptions. - Locating the expired Apple Music entry allows him to manually select the individual $9.99 monthly plan and click "Confirm."
Just when success seems imminent, the transaction fails with a "Payment method declined" notification followed by an "Unable to send code" error, forcing him to leave his desk to retrieve a physical credit card. Upon returning, the interface abruptly updates itself. A "Try it now" promotional banner appears, replacing the "For You" tab with a machine-learning onboarding screen to pick favorite genres and artists. After clicking through the artist selection circles and clicking "Done," the transaction finally goes through. Yet the victory is short-lived: the moment he begins playing a song, the app abruptly resets itself back to the initial genre onboarding screen, completely ignoring what he had just selected.
---
[07:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=436s) Disappearing Navigation and the Lost Back Button
The interface descends into a state of structural confusion. The host clicks through to the "Browse" tab, but the main window continues displaying the "For You" recommendations alongside a back arrow that leads nowhere before vanishing from the screen entirely. Attempting basic media management proves just as bewildering. When he right-clicks a track in a playlist and selects "Add to Playlist" followed by "New Playlist," the interface freezes for five seconds without giving any visual feedback before quietly appending the new playlist to the sidebar.
```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: Broken Navigation Flow accDescr: Flow diagram showing how entering a new playlist destroys the navigation history and back button.
A["'For You' / New Releases"] -->|"Create New Playlist"| B["New Playlist View"] B -.->|"No Back Button"| C["Dead End"] C -->|"Manual Guesswork"| D["Browse? (Wrong)"] D -->|"Manual Guesswork"| E["Recently Added? (Wrong)"] E -->|"Manual Recovery"| A ```
Once the user clicks into the newly generated playlist, the software traps him. Unlike Spotify, web browsers, or standard macOS software, there is no back button or navigation history. To return to the album he was just browsing, the user must rely on pure memory: - He guesses he came from the "Browse" section, but finds nothing. - He checks "Recently Added," which also fails to show it. - He finally locates the track under the "New Releases" shelf within "For You."
Contextual menus exhibit completely contradictory logic. When clicking on an unadded track, the menu simultaneously offers the options to "Delete" and "Add to Library." When he clicks "Delete" on a song that was never added to his library in the first place, the app executes no action and updates nothing. As the reviewer remarks:
> “Honestly it feels like a little kid wrote this while being on drugs.”
---
[10:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=604s) Phantom History and Missing Drag-and-Drop
Seeking refuge, the host navigates to a curated section titled "Comfort Zone" and creates a radio station from a song. He quickly mutes the audio to avoid automated YouTube copyright claims, only to discover another series of bizarre software bugs: - Opening the playback history reveals a sequence of blank entries titled "Unknown Title." - The "Unknown Title" entries dynamically shift and load metadata only when the user looks away, but freeze as soon as he watches the screen. - Selecting "Show in Apple Music" on one of these mystery entries redirects to a completely unfamiliar artist page that he has never visited. - The custom radio station he just spawned does not appear under the "Radio" sidebar tab, forcing him to hunt down its footprint under "Recently Played" in "For You."
The host then tests core desktop capabilities that have been standard on the Mac operating system for decades, specifically drag-and-drop. Attempting to click and drag a song from a playlist onto a custom playlist in the left sidebar yields nothing. Drag-and-drop is completely unsupported. Adding a track to a playlist requires clicking through nested contextual menus. When an item is finally added, the app displays a sluggish "Adding item" notification that takes multiple seconds to complete. Furthermore, attempting to re-add a track results in silent failure; the app does not allow duplicates, but never informs the user or asks for confirmation.
> “What about such advanced features like drag and drop? Can I drag this song from a playlist to one of those playlists on the left? No, there's no way to drag and drop. Just fuck that, it was a mistake for 20 years, it was a bad user experience pattern.”
---
[12:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=757s) Mismatched UI States and Queue Madness
Basic library viewing options are severely stripped down. The host finds no way to sort playlists by criteria like release year or artist, nor can he customize table columns. Instead, the menu presents cryptic, unexplained options such as "Copy to Play Order."
Visual state synchronization breaks down entirely when exploring music: - While browsing through an album titled *Best of Mushroom Jazz, Vol. 1–5*, the sidebar on the left keeps an unrelated personal playlist highlighted. - A user glancing at the window would assume the tracks on screen belong to the highlighted sidebar playlist, when the two views share no relationship at all. - Clicking "Show in Apple Music" while already viewing an Apple Music page causes the app to push duplicate states onto the navigation stack. The user can hit the back arrow five times in a row and remain pinned to the exact same screen.
| Issue Encountered | Expected Behavior | Actual Behavior in Apple Music (macOS Catalina) | |:--- |:--- |:--- | | **Sidebar Selection** | Reflects current view | Unrelated playlist remains highlighted while browsing store albums | | **History Navigation** | Navigates back across distinct screens | "Show in Apple Music" stacks duplicate pages; back button loops on same view | | **Drag-and-Drop** | Reorder and add tracks to sidebar | Completely non-functional across the application | | **Queue Playback** | Seamlessly prepends or appends track | Presents confusing modal warning about clearing 250 previously queued songs |
Finally, the reviewer attempts to use the "Play Next" queue functionality. Rather than smoothly lining up the requested song, the software interrupts playback with an ambiguous modal warning: *"You are about to start playback. Do you want to clear the 250 songs previously added to Playing Next?"* The dialog offers confusing choices between "Clear Songs" and "Play Song," alongside another dead-end navigation arrow pointing nowhere, leaving the user baffled as to what will actually happen to his queue.
[16:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU&t=1008s) The Queue Mystery and macOS Catalina’s Broken Polish
The host finds himself completely lost trying to figure out what track the Apple Music app is going to play next. After setting songs to play, he cannot even tell whether his first playlist has resumed, admitting, “I have no idea because I don’t know how to access my queue.” He fumbles through the interface until the queue suddenly reveals itself, prompting him to realize that the view he had been looking at earlier was actually the listening history rather than the upcoming tracklist.
Seeing how unintuitive and unpolished the interface remains, the reviewer vents his disbelief at the fact that Apple actually released the software in this state. He points out that this level of broken behavior might be excusable for an early developer build meant solely for internal review, but not for software distributed worldwide. Venting his frustration at the lack of quality control, the host remarks: “It’s okay if that’s some that is some internal temporary version like you know they showed to the managers saying oh we're gonna fix all this of course like we're not gonna ship this to millions of people who pay money or if we do we're gonna fix this as soon as possible but no it has been months like that and this is the current stable version.”
- The queue toggle is so confusingly laid out that it is easy to mistake playback history for the upcoming queue. - The host characterizes the interface blunders as “childish” and “ridiculous” for a paid commercial product. - Despite months having passed since release, these usability issues remain unresolved in the public stable build on macOS Catalina.
## Mentioned Apple, Apple Music, macOS Catalina, iTunes, Spotify, Reddit, Best of Mushroom Jazz, Vol. 1–5
## Video description Apple Music app on macOS Catalina is "not so great"
[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU)