The iTunes for Home windows app has simply obtained a significant overhaul. The app has now been break up into 4 completely different entities: an iCloud app, Apple Music, Apple TV, and a brand new Units app. These new apps supply a refreshed onboarding and setup expertise, aesthetic enhancements, and a extra intuitive sync course of that may make downloading your iCloud content material to your PC a lot simpler.
Even now, in spite of everything these years, iTunes in Home windows 11 hasn’t improved sufficient to win me over. For a very long time it remained clunky and sluggish and albeit not that helpful. Utilizing the app in Home windows seems like navigating a twenty-year-old piece of software program.
Happily, it appears that evidently Apple has lastly gotten the hold of it and has determined to dissect it and supply 4 separate apps that consider particular features and use circumstances, moderately than being the jack-of-all-trades that iTunes typically is felt like. This transfer may sign the short demise of iTunes altogether, because the app is now much more redundant.
Properly, something new?
iCloud Images is getting a giant enhance that brings the Home windows 11 app on par with the pre-installed apps you will discover on Apple Macs, providing the power to create shared albums in your PC and entry and take away photographs and movies out of your cloud storage instantly out of your PC. Maybe my favourite new characteristic is you could now view your photographs instantly from the default Microsoft Images app in Home windows 11.
Having the ability to see all of your photographs, each out of your PC and out of your telephone, in a single place within the Home windows Images app is an extremely handy change. For those who want one thing for work otherwise you simply need to ship a couple of photographs in an electronic mail to somebody, now you do not have to make use of completely different apps and trawl folders to seek out what you want, now you’ll be able to simply open the default picture app in your Home windows 11 PC and have all of your photographs in a single place – making the method way more seamless – and extra just like the expertise iCloud customers on Apple units are used to.
The brand new iCloud Drive app will now allow you to share recordsdata with associates, household, and colleagues instantly from File Explorer, which once more is such a time-saving integration that makes your Apple system really feel extra at house along with your Home windows PC. Not each iPhone consumer needs to personal a Mac or MacBook, and it is nice to lastly see Apple implementing modifications that imply iPhone customers with Home windows 11 laptops and PCs do not feel like second-class residents.
Password administration throughout your iPhone and PC can even be a lot smoother, so should you occur to neglect any of your passwords, you’ll be able to simply view them within the iCloud Passwords app in your Home windows PC with out having to select up your iPhone or iPad . Your passwords can even be saved and synced throughout not solely your Apple units, however to your PC as effectively through the Chrome and Edge net browsers with an iCloud Passwords extension. Once more, that is excellent news for individuals who use PCs and have to shortly log into their accounts with out having to fumble with their private units.
Lastly, your Apple calendars, bookmarks and contacts can even be synced in your PC, so you’ll be able to view your iCloud calendar in Microsoft Outlook. This is applicable to each the free model that comes along with your PC and the paid model for Microsoft 365 subscribers.
The Apple Music app has additionally obtained a refresh of its consumer interface, in addition to time-synchronized lyrics and 4K music movies, that are a characteristic of the iOS and iPad variations of the app. The Apple TV app for Home windows is a brand new addition that goals to carry your viewing library to your desktop, which is nice information for these of us who wish to have a present or film on within the background whilst you work on private initiatives. I like watching TV reveals whereas taking part in video games on my PC and that is nice information as a result of it means I haven’t got to prop my iPhone up off the display screen simply to look at one thing on the similar time.
The fourth app launched for Home windows is known as ‘Units’ and presents a easy method so that you can maintain observe of which units are related to your iCloud account, in addition to permitting you to sync, replace and again up your Apple units instantly out of your desktop. Which means the iTunes app can be left with podcasts and audiobooks for now, with all the opposite options break up between these 4 apps. So you will not lose any of your favourite bits of audio content material.
The implementation of those new apps provides a extra fashionable really feel to the Apple expertise on Home windows. All of those positives mixed will hopefully make it really feel much less such as you’re utilizing an outdated app that is been ignored for years.
Total, it is a constructive transfer by Apple that lastly brings some much-needed enhancements to PC customers who need to sync their iPhones to their units. This fashion, you get the very best of the file sharing expertise of the Apple ecosystem with out having to personal an precise Mac.