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How Apple Music Can Disrupt Users' iTunes Libraries
An anonymous reader writes: Early adopters of Apple Music are warning others they could get more than they bargained for if they intend to download tracks for offline listening. Since Apple Music is primarily a streaming service, this functionality necessitates turning on iCloud Music for syncing purposes. The way Apple syncs files is to scan your library for known music files, and if it finds one, the service gives your account access to Apple's canonical copy. Unfortunately, this wipes out any custom edits you made to the file's metadata. For those who have put a lot of time into customizing their library, this can do a lot of damage to their organizational system. Apple's efforts to simplify and streamline the process have once again left advanced users with a difficult decision to make.
Get out of here!
Everyone knows there's no such thing as "advanced apple users" (unless you count people who installed Gentoo on an old mac).
oops
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
If you use Apple products you are not an advanced user. It is as easy as that.
Escaped the Apple Ecosystem this week. No regrets.
On an apple??
I think not!
Nowadays I just follow Spotify's, or Napter's, or Deezer's or Apple's. They do all the work for me already. For $9/month that's a lot of time that I save.
Apple can't keep their hands off of people's data...
In what world is customizing your music tags considered advanced?
The apple world ;)
( According to the last sentence of the article. And since it's on slashdot, this must be true. )
Why is this news? Apple's itunes has been destroying people's music collections since it was released.
I'm not even using Apple Music and the update wiped out all the music on my iPhone. This was a long standing bug with IOS when the iPhone 6 came out, and I thought they'd finally nixed it a few months ago, but no now it's back. Meanwhile my iMac is at Apple for 10 days because of their failed 3TB iMac hardware, Argh, so I can't even synch it back on. Apple's quality has really dropped the last couple of years.
You'd think Apple/Mac customers would be fairly comfortable with the flexibility vs simplicity trade-off by now?
-Styopa
So many stupid comments about how Apple users cannot be advanced users, including troll moderators that support such idiocy.
Guess what, idiots? They're advanced users, not hackers/coders/programmers. Stop being elitist jerks and accept that there's people less knowledgeable than yourselves.
.
I want to be the one in control of my music library. I do not want Apple, acting as a proxy for the media industry, taking inventory of the songs I have and changing the metadata for those songs.
I was done with Apple after iTunes on windows deleted mp3s from my gifted iPod that I put on it using Linux.
Think different - as long as it is exactly as we tell you to.
You're thinking of the iPhone and iPad, toys for people who don't care about control over their property, but perhaps do care about build quality, vs. Macs, which are powerful Unix computers.
I've been a developer for 17 years. My name is in the kernel changelog. I've designed and built custom servers with power tools. I use Mac Pros for work.
iTunes is to music what crayons are to Picasso.
Looks like I can't buy music on my ipad and have it show up in itunes on my pc to play anymore, massively buggy.
You're talking about me.
I've been a developer for 17 years. My name is in the kernel changelog. I've designed and built custom servers with power tools. I use Mac Pros for work.
It seems GP might think that Apple only makes iPhones. Mac Pros, which run certified Unix (OS X) are possibly the _best_ option for serious professionals. There are also a couple other companies making one or two choices in well-built hardware you can install enterprise Linux on, of course.
it's all part of the assimilation process
I like how all the posts that say iTunes was an unmitigated pile of dogshit, particularly on Windows, get modded down, especially as Apple Music is now acting the same way. I witnessed iTunes completely trashing people's collections on multiple occasions. At first I was sympathetic (I've lost collections due to hardware failure). Now I don't care that people continue to use it and get burned despite all the evidence that, given a chance, it will fuck them over.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Even more important than the music tags in my mind is the directory structure. I have many media devices that rely on // directory structure to have the music organized properly. I found it very distasteful that iTunes seems to put all the music in a big glob on the disk and expects you to use their UI to access it. So I'm not sure why this is news that they don't care about the tags, because they never cared about the structure on disk.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Stupid html formatting.. that should read: artist - subdir - recording - subdir - track
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
You're not OCD about your music library, a small minority (not including me!) are. And websites always need clickbait with headlines implying a world shaking problem that hits all users... so the problem gets blown out of proportion.
If you're only claim to being an advanced user is your ability to customize your system, then you aren't an advanced user. You're just a person who wastes their time customizing their software, and who will waste even more time trying to figure out how to use the default configuration on other people's systems.
People who actually know how to use their software, even if it is to better organize their music collection, have a better claim to being an advanced user. Personally, I'd set the bar a fair bit higher than that. On the other hand, at least they are actually using their knowledge to do something productive.
There is an option in iTunes to leave the song files in their original location. I keep all my songs organized my way on a NAS and just point iTunes to it. The songs are not copied or moved to my Mac.
You can do it that way if you like - you can tell iTunes to let you manage the directory structure how you like. This is the first time an automated feature has clashed with that option it seems (it won't change the directory structure, but it might affect things like custom start and end points set in id3 tags). It's not supposed to interfere if you set it to manual control so this is clearly unintended behaviour.
For certain music genres, third party tags will be flatly incorrect even from an authoritative source. Classical music and Jazz need to use more tags than are typically supplied by download and streaming services and what tags are used are often applied incorrectly. Streaming and online stores ironically make more work for me than just ripping a goddamned CD and typing everything in myself.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Not a single shit does Apple give. Now be a good iPhanboi and buy an Apple watch.
The majority of tags from legit music I've bought have been incorrect.
The most common problems are:
1. Confusing composer with artist. If the song is a remix, the artist is the remixer. The original artist is the composer.
2. Genres are fuzzy. Lots of songs fit into many genres. Picking a single genre is inaccurate at best. Sadly the id3 spec only lets us pick one, so I comma separate them out of protest. Wikipedia does this too. Look up an album, see many genres, not one.
3. The infamous "Various Artists" artist. Likewise with genres, I comma separate artists because the id3 spec doesn't let us add multiple artists. Although this is actually becoming more common with legit purchased music too.
4. Bad metadata. Even legit purchased music sometimes has errors, typos, bad punctuation, etc. It always enrages me when legally purchased music has these kinds of metadata errors.
5. Quality of downloaded music. Lossless or GTFO. This is very rare. I usually have to buy actual CDs and rip them to get that kind of quality when doing it legally.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Apple destroys user data
oops
No, Apple doesn't restore some user data. You don't get Apple's version of the file unless you delete your copy or never had it on a particular device in the first place.
Apple looks for matches in your library with Apple's library. If it finds a match it makes note of it. If it does not find a match it uploads your copy of the file to Apple's servers. When you restore files you get Apple's copy for matches and your copy for non-matches.
The issue is that Apple only analyzes the music to determine a match. It does not consider the meta data. So the same music with different metadata is a match according to Apple so your edited copy is not saved on Apple's servers. This makes sense given that there is no standard metadata for ripped songs. When ripping a CD one often finds multiple incarnations of metadata to apply.
You're metadata-editing wrong.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
If it doesn't work as expected, or a change in feature set results in data loss or poor performance, it's because you're doing it wrong... much like when the iPhone 4 introduced the faulty easy-to-short antenna design when holding the phone the way anyone holds ANY cellphone, Jobs excuse was "you're holding it wrong." Therefore in this case, extending Apple reasoning to the current use case, if you're editing metadata, you're doing it wrong.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I am in charge of the kernel because I run okie dokie pro! Wheeeeeeeeeee!
I bought an iPod touch when they were new. ITunes fucked up my on-device music repeatedly. I left them and never turned back.
iTunes will leave the songs where they are OR will organize them into artist/album/song.ext for you if you choose. Those are two little checkboxes in the preferences, pretty sure the default is to move them into your iTunes library structure and organize them.
You have to have a seriously messed up configuration before it just dumps them into the same directory. I have experienced what you're referring to but I also do a bunch of weird crap with an AFP on a FBSD box using a ZFS store for it all, so I have a seriously messed up configuration :)
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Then just "open ." In the folder when you are at the terminal and you have a finder window for that folder. Simple
Ok foot in mouth.. You're right that opens a new window. To me 'Open' means open in the same window, and 'Open in new window' means open in new window. Thanks, I shall use that from now on.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Perhaps you could tell me how to make a window full-screen without making a new desktop for it?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
No, the original artist is the original artist (ID3v2.2 tag TOA, ID3v2.3 tag TOPE). They may also be the composer, but that is by no means certain.
No, the ID3v2.2 and ID3v2.3 specs let you select multiple genres, or even mix multiple pre-defined ones with a custom one. One thing they do fall down on is defining how to tag a song with multiple custom genres.
No, ID3v2.2 and ID3v2.3 specify that multiple artists should be separated with a / character.
It may be that the vendors don't follow the spec, but you're being very unjust in blaming the authors of a spec with you obviously haven't read.
There is no "original artist" tag, AFAIK. What I'm referring to is the "artist" tag which properly should refer to whoever actually made the song. If it's a remix or a cover, the artist is whoever made the remix or the cover, not the author of the original song. The author of the original is the composer.
I was unaware of the "/" syntax being codified by the spec. But that does beg the question why don't they just allow multiple artist tags instead of a single tag as a long string separated by an awkward character? You'd think the spec authors would come up with something less stupid than that.
Why not just use the "/" separator like with artists?
The spec is long, poorly written, and has obviously been updated since I last read it. I may have been unaware of the "/" separator thing, but it's not exactly the best idea to begin with and you might wanna hold off on the insults until you get composer vs. artist straight. Or, you know, just avoid being a jerk in general even if you are right.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Why? It's pretty irrelevant if a full screen window has a logical desktop associated with it that you do not need to care about.
Jesus fucking christ what's wrong with you people.
Google Music, in my experience, has the exact same problem Apple Music does. It ignores your manually input album art and other metadata, and decides to substitute what it thinks your tracks should have attached to them instead.
The only good thing Google does that (so far), Apple doesn't is gives you a button to tell it the data is wrong for a given track so you can override it. (Still, that's a LOT of pointless extra work to put back what was there in the first place.) Well, that, and the fact they're not going to trash your "master library" of music since they don't act as the application all of your music is stored in. They just mess up the copies of the data they put up in the cloud for you to stream back down from your devices.
I *wish* these cloud music services would simply ASK FIRST if you'd like to replace all of your existing metadata, or if you'd rather they only add metadata to your tracks that don't yet contain any at all.
Huh? What do you mean by putting your music in a "big glob"?
If I tell iTunes to copy my music when adding tracks to it and to "manage my library", it creates what I think is a pretty sensible file structure for the songs under the main "iTunes media" folder and "Music" beneath that. Everything goes by folder with the artist's name, followed by sub-folders under each of those for the name of each album by that artist.
A long time ago, this didn't work the same way. (Originally, they didn't have a top level folder called "iTunes media", with folders under that for each of different categories of media.) But iTunes used to offer a way to convert the old format to the new one if you selected one of the options in a Preferences menu to do so. It's used the newer folder structure for at least 2 major versions now, though ....
I just got over the rant about Photos replacing iPhoto and now I deal with Apple Music messing up my music. As someone who used to beta test Apple software I have to wonder if many of these testers simply don't challenge this beta stuff enough. I mean the stuff being released from Apple of late simply does not have the Steve Jobs micro managed review before it gets released. Tim Cook might be a OK pencil pusher, but he is lousy at making sure this stuff gets out the door correctly. .Mac was handling cloud sync and OS X was really a well oiled operating system. Now the train wreak of combining all services with IOS and OS X seems to be riddled with mistakes and over looked combinations that break many users setups. Really too bad, I guess you do it Apple's way or no way.
I store nothing on my iPhone but don't care to cater to Apple's nickel and dime approach to the end user either. iTunes Match had similar complaints when it rolled out with album art getting messed up and customized data being lost. Frankly nothing Apple does is remotely polished anymore and I agree OS X is not Linux anymore the Chrome OS is Linux. They are proprietary software designs bent on reigning in users into a walled garden of apps and services. With Apple that used to be a OK ideal back when
I think the last time I tried it was the 'long time ago'. Nice that Apple added the feature.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
And presumably, you won't be joining Apple's streaming music service, right?
Since Apple Music is primarily a streaming service, this functionality necessitates turning on iCloud Music for syncing purposes.
Not at all. iCloud Music stores your own music in the cloud (and has the "features" described). Apple Music is a streaming service. The two are only related because both are managed through the Music app. Otherwise there is no link and no need to enable one to use the other.
It's not a race :)
The spec is long, poorly written, and has obviously been updated since I last read it. I may have been unaware of the "/" separator thing, but it's not exactly the best idea to begin with and you might wanna hold off on the insults until you get composer vs. artist straight. Or, you know, just avoid being a jerk in general even if you are right.
He did not insult you. You are insulting him, by calling him a "jerk".
No. They are really terrible. Professional features. Horrible UI.
(not to mention an installation system that fucks up your system and requires hard work to undo)
Windows. It fucks up people's brain. People are so tormented by it, they think it is the norm and one&only way. Poor sods.
No - you're not reading the post you just replied to.
Apple have never stored their music as 'one big blob'. Ever. On any system or device. They didn't 'add' a feature to organise their files sensibly, iTunes has always organised your files sensibly, and has always given you the option to organise them yourself in you prefer.
So this, like the great majority of the nonsense about how Apple products work that's being thrown around in this thread, is completely false;
I found it very distasteful that iTunes seems to put all the music in a big glob on the disk and expects you to use their UI to access it.
Did you seriously believe that this was true? And how did you arrive at that incorrect conclusion?
Here's a post a made over two years ago.
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Not very good at this internet thing, are you?
unfortunately, we've all learned that after itunes fucked up our file structure.
That's just your opinion, really.
> (not to mention an installation system that fucks up your system and requires hard work to undo)
PEBCAK. It's never happened to me once in 20 years.
And websites always need clickbait with headlines implying a world shaking problem that hits all users... so the problem gets blown out of proportion.
The one blowing it out of proportion is you. The headline is: "How Apple Music Can Disrupt Users' iTunes Libraries" and you somehow then interpret this to mean a "world shaking problem that hits all users".
Yeah..... this is true. Although it's ALSO true that at some point when Apple made the change to how iTunes sorted everything, they made it cleaner and easier to navigate. Because the change to putting things under "iTunes Media" vs. "iTunes Music" acknowledged people put a lot of different types of data into the software like video, ringtones, iOS apps, etc. With the older format, it ALL went under the main folder.
But yes, it was never all "in a glob". Now, iPhoto for Mac was another story ..... Compressing all your photos into one database file created a LOT of issues.
iPhoto doesn't compress all your files into a single database either. It doesn't necessarily store them in a format that you'd like, but they are stored as individual files and they always have been. Can we all try to stick to the facts please.
Think about it, which is easier from a software engineering point of view?
A: Use the database-like features of the filesystem to store your assets, and index into that from an actual database to store all the metadata that the filesystem either doesn't support or doesn't support efficient indexing into.
B: Re-invent the database-like features of the filesystem, but the rest is the same.
So *not* using the filesystem to store *files* is a poor engineering decision, and not one that I believe Apple have made in any of their software products. Unlike Microsoft, I'm looking at you Outlook and your PST file....
hold option as you click the maximise button
I only care about title, artist, year and track number. I would guess that Apple's metadata is better than mine so sign me up.
If you want ununlimited choices, where you can do anything from anywhere, any time, that's called CLI. I open a bash prompt and I can do millions of things in one step, without opening any new windows, navigating to any other location, etc. Unlimited choices. I do most of my work at the command line because that's what I like as well.
The entire point of a GUI is to present the user with the most relevant and common choices for the current task at hand, in an easy-to-use way, so they don't have to KNOW all of the choices available, they can SEE the choices available at the present time.
If you want to memorize arbitrary key strokes to get things done quickly, that's precisely what the command line IS. A GUI is the alternative, for people who want to visibly SEE the choices, not LEARN them.
Learning hundreds of arbitrary keystrokes and using them in a gui is like using a motorcycle to move furniture- precisely the wrong tool for the purpose you wish to achieve.
The claim was that "advanced users" don't use Macs.
To reply "I use a Mac" would be pointless and not advance the discussion in any way, because it wouldn't tell you whether "advanced users" ever use Macs.
What does move the discussion forward is to show that some advanced users do in fact use Macs, so a relevant post must establish two things:
a) I'm an advanced user
b) I use a Mac
Point a is made quickly, and in an easily verifiable way, by mentioning where you can find my name on your system.
> Who cares whether a Unix is certified? Linux is the big daddy of the server rhythm these days
Linux has a huge installed base, absolutely. Most of my work throughout my career has been on Linux. We also know that GNU stands for Gnu's Not Unix. Linux is popular, and it's explicitly Not Unix. There is no guarantee your Unix software or integrations will continue to work on any particular version of any particular Linux distribution, as they try out a third init system in as many years.
So who cares about certified Unix? Two groups of people. People who have enterprise production systems running Unix software that MATTERS care. If you're running a payroll system for 10,000 employees and a glitch means missing a pay day, or perhaps ending up with the decimal point in the wrong place on everyone's pay check, certification of the whole stack is good. You can, at a cost, show that the software uses only official Unix apis, and will therefore run on any certified Unix. Similarly , regulators and such like certified components for similar reasons.
The second group is represented by alot of the systemd comments. Certified Unix means you have certain guarantees about how things (still) behave. You won't have important stuff changed out from under you, if you interface with the system as a Unix system, not as a Brand X version y.z system. Apple CAN'T fuck certain things up in the next version, systemd style, without losing their certification. That can be attractive to a lot of people.
So, Apple music scans your drive for previously existing copies of music, then makes available to you copies of that music that Apple has on their cloud servers.
I seem to recall there was a lawsuit a few years ago against a company that allowed you access to streaming files if you had proof you bought the CD.
So, how does Apple get away with this when other companies were shut down?
I've never understand it. I've been collecting/ripping mp3s (and then later oggs) ever since about '97. I've never need a tool to 'organise' my collection. Every OS I've ever used has had this really clever idea called the directory (or folder). It's quite simple really, I haev one top-level directory called 'Music' and inside I have an 'A' folder, a 'B' folder etc. etc. Inside I have (here's the clever bit) more directories eg. 'Ah-ha', with that I have directories for each album by the band.
Okay, I have one directory under 'M' called 'Misc' which is getting a bit large by hey-ho.
Oh and I own all those files, they're mine and I can copy them onto any device I own and share with friends should I want to.
Screw Apple and screw anybody that doesn't let me own my music collection and potentially pass it onto my children. Props to Amazon that allows me to buy DRM-free mp3's (along with the CD! awesome!)
If you want ununlimited choices, where you can do anything from anywhere, any time, that's called CLI
This is a fallacious cop-out. You are attacking a straw man of 'wanting ununlimited [sic] choices' (nobody said they want that), and are implying a false dichotomy (there is something in between 'no choice' and 'unlimited choice') of which the choice you present is absurd in itself ('unlimited' is technically physically impossible).
We weren't talking about CLIs and we're not going to.
The entire point of a GUI is to present the user with the most relevant and common choices for the current task at hand, in an easy-to-use way, so they don't have to KNOW all of the choices available, they can SEE the choices available at the present time.
Which says NOTHING about what number of choices is appropriate and thus NOTHING about the subject at hand.
If you want to memorize arbitrary key strokes to get things done quickly
Straw man again.
A GUI is the alternative, for people who want to visibly SEE the choices, not LEARN them.
Which only SPEAKS FOR showing many choices early instead of HIDING them somewhere deep in the UI.
(is the caps-emphasis annoying you yet?)
Learning hundreds of arbitrary keystrokes and using them in a gui is like using a motorcycle to move furniture- precisely the wrong tool for the purpose you wish to achieve.
Nobody was talking about keyboard shortcuts, but as long as they are optional they do not complicate the UI for anyone, but do make it more powerful for everybody. But again, you seem to be arguing in favor of showing users many choices in a UI. Is that correct?
On Saturday I noticed the new "Rainbow" iTunes icon on my MacBookPro apps line. The next day I was missing all my music/recordings except what I had bought from Apple, and is ready to be downloaded from the cloud. With a little searching, I found that the recordings are probably all there in my hard drive--probably. I've *VERY* reluctant to reinstall those recordings into iTunes. I'm very close to bailing out on Apple--even though I'm a diehard longtime Apple fan. Highjacking my desktop with yet another rainbow, and then messing with my media libraries. Not good, not good at all.
The feature you mentioned is called Music Match, a subscribed service... and it has been around for quite a long time... this is not a new feature that came with Apple Music....
Yes it is. You just do not seem to be aware of it. It is a race to the bottom. I am winning.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The "OCD" bit implies a disorder. You do not have a disorder that is compulsive/obsessive. You are just retarded. There is a difference.
Seriously - I say this for your own good. Let it go. It is retarded and you are not "winning" anything. Just think of the valuable things you could be getting done, like reviewing the source code for your browser and then compiling it yourself!
Yes, the above is sarcasm and not really directed at you. It is just the gist of much of the posting on this thread. I had to release it somewhere and you, for better or worse, were chosen.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
If I write a piece of music and you produce it then you are the original artist and I am the composer. If someone takes your work and reproduces it then they are the artist, you are the original artist, and I am still the composer.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
"...Once again left advanced users with a difficult decision to make." There are enough better music services out there to switch to. For example, I've NEVER had a problem with Google Music kiboshing my music libraries. iTunes has been trash from day one. Too temperamental and too quick to want to already destroy the music library on my computer (from day 1). Why are Apple users always so cool with getting fucked over? For the premium that they're paying for their devices, they should be given first-class service.
> You are attacking a straw man of 'wanting ununlimited [sic] choices' (nobody said they want that),
"As many ways as possible" - FlufferMutter
> Nobody was talking about keyboard shortcuts
I see above in this thread talk about ctrl-w, ctrl-F4, "cycle through windows using the keyboard ".
Seriously, if you want a powerful, fast interface that requires learning, the bash CLI is a thousand times faster than any gui. Try it out. GUI is all about being simple by putting the knowledge in the world, not in the head. That means showing the common, sensible default choices.
> you are attacking ...
It's a suggestion, for something you'll probably like, not an attack, silly. Don't tell me you're one of those guys who feels that if his first idea is ever imperfect, that makes him stupid, so he must defend all of his ideas from "attacks" rather than learn anything, or take any suggestions.
There is no ID3 tag called "original artist."
When Jimi Hendrix covered Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower," the artist was Jimi Hendrix because he performed the song. The composer was Bob Dylan because he created the original.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
"As many ways as possible" - FlufferMutter
Which isn't 'unlimited'. It includes 'as possible', which implies that there are limits.
I see above in this thread talk about ctrl-w, ctrl-F4, "cycle through windows using the keyboard ".
Somewhere, maybe. Not in this comment-thread, though. You should have replied there. My comment was and is about how The Paradox of Choice is a bad basis for informing UI design. You have not responded to that.
Seriously, if you want a powerful, fast interface that requires learning, the bash CLI is a thousand times faster than any gui. Try it out.
I know and I have. It's completely besides the point. Stop bringing it up.
When people are talking about whether a convertible is preferable over a coupé, the guy that insists that you should just ride a bike if you want the wind in your hair is just being an annoying (offtopic) asshole.
GUI is all about being simple by putting the knowledge in the world, not in the head. That means showing the common, sensible default choices.
No, it's not and no, it doesn't. Do you think that no professional on this planet uses a GUI? That nuclear powerplants and huge complex infrastructure networks are managed via a CLI? There are hugely complex GUIs that definitely do not only show 'common, sensible default choices', because they would effectively be useless if they did.
The point of a simple GUI is that it does not require learning. The point of a complex GUI is that it is very powerful. These are separate dimensions. Some GUIs cannot require learning, some GUIs can. Some GUIs need to be powerful, some don't. Many GUIs are somewhere in the middle of the plane.
The point of a GUI in general is that it allows for a completely different multidimensional way to interact with software (versus a CLI). The problem with GUIs is that you generally lose expressiveness, as only the options put into the GUI are generally available to express what you want the software to do.
Now you and many people with you are arguing that a GUI should contain the minimal amount of expressiveness to make it useful and people with wishes for even slightly more expressiveness in a GUI should just piss off and use the CLI. It's simply ridiculous. Especially when you start arguing that "humans don't like choices" (I'm paraphrasing).
Determining or not whether adding certain choices is beneficial or not is something that should be thought through and not dismissed with the inane 'less is more'.
It's a suggestion, for something you'll probably like, not an attack, silly.
Oh stop.
1. People who 'suggest' things DON'T SCREAM.
2. Also, 'attack' is a perfectly valid term in the area of debate to denominate an argument against some statement. It's nothing personal, just the English language.
Silly.
I did not mention that there was an ID3 tag for it. Only what was what.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."