Apple shutters iTunes at WWDC 2019

Apple opened its annual developer conference yesterday with some shocking news – it will close its flagship iTunes app almost two decades after it first launched. The iTunes store will be replaced by three new apps instead, which separate out the various categories into their own unique properties.

The replacement apps will cover music, TV and podcasts Apple announced at the Word Wide Developer Conference in California. It assured users that they would retain access to their music files purchased or downloaded through iTunes in the new iTunes Music Store.

The shuttering of iTunes came as part of a wider reveal, which debuted the new macOS Catalina operating system. In its official press release, Apple said that the advanced OS was “…packed with cool new features, fresh new apps and powerful new technology for developers. With macOS Catalina, Apple is replacing iTunes with its popular entertainment apps — Apple Music, Apple Podcasts and the Apple TV app.

Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering added, “With macOS Catalina, we’re bringing fresh new apps to the Mac, starting with new standalone versions of Apple Music, Apple Podcasts and the Apple TV app. Users will appreciate how they can expand their workspace with Sidecar, enabling new ways of interacting with Mac apps using iPad and Apple Pencil. And with new developer technologies, users will see more great third-party apps arrive on the Mac this fall.”

The trio of new apps has been designed to simplify the process of finding and enjoying media formats through Apple. Criticism levelled at the old iTunes Store centred around the difficulty of navigation and slow loading pages, a result of new features being bolted on over the course of the last two decades.

By splitting apps into media types, the user experience will become more streamlined and make it easier for users to discover TV and film, music and podcasts. Movies and TV shows will live within a new Apple TV app, which is widely thought to reflect Apple’s desire to focus more on lucrative streaming services. The new app will host Apple TV channels and more than 100,000 TV shows and movies to buy or rent. Later this year, Apple’s new video subscription service, called Apple TV+ will also be added to the Apple TV app.

Finally, Apple says the Apple Podcasts app will now be home to more than 700,000 podcast episodes.