Apple to break apart iTunes in MacOS, introduce music, podcasts, and TV apps

When iTunes was introduced to MacOS in 2001, it brought along a media revolution but was quickly hindered by the addition of features and capabilities that caused the once lightweight application to become a piece of bloatware. A light appears to be on the horizon as sources, including developer Steve Troughton-Smith, have noted that Apple will plan to split the application into a range of different pieces of software. The purported change is said to be coming with the next major release of MacOS, 10.15.

Troughton-Smith noted on Twitter that he discovered evidence that the split of iTunes is likely to occur shortly. Guilherme Rambo, a technology writer and developer, has also independently confirmed this possibility to be true. Each new application is said to be built upon the latest version of Apple’s Marzipan foundation, meaning that they are likely to be replicas of their iOS app counterparts.

With music, podcast, and TV apps already available on the iPad, it isn’t hard to imagine how the software may appear when launched. Marzipan was shown off at Worldwide Developers Conference 2018, allowing developers to see how they might develop a single application for both iOS and MacOS. Existing Marzipan apps currently on the Mac platform include the news, home, voice memos, and stocks apps — both which have been criticized for their performance.

The soon-to-be-old-fashioned iTunes app is rumored to be kept around a bit longer to assist with features such as manual device syncing for iPods and iPhones — yet another push for individuals to keep their devices managed through iCloud. One last app to see an update in the next version of MacOS is rumored to be the Books app, but it is unknown whether it will be a simple redesign or based upon the company’s Marzipan developer technology.

Apple introduced a new version of MacOS every year since 10.7 Lion was unveiled in 2011. Thus, we have solid ground to expect that MacOS 10.5 is likely to hit later this year with an announcement at WWDC and a launch sometime in autumn. Note, information about WWDC and MacOS 10.15 is deduced based on Apple’s typical release cycle, not insider knowledge.