Apple prepares to kill off iTunes once and for all - The INQUIRER

APPLE IS REPORTEDLY planning on saying goodbye to iTunes at tonight's WWDC event. According to Bloomberg, it will be survived by three children: Music, TV and Podcasts - new apps that will live on in iTunes' place.

Because why have one bit of software to do everything when you could have three bits instead?

This is just one report of course, so for now, iTunes is alive and well, but it's fair to say the omens don't look good. Apple has deleted every post from its Facebook and Instagram pages, which isn't a sign of software in great health. No doubt iTunes' 5,398 Instagram followers will be devastated.

Actually, that tiny number - plus the additional 13,223 people who claim to like iTunes on Facebook - does kind of say it all. The software has never been truly loved, regarded as a necessary evil of setting up an iPhone until Apple realised that was literally the only reason people were still installing it, and no longer made it mandatory. It being taken out the back like Old Yeller won't cause the mass outpouring of nostalgia that Microsoft Paint seems to generate, say.

When it launched back in 2001, it was an important legal rival to the likes of Napster: a one-stop shop where people could rip their CDs and legally download new albums alongside. Next to Spotify and the company's own Apple Music, iTunes looks a curious anachronism - like spotting a Wimpy on a high street - and it shouldn't really come as any surprise that the company is finally looking to move on.

Or maybe this is all just an elaborate double bluff before Tim Cook comes on stage and announces that we'll all be getting the other 13 U2 albums to go alongside the one foisted on us against out will back in 2014. µ