14 DAY TRIAL // One of the changes announced by Apple at WWDC 2019 this week is the demise of the iTunes app, which would go away to make room for three dedicated apps called Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and Apple TV.
This transition, however, will only happen on macOS, as the Windows version of iTunes will stick around for a little longer simply because the process of killing it off is too complex to happen overnight.
First of all, let’s see how the whole thing would take place on the Mac. In addition to Apple rolling out dedicated apps for music, podcasts, and TV, the company is also replacing the iPhone sync process that until now was powered by iTunes.
On the Mac, whenever you connect an iPhone, an iPad, or an iPod, you should now see a driver in Finder just like you’d plug in an external drive. Clicking this drive opens a UI that looks and feels like iTunes but which is integrated at system level in a way that makes the whole sync process more straightforward.
iTunes for Windows going nowhere for the time being
It goes without saying that this approach isn’t possible on Windows just yet, and this is the reason Apple wants iTunes to stick around for a little longer on Apple’s platform.
Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Apple would continue to maintain iTunes for Windows forever. Instead, what I think the company wants to do is buy more time until it comes up with a similar plan for this operating system, which means that at some point in the future, iTunes would be killed off on Windows as well.
It’s probably just a matter of time, but for the time being, retiring it would technically make it impossible for users to sync their iPhones with Windows devices.