Apple has killed iTunes, its most famous app.
Launched nearly 20 years ago, the app powered the iPod and then iPhone era, redefining how people listened to music and watched films. But over that time it also became widely mocked for being slow and bloated, as Apple added more and more features.
Now iTunes is dead, Apple has announced, and will be replaced by individual apps for its various functions. It will instead have a music app, a podcast one and a TV app, it said.
The Music app looks largely similar to the old iTunes app. But it removes all of the features that were not supporting music, instead focusing on songs, either stored locally or through Apple’s own streaming service.
Apple has been looking to encourage its users to sign up to its streaming services, which currently include Apple Music and will soon bring TV too.
It did not say what would happen to the iTunes Store, which as much impact on the music industry as the app itself. Songs inside the app are unlikely to disappear, but it is unclear whether users will still be able to buy new ones.
The company made the announcement while making a series of jokes, during which it poked fun at its history of adding a series of different features to iTunes and gradually making it more bloated and slow. Software head Craig Federighi suggested it would add a calendar and email clients to the app – before saying that the truth was they would be getting rid of the app entirely.