It seems to me that Apple should consider merging the iPod and Remote applications on iOS.

A few days ago I wanted to listen to some music on my iPad from my Mac’s library. So I hopped over to Remote and… uh… hm. I got lost pretty quickly looking for buttons I thought should be there. They just weren’t! The problem was that this functionality was within the iPod app, and not the Remote app.

So to clarify, if I want to play music on my iPad from a remote library, I need to use the iPod app. If I want to play music on AirPlay speakers from a remote library, I need to use the Remote app.

It seems to me that both the iPad and AirPlay speakers are functioning in the same capacity here, and this seems like an arbitrary and weird distinction. Compounding it, I can access my Mac’s library via a remote connection to the Apple TV (which has no library!) via the Remote app, because I’ve told the Apple TV to look for my libraries. Whew!

There ultimately needs to be one app for playing music and media anywhere, including on one’s iOS device. That app should be iPod, not Remote. Let Remote just be a control for Apple TV.

iTunes isn’t in iTunes; it’s in iTunes

I find myself occasionally going to the iTunes app on my iPhone in order to access my music library because the Mac application for this purpose is called iTunes. But really, the iTunes app on iOS is for the iTunes Store. Thus, I have to jump out of iTunes and back to iPod.

I suspect this is less of a problem for people living solely or mostly in iOS, but it does throw me. It’d be nice if iTunes on iOS was labeled “iTunes Store,” which would give it parity with the App Store.