iPad Pro equivalent of windows media player

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Level 1

8 points

iPad Pro equivalent of windows media player

Hi. So I took the plunge. My 10 year old windows 7 laptop finally breathed its last breath and I went for a shiny new “laptop replacement” - iPad Pro 11”

During my 10 years of windows “bliss”, I had used the media player to rip to wma my complete cd collection - 1000s of songs. Whilst not amazing the player allowed me to view the albums, set up playlists, shuffle and organise, see meta data etc.

Now in the iOS world I’m feeling things just got harder (but hoping that’s just my lack of knowledge!). First thing I did was get a friend to format a usb stick and copy my old wma files to it. These didn’t play natively in iOS (although I downloaded VLC and it did play them, but without any album management type stuff)

So I got same friend to convert wma to m4a and now I can play them using iOS native player. But still I get no album/playlist management features. So not great.

So I can see that there is an app called “iTunes” which I’ve signed up for and can see I can pay for music (which I don’t need to do as I already did!).

Apparently I can use a PC to copy my m4a songs into the iPad, but I don’t have a PC (didn’t think I needed one!) and I don’t really want to rely on being able to use my friends PC whenever I want new music on my iPad. I cannot find a way to import my music into iTunes on the iPad.

Can someone point me in the right direction here? I have about 20gb of music (for my 256gb iPad that is a drop in the ocean). I don’t want to pay extra for iCloud or any other services or apps to play my music. I just want to copy my music to the iPad and see/search for my music, see my album art and music meta data, see my playlists and create new ones. And generally enjoy the music I’ve spent so long curating. Surely this is possible?

Thank you.

iPad Pro, iPadOS 13

Posted on Apr 14, 2020 12:52 AM

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Answer 1

MichelPM

Level 10

81,701 points

Apr 14, 2020 1:47 AM in response to MarkTheMark

iPads, and even iPad Pros, are NOT full featured laptop replacements for most users.

iPads are still companion, ancilliary devices and you still need a full featured computer.

A PC or Mac is still needed with an iPad.

You really can't get music and photo libraries into an iPad without using the actual iTunes app for a PC or Mac computer.

The iTunes app in iOS is just a portal to Apple's media stores for purchasing music, purchasing or renting TV Shows and movies

You can use external drives now with iPads, but NOT optical CD/DVD/Blu-ray drives, at all!.

Also, a full featured computer may also be needed, at times, to do iOS/iPadOS upgrades/updates.

AND for backups, a full computer is much quicker and much more convenient than using Apple's iCloud ( which is more of a “data sync-ing service” than a data backup service ) or other online, offsite data storage/backup services, like Google Drive/Photos, DropBox, Flickr and other similar services.

Even with external drive support and now integrated mice/trackpad support, an iPad is nowhere a full replacement for a much more full featured computer.

No matter how Apple advertises iPads/iPad Pros as such laptop replacement.

Currently, as long as Apple keeps making MacBook Air/MacBooks/MacBook Pros with a full macOS, iPads and iOS/iPadOS will never be one for one equals in features and function.

My feeling on your purchase is that you purchased the wrong device/tool from the wrong company.

If you can, I would return this iPad Pro from where you purchased, get your money back and instead, look at Windows Surface tablets that offer a full Windows experience with a touch screen display that have full support for a variety of different user input devices and are more customisable than Apple iPads.

With Windows Surface tablets you can customise the CPU, GPU, and the amount of internal RAM.

You were expecting an iPad Pro to be a full laptop/MacBook experience. They are not.

Best of Luck to You!

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Answer 2

LotusPilot

Level 10

307,381 points

Apr 14, 2020 1:26 AM in response to MarkTheMark

Media management within iOS/iPadOS, due to the DRM controls implemented by Apple, is heavily tied to iTunes - and in the contect of managing an external music/media collection, this will be the full iTunes Application that runs on a PC or Mac (although MacOS Catalina now manages iOS/iPadOS devices via Finder).

The full iTunes Application, running on your PC, is you media managment hub - frm which you can import and/or legally “rip” content from physical media that you already own (such as CD). Media is managed in the full iTunes Application - and transferred to your device.

The iTunes App on your device is the gateway to “paid” content from Apple - whereas the Music App serves as your native media player.

iTunes (and Finder) also serve another critical function... namely they facilitate device “restore” should your iPad or iPhone everr require total reload of their Operating System - or if your device ever becomes disabled due to you forgetting your device passcode. Whilst it is “possible” to use an iOS/iPadOS device without ever resorting to needing a PC/Mac, most owners, sooner or later, encounter a situation where access to a PC/Mac becomes necessary.

I hope this explanation and clarification is helpful to you.

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Answer 3

MarkTheMark Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 14, 2020 2:18 AM in response to MichelPM

Thanks. I did spend quite a lot of time testing out various tablets (including surface book) laptops and chrome book type things.

I came to the conclusion that the iPad Pro was the best tablet out there and I haven’t changed my mind on that. The pencil is sublime. The build is beautiful. The performance is incredible. 95% of the time it’s a joy.

But I think you’re right that for some of those old school laptop functions that I took for granted on windows, it is still not good enough, despite the usb stick support. Suddenly you hit a brick wall as I think I have here and that’s deeply frustrating for such an expensive and otherwise capable device.

i guess right now I’ll have to work around the problem and hope that with the advent of the Magic Keyboard with its trackpad and associated “the only computer you’ll ever need” marketing spiel that Apple will improve things.

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iPad Pro equivalent of windows media player

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