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[Dr Tone]

I just got back into apple with the new iPhone 6 and iOS 8.  The app extensions, widgets on the notification screen and custom keyboards finally pushed me back from Android.

Anyway...

It didn't take long to realize ugghh managing music on it still sucks and in fact the music player on the phone is actually worse than when I used it on the iPhone 4 way back when.

So here is how I set things up to manage my music:

1) Created a new empty iTunes Library.  (Shift and start iTunes on Windows)
2) Created an iTunes Match playlist in MC
3) Synced the music I wanted on my phone to iTunes from MC.
4) Enabled iTunes Match on this small subset of my library.
5) Configure my phone to use my iTunes Match library.

Pros:
1) I don't have to plug my phone in to get new music on it.
2) I don't have to download music to my phone I can just stream it if I want.
3) I don't have to deal with maintaining my entire library in iTunes.  Currently 125,000+ tracks.
4) Since apples aac tracks are smaller I can get more music on my phone.

Cons:
1) $28 CDN a year.
2) Apples AAC isn't quite the quality of my custom 320 CVBR encoded MP3s.
3) iTunes Match only supports 25,000 songs currently.
4) Still have to deal with iTunes.

[6233638]

These are actually the things which are pushing me away from Apple and towards an Android phone.
iOS 8 has been a poor experience on my iPad, and 128GB storage is not enough for the amount of music I want to carry on my device.
 
Once JRemote is ported to Android I'll probably be making the switch over since most devices there let you add a 128GB MicroSD card (which will hopefully soon be 256GB+) in addition to their internal storage, they play high-res files natively, and you don't have to deal with iTunes.

[Dr Tone]

These are actually the things which are pushing me away from Apple and towards an Android phone.
iOS 8 has been a poor experience on my iPad, and 128GB storage is not enough for the amount of music I want to carry on my device.

I love the idea of Android, I've been running it since my iPhone 4 but...

1) I've been finding Android getting more and more bloated over the years even on my Nexus 5.
2) It's always a constant battle to get the best battery life out of my Android Phone other than my Note 2.  I pretty much have to disable everything.
3) I find my Android devices really don't like areas of less than ideal cell phone coverage.  I spend allot of time in rural farm areas with shoddy cell coverage.  I was home for 3 weeks harvesting and I had to reboot my Note 2 at least a half dozen times to get service back after it lost it and it wouldn't come back on it's own.  My Nexus 5 won't even get service half the time.  My Dad and brother's iPhones just works out there.


There just isn't the perfect phone ecosystem.

[glynor]

iOS 8 has been a poor experience on my iPad

It isn't great on my iPad 3, though 8.0.2 has seemed to help a bit.

It runs fantastic on my iPhone 6, my wife's iPhone 5s... And decently enough on my old iPhone 5 (which is better by far than the iPad 3, because RAM, I think).

They'll improve it over time.  The iPhone 4 sucked hard on iOS 7 at first, but is fine now on the latest builds.

[6233638]

It isn't great on my iPad 3, though 8.0.2 has seemed to help a bit.

It runs fantastic on my iPhone 6, my wife's iPhone 5s... And decently enough on my old iPhone 5 (which is better by far than the iPad 3, because RAM, I think).

They'll improve it over time.  The iPhone 4 sucked hard on iOS 7 at first, but is fine now on the latest builds.

I have an Air and I think this is the tipping point for me to finally ditch the iPad, and possibly iOS. It's been an unbelievably poor experience, with constant issues in the majority of apps that I use.
Safari is worse than ever before and is painfully slow to render pages now.
2/3 of the time I have to manually refresh pages as I scroll down them because they are just blank.
 
I had been considering a new iPhone even though the specs are not what I'd like (ideally 3GB+ RAM, 256GB storage, MicroSD expansion) but there's no way I'd consider one now. The main issue I have is that some of my contacts only use iMessage now. I can't believe that they have a closed messaging platform in 2014, or that people accept it.

[glynor]

I have an Air and I think this is the tipping point for me to finally ditch the iPad, and possibly iOS. It's been an unbelievably poor experience, with constant issues in the majority of apps that I use.
Safari is worse than ever before and is painfully slow to render pages now.
2/3 of the time I have to manually refresh pages as I scroll down them because they are just blank.

Sounds like something is borked.

I have access to quite a few Airs at work, and none exhibit similar problems.  I also just spent basically a full day playing with a Retina Mini on iOS 8.0.2 and it was perfectly well behaved.  Have you tried a full restore?

[BartMan01]

Cons:
1) $28 CDN a year.
2) Apples AAC isn't quite the quality of my custom 320 CVBR encoded MP3s.
3) iTunes Match only supports 25,000 songs currently.
4) Still have to deal with iTunes.

Another 'con' for you:  iTunes Match is fickle. It frequently 'fails to download file' for me, and some of the tracks only play 1/2 or so of the song for specific tracks (the version in the cloud is broken). 

I have a 'love/hate' relationship with iTunes Match.  When it works, it works well.  When it doesn't work there is no support and can be a huge time-suck trying to troubleshoot.

[Dr Tone]

Another 'con' for you:  iTunes Match is fickle. It frequently 'fails to download file' for me, and some of the tracks only play 1/2 or so of the song for specific tracks (the version in the cloud is broken). 

I have a 'love/hate' relationship with iTunes Match.  When it works, it works well.  When it doesn't work there is no support and can be a huge time-suck trying to troubleshoot.

I've seen album art not show every now and then, but that was related to an unstable wifi connection caused by iOS 8 issues.

I've synced up about 2500 songs so far an all have downloaded properly to my phone and play perfectly.  That said I certainly believe you that it is or could be fickle, apple's stuff doesn't "just work" anymore.  They need to slow down and work on stability and infrastructure again.

[glynor]

If you have trouble with WiFi or Personal Hotspot on iOS 8, try doing the reset network settings thing under General > Reset.

That was somewhat common during the betas (and got me once) but that typically solved it.