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Comment by calciphus | Hacker News Reader

Every time I click the play button on my keyboard, Apple Music launches and asks if I want to start a subscription. There's no (normal) way to make it so that play will launch, or even reliably play, Spotify.

MacOS is covered in non-removable Apple adware like this but somehow always gets a pass.

... yes apparently I can install an app that force quits Music every time it launches, or I can modify system permissions, but...why can't I just uninstall it?

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Apple is full of weird choices that are off-putting to newcomers, intrusive ads, bugs. For some reason in German, they use a non-standard keyboard layout and they don't sell a standard one.

But it's still better than Windows.

I just wish Apple would fix their idiosyncrasies, I may have gone into the eco-system more fully. I guess they don't need the business of undecided people.

That's odd, I just tried mine and it controls VLC just fine.

Mine plays whatever was playing last, including youtube in Chrome. Brutal! Now I just click on the play icon in the top menu instead - that shows a list of all play button targets and you can pick which one should play.

Mine usually works great, controlling whatever program or video I'm watching, but 10% of the time it just decides to go control a completely different AV program in the background, for no discernible reason.

I don't have that issue with play buttons on Windows. Never tried media keys on linux.

If a video is already open in VLC, yes. It's a little annoying how the button will launch Music if there's nothing to play. I don't give them a pass for this, it's just still a lottt less annoying than Windows.

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