Apple has a reputation for doing their own thing, often in the face of accepted assumptions. But when the changes a company makes detract from the benefits customers have grown to rely on, who benefits?

Apple’s latest iTunes update removed some of the key features of the app – managing apps on your devices, to name one – in favor of pushing their music and media services. But by eliminating this feature from the desktop version of iTunes, they have eliminated the key lock-in for using iTunes at all. There are plenty of apps – free or paid – that will use their API to sync music and movies to the your phone. But nothing really served that extra role of managing which apps you have on which devices, and keeping them all up to date with the latest versions.