Trapped In Time is the tumblelog of Matt Simpson. Matt is the co-owner of Maven Web Solutions. His business partner is Eugene. They also blog live music with Todd at The Butter Room, whose latest project is Jamwich.
Matt has two min pins, Forbin & Floyd. He often blogs about music and is a Phishhead who went on 2009 summer tour. In addition to traveling, Matt takes photos. Proud Hoosier and Chicagoan.
Matt Suggests: Annicka, Autumn, Brian, Chris, Christina, Drew, Elle, Jim, Josh, Irick, Katrina, Kaylie, Kelly, Megan, Michael and Michael, Mills, Nikki, Shannon, Sharon, Stacey and Terz, amongst others.
Modified Titanium iPhone 3GS Casing (view the full video on Engadget)
This looks very sexy and is undoubtedly a better case than the plastic backing or even the original iPhone’s aluminum backing. Check the video out. The guy proves it actually gets full 3G reception and makes calls without issue. Pretty impressive.
A photo has leaked of what the casing to the tablet likely looks like following a photo of the front of the device overnight. The event kicks off at 1 PM EST. Follow Engadget’s live coverage here.
Since Apple’s Newton project closed, many have wondered if and when Apple would return to the PDA/Tablet market. In many ways, the company already has. The iPhone does much more than the few Newton products - that actually made it to market - ever did. And yet, since the iPhone’s release, especially over the past twelve months, speculation has run rampant that Apple has been working on a tablet. On Wednesday the company will almost undoubtedly unveil the new product at a media event at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.
I’ve been particularly interested in such a device and followed the speculation closely for a number of reasons:
So what should we expect to see on Wednesday? That still remains a mystery, but through patent filings, rumors that won’t go away, and past offerings, the picture has started to become pretty clear. Here are my general predictions based on the best evidence available:
Design and Hardware
Software and Features
You Should Also Expect
It’s still anyone’s guess what Apple will or will not drop on us all come Wednesday, but one thing’s for certain: this device will impact computers, mobile phones, and major media - print, television, movies, and music - in a very profound and culturally transforming way.
“Domination Visualization” would be my title for this pie chart
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Steve Jobs, on the iTunes App Store reaching 3 billion downloads in only 18 months. I guess he would be the one to know. |
Awesome. Bonus points for bluetooth keyboard support.
(via jhersh)
Because the iPhone does not handle disk mode like a traditional iPod, there has been no way to sync music, apps, files, etc… or so I thought, until I did a little research today, and found it’s pretty easy to trick iTunes into thinking you are syncing to the same library (on however many computers with iTunes you want).
Check it out, I’m headed home on the train with some new albums I didn’t have when I got to the office (including Vampire Weekend’s Contra which leaked today).
If you own an iPhone or iPod touch, or just got one for Christmas, you likely received a gift card for the iTunes store. I almost never buy music on iTunes, for a variety of factors, so I would almost always recommend spending your money on apps (especially right now, as many developers are offering end of year discounts).
I have a lot of apps (upward of 100) for my iPhone, so I thought I’d share some that I think are definitely worth buying.
1. AwesomeNote ($3.99)
I’ve always been disappointed with the bland notes application that comes with the iPhone. There’s no way to organize your notes, no way to customize the look or feel (I hate the default font and paper style), and it doesn’t sync well with your computer.
ToDo and note taking applications are very popular because of the void left by Apple’s default application. I’ve tried a variety of these type of applications, including Informant and Simple Note, but found AwesomeNote to do the job the best for my needs. Why? Well I don’t take and store notes on my iPhone specifically for work. Thus, I don’t need a ToDo app with note taking capabilities. Second, I’d prefer to keep my notes organized in folders so that I can quickly add new notes related to a category (see the screenshot above), which is why Simplenote is well, too simple.
AwesomeNote allows you to create folders, define the color of each folder, an applicable icon, and customize the style of the note - background, font size and color, a variety of easily customizable options depending on the subject matter. You can also choose various views in which notes within a folder display - i.e. thumbnails or list view. Additionally, you can use the app in either orientation - vertically or horizontally - and even lock the orientation if you prefer a particular view. The other great option is importing and exporting your notes to your Google or Evernote account. If you’re a Google Docs user, this makes a whole lot of sense.
For those who do prefer assigning due dates and using notes in a more task-oriented way, you can make your notes into ToDos with due dates and reminders!
2. Convert ($1.99)
Convert provides a very clean, intuitive interface to get a conversion from just about any set of units to another. Conversion units include area, energy, currency, force, computer, angle, speed, pressure, time, temperature, and typography. My favorite part of this app is the built-in calculator, which is similar to the default iPhone calculator. Essentially, you can replace one of your existing icons with this one and always have a handy reference at your fingertips!
3. Tweetie 2 ($2.99)
There are dozens of Twitter clients available for the iPhone. Some are free, some are a dollar, some are more. For the price, I can’t think of a more useful app, even for the not-so-interested Twitter user. The search features alone (particularly saved searches) allows you to keep on top of topics of interest to you. Tweetie 2 manages multiple accounts, integrates with various bookmarking and image hosting services, and features one of the nicest interfaces of any iPhone app on the market. For tumblr and Wordpress users, you can now also add your accounts to Tweetie 2 for a single source to find, navigate and share a variety of information.
4. Instapaper Pro ($4.99)
I hate bookmarking sites or articles that I know I won’t be interested in or need a few weeks from now, which is why Instapaper has taken a permanent spot on my bookmark bar. With Instapaper Pro, I can bring some unification to all of my browsing and bookmarking, wherever I’m at. While the free version does a decent job of this, the paid application allows me to better organize my bookmarked articles, which gives me more purpose when I try to navigate through my bookmarks after the fact.
For iPhone users the integration between Instapaper and NewsNetWire (I’ll cover that shortly) as well as Tweetie, make it a no-brainer.
5. CNN Mobile ($1.99)
CNN Mobile has one of the best iPhone interfaces I’ve come across. You can view stories in various categories in Cover Art mode for easy navigation, access videos and analysis wherever you’re at, and perhaps my favorite feature are push notifications of breaking news. It’s nice to know when something important happens if your attention is currently elsewhere. CNN also has a portion of the app dedicated to your current location with local news and weather that are very up to date.
6. Simplify Music 2 ($7.99)
I’ve detailed this app in a lot of depth, but the bottom line is that if you consider yourself a music connoisseur, or use the term “library”, this app is worth the money (even though they raised the price by $2). I currently have about 60,000 songs from my own computer accessible wherever I’m at, and the social networking aspect of it allows you to have up to 30 friends’ libraries accessible as well. With the right people, you could easily have access to a quarter million songs wherever you’ve got phone or Internet access.
7. NetNewsWire ($4.99)
If you use Google Reader, NetNewsWire for OS X, or FeedDemon for WIndows to manage your RSS feeds, this app is perfect for you. If you’re an Instapaper user, it’s especially useful. NNW allows you to sync your RSS feeds from your home computer with your iPhone, so you’re always up to date with what you have and haven’t read. Star items or send them to Instapaper for later reading, and organize and view by categories/folders defined by you. Great for picking out what you’ll read later in the day while you’re on your way to work.
8. Things ($9.99)
There are a plethora of task management/productivity applications available for the iPhone, but this one does it just right for me. Its interface is simple and clean, it syncs wirelessly over WiFi on your home network (assuming you use the equally impressive desktop version). Export ToDos straight to iCal, manage by project or client, set reminders for upcoming due dates. This has been one of my favorite apps from day one, even if the price tag does seem a bit hefty.
Free apps you should also consider downloading: Apple Remote, ESPN ScoreCenter, NYTimes, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr, IMDB, iDisk, Dragon Dictation, DirecTV, Boxee Remote
At the risk of sounding like Glenn Beck Jr. — what the fuck has gone wrong with our country? Used to be, we were innovators. We were leaders. We were builders. We were engineers. We were the best and brightest. We were the kind of guys who, if they were running the biggest mobile network in the U.S., would say it’s not enough to be the biggest, we also want to be the best, and once they got to be the best, they’d say, How can we get even better? What can we do to be the best in the whole fucking world? What can we do that would blow people’s fucking minds? They wouldn’t have sat around wondering about ways to fuck over people who loved their product. But then something happened. Guys like you took over the phone company and all you cared about was milking profit and paying off assholes in Congress to fuck over anyone who came along with a better idea, because even though it might be great for consumers it would mean you and your lazy pals would have to get off your asses and start working again in order to keep up.
And not just you. Look at Big Three automakers. Same deal. Lazy, fat, slow, stupid, from the top to the bottom — everyone focused on just getting what they can in the short run and who cares what kind of piece of shit product we’re putting out. Then somehow along the way the evil motherfuckers on Wall Street got involved and became everyone’s enabler, devoting all their energy and brainpower to breaking things up and parceling them out and selling them off in pieces and then putting them back together again, and it was all about taking all this great shit that our predecessors had built and “unlocking value” which really meant finding ways to leech out whatever bit of money they could get in the short run and let the future be damned. It was all just one big swindle, and the only kind of engineering that matters anymore is financial engineering.
And now here we are. Right here in your own backyard, an American company creates a brilliant phone, and that company hands it to you, and gives you an exclusive deal to carry it — and all you guys can do is complain about how much people want to use it. You, Randall Stephenson, and your lazy stupid company — you are the problem. You are what’s wrong with this country.
What if Apple entered a massive iPhone partnership with Sprint, possibly by purchasing a significant slice of it?
Sprint has a great U.S. data network and desperately needs hot devices that can bring an influx of new customers. Sprint isn’t worth much and could really use some cash.
Apple has hot devices that deliver tons of new customers to their carriers, but desperately needs a great U.S. data network. Apple is worth a lot and is sitting on an assload of cash.
On the surface this sounds like a great idea, but could never happen. A phone manufacturer/tech giant owning a significant portion of a company who has relationships with their competitors? Apple owning a company that Palm’s Pre resides on? Do they just give everyone else the boot? Anti-trust issues abound in this scenario.
The real issue that needs to be addressed is bigger than any phone manufacturer or telecom company, it’s systemic. We need an open system in which any device can work relatively well without major contractual obligations or headaches for the customer. This is why Europe is selling so many iPhones and why both Europe and Asia generally scoff at our cell phones and our cellular networks. Some conformity on standards, openness, and device compatibility would take us all a long way, and force shitty companies like AT&T to focus on voice and data coverage and quality, customer service, and differentiating features.
Simplify Music 2 may be my favorite app for the iPhone. Over the past couple weeks I’ve been using it extensively, pretty much replacing the built-in iPod app on my iPhone in many instances. If you’re not familiar with Simplify Media, it’s basically a very small app that runs in the background, providing access to your iTunes library wherever you are. With the desktop version, you will see another network share when you’re logged into your Simplify Media account from another computer (i.e. at work or a secondary machine), and be able to access it. This is pretty great, but takes a good amount of time to pick up your library in whole if you have thousands of albums, or 10’s of thousands of songs (over 60,000 songs in my case). And it used to be that the iPhone app (the original Simplify Music) loaded song by song, album by album as well, making it essentially useless for someone like me, and many someones like me who are probably the core userbase of this app.
Yet this version caches your library periodically, and only updates when the app running on your home machine (i.e. the server) detects you’ve updated your iTunes library. Thus, it becomes very easy to access any song, album, or playlist in your iTunes library from wherever you may have phone service.
If you have less than 20 GB of music, you likely would never need this, but if you have 500+ GB of music, this frees up space on your iPhone or at the very least gives you access to a virtually unlimited amount of music. I found while driving from Chicago to southern Kentucky that the streaming is quite reliable over both 3G and Edge. While it certainly works better over 3G, if the song is only a few minutes long, you’ll have no problems with buffering over Edge. I streamed Led Zeppelin IV end to end over Edge with no buffering on one drive through southern Indiana.
You can also search your library and find what you want, and add albums as favorites. Unfortunately the interface could use a bit of a boost in certain areas. Adding an album as a favorite simply adds all of those songs to a master list with no organization, and shuffling could be much more intuitive. For a live music fan, it’s hard to discern one version of a song from another on your favorites list.
Yet for an album listener with thousands to choose from, this may be the most valuable media app on the iTunes store. I know when we’re having a ball out in Palm Springs, our iPhones will be providing the soundtrack to our party from our desktops at home.
One thing I haven’t mentioned is the social networking feature. You can approve up to 30 Simplify Media users at a time to have access to your library, meaning you can also tap into your friends’ libraries and vice versa if you coordinate. All said, you could have terabytes of music at your fingertips wherever you’re at!
Ultimately I think Apple will be bringing similar functionality built into their remote app, allowing you to stream your iTunes library to your iPhone. Perhaps sooner than we think too, with many of the cloud computing features rumored in the upcoming tablet running the iPhone OS on the horizon. In the mean time, this is the best $6 you can spend if you have a huge collection that you always want access to.
If you’re using iPhone 3.0 or 3.01 and loving the tethering feature, and don’t want to upgrade to 3.1 and lose it, but still want to take advantage of today’s new MMS functionality, you can do so in a few easy steps.
1. Download the new AT&T carrier file
2. In order for iTunes to allow you to update the carrier file on your phone, you’ll have to make one change at the command line. Make sure iTunes is closed, and in OS X go to terminal and type in: defaults write com.apple.iTunes carrier-testing -bool TRUE
For Windows (32-bit) – Go to Start > Run and type in command, then hit Enter. Then, at the prompt, type “C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.exe” /setPrefInt carrier-testing 1 and hit Enter.
For Windows (64-bit) – Go to Start > Run and type in command, then hit Enter. Then, at the prompt, type “C:\Program Files(x86)\iTunes\iTunes.exe” /setPrefInt carrier-testing 1 and hit Enter.
3. Load iTunes and select your iPhone on the left nav bar. Hold option in OS X, alt in Windows, and click ‘update.’
4. Select the downloaded AT&T carrier file, and wait about 5 seconds.
5. Disconnect your iPhone, reboot, and MMS now works!
New iTunes Store Interface
New navigation: easier on the eyes
Genius Mixes: Your Own Pandora Stations
Better browsing for 'recently added' etc
iPhone apps: search and manage
iTunes 9 came out today, with a plethora of new features and functionality. I’ve spent the afternoon listening to music from my MacBook iTunes library (not my full 600GB+ desktop library), and have some initial thoughts.
I’m not an iTunes store user (as far as music downloads go), so I won’t have much to say about such changes, other than that it looks more attractive, and has navigation akin to an OS X app.
Since iTunes 7, the focus of the multimedia application has centered around better ways to browse and interact with your media. Cover flow and grid/album view provide more visual ways to peruse your library, and are great for the casual user who manages a small collection of music. However, these features never wowed me because they failed to provide any logical use case for someone who has more than 60,000 songs in their library. Scrolling through thousands of albums - many with cover art, others that must be found and imported - proved impractical to me and left me using the tried and true ‘List’ view.
iTunes 9 provides a much more intuitive list view interface. Users can arrange their informational columns on top (the traditional way) or to the side. At first I was a little confused about why I would want to use the new side column setup. I didn’t even see a column for ‘album’ which was a little off-putting since I’m mainly an album listener. However, going to the View > Column Browser menu setting allowed me to not only toggle between top/side view, but also allowed me to choose and what columns remained on the left at all times. I chose to include the artist and album columns, the main two ways I go about browsing my music.
Separating out my albums into a more defined and permanent column makes it easier for me to browse exactly what I’m looking for. I think any live music collector, or anyone with a large music library, will find this view provides them more real estate on the screen vertically, while constantly keeping the important stuff in front of you.
The next feature I stumbled upon was ‘Genius Mix.’ These are essentially an extension of the genius feature introduced in iTunes 8, and a more advanced leveraging of the data Apple has collected from users. I received 4 stations in my (considerably small) library:
I realized quickly that the key to these “stations” are the amount of music you have that fits into the iTunes genius category. My Jamband and Alt mixes were considerably more diverse than the Rock mix, which seemed to just pull from what crossed over from the other two genres. Utilizing my desktop genius results, I have a feeling that I’ll have dozens of stations and a diverse set of genres to play from. A synthesis of your genius results from multiple machines would make this feature more useful wherever you’re at, but in typical Apple fashion we may have to wait some time for such functionality to come alive.
Nonetheless, I think this is a great way for someone like myself to better interact with a massive amount of content that resides on my computer. I like Pandora, but at the same time I’d rather sift through all the albums I’ve downloaded and haven’t gotten to listening to, or already consider a staple of my listening. Centralizing my music listening to one application (iTunes) makes a lot of sense for me, especially since I use airTunes and the Apple TV to stream much of my music to different sets of speakers.
Other features appeal to me in terms of the thought and logic put into them, but perhaps not their execution. The ‘home sharing’ feature is great because it allows you to share and sync media between multiple local computers. I’d love to do this, but how useful is it if your roommate, significant other, or family can only share music by using one centralized apple ID? I’d imagine even most married couples have individual accounts for their iTunes, and with good reason: Apple really provides no way to make individual purchases and be part of a family “group.” The HP MediaSmart iTunes server remains the only decent way to sync iTunes libraries, but is probably not the most cost-effective way to do so.
Another new feature from iTunes is their “iTunes LP.” Basically they give you liner notes, lyrics, track lists, photos, etc… for an album, all nicely presented. This is great if you buy your content from iTunes, but what if I already own that album in my library? It’d be wonderful if I could use the interface or have it available to me with my OWN (assumably purchased) content. I don’t see Apple budging on this though, they see the LP as a way to create competitive advantage in the mp3 market.
Overall, iTunes 9 is a great step forward. The interface features updated bevels and curves to give new life to long recognizable interfaces, and integration with your iPod or iPhone is even better. I especially like how easy it is to view, search, and sync your iPhone apps back to your iTunes library. For the first time in several years, it feels like Apple actually cares about improving the multimedia experience for their customers.
As an iPhone and iPod user, I’m naturally drawn to using iTunes. For other less invested users, iTunes may still not be the preferred music or multimedia application. However, if you maintain a large library of music, and own an iPod or iPhone, you’ll be very satisfied with the upgrades in iTunes 9.
I think it has alot to do with the software it’s controlling — the XBOX UI often specifies one of the 4 colored buttons to exit or activate a menu whereas Apple’s UI is like a series of rooms each with 2 doors and a variety of items inside. It’s still an indicative comparison of design philosophies but also marketing philosophies. I could imagine prototypes of the XBOX remote with half as many buttons which were axed because marketing wanted it to be a universal remote.These two remotes, by Apple (left, Apple TV) and Microsoft (right, Xbox 360), do approximately the same things with a few exceptions:
- The Microsoft remote uses two AA batteries that need to be replaced about every 6 months. The Apple remote uses a single CR2032 that has never needed to be replaced.
- The Apple remote has 6 buttons. The Microsoft remote has 46, only 15 of which are regularly used for media playback.
- The buttons on the Microsoft remote are backlit so you can see what they do in the dark. The Apple remote doesn’t have this feature because you never need to look at the buttons after the first minute of use.
- The Apple remote works from nearly any position in the room with approximate line-of-sight between itself and the front of the Apple TV. The Microsoft remote has the worst reception angle of any remote I’ve ever used (supposedly 90°, ±45°). Mine starts failing consistently at about 22° right of center at a distance of 8 feet, putting it right at the bottom of their specified total radius (~44°). It won’t even work from the right half of the couch.
This is a pretty good indicator of the two companies’ design philosophies and quality goals. And this isn’t even considering the software interface that each remote is respectively controlling.
While I think this is a great comparison for differences in design philosophies, it ultimately doesn’t take into account how clunky the Apple TV responds to this remote. The XBOX is rather snappy just like you’re using a game controller or regular remote. However, the Apple TV will take seconds (or 10s of seconds) to recognize commands from the remote, and is generally very poor. Try entering text commands on your Apple TV with that remote vs doing the same with the XBOX remote. The XBOX will be finished minutes earlier in most times!
Apple’s new iPhone remote app uses multi-touch gestures that allow you to control the Apple TV with new fluidity that has brought new life to a platform I have found rather useless for watching media up until now. 90% of my Apple TV usage has come from using it as another Airport Express, streaming music to my 7.1 system (with optical digital audio output).
A little perspective goes a long way, especially when you consider that the XBOX remote allows you to play physical media often in higher quality than the Apple TV. To convert my DVDs to similar quality for my Apple TV has been a long and tiresome process that is probably only about 5% complete. There are advantages to the Apple TV in that you can rent and purchase HD movies, but you certainly can’t play DVDs, BluRay or HD-DVD media. The XBOX also allows you to control an iPod or other mp3 device via the remote and interface, and does so snappier than the Apple TV + Apple Remote (pictured above).
I love the thought behind the Apple remote and believe that applications such as the iPhone remote app and Boxee make the Apple TV a superior media center when coupled with its integration to iTunes, but it’s not as cut and dry as Marco’s original post suggests. The two platforms are geared at completely different types of users, and thus the remote and user interface is set up much differently.
