The biggest technology and gadget show, CES, just kicked off in Las Vegas, and as usual much of the talk surrounds Apple:
Apple is the only company that consistently gets big buzz out of the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas — without even attending.
This year will be no different.
Connected TVs — TVs that connect to and can access content from the Internet — will be a big part of CES this year. And just about everyone in tech expects Apple at some point to launch such a television — an iTV — that easily consumes and shares with other Apple devices content served from the company’s media-storing iCloud.
Microsoft made news earlier by saying this was the last year they would attend CES/ Why attend if Apple gets all the buzz anyways? Maybe Microsoft should focus on new products instead of protecting its Windows/Office cash cow? Or maybe not . . .
I’m seriously kicking around the idea of dumping my iPhone in favor of an Android device. I’ve been playing with the HTC Inspire for the past few days and really loving it. The notification bar alone could be reason enough to say goodbye to Apple for a while, at least anything running iOS. One of the things I loved about my iPhone was the ability to get any music, anywhere. The MOG app was amazing for streaming and allowed for downloads when I would be without a connection. The Android version does the same thing, just much more shittily.
This is one of the problems with Android in general – different apps will behave differently on different devices. That differentiation (wink wink) is good in some ways – there are a lot of options for users – but it can also be a bit painful. Right now my app has a constant “Artist Radio” overlay along the bottom of the screen, no matter which screen I’m on. It blocks the Download button. It blocks the Play Album button. It infuriates the hell out of me. The app also randomly starts playing any time I receive a notification on my phone. Yes, any notification will start whatever music MOG has loaded provided I’ve used MOG earlier in the day. I have to restart the damn phone to turn it off.
Shopping for a gift for Valentine’s Day can be a challenge if you’ve been with the same person for a long time. Holidays, birthdays and anniversaries add up, and it can sometimes feel like you’ve given that special someone everything they could possibly want. That’s obviously not the case, but if you’re completely out of ideas, you might want to consider Speakal’s iPig docking station for the iPod, which delivers surprisingly great sound in the shape of a bulbous little pig.
Available in pink, yellow, white and black, the iPig might look like something you’d pick up at the toy store, but it’s actually a pretty impressive piece of machinery – something you’ll quickly realize upon feeling the weight and durability of the system. The docking station can be used with any Apple iPod (there are six cradle pieces to choose from, but it even works without one attached) and though your iPhone will try telling you it’s not compatible, it actually is.
The system itself boasts five speakers with a total output of 25-plus Watts, including a 4-inch subwoofer on the bottom of the unit, two speakers on the front that double as the pig’s eyes, and two more underneath its ears. The ears also happen to include the docking station’s coolest feature: touch activated volume control that works better than I could have possibly imagined. Additionally, there’s a handy remote for all of the other controls like play/pause, fast forward/rewind, and bass and treble level adjustment, and you can connect the speaker to a TV or gaming console using the 3.5mm AUX input jack in the back.
Oh yeah, and not only does this speaker get loud (so loud, in fact, that I didn’t dare test to see how high the volume would go at the risk of blowing out my eardrums), but it doesn’t appear to lose any quality as a result. Granted, the cutesy pig design pretty much guarantees that no guy would want to purchase such a speaker system for himself, but between its impressive sound and portable, compact size, the Speakal iPig would make the perfect gift for that gadget-crazy lady in your life.
I got a bug in my ear to listen to a song from Glee today. Stay with me; I know you want to click away but I promise this post is about streaming services. I looked up the song – an a cappella version of Katy Perry’s ‘Teenage Dream’ (again, please keep reading) – and was pleasantly surprised to see that MOG had it. I turned it on, turned it up, then realized I should be doing some dishes.
No problem – I’ll fire it up on my phone and run it through a Bluetooth speaker system in the kitchen. There’s just one problem with that – logging into MOG on my phone logged me out on my computer. Come back to the computer later and log back in, go out to get some coffee and log out and in on the phone for the car ride and then back home, log back in, blah blah blah, you get the picture. It’s too much, and it could be so easily solved. Build a feature into both the web app and the iPhone app that allows me to tie my account to my phone so that both can be logged in.
So begins my letter to companies that dream of providing a music streaming service. You absolutely have to make a smooth experience across devices. I’ve been so pleased with MOG that I’ve gone through and deleted a shload of my own digital library, the stuff I just didn’t listen to much or was so ubiquitous I could always get it on MOG (do I really need MP3s of Aerosmith’s Big Ones?). I’m so annoyed with the device situation, though, that I’m ready to jump the MOG ship the moment someone else can do it better.
Another simple thing – make the app more like a music player. I want access to my player all the time from anywhere. I don’t want to have to play a song to see my player, which already has songs queued up by the way. Yes, I could make playlists, but I shouldn’t have to. The whole advantage of the cloud isn’t a cumbersome experience. It’s the opposite. I want your streaming service because I don’t have to keep hundreds of gigs of music around in case my taste changes. I literally dumped 30 gigs of songs last night because the cloud is so convenient. I’d love to dump 30 more.
About a month and a hlaf ago I decided it was time to give a streaming music service a shot. Rdio had just launched with a nifty little free trial so I jumped in there right away, but the selection was severely limited. I went to MOG, which started out okay, until I realized just how much better the Rdio service is.
For starters, Rdio has a vastly superior interface. Every god damn time I open MOG I have to sign in, which is bad enough, but then I can’t just open the player from that sign in page. Yes, I can point my browser to the player location, but I do not want to. I also do not want another browser window open. Seriously, what decade is this? For all the goodness that MOG brings – a nice library, good quality, sturdy streaming, the ability to download and play stuff later – they are way behind the times with regard to design.
The saddest part, much like the current TV streaming, is that MOG just might be the best around. From what I’ve seen of the other services, they’re just as bad, maybe worse, and that just isn’t going to cut it for a service I will use every single day.
I love Reddit, especially for things like this. This image shows the real truth behind the iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle. Was it years of careful industrial design an planning? Nope. It was the scissors tool in Photoshop.
If you take a look at the two new music players it gets harder and harder to deny that it just looks like the old iPod Nano has been cut in half, leaving behind a screen (which is now touch sensitive) and a control scheme (welcome back, hardware controls – glad you’re off those headphones).
As good as Reddit is for these little gems, the discussion can be a bit polarized. Continue through those comments at your own risk.
Do you remember your reaction when you saw the first iPod Nano commercial? Those two hands fought over something that seemed, at the time, ‘impossibly small.’ By today’s standards, that first Nano would look commonplace – some people might even mistake it for a new iPhone. All signs point to a Nano announcement at this week’s Apple event, and from all the leaked pictures and accessories, we know it’s going to be small.
This picture, which comes from Apple Insider, shows an old Nano up against a render of the new, touchscreen version. There have been some concerns raised about controls – that screen is awfully small to comfortably navigate your music library. Apple could be headed toward an inline control system, similar to that of the iPod Shuffle. Personally, I hate the idea. I want to be able to use my own headphones without worrying about a stupid control dongle.
From the looks of things, I’d say Apple also scrapped the crappy little camera it added to the most recent generation of the Nano. Thank god. That thing was the laughing stock of Flip SD owners everywhere, to say nothing of all the portable HD handcam owners of the world.
I constantly struggle to find new music. Yes, there are a million resources out there – blogs, fan sites, news and reviews, venues, torrents, etc. etc. – but there’s so much music in the world that a lot of it ends up sounding the same, and I don’t want something that always sounds the same.
I decided I was going to try a streaming service for the sheer amount of music available. Pandora isn’t on-demand so that was out. I gave Rdio a shot because it was free and had just launched but their selection was woefully slim (they were missing big names like The Arcade Fire among some lesser stuff I was hoping for). From there I turned to MOG and I’ve been fairly impressed. Their selection is good, the iPhone app is passable, as is their web-based player, but I don’t think I’ve discovered all that much.
MOG does have a feature on the web player that allows you to broaden your horizons by including similar artists to the one at the top of your playlist, but it’s just not diverse. It’s the same thing with Pandora. What I want is some sort of discovery mode, where the player throws a wide selection of stuff at you, based not just on the music you’re listening to, but what other people interested in that selection listen to. I would love if it there was even some sort of blacklist feature so that you wouldn’t get the same old mix.
As a for instance, I’m listening to The Hold Steady right now. The similar artist list is about what you’d expect – Modest Mouse, A.C. Newman, Spoon, White Rabbits – all bands that someone listening to The Hold Steady would probably say, “Hey, you’d like these guys, too.” I don’t need that kind of guarantee, though. I want to hear a mix of stuff I might not like and might like and might be surprised I like, and I haven’t found a music service that provides that.
I probably won’t renew my MOG subscription beyond a month because I’m not getting a whole lot more from it than I can get from a Pandora. The on-demand is nice, but the web-player is a little clunky, and I have plenty of music to get through on my own.
MacRumors has pictures of what could very well be the screen and bezel from the new iPod Touch. The most notable feature you can see is the little pinhole near the top that looks to be the spot for a FaceTime camera.
None of this is really exciting, considering we already knew that FaceTime would be moving to non-iPhone devices some time this year and that it would start relying on email addresses instead of phone numbers to connect users. From what we know so far, it looks like the fourth-generation Touch could be on track for a september release.
