iPod

Vox Pop: What's on your iPhone app wish list?

Merlin — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:42:10 -0400

Now that Steve has announced there's an iPhone/iPod Touch SDK coming in February, what's at the top of your application wish list?

The Question to You

What’s the first application for iPhone you’d like to see? Where’s the biggest hole in your iPhone world right now?

Perhaps not surprisingly, I'm hoping for a great, sync-able, no-internet-required task management application. Can't wait to see what my OmniFocus pals come up with.

”Vox Pop: What's on your iPhone app wish list?” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 17, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Microsoft to boldly go where Apple is already going...eventually

Merlin — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 09:17:58 -0400

Microsoft changes tune on selling DRM-free songs

Exciting news on the digital music front. Microsoft plans to follow Apple's plan to sell DRM-free tracks from EMI to its extant army of Zune enthusiasts. Welcome to the social:

"The EMI announcement on Monday was not exclusive to Apple," said Katy Asher, a Microsoft spokeswoman on the Zune team, in an e-mail to the IDG News Service today. She said Microsoft has been talking with EMI and other record labels "for some time now" about offering unprotected music on its Zune players in an effort to meet the needs of its customers.

Way to innovate, Redmond. Once the period of EMI's exclusive deal with Apple has ended, this should make both Zune owners very happy.

[via: Boing Boing: Microsoft dropping DRM from Zune Music Store]

”Microsoft to boldly go where Apple is already going...eventually” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on April 07, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Vox Pop: Want HD video from iTunes and Apple TV?

Merlin — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 12:03:07 -0400

Since the new TV can handle video up to HD's 720p resolution, there's been a lot of speculation about whether the iTunes store will eventually start selling HD content, such as TV shows and movies. You can bet that the desire for that quality of presentation is theoretically out there (at least it is for this HD TV owner). The problem, as many folks have discussed at length, is that the file size for HD movies, in particular, may be prohibitively large for the garden-variety home broadband user.

As Greg Keene notes, "With simple math, we can extrapolate that a 2-hour movie would be about 3.9 GB." That's not only a substantially lengthy download for, say, a residential DSL subscriber, it also represents the investment of over 10% of the available space on the Apple TV's drive (as well as, it should be noted, an equivalent chunk of space back on your Mac or PC's disk).

In his very good "Apple TV: iTunes Store Movie Quality vs DVD, HD, Cable," Daniel Eran writes:

Since the existing "near DVD" quality movies are already large downloads, Apple would either have to highly compress HDTV or accommodate much longer downloads. Don’t expect a sudden move to HDTV from iTunes...

Apple optimistically estimates that broadband iTunes users can download its “near DVD quality” movies in a couple hours, so HD movies would either take well over a day of sustained downloading at full tilt, or require far more compression.

This is one reason I think the Apple TV may be giving a kind of temporary competitive advantage to producers of shorter-length HD content, such as -- well -- let's say video podcasters. It's a big reason behind our decision to start shooting and releasing The Merlin Show in 720p over the next month or so. The current hi-res version of the show -- which actually looks pretty good on my Apple TV -- is presented at widescreen 854x480, which makes our most recent, 14-minute episode weigh in at 88 MB (about 6 MB/minute).

Here's a comparison of the three screen resolutions (720p, hi-res/854x480, and iPod/320x176) for reference (This is just for relative size comparison; you can mentally change the image's "mm" to "px.")

Seems to me that the typical expectation for podcasts is that, while they will be released on a relatively regular basis, they will also get downloaded automatically in the background and then get synched to a device like a Video iPod or TV for viewing at the user's convenience.

But, movies, and to a lesser extent, single episodes of TV shows, strike me as more of an impulse item -- something you want to download and watch more or less now. Knowing there's two hours and multiple gigs of disk space between you and Norbit might be a disincentive to downloading, right? But, then again, people don't seem to mind the wait of their Netflix queue, right? I dunno. You tell me.

Given the constraints of time and disk space, would you purchase (and wait for the download of) HD content for your TV? What do you think is an acceptable resolution for content on your HD TV? Anybody hacked on their unit yet? Whither TV, iTunes, and HD?

”Vox Pop: Want HD video from iTunes and Apple TV?” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 25, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Cool-looking "Buddha Machine"

Merlin — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 18:38:54 -0500

FM3 BUDDHA MACHINE

I've been hearing about the $25 Buddha Machine for a while (I recall Leo mentioning it once) and was tempted enough to go ahead and order my own today over on Forced Exposure (probably not least because of the amazing exploded drawing they use as a logo).

From the FAQ (which comes from a Pop Matters review):

The Buddha Machine is a little plastic box that plays music.

Specifically, FM3 constructed nine drones, varying from two seconds to 42 seconds, which repeat endlessly in the listener’s ear until the “track” is switched to the next drone (or the two AA batteries run out).

Sean notes that the manufacturers will also let you download uncompressed versions of the 9 included drones for free, so you could presumably emulate some of the functionality on your iPod. Friendly.

Anybody out there got one of these? How you enjoying it?

”Cool-looking "Buddha Machine"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 11, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Introducing the Hipster Shuffle

Merlin — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 21:50:58 -0500

Restless Dreaming » Hipster Shuffle

The crickets. Awesome.

[ via Daring Fireball ]

”Introducing the Hipster Shuffle” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 29, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Let OS X developers at the iPhone. Please.

Merlin — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 08:56:25 -0500

Sixfoot6 Archives: 30 Things the iPhone Could Do That You Haven't Thought of Yet

Ryan's list contains a lot of the tear-inducingly sexy fantasies that were going through my own mind on Tuesday morning when we all heard that the iPhone was going to run OS X.

Like a lot of my friends, I (probably naively) took the announcement to mean that, as on my own Mac, I'd be able to install Cocoa applications built to take advantage of announced features like WebKit, Core Animation, and so on. Sure, given the foreseeable hardware limitations, these wouldn't be the exact applications that we're each running on our MacBooks today, but, hell, I'd take "OmniOutliner Mobile" or "iTerm Lite" or "Textmate for iPhone" in a heartbeat. No question.

Yesterday morning, though, I started to hear rumbles about the "inability for users to install additional applications of their choosing." And then later, after Brian from Gizmodo got a hands-on demo along with a sit-down with official Apple honchos, he noted...

It isn't OS X proper, as you'd expect. And like an iPod, it won't be an open system that people can develop for. Remember, this is both an iPod and a Phone.

...and I died a little inside.

Yes, there's still months for this to change, and yes, this is a 1.0, and yes, one reason the iPod became the iPod is because Cupertino retained 100% quality control (up to the point of individual musical taste). So I would completely understand why user-installable applications are off the table. Or how, as my friends have speculated, third-party functionality might be handled in a tightly controlled and for-pay way (ala iPod Games).

Yes I'd understand, but I'd feel like Apple was abandoning an opportunity to make this more than a phone, and more that an iPod, and even -- let's be frank about the elephant in the room -- much more than a Palm or a Pocket PC. There's the potential here for some serious George Jetson shit and it would be a pity not to capitalize on that as early as possible.

I hope our friends at Apple will clarify what we can expect this phone to do for us as Mac users and share that information with developers as soon as possible. To be more honest I guess I wish some C-level would pop in to say "Oh, silly. It's OS X: of course you can just drop mobile versions of your applications onto iTunes and they're installed for you!" But, regrettably for now, I think that ain't gonna happen. And it's a bummer.

This week there are a lot of excellent software companies wandering around the floor at Macworld scratching their heads and muttering to themselves about the under-development products that could really benefit from having OS X mobile functionality. They're anxious and thrilled to start doing what indie developers have always done for Apple -- provide the software that answers questions, solves problems, and gives us the personalized affordances to love using Apple hardware all the more.

When it hits stores this summer, the iPhone will be reaching thousands of people who "hate macs." And, as with the iPod, that's obviously the idea (note that this is not a "Mac Phone"). If our beloved OS X developers can introduce people on the other side to the richness and variety of the OS X Mac experience via this lovely phone, you can expect to make an extraordinary number of those former haters into new evangelists for the former "Apple Computer, Inc."

[ Ryan's page via mathowie ]

”Let OS X developers at the iPhone. Please.” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 11, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Podophile on Actiontastic for GTD with your iPod

Merlin — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 08:24:08 -0500

Getting Things Done With Your iPod

My head swims with the number of Mac GTD apps that have sprung up over the last year or so, one of which is the Quicksilver-friendly Actiontastic. Although I haven't spent more than a few minutes playing with Actiontastic, as described by Podophile it appears to merit a look for Hipster PDA-centric iPod fans:

Syncing to my iPod is obviously another big feature for me. At the click of a button, all of your Projects and Context Lists are sent to your Notes folder, making it easy to review them anywhere you happen to be. Obviously, you can’t add or edit items directly with your iPod, but that’s why I always carry my Hipster POD with me. It’s easy enough to input any new items when I get back to my computer.

Funny thing. My newish Treo died two weeks ago, and I've been too busy to get it fixed. Yet, pretty much as I'd predicted to myself when I bought it late last summer, I'm not really missing it. I still was using index cards for on-the-go capture, and, thus far, since the Treo's demise, I find myself no poorer for not being able to check email on MUNI. Yeah, I definitely will get it fixed (Man, I love having Google Maps with me everywhere), but it is interesting how fundamentally a Hipster POD-esque approach must have been encoded on my brain.

[ via LifeDev - GTD for iPods ]

”Podophile on Actiontastic for GTD with your iPod” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on December 28, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Bandwagon: Links not to miss, 2006-11-27

Merlin — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 09:41:34 -0500

A few links that have been pretty popular on other sites, which I'd be remiss not to mention in passing here:

Hacking Email: 99 Email Security and Productivity Tips - Shovelsful of email usefulness here.
- What's to like here: the faceted approach, which suggests that there are many ways to look at email -- put differently, that there may be a lot of people out there who don't see this medium the way you do. Gosh, but that's a good lesson to pick up.
3 Tips to Maximize iPod Battery Life :: Bright Delight - My own iPod battery life is a subject of much consternation in our household. It seems to allow us fewer and fewer Battlestar Galacticas-per-charge (BGPC) all the time.
- What's to like here: The volume limit tip is new to me. Would like to see some numbers on how much this contributes to battery life, but it seems like a smart enough idea.
Pile of Indexcards - Selection - Wow. I thought I was really into index cards.
- What's to like here: Exhaustively nerdy, illustrated exegesis is sure to contain ideas that will rekindle your affection for the modest three by five. Fun stuff.
10 OS X Apps You Might Not Know About But Should -
- What's to like here: Some new-to-me gems (GarageSale, Connoisseur), plus any list with ChronoSync is okay by me.

”Bandwagon: Links not to miss, 2006-11-27” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 27, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Revenge of the Smart Playlist: 5 tricks for packrats & power users

Merlin — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 10:56:21 -0500

The success of yesterday's post on the basics of Smart Playlists makes me think you might enjoy seeing a few more. So, today I want to show you how to get control of a very large iTunes library -- to save space by getting rid of stuff you're not enjoying or listening to, as well as bubble up stuff you may not even realize you like.

If you are an iTunes packrat but feel overwhelmed by your collection (or are simply running out of drive space), try these recipes for Smart Playlists to help you get it together.

Step 0: Backup

Before doing anything too fancy with your iTunes (or with anything else for that matter), always do a backup.

This could be as simple as dragging your library to an external drive, although personally I'd recommend a smarter tool -- I recommend rsync for geeks, and ChronoSync for civilians.

In any case, don't yell at me if you get confused and permanently delete your heirloom recordings. 'Nuff said.

Big and Useless

This is the dullest instrument in our drawer, but if you're on deadline for a video editing project and suddenly realize you have 200mb of disk space left -- well, you need to delete some shit fast.

This Smart Playlist, as you can see, looks for the biggest bang for the buck in terms of deletion. It's the fastest way to find very large files that you aren't listening to much. You could also use something like What Size for this, but, you know, that would be cheating.

Basic Culling

This one's not much more sophisticated, but, if you're doing regular backups, it's my favorite way to quickly and responsibly reduce the disk space used by your library. As with many of these lists, you'll start to see the value of rating your music; in addition to improving the quality of your lists and listening experience, it eventually becomes a quick way to determine which music you can afford to dump in a pinch.

Old Podcasts

Man, if you aren't careful, podcasts will eat your lunch. Although iTunes provides useful tools for managing the number of eps you keep, per podcast series, you'll be amazed how quickly old episodes will fill up your drive.

This little fella does something insanely simple but critical; it pulls up any podcasts that you've already listened to, making it easy to select them all and delete quickly (without lots of COMMAND- clicking in the "Podcasts" window)

Sure you really like that?

This simple auditor calls you on your ratings. It looks at your higher-rated songs and sees if you're skipping them often -- a good sign you don't like them as much as you claim. Very helpful way to refactor if you realize you've gotten too enthusiastic with the 5-star ratings.

Rate these

This does something like the opposite of the previous list -- it pulls up songs that you've listened to a lot but have never rated. Again, if you're going to get the most out of your Smart Playlists, it pays to rate stuff you have a strong opinion about. This is one of the fastest ways to do that.

You get the basic idea at this point. By tagging the crap out of your songs, adding correct genres, and rating rating rating, you can produce a library that is both more enjoyable and way more manageable. Even if you save every track you've ever added, you can always benefit from the history of your behavior that iTunes has collected and exposed.

”Revenge of the Smart Playlist: 5 tricks for packrats & power users” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 10, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

"Music Only" for your iTunes playlists

Merlin — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 12:18:28 -0500

New for Friday 11/10:
Revenge of the Smart Playlist: 5 tricks for packrats & power users »

In my MacBreak Weekly capacity as Vice-President in Charge of Digging Pointless Ratholes™, I recently mentioned some tricks that I use to create better playlists in iTunes. One of these tricks -- which is an oldie, and which I'm certain I yoinked from some uncredited smarter person out in the blogtropolis -- is to create a "Music Only" list.

So you know how you have increasing buttloads of non-music (podcasts, audio books, etc.) in your iTunes library? It's really annoying to throw on one of your sexy Smart Playlists or the Party Shuffle, only to have a 20 minute nap or a Noam Chomsky lecture kick in.

I get around this by basing almost all my Smart Playlists on my one canonical "Music Only" list, which currently looks like this:

Yes, it's very hacky, and yes there's probably a more elegant way to accomplish this effect, but so far it's been a handy jumping off point for my favorite Smart Playlists. This helps me build stuff like...

New and unlistened-to

My neglected lovers

If you're even a casual iTunes user, it pays to spend some time rating your songs (no they can't all be "5 stars"), adding rich metadata, and building Smart Playlists. So powerful. And it you're using a (GUI-free) iPod Shuffle but not Smart Playlists? Man, that's just nuts.

New for Friday 11/10:
Revenge of the Smart Playlist: 5 tricks for packrats & power users

By popular demand, here are five more Smart Playlists, designed to help you manage very large libraries and bubble up interesting tracks (that you may not realize you like). (more »)

”"Music Only" for your iTunes playlists” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 09, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"