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Robby Burns
David MacDonald unboxes the Odla music notation ...
David MacDonald unboxes the Odla music notation controller

Confessions of a Vinyl Junkie | David Bowie's 25 Favorite Albums

Confessions of a Vinyl Junkie | David Bowie’s 25 Favorite Albums is a good read.

It's just fascinating to see how eclectic Bowie's interests were.

I find my musical tastes to be just as all over the place and really related to the list. I look forward to digging through it over the next few days.

Here is a link to an Apple Music playlist I made containing all of the albums I could find. In some cases, I replaced the version on Bowie's list with an alternate recording to accommodate as many of the albums as I could.

iOS 9.3 Preview

Apple has released a preview of iOS 9.3. This update is in beta and will contain many new decent features. Nothing big, but stuff that Apple typically does not add to their operating systems mid-year. This a much welcome change and allows Apple to stay current in ways that they could not on an annual software release cycle. I am really happy to see Apple Music features in the car, thumbprint protected notes, and suggested apps that can feed the data in the Health app. Also interesting is the Night Shift feature which will warm the colors of your screen when it gets dark at night to make it easier on your eyes. This is just a month or so after the developers of f.lux (popular screen temperature app for the desktop) figured out how to release it for iOS through process of sideloading only for Apple to ask them to remove it soon afterwards.

Most surprising to me is the last section on the iPad in education. It looks like Apple is adding multiple user accounts to the iPad for classrooms and is adding a classroom management app. This is interesting especially because of CEO Tim Cook's recent comments to Buzzfeed when asked about the growing ubiquity of Chromebooks in the classroom.

Google’s Chromebooks have overtaken Apple products as the most popular devices in American classrooms, but Apple CEO Tim Cook says the company will not be following the search giant’s approach to the education market, which has been a stronghold for Apple since the early days of the Mac.

“Assessments don’t create learning,” Cook said in an interview with BuzzFeed News Wednesday, calling the cheap laptops that have proliferated through American classrooms mere “test machines.”

“We are interested in helping students learn and teachers teach, but tests, no,” Cook said. “We create products that are whole solutions for people — that allow kids to learn how to create and engage on a different level.”

Apple has been deeply connected to schools since it first rolled out mass market personal computers in the 1980s, and has long offered big discounts to students and teachers. But its education market share has been snatched away by the Google-branded Chromebooks, which are outselling not just Apple but everyone else in the tech business.

I am very excited about these new features, what it means for Apple to break the annual software release cycle, and how they might fight for their place in the classroom.

My favorite apps of 2015

I feel the need to defend these apps in a way that I didn't for my favorite albums of 2015 list I posted yesterday. In part, this is because music's role in my life has a certain type of inevitability that makes it difficult for me to immediately understand its value myself. Secondly, the music I experienced this past year is worth so many more words than I could possibly type. Finally, apps, especially paid ones, tend to require a defense; a "why do I need to buy this?" Their value is also often technical and practical, and can be condensed down into a few sentences.

Productivity

Documents by Readdle

I can't remember what getting work done on an iPad or iPhone felt like before discovering this app. Think of this as the missing Finder on iOS.

Due

My new favorite for setting timers and reminders. I like how persistently it bugs me until I actually complete the task.

Workflow

Unbelievable automator for creating multi step workflows on iOS.

Scannable

For getting all physical paper into the cloud as beautifully formatted, text searchable, PDFs. Syncs effortlessly to Evernote, lightning fast, and zero step scanning.

Apple Notes

Stellar update this year to the notes app that comes bundled with Apple devices. I love the rich text formatting, web clipping, and list support.

OmniGraffle

A great app by the makers of two of my favorites: OmniFocus and OmniOutliner. OmniGraffle has come to replace Adobe Illustrator for me. It is my go-to for designing graphics. Specifically, I use it to design seating charts for my classes.

IFTTT

Amazing service for linking different internet connected services and devices. You can create if-then statements to automate them. Example: If I am tagged in a Facebook post, save that photo to my Dropbox. Another example: When I arrive at home, then turn on the lights in my house.

Paprika

Cooking game changer! My wife and I clip recipes from the web into this app and it formats them beautifully so we can isolate ingredients, directions, and set timers. It has a built in grocery list and meal planning feature that can send data to Apple Reminders and Calendar apps, respectively.

Overcast

I have been listening to a lot of podcasts this year. Overcast offers the best experience of all the podcast apps I have tried.

Music

forScore

Not a new app to me but I have really taken to organizing my scores on the iPad with this app over the last year. It has truly revolutionized my musical workflow throughout my band directing, private teaching, gigging, and church music directing jobs.

Tempo

Still my favorite metronome app on iOS.

Tunable

My favorite tuning app. Features gamified tuning, polyphonic tuning drones, just intonation, and simultaneous metronome and tuner playback.

Health

Using these apps (and more) in combination with the Apple Health app and Apple Watch, I have lost about 30 pounds since late August. Ok, really, I worked out and changed my diet some, but the apps helped.

Waterminder

Helps me set goals for water consumption and see my progress each day. Logging water is easy with the Apple Watch app and all data syncs to the Apple Health app.

Lark

This app is fun for tracking work outs and food, but I use it primarily to track the hours I sleep each night. It accomplishes this through the motion of my iPhone.

myfitnesspal

I have been using this app to track calorie and nutrition data for almost a year now. Really easy and addictive to use once you get into a routine.

Spire

This app, in combination with the wearable tracker by the same name, has allowed me to track trends in my breathing for the last few months. The app categorizes my breathing patterns into "focus," "tense," "calm," and "activity." When it senses a streak of tension, it sends my watch a message to breathe slower. It also allows me to set goals for minutes of focus per day, offers guided meditation, and syncs respiratory rate data to Apple Health.

Home

All of these require home automated hardware to be useful. By recommending them, I am recommending the devices themselves as well.

Harmony

Automated TV remote. No more fuss over HDMI inputs and multiple remotes. This app controls all of the things plugged into my TV and allows me to trigger different things on and off with simple one tap button presses.

Philips Hue

Lights that connect to wifi. These can be controlled from a phone app, automated with services like IFTTT, and commanded with Siri.

Sonos

High quality speakers that connect to one another over a home wifi network.

Games

Crossy Road

Shooty Skies

PAC-MAN 265

My favorite albums of 2015

NPR Music's 50 Favorite Albums of 2015

It is time for one of my favorite recent holiday traditions!

Every year around this time, I look forward to creating a Spotify playlist containing NPR's favorite albums of the year. Every year, I have a great old time driving around doing various holiday tasks and traveling to and from gigs while soaking in tons of new great music. The lists always last me far into the following year too. I hope you enjoy the playlist.

Click here to see NPR Music's 50 Favorite Albums of 2015.

Click here to listen to my playlist.

Happy holidays!

iTunes Match song limit increase

The iTunes Match song limit has been increased from 25,000 to 100,000!

This is a big deal for me because my iTunes library is massive. It is full of large libraries of classical and jazz. Additionally, I archive all of my music projects, concert recordings, and educational materials there. Now that the limit has increased, I can actually sync my iTunes playlists of all this personal data across all my Apple devices which is pretty powerful. I am even warming up to the idea of importing music from multiple machines instead of all from my desktop which is currently my media "hub" (where local copies of my videos, photos, and audio is stored).

Apple Music - Take Two

Since canceling my Apple Music subscription after the free trial, I have continued living life as a happy Spotify user. iTunes and Apple Music are the companies most disgraceful products. The music apps on OS X and iOS are inscrutable disasters of design. During the free trial, playlists and songs would not consistently sync between my devices. And managing the difference between an iTunes Match subscription and an iCloud Music Library still doesn't make much sense to me.

Still, it has bugged me that I couldn't figure it out all out. I still have this desire to see my streaming songs alongside my archive of personal audio. And one of the reasons I have been holding out is about to change. Apple Music is finally coming to Sonos. I figured it was time to give the service another trial.

When I signed up again this afternoon I was met with all of the same syncing problems as before. My MacBook, though signed into the iCloud Music Library, was acting as if it wasn't, and I could not make any sense of what was syncing and what was not. Naturally, I decided to complain about this on Twitter. But it was then that I realized Apple has an Apple Music Help account. I decided to give it a try. I have been DMing them all afternoon and they are fast, helpful, and human. I feel like they hear my concerns, comprehend them fully, and address them each thoroughly. After a few hours, I am now seeing that most of my playlists and songs are syncing between my two Macs for the first time.

I still think Apple needs to overhaul iTunes and Apple Music in 2016. If they could make syncing audio work like their new Photos app, it would be a dream. Until then, I am having a better experience the second time around. And combined with my new subscription to YouTube Red (which automatically subscribes me to Google Music), I might be able to seriously consider ditching the paid Spotify tier.

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