I will be presenting at the New York State School Music Association Conference in Rochester, NY this Wednesday, December 2nd at 9:30 am.
Find me in room 100, the Hilton Garden Eggleston.
Click here to view the session notes and save them to Evernote.
Click here to see a list of pro music software compatibility with Apple's new OS X update, El Capitan.
Generally, I update my MacBook Pro to new Apple software immediately given that it is mostly used for documents and email.
I usually wait 2-6 months to update my desktop Mac Pro that I use for music production just to be safe.
iOS 9 was released this past week. I have been running the beta on my iPhone and iPad since late July and it is just really a great update.
Here are a few unsorted thoughts on the update:
- Battery life. Battery management has improved tremendously. I can actually get through most days using my phone like a normal person without needing a recharge at 3pm. Low power mode is also a nice touch. At 20 percent, my phone offers to conserve battery life by doing things like turning down the backlight and restricting apps from running in the background.
- Power features on iPad. Now the iPad can view two apps on the screen at once. You can also close out of an app you are watching a video on and the video will stay visible in the corner of the screen even when you leave and enter into other apps. I also love the keyboard update. Dragging with two fingers on the iPad keyboard turns it into a curser. No more pressing and holding to use that flakey magnifying glass.
- Spotlight for all apps! Now any app can allow you to search its contents from the Spotlight search, making it really easy to search apps like Dropbox and Documents. Sadly, Evernote has not enabled this feature yet.
- Siri is quiet. Small thing. But I love that Siri does not make a "boop" sound when activated anymore.
- Proactivity. Now my phone tells me when I need to leave for my next appointment based on my calendar and traffic info. It also searches the signatures of emails sent to me to suggest the names of people who are calling me if their names are not in my contacts list. Some of these features are lackluster. For example, going to the Spotlight search is supposed to suggest to you the apps you use and the people it thinks you might want to interact with based on usage patterns. I have found it to more often just suggest recently opened apps. But I have been noticing all sorts of other features of this nature that Apple has quietly added. For example, today I got in my car and booted up Apple Maps. The first option for directions was to my friend's house. The address had a mail icon next to it. I can only assume that Maps looked in my mail and saw the email from that friend inviting me to a party, including both that days date and his address, so it connected the dots and suggested that I might be driving there at that time. Fantastic!
- Another great example of Proactivity. Every morning, I launch an app that my school system uses to take student attendance on. Now, around the start of my first period class every morning, my iPad has been showing me a tiny version of the icon for that app in the lower left corner of the screen. All I have to do is touch it and swipe up to instantly launch into that app.
- You can now search for different parts of the Settings app!
- The new system wide font looks great.
- Maps is smarter and more accurate than ever before.
- Reminders stay on the lock screen until they are checked off to be extra remind-y.
- The new Notes app is awesome. But it is just not going to replace Evernote for me.
If you have been scared to update an Apple device before due to them being buggy or taking up too much space, I would still encourage you to download iOS 9 immediately. Not only does it have all the features listed above and more, but it really does feel a hundred more times polished than the updates of the past few years.
Here are a few of my favorite reviews of the operating system so far:
iOS 9: The MacStories Review, Created on iPad | FEDERICO VITICCI
This post by Christopher Russel does a great job capturing my feelings about the importance of the Apple Watch in a busy classroom environment.
The surprise Apple Watch feature this week has been a combination of Siri and Alarms. Yes, alarms.
Our Middle School has no bells (other than start of the day and end of the day). We have different schedules all the time. So what I have done is this: at the end of one class, I raise my wrist, say, “Hey Siri, set an Alarm for 10:15” (or whatever the ending time of the next class is).
At 10:15, my watch dings, but more importantly, taps my wrist, and I know that I need to dismiss students.
I cannot overstate the importance of alarms. My school has bells this year and I STILL need alarms to remind me when to let kids pack up in time to be at their next classes. I am usually setting alarms throughout the entire day. In the frantic moments of teaching it absolutely does make a difference to save a few moments asking Siri on my wrist to do it rather than fiddling around with my phone.
The same goes for notifications. I am always on the move at school. And I am able to be attentive to so many things without ever stopping the task at hand. I get notifications from Slack (the messaging service our music department uses to collaborate), iMessage, and important staff emails. This might seem unnecessary, but I love being able to know if one of my colleagues is sending me a troublesome student or if there is going to be a fire drill at a particular time that afternoon without dropping what I am doing. I keep all of my Apple devices on silent or do not disturb mode so I only get notified by the gentle haptic feedback on my wrist. The only exception is when I am sitting in front of my Mac which I also leave in do not disturb mode at work but see the little red badge on various apps to know I need to attend to something. Watch notifications are non intrusive enough that I can easily ignore them. But they are still pretty non intrusive even if I choose to read them. I think the basic clock and notification features of the Apple Watch are so well implemented that they very well may be the "killer apps" everyone is always saying a new and innovative product needs to have. At least they are for me.
That being said, I am curious to see what other kinds of apps can be made when Apple releases watchOS 2 on September 16th. This update is shipping with a native SDK which will allow software developers to make their apps perform a lot faster (all third party apps are garbage slow right now) and take advantage of the hardware of the watch, particularly the digital crown, speakers, and haptic engine. I am desperately awaiting a metronome app for the watch that allows me to change the tempo with the crown and feel the tempo with haptic feedback rather than the speakers.
Click here to read The New York Times's coverage.
Oliver Sacks's books have had a huge impact on me. I especially recommend you read Musicophilia if you are interested in him and do not know where to start.
Good post by Daniel Andrews that sums up some of my relationship with Apple products lately.
The only Apple apps on my home screen are Mail, Messages, Camera, Photos and Passbook. Not a great ratio. I mention this because it makes it easier for myself and anyone else to decide to try another platform if they like if their vendor lock-in is so low. Further, if users get in the habit of looking at default Apple apps on iOS and thinking “oh, I don’t need this” it actually creates a negative perception in their mind. Apple isn’t in the “surprise and delight” business as much as they used to be – instead, they’re focused on locking their users into their ecosystem, and honestly the apps they’re using to do that are not very good.
For me, it's Messages, Photos, and Safari. Messages and Safari are solid apps. No complaints there. Photos is great too, a true example that Apple can do cloud services. However, I use Dropbox instead of iCloud Drive in most cases because it is more reliable and has better sharing features. Google Maps instead of Apple Maps for the same reason. Overcast over the Podcasts app, mostly because it is more reliable but also because it's design is top class (and because I truly miss it's smart speed feature when I am using another app). I use Evernote over Notes mostly because Evernote has features that allow me to get stuff into it more easily. I use Fantastical over Calendar for reasons that could fill another blog post. And I use Outlook over Mail beacuse it allows me to attach documents from cloud services, snooze mail, and more.
Apple does have a tendency for making apps that are “just good enough.” This has always been the case with Apple. It's not disappointing that there are often more powerful third party alternatives. This is the nature of software. That being said, the more Apple requires you to use their apps to get features deeply tied into the operating system (for example, saying “Siri, take me home” and getting instant directions through, and only through, Apple Maps), the more disappointed I become. These deep connections to the operating system are often massively time saving which is especially noticeable on mobile devices.
Additionally, I’ve begun to hedge my bets and avoid buying into Apple’s ecosystem too much when I can avoid it. This means that instead of buying lots of Airplay-compatible speakers, I’ll be buying a Sonos system instead. Rather than looking at something that is HomeKit based, I might invest in a Nest instead. And obviously, I trust Apple with their cloud services as little as possible – instead, I use Google’s cloud, Dropbox and others with my data these days. Instead of doubling down on Apple’s streaming solutions in the household, I’m buying a NAS that can work with any HTPC or video streaming solution. I’m not looking to get out of the Apple ecosystem per se, but I am making sure that if things continue to trend in a downward fashion I have a fairly easy exodus ahead of me.
Once you start getting used to bugs, it is really easy to stop trying the new features that make new technology so compelling.
Some of Apple's recent software issues that have plagued me are: AirDrop and AirPlay never working reliably (so frustrating for dining room music listening that I recently bought a Sonos and it works great!), frequent iOS animation lagging and crashes, searching in Apple Maps, everything about Apple Music, iCloud Drive syncing reliability, Mail app syncing, and more…
The bottom line is: Apple can't be criticized for making software that some people don't want to use. They are the least guilty of this. Samsung phones come with tons of useless software installed on them. Windows PCs come with countless apps that most users don't even know the meaning of. This has always been part of owning a computer. That being said, Apple is loosing my trust with unreliable software, particularly when it comes to maps and music. Truthfully, I don't think they need to make the best software in the world. I just wish I could set some defaults on my iOS devices. Simple things like web browsers, maps, and mail so that I could take advantage of the third party options like I can on a Mac. This kind of ecosystem lock-in appears to be the way of mobile operating systems, but if Apple is going to hold my feet the the fire with their default apps, they have a lot of work to do to keep me happy.
Couldn't agree more with this post from MacStories. The original story they are covering is this post from the app developer Steamclock about limitations that third party apps have when accessing iTunes tracks stored in the cloud.
From Steamclock's blog post:
According to our latest stats, 17% of Party Monster users have been unable to play a song in their iTunes library, and 22% of WeddingDJ users have tried to cue a playlist that has so many unplayable tracks that we need to display a warning. While it’s a miracle that we’ve been able to maintain a 4 star rating through all of this, it’s not going to last if we stay the course.
Given all of this, we have a couple options. We could double down and go pro, catering to serious DJs who can load DRM-free music into our sandbox. Pro DJs who use our apps often have a large licensed library of songs, and won’t rely on iTunes Match or Apple Music.
Alternatively, we could steer towards the mass market, drop crossfading support, and regain full iTunes compatibility. We could also put in the work to add support for Spotify or other competing streaming services, and focus our apps less on playback features and more on having a great UI for queueing.
I am glad this problem is getting some publicity. I have been frustrated with the fact that iTunes tracks can't stream from third party apps for years.
Robinson Meyer's The Tragedy of iTunes and Classical Music is the best thing I have read all week. It is a perfect overview of the problems haunting serious music geeks when it comes to archiving large and complex music collections in iTunes.
When the developer Erik Kemp designed the first metadata system for MP3s in 1996, he provided only three options for attaching text to the music. Every audio file could be labeled with only an artist, song name, and album title.
Kemp’s system has since been augmented and improved upon, but never replaced. Which makes sense: Like the web itself, his schema was shipped, good enough, and an improvement on the vacuum which preceded it. Those three big tags, as they’re called, work well with pop and rock written between 1960 and 1995. This didn’t prevent rampant mislabeling in the early days of the web, though, as anyone who remembers Napster can tell you. His system stumbles even more, though, when it needs to capture hip hop’s tradition of guest MCs or jazz’s vibrant culture of studio musicianship.
And they really, really fall apart when they need to classify classical music.
Read the whole thing, it's great! File this under "things I wish I had written myself."
Apple Music was released a week ago today. I have spent the past week digging deep into it’s features. Below you will find my early impressions and links to all of the Apple Music research that I have found useful in understanding How Apple Music works, how it should best be understood, what it means for Apple’s future, and how to reconcile it’s use with other streaming solutions.
One of the primary questions I asked before starting my Apple Music free trial was “Will this replace Spotify?” Despite my power user needs, the bar is actually low for me. All Apple Music really needs to do is allow me to stream a majority of their library, for a reasonable price, and allow me to integrate it into my existing iTunes Library. In other words: Give me a reason to stop using two different music apps where I want to just use one. Apple Music accomplishes this. Using it feels like augmenting my existing library with practically everything on the iTunes Store. Using Spotify felt more like using one app for my personal library (iTunes) and another separate but magical app (Spotify) to funnel me into a realm of endless music.
Although Apple Music satisfies this basic need for me, there are a few features that I have come to like in Spotify. I think they do the social stuff just right. Just right for me, anyway. I like following my Facebook friends to see what they are listening to. I love the ease of publishing public playlists I have created from Spotify, knowing that anyone, even with a free account, can listen to that playlist from a desktop computer.
Apple’s take on social is a little different. The focus is less about consumer to consumer and more about musician to consumer. In theory, this is great, because with their message that Apple Music Connect (this is what they are calling their social feature) will more easily allow artists to connect with fans, they also claim that the barrier to entry is easy enough for anyone with a drum machine and a microphone to pass. In practice, I am not sure this is true. As a musician, I imagine I will want to start an Apple Music Connect account for artists some time. I tried this the other day and the process is a little more cumbersome than expected.
None the less, I am not sure that connect will really take off unless artists are actually using it. Apple says the motivation to do so is that it will give them one place to connect with fans instead of many (Facebook, Instagram, Sound Cloud, etc…) but in reality, it seems to just be adding one more thing.
From a consumer perspective, I would much rather Apple focus on the user. As mentioned above, I love shared playlists in Spotify. Some like minded musicians and I have a playlist we use to share music we are listening to with each other from each of our respective computers all over the country. It’s great. Perhaps my interest in these features has to do with the fact that I know what music I like. I am an archivist when it comes to data and a curator when it comes to music, a position that Apple has taken into their own control with Apple Music. More on that next.
One of the strongest messages of Apple Music is as follows. All other third party services give you algorithmically determined discovery features by interpreting what you like and playing you more of it. Apple Music, by contrast, features a LOT of playlists curated by real people. Go to Apple Music and search for the word “curators” to see a list of all of them. The idea behind this is that music requires a little bit of the human touch. And I agree. And I am really convinced by some of the playlists they have recommended to me so far. Playlists like “As a Sideman: John Coltrane,” “Baroque: The Golden Age of the Trio Sonata,” and hip-hop series “Hipster’s Paradise” certainly reflect the human touch. They are all well conceived by experts and geeks who love those styles of music. Not only that, but each playlist has a logical flow from start to finish, much like the perfect mixed-tape from a musically inclined friend.
In addition to these playlists (which by the way are recommended to the user underneath the “For You” and “New” tab from within the app), Apple has launched a new radio service called Beats1. You can still listen to the old radio stations that are algorithmically curated à la Pandora but Beats1 features real live human djays “always on and worldwide.” Pretty cool concept. And although it plays mostly only pop and hip-hop whenever I have tuned in, I like it a lot more than what I hear on standard radio. I don’t have much more to say about this in terms of Apple’s philosophy. It is all part of the same message that human curation is the key to music discovery.
This is the reason that Apple appears to have purchased Beats rather than another streaming service like Rdio or Spotify. As a stand-alone service, Beats has had these curated playlists for a while. If the acquisition didn’t make sense then, it definitely does now. This music service is designed around the idea that Apple knows what is best for me and makes the decision for me. This is the most Apple-y thing about it. This is the same company that decided not to give users access to the file system on iOS devices because it would complicate the perfect experience of using the product in the way they have designed it to be used.
Fortunately, Apple Music mostly pulls off this experience effectively and with style. That being said, I fail to see how it will continue to set them apart from the competition. Gathering around music geeks to curate great playlists seems like an easy initiative for Spotify and others to throw money at and get similar results.
At the end of the day, I miss being able to collaborate on playlists, but I can’t imagine Apple is not planning on a feature like this down the road.
One of the things I am enjoying the most about Apple Music is it’s integration into the system. Being able to take advantage of features like Siri is a big win. Being able to raise my wrist and say to my Apple Watch “play me hits from 1985” or “play me the new Snarky Puppy album” and get results on my phone instantly is a fantastic use case.
I have heard a lot of people complain about how complicated and cluttered it has made the iTunes user interface. To this I ask: could it really get any worse at this point? It is clear (to me at least) that Apple must be working on a bigger iTunes update down the road that will separate it into it’s separate functions, much like on iOS: one app for music, one app for video, one app for podcasts, etc… Until then, I don’t really think the new streaming features make it that much more difficult to use. Especially on mobile, I find it much easier to use than Spotify, though I do really hate the static list of text that appears when you click the “more button” while looking at the contents of an album. Too much information!
One of the major technical considerations I made in the weeks approaching the launch of Apple Music was what it was going to do to my existing iTunes Match account. If you didn’t know, iTunes Match was released a few years back as a way to upload all of your iTunes Library to the cloud for listening on any device. I have mixed feelings about how well it works, but it works well enough for the 25 dollars or so I spend on it every year, so I was naturally curious to see how Apple Music would impact it. This turned out to be a much more complicated issue than I thought, and so instead of spelling it out in detail, I encourage you to scroll to the bottom of this post to see links to some web articles that explain it way better than I could.
As I said, Apple Music is fulfilling my low expectations pretty well and also surprising me in some nice ways with curated playlists. Mixing songs from my personal iTunes Library with those from Apple Music in the same playlists is a dream. Although I still have a lot of questions, I will stop for now and leave you with these informative links.
If you read anyone of these links, read this: Apple Music FAQ: Everything you need to know | iMore. It is the most comprehensive and simple overview of the features of Apple Music.
Six Colors: Apple Music first looks trumpet curation over algorithms
Apple Music Is Strong on Design, Weak on Social Networking - NYTimes.com
How to check if your Mac’s songs are uploaded, matched, purchased, or Apple Music DRM-laden | iMore
The Real Difference Between iTunes Match and iCloud Music Library: DRM | Kirkville
No, Apple is not adding DRM to songs on your Mac you already own | iMore
With Apple Music live, Beats is going away gracefully – AppAdvice– AppAdvice
How to properly use “Likes” in Apple Music
Apple Music and Apple’s Focus - Stratechery by Ben Thompson
Taylor Swift Scuffle Aside, Apple’s New Music Service Is Expected to Thrive - The New York Times
Tweetbot 2 for Mac is out. If you are a Twitter power user or just plain addicted, this is worth checking out. It provides a far superior experience to twitter.com and especially the official Twitter app for Mac. Best of all, it is now permanently 13 dollars.
Screenshot 2015-06-23 13.19.23
Find Robby elsewhere on the web
