News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
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There’s been a great amount of both hoop as well as la in the last couple of weeks in regard to the iPhone 3G S and the iPhone 3.0 software. Yet very little of the noise generated by either focuses on the iPhone’s iPod capabilities. Not that Apple hasn't made improvements. Fact is, a couple of them could save your life.
With an iPhone 3G S, for example, you can order your phone to play particular songs, albums, or playlists and demand that it play songs similar to the one currently playing, using your commanding voice only. If you’re one of those people who fiddles with the phone while driving to find the perfect song, album, podcast, audiobook, or playlist, this will allow you to keep your eyes on the damned road from now on.
Similarly, if a song comes along that you loathe, put the 3.0 software’s Shake to Shuffle feature to good use. Just as with the 4G iPod nano, all you need do is give the device a firm rattle and you’ve skipped off to a different track in the currently playing playlist.
Not quite as life-saving but useful for parents is the ability to keep those using the iPhone or iPod touch from downloading media from the iTunes Store that is explicit (in the case of music and podcasts) or rated as more mature than the sensibilities of the viewer (in the case of movies and TV shows).
And finally, with that same 3.0 software, you can search for songs, artists, and albums from within the iPod portion of the device. The Spotlight feature locates this stuff as well. Find it within Spotlight and you can initiate playback just by tapping the item you want to play.
So, given all that, are we done yet? Is the iPhone/iPod touch with the 3.0 software perfect? Not quite. Were I granted the power to further tweak this area of the iPhone and iPod touch, I might suggest:
Make On-The-Go go. Can I see a show of hands from those who’ve attempted to create an On-The-Go playlist on their iPhone? Anyone? Right, you over there. Confusing, isn’t it? You essentially enter an iTunes Library within an iTunes Library, choose playlists, artists, songs, or selection from within the Other screen, tap a Plus button either within one of those headings or a Plus button for an item filed under a heading, and then tap Done to save the playlist. If you want to change the order of tracks in the On-The-Go playlist you tap Edit, then drag tracks around, and click a different Done button.
There has to be a better way. Perhaps tapping On-The-Go could place an On-The-Go item at the bottom of the iPhone’s screen. To add items to this playlist, simply drag them to it.
Lyrics and liner notes. The iPhone and iPod touch will display lyrics of the currently playing song if those lyrics have been added in iTunes. Given that the iPhone has multiple ways of getting in touch with the world around it (and the iPod touch can work this same kind of magic over Wi-Fi) isn’t it about time we had some way to directly download lyrics to these devices?
Yeah, yeah, I know, licensing issues. Okay, fine. I’m more than happy to tap a button next to a song that takes me to the iTunes Store where I can purchase lyrics and liner notes (with live links) for a quarter. I’d cough up an extra quarter for a lead sheet with chords, tablature, and a bouncing ball.
Better support for video playlists. I covered this one a couple of weeks ago. The gist is that the iPhone and iPod touch don’t handle video playlists in a way you’d expect—gathering together the contents of a playlist that contains nothing but video, and organising it under a playlist heading. Instead, videos are organised by type only—TV Show, Movie, Music Video—on the iPhone’s Videos screen. As I point out in the entry cited above, there’s a way around this but it would be nice if the iPhone and iPod touch honored video playlists you create. I’ve seen no indication that the iPhone 3.0 software addresses this issue.
Links to the iTunes Store. If you enable the Genius feature in iTunes and select a track within your iTunes Library you see a list of related albums and songs in the Genius Sidebar. While some may dismiss this as pure marketing, it’s a useful way to discover new music. Now that the iPhone and iPod touch support downloading the bulk of the iTunes Store’s content, how about making it easier to find media you might like via links to media related to the currently playing track?
If you ran the world… Scan through my list and you see that none is a deal-breaker. For the most part, I’m happy with what Apple’s done with the iPhone and iPod touch's iPod components. How about you? If you wore the Big Cheese badge for one day, what would you change?
wrote on June 17, 2009 3:51 PM
I would put in a second camera for video calling and a bigger camera with a flash on the back (nothing under 5mp). I would allow the phone to work on the 900Mhz HSDPA networks as well as the normal networks (850 & 2100Mhz). That's my wish list for the iPhone.
wrote on June 17, 2009 11:35 PM
wrote on June 17, 2009 11:39 PM
For the iPod side of it; I would make it so I can just push play while in the artist or album list, and have the iphone play through everything ( just like my iPod nano does). There's nothing more annoying than riding along and having the music stop. It's very difficult to get the music going again while riding through traffic
January each year sees Apple observers focusing on Macworld San Francisco but just down the road in Anaheim, one of the biggest music product trade shows in the world kicks off at nearly the same time as Macworld. NAMM is the show that any gear-obsessed musician would love to attend at least once in their lifetime – I know it’s on my to-do list. Well over eighty thousand attendees are expected this year and there’s plenty ofnew music gear being announced.
David Holloway | Jan 15, 2008
"Don't forget to get there very, very early", was the advice given to me by practically everyone prior to this morning's Macworld Conference Keynote. "Things get pretty hairy", they claimed -- and they weren't referencing Australian Macworld's fine editor. So at 5am, having been woken by the loud gentleman speaking German VERY LOUDLY, I prepared towander down the chilly streets of San Francisco and wait. And wait, and wait, and wait. Annoyance doesn't quite cover my mood when another Australian journalist makes an appearance two hours later, right behind me.
Alex Kidman | Jan 17, 2008
A young guy with this modification of John Lennon's famous "Imagine"printed in white on an Apple classic black T-shirt is high fiving hisfriends who have just produced "Lotus-eaters", a short music video warning of the dangers of unthinking submission to seductive technologies. They did this in less than 24 hours using the facilities of the new John Lennon Bus, being shown at Macworld Expo 2008 in San Francisco, after its re-launch at the Consumer Electronics Show in LasVegas earlier this month. (The concept has been in existence since 1998).
Martin Levins | Jan 17, 2008
Late last week Palm Inc announced the closure of 30 retail stores -- its entire bricks and mortar presence in the United States -- ending one of Palm's worst years, in my view. One way to measure the depths that Palm has plumbed is to compare it with two other companies. Let's start with Taiwan's High Tech Computer Corporation, better know as HTC. Over the last couple of years HTC has moved from little-known manufacturer to market leader. 2007 saw sales accelerate and the release of a number of different devices. The smartphones it has released have come in a range of form factors and cater for the needs of an increasingly diverse range of users. In my view, HTC has been the most important hardware innovator of the last year or so. Apple has plans in place to open a number of new stores in the coming year -- not only in the United States but in territories where Apple has thus far been absent. The iPhone has achieved for Apple what the original Palm Pilot did for its maker -- putting Apple into the consciousness of all shoppers.
Anthony Caruana | Jan 28, 2008
App Store developers will now be able to reach customers in 13 new countries, according to an announcement on the iPhone Developer Program news page.
