Cody Fink

137 posts on MacStories since January 2010

Former MacStories contributor.
cody@macstories.net

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New Year, New Audio Setup: SoundSource 6 from Rogue Amoeba

Rdio, Now With Better Stations And ‘You FM’

Rdio has always allowed you to play a mix of songs based on what you or your friends are listening to in their collections. Today, Rdio has updated their website and mobile apps with vast improvements to stations, allowing you to instantly listen to stations surrounding artists, songs, and genres.

Everything is a station

Rdio’s Stations is a response to both Spotify Radio and iTunes Radio. Drawing from a library of 20 million songs, Rdio hopes to turn anything into a custom Station. Your favorite pop radio song? That band you can’t stop listening to? By visiting Stations in the sidebar on your mobile device or desktop, you’re instantly greeted with a search bar and collections of music by your friends, stuff that’s in heavy rotation, and popular artists and genres. And no matter where you are in Rdio, you can also select songs and artists to make a station out of them as well.

Just like the music player, the Stations Player puts album art front and center over a blurred background that provides some contrast for the scrubber and other controls. New to the Stations Player are like and dislike buttons that let you vote on your favorite tracks.

It’s about you (FM)

You FM is the biggest new thing here, which is Rdio’s way of curating stations based on what you do across your social networks. Rdio says they’ll look at who you follow on Twitter, things you like on Facebook, and things you thumbs up in Rdio to create Rdio stations of all your favorite songs and “related tracks.” So if you follow Nine Inch Nails and have your Twitter account hooked into Rdio you’ll hear a lot more Reznor in your Stations mixes.

It’s also about your friends

Then there’s your friends. There’s a People tab in Stations that’s supposed to highlight what your friends are listening to, which is basically their ‘You FM’ stuff. It’s the previous implementation on steroids. You’ll also find Stations in there like Pitchfork FM and Rolling Stone FM if you want indie or Top 40 Stations.

So if you like radio here you go

Rdio can be downloaded for free from the App Store, but requires a monthly subscription to use. Check out Rdio’s pricing here and read more about their Stations update on their blog page.

Thoughts on the New AirPort Extreme→

Thomas Brand of Egg Freckles thinking out loud about Apple’s latest AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule.

In the era of Post-PC computing I would like to see an AirPort Extreme of Time Capsule that do more than just desktop backup and wireless networking. A central household cache for iTunes streaming, App Store downloads, and iCloud backups would be a great start. Maybe next year we will see another vertically oriented white box that does just that.

When iCloud Backups became a thing that we started seeing on rumor blogs, I remember quite a few of us positing that our AirPort devices would become an important piece in that equation. We were wrong, but it’s not hard to imagine an iPhone or iPad syncing to a Time Capsule in the same manner that our Macs do with scheduled Time Machine backups.

You can come close to a proposed solution like this today. Take any old USB hard drive, copy your iTunes data to it, plug it in your AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule, and you’re off to the races. Although loading an iTunes library over a network is so slow there’s really no benefit.

The big con in doing any of this of course is what happens when the hard drive in that Time Capsule dies. If all of your music and mobile backups are on this thing you’re suddenly hosed unless Apple has some cloud storage or RAID solution in mind. This is why I think our Macs and iTunes continues to be the gateway for syncing and backing up our iOS devices — data is at least redundantly stored on both your Mac and Time Capsule.

Although Apple claims the vertical departure from the previous AirPort Extreme’s six-year-old design was choosen for better reception, I tend to think it was a cost cutting measure. The new AirPort Extreme and AirPort Time Capsule share the same enclosure along designed around the same 3.5 inch hard drive. The added price of the Time Capsule gets you nothing more than said drive, and the cables needed to connect it. Saving Apple millions on duplicate parts.

I forgot who said it, but the theory I like the most is that the new AirPort Extreme design keeps people from stacking crap on top it.

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Thinking About The New Mac Pro→

Guy English of kickingbear writes:

 I don’t think Geekbench scores for this machine will be terribly meaningful. Benchmarks have the curse of trying to capture how a machine will perform under typical, or extreme, conditions. What they don’t do is give a broad perspective of the actual capabilities of the machine. They’re informed by history. If you do something new history will be less relevant.

Keep reading for the geeky bits.

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Quantifying the iTunes Video Store→

Horace Dediu of Asymco writes,

Apple states that the movie download rate is 350k/day. My estimate  was only about 126k/day.

As a result, my new estimate for the rate of spending on iTunes video is about $1.75 billion/yr. This is much more substantial than prior estimates mainly because movies are much more valuable. A tripling of the download rate shows up as a significant rise in the profile of video vis-à-vis the other media types.

Apps, music, and software are still king, but video on demand is still a growing source of revenue for Apple.

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HBO GO, WatchESPN, Sky News, Crunchyroll, and Qello Come to Apple TV

Apple is rolling out new programming with its latest software update, version 5.3, for 2nd and 3rd generation Apple TVs. HBO GO and WatchESPN are now directly available on Apple TV, in addition to Sky News (for US, UK, and Ireland), Crunchyroll, and Qello.

HBO GO and WatchESPN require a cable subscription:

HBO GO users get unlimited access to their favorite HBO shows, including HBO original programming, hit movies, sports, documentaries, comedy specials and more. This includes full seasons of the best of HBO, plus bonus features and special behind-the-scenes extras. HBO GO on Apple TV requires a subscription to HBO through participating television providers.

WatchESPN on Apple TV delivers a one-stop video destination for sports fans with live access to ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN3 and ESPN Buzzer Beater/Goal Line to those who receive ESPN’s networks as part of their video subscription from affiliated providers.

You can learn more about today’s update in Apple’s press release.

So What’s New With Apple’s MacBook Air?

 

Image credit: iFixit

Apple’s new 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Airs now last 9 and 12 hours on battery respectively, a 4 and 5 hour improvement over the previous generation. Lots of sites have started poking and prodding at the new machines, including iFixit, known for their great do-it-yourself gadget repair manuals.

iFixit’s (mid 2013) 13-inch MacBook Air teardown

Last year’s 7.3V, 6700 mAh battery has been supplanted by a new 7.6V 7150 mAh battery. Apple noted that Flash storage was 45% faster in this revision, and that’s due to the move from a SATA based solid state drive to a PCI Express based SSD. The AirPort card has also been updated to support 802.11ac. It’s still a very proprietary machine: RAM is soldered onto the logic board and many components aren’t meant to be user replaceable or upgradeable, despite otherwise easy access to its insides.

 Wired on how Haswell saves so much power

The MacBook Air is packing a big battery, but those substantial energy savings are owned to Intel’s latest round of fourth-generation processors, known as Haswell. The new Haswell chips in today’s MBAs are part of a special low-voltage series of chips designed specifically for Ultrabooks, which Intel claims is twice as energy efficient as the previous generation.

AnandTech quick and dirty benchmarks

Something to keep in mind is that the new Haswell chips in Apple’s MacBook Airs are officially Intel HD 5000 based and not Iris.

Macworld puts the new MacBook Air through read and write paces

Macworld has the most comprehensive benchmarks at the moment, showing that the new MacBook Airs get substantially better read and write speeds with their new PCIe based SSDs. However, Haswell is pretty much in line performance-wise with the last generation of processors.

Apple Releases New MacBook Airs, Previews New Mac Pro Design

Apple’s line of MacBook Airs received nice spec bumps today, which include Intel’s fourth-generation core processors, Haswell. Haswell chips include the new Intel HD 5000 graphics, which is 40% faster than the previous generation Intel HD 4000. Haswell’s main benefit isn’t just that it’s just a new, better processor, but that it’s built especially for mobile. Intel’s latest chips are designed for power savings, and incorporate smarter low-power states. It’s an extremely efficient chip, resulting in a substantial increase in battery life over the previous generation of MacBook Airs.

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Google Chrome for iOS Updates With Improved Voice Search

Pending an official announcement from Google, Google Chrome for iOS now contains the previously announced voice improvements that lets you search the web without typing out a single letter. Covering the extra row of keys that used to present themselves as you typed, a floating bar replaces the previous voice button from the omnibox. Tapping it brings up a microphone where you can speak your query, and depending on the question, Google will read the answer back to you (for example, ask it what time it is in Italy). Just like Google Search, Chrome will read back the text to you as you speak, and the results feel nearly instant.

You can download Chrome for iOS from the App Store.