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Music Movies on iTunes

Liam Widman — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:50:24 -0600

In a bid to increase movie sales, Apple is featuring more alternative content in the iTunes store. Today, they've introduced the "Music Movies" library and added a landing page to promote releases. Music movies are music themed movies, concerts, and documentaries showing a lot of behind-the-scenes footage.

While at the moment the collection is limited, Apple does offer a few movies that are only available on the iTunes store, like the Kings of Leon concert DVD and U2's 'Rattle and Hum' and 'John Lennon Imagine'.

Apple also plans to negotiate early release of some music-themed movies for the iTunes store so people can buy them there long before they come out in stores.

Apple Corps Releases A Beatles Apple

Liam Widman — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:29:53 -0600

The Beatles' songs may have not come to the Apple iTunes store, but they will arrive in a small green apple USB device.

The new Beatles apple is selling for $279.99, and will be released on December 8, almost 3 months after the September 9 (9/9/09 because of the song "Revolution 9") release of the remastered set of Beatles albums, along with the, oh so amazing, Beatles Rock Band video game. The apple shape is a reference to Apple Corps, which was the Beatles' music publisher, who also sued Apple Computers for because of a trademark dispute in the past.

In addition to all the Beatles songs in MP3 and FLAC format, the 16 gigabyte USB drive will have "all of the remastered CDs' visual elements, including 13 mini-documentary films about the studio albums, replicated original UK album art, rare photos and expanded liner notes."

Patent: New Wireless iPod/Headset Combo?

Cory Bohon — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:14:32 -0500

A new iPod patent filing has been unearthed today that shows us an iPod built into a small Bluetooth-style headset. Could it be a replacement for the iPod shuffle?

According to the US patent application, the device is a "wireless headset with integrated media player." Apple has included the following abstract about the patent filing:

"Additional functionality in a wireless headset allows it to be used during times that the external device with which it is wirelessly coupled is not being used, but when the headset is nevertheless being worn. This is accomplished by integrating a media player into the wireless headset. The media player may be an audio player, capable, e.g., of playing audio files such as MPEG-3 ("MP3") files. Optionally, the media player may include a recording function as well, so that a user can record voice notes. In addition, if the external device is a telephone (mobile or landline), the availability of a recording function could make it possible for the user to record all or part of a conversation. Similarly, voicemail messages received on the user's telephone could be uploaded into the headset for later off-line playback. Media files recorded by the headset also could be downloaded to the external device."

Of course, just because it's a patent doesn't mean that Apple will create a product. We think this could be a neat addition to the Apple lineup though and wonder if it could possibly replace the iPod shuffle.

You can read the full details on the U.S. Patent Office website.

via 9to5 Mac

Podcast #113: Apple's Holiday Proclamation and Another Round of Tablet News

Mac|Life Staff — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:01:16 -0500

Phil Schiller told Gizmodo that there wouldn't be anymore Apple products released this year. That wasn't good enough for Apple, they called and clarified, "The holiday lineup is set." Uh okay.

Another set of Apple tablet news items appear. Now it's the Slate according to the executive editor of the New York Times, Bill Keller.

We also announce the latest DonorsChoose prize pack for the week. This week we're getting you ready for traveling while you help the kids.

Got a question, but you're afraid to leave a voice message because of Witness Relocation Dept. rules? Drop us a question via Twitter twitter.com/maclife.

This week's Battlestar Applactica picks:

OneArm Battle - $1.99

Simplenote - $1.99

Don't forget, the Mac|Life staff would love to hear your thoughts, comments and ideas for the new podcast. Just leave a message on the Mac|Live question/comment line: (877) 404-1337, extension 622. Please limit the length of your messages to 1 minute max. We'll review these calls each week and feature our favorites, along with responses, on that week's podcast.

To subscribe to the Mac|Live podcast series through an RSS feed, click here; if you want to subscribe through the iTunes Store, click here.

iLuv iSP100

Susie Ochs — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:06:09 -0500

An iPod speaker is a great investment if you want to rock out with friends--unless you and your friends prefer to dance around with headphones on, like those silhouetted party people in Apple’s print ads. iLuv’s iSP100 is portable, compact, and takes regular AAA batteries, so there’s no need to tote along an AC adapter or charger. But the anemic sound it produces might have you reconsidering that “let’s all just put our headphones on and dance around” idea.

It's nice and small, but unfortunately, so is its sound output.

To be fair, sometimes you might not want a lot of sound. Say you’re sunbathing, and you don’t want to risk “earbud tan.” Place the iSP100 at the head of your towel, turn it about halfway up, and its cone of sound will be barely noticeable by fellow beachgoers mere yards away. Other than that, or the occasional phone booth dance party, we can’t think of many killer scenarios for a speaker this wimpy. While we had it playing on the counter of a small kitchen, for example, it was hard to hear the music clearly even across the room, and when the fridge motor clicked on and vegetables were being chopped, our songs were pretty much drowned out unless we turned both the iPod and the speaker all the way up.

The oval-shaped, éclair-size iSP100 houses two speakers that iLuv claims provide surround sound via the company’s jAura acoustic speaker technology. The music, although quiet, sounded all right—not enough bass, somewhat flat-sounding highs, but respectable for the speaker’s size, and we didn’t hear bothersome distortion until it was cranked to the max. As for surround sound, we didn’t notice it. Another problem is the buttons: The on/off button protrudes from the speaker a bit and kept getting pressed accidentally by other items in our laptop bag, turning the speaker back on and wasting battery life. The only other buttons are volume up and volume down, but there’s no indicator to show if you’ve got it up (or down) all the way. There’s no battery indicator either, but battery life was impressive--we got 12 hours of full-blast music out of one set of generic alkalines.

Doug Adams Dupin

Roberto Baldwin — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 03:20:00 -0500

Initially we all had just one Mac and one iPod. We’d dutifully sync our iPod with our Mac, and life was grand.

Then we got a MacBook, another iPod, and finally, an iPhone. Soon it was apparent that our music library was scattered across multiple machines and the idea of trying to figure out which machine had which songs became an onerous task. So we just threw them all together, resulting in tons of unwanted duplicate tracks.

Even without Foreigner, we had double vision--but that was before Dupin cleaned up the duplicates in our iTunes library.

Dupin scours your iTunes library for duplicates and helps cure you of double-track syndrome. iTunes contains a Show Duplicates feature, but it’s woefully underpowered. It works fine for a couple tracks, but music fans with larger libraries will by stymied by its extremely limited definition of “duplicate.” Dupin turbocharges the process, making it easier to find actual duplicates--as opposed to different versions of the same song. With 10 selectable criteria for defining duplicates and the ability to confine searches by playlist or specific library, there are few rogue tracks that can escape Dupin. iTunes doesn’t have to be open for the application to do its thing, and, in fact, you can continue listening to iTunes music without fear of interruption from Dupin.

Once the dupes are identified, you can set filters for the application to determine which files to keep in your iTunes library and which to purge (keeping higher-bit rate versions and tossing lower-quality copies, for example). We threw multiple songs with the same name, songs stored on different devices, and songs with varying bit rates at Dupin, and it was able to reliably separate the keepers from the unnecessary duplicates.

You can tell Dupin to simply remove the tracks from your iTunes library without deleting them, send them to the Trash, or have them deleted on the spot. We recommend hanging on to them, but we wish Dupin gave us the option to move the files to a specific folder--which would reduce the size of our Music folder while still giving us the chance to back up the duplicate files. Purged tracks that are sent to the Trash can be manually recovered, but you lose the Artist/Album folder nesting that iTunes creates, leaving an organizational nightmare.

Pioneer VSX-819H

Roberto Baldwin — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:25:00 -0500

Giant TV. Check. Super-rad universal remote. Check. Speakers strategically placed around the room so that when stuff blows up onscreen you actually feel it in your belly. Check. A/V receiver that supports up to 7.1 surround sound and the iPhone. Surprise--check!

While the iPhone has taken over your pocket and possibly your car, home theater rigs have been noticeably late to the iPhone party. Fortunately, the folks at Pioneer have taken notice of the iPhone and its league of faithful users with the release of the VSX-819H home receiver. Instead of relying on 1/8-inch cables, the system includes a USB port with a USB-to-dock cable.

Once you have your iPod or iPhone attached to the receiver, you have a very important decision to make. What do you do with the tiny front panel on the front of the receiver that hides the USB port? The panel comes off, instead of being on hinges. This is fine if you’re a bit anal-retentive, but it’s not so great if you tend to lose things or have a kid at home. Once you find a safe place for the panel, the magic happens. Thanks to the dock connector, you can control your iPod or iPhone with the receiver’s remote and have the audio blasting out of your expensive speakers. The device also supports video playback from capable iPods, although at press time, Apple’s 3.0 software update broke video output on the iPod touch and iPhone when using third-party cables.

Great sound on a budget.

Beyond the nice iPod/iPhone integration, the VSX-819H pumps out some impressive sound for a sub-$300 receiver. The highs felt crisp and lows were tight without sounding muddy. Pioneer’s Advanced Sound Retriever added a bit of warmth to our compressed audio files without compromising the high end. The receiver features the ability to tune your setup via an included microphone. After placing the mic in the center of a room, the system sends out a series of tones that it uses to tweak your audio settings based on your speaker placement and room acoustics. Golden-eared perfectionists can also manually adjust the phase and volume of their speaker setups by hand. An impressive number of surround sound formats are supported, including Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio for Blu-ray players.

If you’re the type of person who’s more interested in what’s on the back of a receiver than what it looks like, the VSX-819H’s inputs are adequate for all but the hard-core home theater geeks. The unit features three HDMI, three composite, two component, one coaxial, and two digital optical inputs. For output, the Pioneer sports single HDMI, composite and component ports. Pioneer is quick to point out that this device is not a digital converter. It doesn’t support upscaling signals from composite or component inputs to HDMI output.

Out of the box you’re ready for a 5.1 setup. A pre-out is available for 6.1 and 7.1 setups as well. The automatic setup mentioned above makes getting more complex systems up and running a breeze: You won’t eat up an entire Sunday twiddling knobs. Just connect the speakers, run the automated setup, and sit back to enjoy the special extended director’s cut of Watchmen. Nice!

The front of the device has all the knobs and buttons you’ll need when you lose the remote in the couch, and it doesn’t look tacky. The display is easy to read and bright enough for daytime viewing, but won’t blind you at night. Navigating the menus within the system was a breeze and we found ourselves bravely treading into the menu system without consulting the owner’s menu first.

Apple Releases Aluminum Remote

Cory Bohon — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:18:47 -0500

Today Apple released a shiny new remote to go along with the other product announcements. The new remote takes the place of the older, shorter, white plastic remotes that always seemed to squeak when you pressed a button.

The new remotes have the same $19 price tag, but are more iPod shuffle-esque in nature. Oh yeah, they're also made of aluminum (or as Jonathan Ive says, "AlooominiUm").

Apple notes on the store page that these new remotes will work with all Apple IR devices made after 2005, which means that you can get one for your beloved Apple TV, iMac, or MacBook.

You can get yours or see more pictures on the online Apple store.