Clever Apps: Airfoil

 Apple, Apps  No Responses »
Jan 222012
 

Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil is one of those apps that you don’t really need, but once you have it, you wonder how you ever lived without it.

The premise is reasonably simple: you’ve got audio on your desktop computer, you want to listen to it somewhere else. For example, you’re running Spotify and want to listen to it as you clean around the house. Unless you’re paying for Spotify Premium, there’s no way to get the music out of Spotify onto your stereo short of plugging the audio of your computer into your stereo.

With Airfoil, you gain a bunch of options. When you run Airfoil, you can send the audio to any Apple TV you’ve got. You can send the audio to any device running the free Airfoil Speakers application — another desktop, a laptop in another room, or even your iPhone.

Pretty awesome.

But, for me, the coolest thing with Airfoil happened the other day. I was watching some TV off of our iMac, and was trying to be polite and keep the sound low.

“Self,” I thought, “why not use Airfoil and broadcast the sound to your iPhone.”

Brilliant. Except, the sound was a couple of seconds behind the video. Which was incredibly annoying.

The smart folks at Rogue Amoeba have it covered, though. Turns out, the Airplay format inserts a 2 second delay. But, if you run the Airfoil Video Player, it will delay the video 2 seconds, so the sound and video are in sync. Including for web videos. So, I laid back and watched some TV off of Hulu, while listening to the sound as it played through my iPhone.

For $25, I continually find uses for Airfoil. It’s easily worth it (and it works for PCs too).

 Posted by Ryan Toohil at 6:53 pm

Spotify: For all of your musical shame

 Apps, mp3, Music  No Responses »
Jul 242011
 

I’ve been playing with Spotify for the better part of a week and I think I’ve decided that, at least for me, it’s not an iTunes replacement. The music that I really like, I will still buy it via iTunes or Amazon. For one thing, it’s really cheap (Amazon runs those $5 album deals all the time), and two, it means that I’ll always have music available when I’m out of range of any signal (without paying $10/month). I also don’t want my music tied to a company that could go out of business, or lose rights to certain artists, or whatever horrible licensing catastrophe the RIAA can come up with (c.f Netflix Streaming, it’s lack of new titles, and ever rotating collection of long tail titles).

What Spotify (and, presumably, all of the other streaming music services) is really good at is listening to the music you don’t like enough (i.e. you’re too embarrassed) to keep in your iTunes library. When you’re playing foosball and someone references Michael McDonald, you can go back and listen to “I Keep Forgettin’”. When you hear some 90s R&B on the radio, you can play yourself some Jodeci and Joe Public. You can binge on Dan Folgelberg and the Little River Band.

Spotify fills in the gaps in your library with the music you would never really buy. Because you’re too ashamed of it.

Which is awesome.

And also, likely, its downfall.

If Spotify (or Rhapsody or any of the other streaming services) really take off, why wouldn’t Apple (or Amazon) get the same streaming licenses that Spotify has? If iTunes let you stream any music off of the music store (and create playlists, tag songs, etc), wouldn’t that be about the best complement to buying music? Sure, there are some folks who will buy less music (trading it for whatever monthly fee Apple charges), but a whole bunch of people will stream a bunch of music, then buy more (when they realize they’ve listened to Hall & Oates 10 times in a row).

This seems like the logical next step for iTunes/iCloud (as well as for Amazon’s MP3 Store/Cloud Player, and probably for Google Music, too). And a likely death (or, in a best case, acquisition) for the streaming music services. One of them will probably survive, just as an alternative to the Apple/Amazon cartel.

So enjoy it while it lasts. In a couple of years, it’ll be part of iTunes (like everything else).

 Posted by Ryan Toohil at 6:16 pm

BOOM-SHAK-A-LACKA (NBA Jam on the iPhone)

 Apple, Apps, iPhone  No Responses »
Apr 232011
 

On Friday, a bunch of sites mentioned that EA was having an Easter weekend iTunes Store. An assortment of EA games were at reasonable prices (then again, a bunch of EA’s games are shite, and they should pay me to play them).

But, 99 cents for NBA Jam?

It didn’t really matter how bad it might have been, because that’s a price I couldn’t possibly pass up.

And, oh, how it is awesome.

To be fair, let’s start with the bad.

  • As with almost any iOS action game, the controls are an on-screen joystick and buttons. It doesn’t matter how well they’re implemented, it’s still a shitty control scheme and probably the weakest part of iOS as a gaming platform.
  • If you’re not wearing headphones, your hand is going to cover the speakers and you won’t hear the sound.

Photo 2

That’s pretty much it.

What’s awesome? Everything. The rosters are pretty up-to-date and full of awesome unlockable and hidden players (Bird and McHale, Spud Webb and ‘Nique, Stockton and Malone). The gameplay is simple enough that the touchscreen controls, as cumbersome as they might be, work well enough. The graphics are fun and solid. The sound is good, and has brought back the announcer (or at least a sound-alike) from old-school NBA Jam.

Photo 1

Basically, it’s the same old NBA Jam with prettier graphics, modern players, and it’s on a device that fits in your pocket.

Oh yeah, and it’s 99 cents.

Photo 3

If you enjoyed NBA Jam at all when it was in the arcades or on the home systems in the 90s, you’ll like it now. There’s a difficulty that works for everyone, you can pause a game at any point and pick it back up again. There’s a campaign mode that let’s you work through all the teams, unlocking players and special attributes as you go.

NBA Jam for the iPhone will be your favorite time killer for at least a couple of weeks.

Go buy it. Now.

 Posted by Ryan Toohil at 10:22 pm

Instacast: A Quick Review

 Apple, Apps, iPhone, Podcast  No Responses »
Apr 172011
 

A good number of folks have been pimping Instacast lately, as a replacement to iOS’ built-in podcast management.

Why would you need to replace iOS’ built-in podcast management? There’s only one reason, really: if I want to get new podcasts on my device, I have to physically sync it (or go through a ridiculous process of finding that podcast in the iTunes store and downloading it or syncing it). That’s annoying.

So, what does Instacaster having going for it?

  • It’s got the basic functionality you need (stream, download, play, pause, double-speed)
  • It’s got OPML support (as of version 1.2) to let you easily (not quickly, but easily) add your podcast subscriptions
  • It let’s you pseudo-automatically download new podcasts right on your phone, without having to sync it

That last bullet is pretty much the big one. You can refresh your list of podcasts (on 3G or wifi) and pull down any new episodes, reasonably quickly. So, if you’re away from your computer and need something new to listen to, there’s always something available, and it’s easier than the iTunes phone interface.

What’s not so hot?

  • The interface isn’t the most straightforward thing ever. Expect a good bit of “oh, that’s what that button does” and “wait, why isn’t this thing cached on my phone” until you figure it out. It’ll only take you a few tries.
  • It’s hindered by a fundamental limitation: the iOS APIs won’t let you add songs into the device’s music library. That means that I have to listen to these tracks inside of the application. That’s fine, but it makes it much harder to listen to stuff through my car’s iPhone interface. I have to keep track of where I was at for when I get to work and switch to using my computer and headphones (whereas podcasts in the iPod player simply sync their location and you’re good to go.)

The app is $2, so regardless of the limitations, it’s worth it to me to have the convenience, but if you’re on the fence, wait until you see iOS 5. It wouldn’t shock me to see the podcast interface overhauled, rendering the app obsolete.

 Posted by Ryan Toohil at 12:11 pm

Clever Weather App Displays Temperature on iPhone Home Screen

 Apple, Apps, iPhone  No Responses »
Apr 132011
 

Weather app uses notifications to display info on home screen: “We are all familar with the red iOS badge that displays the number of missed calls or unread emails on your home screen. The Fahrenheit – Weather and Temperature on your Home Screen app takes advantage of this notification system to display the temperature on your home screen. It’s a clever use of Apple’s built-in system that does not run afoul of the App Store guidelines.”

Ha, this is very, very clever. It’s a workaround that shouldn’t have to exist (and, I’m guessing, won’t have to exist after iOS 5 is released). But it’s still super clever.

(Via TUAW.)

 Posted by Ryan Toohil at 11:08 am
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