How-to

Apple’s Beats 1 global radio station went online this week, and its programming is already grabbing plenty of headlines. The challenge: just like conventional radio, the station doesn’t (yet) offer on-demand recordings of complete past shows. If there’s a DJ, specific artist, new show, or interview you’re really interested in hearing, you’ll need to tune in live… or, if you have a spare iOS 8.4 (or soon, iOS 9) device, you can use this handy guide to record Beats 1 shows using OS X’s free built-in app QuickTime Player. Read on for the details…

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Apple Music officially launched today in iOS 8.4 alongside an integrated radio service featuring the 24/7 live streaming station known as Beats 1. Everyone is getting a free three month trial, but once that ends, Apple will start charging the credit card on your Apple ID with either the $9.99/month plan or the $14.99/month family plan (depending on what you selected when first signing up). If you want to cancel your subscription, or just keep it from auto-renewing so you can go month-to-month and manually activate it when you want, below we’ve put together a quick guide on how to do so across platforms:
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With the launch of Apple Music just around the corner, music lovers currently subscribed to competing services like Spotify and Rdio may be looking to jump ship and give Apple’s offering a try. Apple first confirmed in a Beats Music FAQ that there will be a Beats Music update that allows users to import their libraries to the newer service, but users with music collections elsewhere seem to be out of luck without any official migration tool.

Thankfully, there’s an unofficial route to import all of your playlists from multiple services to Apple Music, but you’ll need to act before the 30th if you don’t already have a Beats Music account as Apple could turn off new subscriptions (and trials) at any moment.

Keep reading for instructions…

In this week’s episode of The Logic Pros, we wanted to dive deeper into Logic Pro X’s Drummer. Considered by many to be a tool for kids, amateurs and even the lazy, Drummer is a much more versatile and customizable feature than you may think. In fact, I would argue it might be one the most interesting and powerful additions to LPX, not to mention one that Apple just hands out for free.

Whether its the slightly embarrassing drummer names or the preset stigma that surrounds it, Drummer tends to be overlooked and, in my opinion, quite underrated. Today we will be taking a closer look at what this feature has to offer, along with how to customize the drummers and the parts they play to work with our original compositions and ideas:
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Like Apple Watches, home offices are “personal” — the look and furniture that work well for one person might not seem “right” to another. But the unified metal and glass aesthetic of Apple products works really well with modern office furniture, and there are also some iconic decor items Apple lovers can incorporate into a home office.

I spend a lot of time working from my home office, and have considered it a work in progress ever since I started building it around an aluminum PowerBook many years ago. Below, you’ll find a collection of items that will help you build a beautiful, practical home office that really spotlights your Apple gear, based on a mix of affordable and small investment-worthy choices…

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The Logic Pros is a new regular series exploring all of the most interesting gadgets and software for making music on your Mac/iOS devices. If there is any gear you would like us to take a closer hands-on look at, let us know in the comments section below or shoot us an email.

In this week’s edition of The Logic Pros, we will be diving into some of the most tucked away and over-looked features packed inside the release of Logic Pro X 10.1. We saw a number of interesting new features get added including AirDrop/Air Mail, a host of new Drummers, and Retro Synth got a seriously powerful overhaul (something we will be looking at in the future). But there were also a few features that didn’t get much attention, whether it be Logic’s brand new MIDI performance creation tool, its simple embedded automation, smarter quantization, or its fully customizable plug-in menus:
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The Logic Pros is a new regular series exploring all of the most interesting gadgets and software for making music on your Mac/iOS devices. If there is any gear you would like us to take a closer hands-on look at, let us know in the comments section below or shoot us an email.

In this week’s edition of The Logic Pros, we will be looking at how to map all those fun looking sliders, switches, buttons and encoders on our controllers to various functions inside of Logic Pro X. In many case, we get home with our MIDI controller, plug it in, and it just works. The keys/pads function just as they should, but the plethora of other dials and faders available generally won’t do much, unless you tell them to.

We will be covering the basics of how to get our MIDI keyboard/controller mapped to just about any parameter in our session, along with a few creative ways to bring some of Logic Pro X’s more powerful features into the real world:
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Up until recently, unfinished “beta” versions of iOS and OS X were only officially available to registered Apple developers, enabling companies to make their apps compatible before the operating systems were publicly released. But to increase openness and expand its pool of beta testers, Apple decided to offer “public betas” of both iOS and OS X to interested users, starting with iOS 8.4 and OS X Yosemite. Very soon, both iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan will become available as public betas under the Apple Beta Software Program, which you can sign up for here.

Should you install these new and unstable betas on your iPad, iPhone, or Mac? What can you really expect after doing so? Below, I’ll provide you with some guidance so you can make an informed decision to participate in the public betas, or hold off…

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Now that Apple Music is official and launching at the end of the month to replace Beats Music, artists can already start submitting music and signing up to manage their artist page. Apple Music introduces new social features under the “Connect” branding, allowing artists to share content, post updates, and connect with fans in a number of ways like never before. While some thought these features would be limited to big artists from major labels, Apple surprised somewhat and delivered for independent artists by making the feature open to all. Here’s how artists can take advantage…

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Apple unveiled its brand new iOS 9 “News” app today that will bring a reader experience comparable to magazine-style apps like Flipboard that pull in content from various sources around the web. It’s starting with an initial list of publishers like Vanity Fair, Vogue, GQ, Wired, and others, but here’s how to get your own content in the app.
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The Logic Pros is a new regular series exploring all of the most interesting gadgets and software for making music on your Mac/iOS devices. If there is any gear you would like us to take a closer hands-on look at, let us know in the comments section below or shoot us an email.

In this week’s edition of The Logic Pros, we will be sticking with the basics to highlight one of Logic Pro X’s most helpful additions: Track Stacks. It is mainly used for organizational reasons and to provide a simple way to create sub-mixes inside your DAW, a technique that has been used by recording engineers/song makers for decades, and previous to Track Stacks, required a number of clicks to get up and running.

Most tutorials and articles online that showcase Logic’s macro, auto-grouping feature focus on the track management abilities and the ease with which Track Stacks allow not-as-experienced users to group tracks together in sensible ways. On top of all that, we will be exploring some of the more creative ways to use the feature, including the creation of fat, multi-layered synth patches/drum hits, and the streamlined editing there of:
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Now that you have your Apple Watch, you might be curious to know how to take a screenshot from your your new device. The process is a little different from taking screenshots on an iPhone or iPad and the photos aren’t automatically saved to the watch, but you may want to screenshot fitness and activity achievements or show friends your customized Apple Watch face. In this how-to article I will quickly discuss how to take a screenshot on your Apple Watch and how you can make the process easier.

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A new Apple support document for HomeKit has now officially confirmed our earlier report that the Apple TV would serve as a hub for HomeKit devices. The document confirms an Apple TV is needed if you want to control HomeKit accessories while away from home.

If you have an Apple TV (3rd generation or later) with software version 7.0 or later, you can control your HomeKit-enabled accessories when you’re away from home using your iOS device.

Sign in with the same Apple ID on your iOS device and Apple TV, and you’ll be able to use Siri commands to remotely control your accessories.

Apple has also created a page listing the HomeKit devices launched so far, and which we’d expect to be regularly updated as new products are announced … 
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In May 2005, iTunes evolved from a music player into a video library manager, paving the way for video iPods (October 2005), Apple TV (March 2007), and AirPlay video streaming (September 2010). Since then, iTunes libraries have become bigger and more central in homes, as users now stream content stored in iTunes — sometimes called a media “server” — to “clients” including Apple TVs, iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches. Unless you stream all of your content from the iTunes Store, you probably have some space-consuming videos sitting in your computer’s iTunes library, where they can be accessed by client devices so long as both the server computer and iTunes are turned on.

Apple has resisted calls to release a standalone, inexpensive iTunes home media server for years: 2008’s release of Time Capsule came tantalizingly close, but couldn’t act as a standalone streamer. So when my video library became too large to keep on my iMac, I bit the bullet and bought a used Mac mini to serve as an iTunes server. It works well, and consumes a lot less power than keeping my iMac on all the time, but it’s still a full-fledged $700 computer — overkill for streaming videos to the Apple devices in my home.

Today, I’m going to help you build a small, inexpensive, and ultra energy-efficient iTunes media server. Depending on the size of your iTunes library, it could cost as little as $150, or as much as $300, in either case much less expensive than a Mac mini. The key component is Intel’s new Compute Stick, a tiny basic Windows PC that can plug directly into an HDTV, run iTunes, and stream videos across your network. For around $130, you can now get an iView-branded Compute Stick with a CPU similar to the 12″ Retina MacBook, bundled with a wireless keyboard and trackpad. Although there are some important caveats you should understand up front, the Compute Stick can become a ~3-Watt video server using a $20+ microSD card, radically reducing the energy required to stream iTunes content in your home. If you need more storage and power, you can easily add a near-silent $90+ hard drive with 2TB-5TB of capacity…

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The Logic Pros is a new regular series exploring all of the most interesting gadgets and software for making music on your Mac/iOS devices. If there is any gear you would like us to take a closer hands-on look at, let us know in the comments section below or shoot us an email.

Apple’s Logic Remote app for iPad allows for a lot of control over sessions in Logic Pro X on the Mac— its two main functions include controlling the mixer/transport controls, and using it as a midi controller for playing virtual instruments with user interfaces for keyboards, drumpads, and fretboards. But the app’s other feature is a grid of drumpad-like squares that can be used as buttons for key commands.

My goal was to be able to easily flip through amps and pedals as I jam, rather than having to deal with mouse clicks, opening/highlighting the plug-in I want to interact with, etc. So using Logic Remote, I setup a workflow with custom key commands that makes the drumpad-style interface work like a giant foot pedal for flipping through the awesome set of virtual amps and pedals Logic includes. Here’s how I did it:
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Update: The Guardian notes that the bug also crashes the Apple Watch when you try to reply to a message.

Today news is flying around regarding an iOS bug that causes the Messages app to crash and iPhones to reboot when a certain string of text is received. There isn’t an official fix from Apple yet, but there are a few workarounds and fixes that you can do in the meantime before Apple patches the bug.

Here are a few fixes that users have discovered and sent in:
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Over the past six months, I’ve published quite a few tutorials to help Mac users improve the performance of older computers, as well as some great guides to the best Mac accessories across a variety of categories. Today, I’m tying them all together in this handy, one-stop roundup of the best Mac accessories and upgrades.

This guide walks you through everything: in one place, you can learn about the best Mac hard drives, RAM upgrades, docks, keyboards, trackpads, stands, bags, and travel accessories out there. And you can also get free apps to improve your Mac’s storage and responsiveness, find plain English explanations of your Mac’s technical specs, and learn about the little security screws Apple uses to tamper-proof its machines. There’s a lot inside, so you may want to bookmark this piece for future reference!…

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We’ve seen a number of solutions for getting a gold Apple Watch without spending the $10,000+ price Apple charges for the 18 Karat gold Apple Watch edition. We went hands-on with one of the first companies doing gold plating for Apple Watch, but that requires you to mail-in the device and pay approximately $400 on top of the Watch’s retail price (depending on the model).

Another option is this $100 DIY kit that offers an easy step by step solution for gold plating the Watch yourself with 24K gold…
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The Logic Pros is a new regular series exploring all of the most interesting gadgets and software for making music on your Mac/iOS devices. If there is any gear you would like us to take a closer hands-on look at, let us know in the comments section below or shoot us an email.

Teenage Engineering, best known for its flagship synthesizer/sequencer the OP-1, recently unleashed a new line of tiny music makers on the world known as the Pocket Operators. The PO-12 Rhythm is a drum machine, the PO-14 Sub is a bass module and the PO-16 Factory is dedicated to melodies and lead lines. The appearance of the units may have some writing them off as toys, and considering they were partially inspired by pocket calculators and the Nintendo Game & Watch products, that may not be totally off base. But creativity and musical inspiration come from unexpected places sometimes.

Having gone hands on with the PO-16 model for over a week now, I have found it to be quite a playable little instrument, with its own interesting quirks, creative limitations, and boutique sound. Most examples of the little device in action appear to be freestyle techno jams, song re-creations or somewhat avant guard pieces that don’t seem to offer much in the way of real-life production applications. So I decided to run the new Factory model through its paces, putting it alongside some bigger name virtual/hardware instruments in the space to see how it would hold-up in a more typical Logic or GarageBand production.

Read on for more details on the PO-16, how to sync this bad boy up with your other hardware and to hear how it sits inside a mix with some big name software/hardware…
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