iTunes

I love AirPlay. It’s simple and elegant. It also means that my elderly but much-loved B&O Ouverture hifi system (with BeoLab 6000 speakers) – which is actually so old that it has a cassette deck – needed only a low-cost WiFi audio receiver to allow it to wirelessly stream music from my MacBook Pro. One $40 add-on and a 20-year-old hifi became bang up to date in its capabilities.

With my particular setup, AirPlay does exactly what we expect of Apple products: It Just Works. I open iTunes, select ‘B&O’ from the speaker output menu, and anything I play in iTunes – whether from my own music library or streamed from Apple Music – plays through the hifi, while system sounds continue to play through the Mac speakers. My partner can stream her own music from her iPad or iPhone just as readily.

I’d previously tried a Bluetooth audio receiver, and the difference between that and AirPlay is night and day. No pairing. No worries about distance. No interference when someone walks between the Mac and hifi. No system sounds emerging at deafening volumes though my hifi speakers.

But despite my own happy experience of it, AirPlay is not without its problems … 
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Apple has once again distanced itself from its past efforts in order to market its new Apple Music streaming service. The company has begun promoting the service using a unique geofilter in the popular Snapchat messaging application. The geofilter has showed up in select areas of Los Angeles, including at The Grove mall where an Apple Store is located.

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Winning tickets for the Apple Music Festival is a long shot at the best of times, but many are reporting that they can’t even get as far as entering the lottery – either getting a blank screen or an error message when they click the Win Tickets link … 
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Apple is continuing its promotion of Apple Music this weekend. After putting out a trio of television advertisements promoting Apple Music and its artist-integrated Connect platform, the company has announced a pair of statistics for the launch weekend of its employee Dr. Dre’s new Compton Album. In a statement, Apple says that Compton was streamed 25 million times over the course of its opening week as an Apple Music exclusive. The album was also downloaded half a million times via the iTunes Store.

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Apple has released an update to iTunes to accompany today’s iOS 8.4.1 release. Like the iOS update, the new version of iTunes introduces bug fixes related to Apple Music and the Beats 1 streaming radio service.

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Update: The stream is now live, an hour early.

Earlier this week, Dr. Dre announced that his first new album in 15 years while hosting his show on Apple Music’s Beats 1 station. While the album has been available for preorder since then, it will be available to stream for free on Apple Music later tonight at 6PM PT. The album, entitled Compton: A Soundtrack, is entirely exclusive to Apple and is being described by Dre as his “grand finale.”

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It appears it’s not just governments who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near technology – it’s also courts. The UK’s High Court recently overturned legislation permitting citizens to duplicate copyrighted material for their own private use, and TorrentFreak confirmed with the UK Intellectual Property Office that the ruling really is as dumb as it sounds.

“It is now unlawful to make private copies of copyright works you own, without permission from the copyright holder – this includes format shifting from one medium to another,” a spokesperson informed us.

The IPO specifically notes that copying a CD to an MP3 player is not permitted. This means that iTunes’ popular ripping feature, which Apple actively promotes during the software’s installation, is illegal.

The ruling would also effectively outlaw Time Machine (as it copies music files), and the current behaviour of both iTunes Match and Apple Music, each of which copies music to a cloud server. And it’s not just citizens who fall foul of this law – Apple does too … 
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For some reason, a popular opinion floating around the web these days is that splitting iTunes up into a bunch of separate apps that all do one individual task each would be a vast improvement on the current one-app-for-everything design. “They did it on iOS,” the logic goes, “so why not do it on the Mac as well?”

After pondering this suggestion for a while, I’m fully convinced that doing so would that be an unnecessary over-complication of the entire ecosystem.

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A few days ago, I argued that iTunes was now so clunky it should be nuked from orbit, and suggested standalone apps as a possible way forward. A little over 70% of you agreed with me, including UX designer Andrew Ambrosino, who created some concept images showing how a standalone OS X Music app might look.

I like what I see. Check out the images below, and let us know your thoughts … 
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It looks like the Apple Watch is launching in a certain big box retailer soon. Also, big changes may be coming to third-party Apple Watch accessories. Along with that, Zac and Benjamin discuss some issues with iTunes and Apple Music. The Happy Hour podcast is available for download on iTunes and through our dedicated RSS feed.

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I’ve complained before about the massive missed opportunity of Apple failing to properly integrate both owned and streamed music within iTunes. I got over that enough to use and enjoy Apple Music, and I’m confident I’ll be continuing my subscription once Apple starts charging my card, despite the raw deal we get on pricing in the UK.

But I also agreed with Variety that Apple needed to adopt the same approach for OS X as it does for iOS, splitting out the various iTunes functions into separate apps. Having now been using version 12.2 of iTunes for a month, I’m escalating this from a moderate whinge to a full-scale rant. The time has come for Apple to finally rid us of this creaking, bloated disaster of an app, and start afresh … 
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[Update 1:45 PM: Apple’s system status page now reports that the widespread outage has been resolved including an issue with iTunes Connect. Apple Music services may require relaunching iTunes or Music to resume playback.]

Last night Apple announced that its Beats 1 web radio station would be the exclusive outlet for MTV to announce the Video Music Award nominees this year. The reveal was scheduled for 7 AM Pacific time this morning, but many users are finding themselves unable to tune in.

Listeners took to Twitter to point out that Apple Music, the Beats 1 station, and several other iTunes-related services are failing to load.

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Misfit, makers of the popular Flash and Shine wearables for fitness and sleep tracking, today launched a new iOS app that turns its Flash hardware into a remote control for a connected iPhone’s camera, music functions, and more.

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Apple will be rolling out a refreshed line of iPods today, according to sources. As indicated by new colors recently found in iTunes on the Mac, the new iPod touch, shuffle, and nano will come in new darker blue and pink colors. A gold color will be added as well for all three iPods.

The new Nanos and Shuffles won’t get new features, but the iOS-based iPod touch will see a considerable upgrade. Here’s what we’re hearing is coming to the touch:

• Major camera upgrade from 5 megapixels to 8, matching the count on the iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2.
• New 64-bit chip for faster operation and better graphics for gaming. Will also help it plow through future iOS versions beyond iOS 9.
• “M” chip from the iPhone for fitness, steps, and elevation tracking.
• Pre-loaded with iOS 8.4 and Apple Music following the June 30th launch.
• New 128GB model for $399, still starting at $199 for 16GB. There will also be a $299 model with 64GB of space.

As indicated by the references last month in iTunes 12.2, the overall designs and screens of the new iPods will remain the same as their predecessors. These are the first major iPod upgrades since 2012, and with Apple’s focus on the iPhone and iPad, these will likely also be the last for some time.
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Apple has released a maintenance update to iTunes 12.2 that addresses issues related to Apple Music, iTunes Match, and Beats 1. The release specifically mentions resolving an issue where songs from iTunes Match would become classified as songs from Apple Music, which would result in unnecessary DRM being added.
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Earlier this month, Greece instituted new regulations amid the country’s financial crisis that blocked users from renewing iCloud subscriptions and buying from iTunes and the App Store. At the time, this left many users wondering what would happen to their iCloud data, seeing that they legally couldn’t pay to keep their subscription alive. Now, however, it appears that Apple is stepping up to ensure that user data remains intact during Greece’s financial crisis.

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A federal judge has overturned the $529.9M damages awarded against Apple for infringing on three SmartFlash patents in its iTunes software, reports Reuters. The judge said that while February’s verdict stood, the jury instructions may have “skewed” the jurors’ understanding of the appropriate level of damages.

SmartFlash, a patent troll which had originally sought $852M in damages for patents relating to methods of storing data and managing payment systems, subsequently went back to court to make the same claims against the iPhone 6/Plus and iPad Air 2 – products released after the award … 
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I gave my first impressions of Apple Music on day two, and my main disappointment remains: despite putting both owned and streamed music into a single app, there is absolutely no real integration between the two. All the evidence suggests that Apple Music has no awareness of my owned music.

I’ll get past that in a moment, but bear with me first for a couple of paragraphs. Because this is, in my view, more than just a missed opportunity: it’s almost criminally negligent. iTunes knows more about my musical tastes than my girlfriend. More than my neighbours, who have sometimes been more familiar with my musical tastes than they might wish. More than any of my friends – even the one who kindly ripped all my CDs for me on his high-end PC with multiple DVD drives.

Think about that for a moment. iTunes knows every single artist, album and track I own. Not only that, but it knows which ones I have put into what playlists. It even knows the exact number of times I have played every single track! And Apple uses none of that data in guiding its Apple Music suggestions. That really is a huge fail, given what could have been.

Ok. I’m over it. I won’t mention it again, I promise. But seriously, Appl- Ok, sorry. That’s it now. So, let me set that aside, accept that Apple Music needed to learn my tastes from first principles, and talk about how well it’s doing a week in … 
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