The fine folks at Rogue Amoeba released an all-new version of the excellent Audio Hijack app last year. Today the sound capturing software is gaining three new features, thanks in part to Machine Learning on the Mac.
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Rogue Amoeba is releasing a major update to Farrago, the great soundboard app for Mac. Farrago 2.0 includes 50 new features ranging from fun emoji art to well-designed Stream Deck interactivity.
Faraggo debuted on the Mac in January 2018, and Paul Kafasis at Rogue Amoeba says today’s big update has been cooking for more than two years. Faraggo lets you easily store and play audio clips on-demand for things like podcasting, theater production, and other creative audio tasks.
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Audio Hijack is one of the best apps to save, edit, and record audio. With this new version, Audio Hijack 4 has 107 new features bringing both powerful new functionality and new interfaces for Mac users to take advantage of this software.
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Rogue Amoeba, the company behind several popular audio apps for Mac, has updated all of its software today with full support for M1 Macs — which includes the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini.
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Rogue Amoeba is out with a big update to its popular Farrago audio app for Mac. The “rapid-fire soundboard” software now features a brand new list mode, app-wide volume ducking, per-tile output controls, new MIDI controls, and much more.
Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack is a handy application that allows you to record audio from any Mac app including Safari, video calls, and much more. Now the app has gained support for live streaming with some of the most used services.
Popular developer, Rogue Amoeba, is out today with an update to its Airfoil and Farrago applications for Mac that brings Dark Mode, Text to Speech support, and more.
Good news for Loopback users! Starting today, Rogue Amoeba will be rolling out its latest major update to its popular audio routing utility. In this release, the company is focusing on making the app more accessible and powerful, with an improved interface “that better illustrates how your audio will flow.”
Rogue Amoeba has updated Farrago for Mac today with a handful of useful new features. Farrago 1.2 brings MIDI support, multi-tile editing, and accessibility improvements to the Mac soundboard app.
Back in March, Rogue Amoeba announced that it would be discontinuing its Nicecast app for Mac, which let podcasters livecast their shows to the Internet. However, today the company is updating its popular audio recording utility Audio Hijack for Mac with support for broadcasting. Announced via a press release, the company says that version 3.5 is focused on internet radio streaming.
Starting and producing a podcast on your own can be expensive. You’ll need to get your own microphone, let alone a software suite that you’ll have to both learn and manage to use in a short period of time.
Update: The team has published a more detailed piece on broadcasting from the Mac without Nicecast.
Rogue Amoeba, the makers of useful sound utilities for the Mac, will no longer be making one of their apps as Nicecast has officially been discontinued. Nicecast allows Mac users to broadcast audio from their machine over the Internet — originally intended for Internet radio — and is still used by podcasters today to create live streams.
Rogue Amoeba is known for making quality audio tools for macOS, and its latest release Farrago continues that effort. Farrago is a super polished soundboard app for Mac created for podcasters and theater techs.
Update: Rogue Amoeba replied to Phil Schiller’s email in a response published on its website. The full response is below.
Following Apple’s decision to pull Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil Speakers Touch app for a feature allowing iOS devices to stream to one another over AirPlay, Apple explained the app was removed for the feature’s use of non-public APIs. It currently only allows Apple TV and certain third-parties such as speaker manufacturers to access the AirPlay streaming protocol. The app was earlier this week allowed back into the App Store without the iOS-to-iOS streaming feature, but today we get word from Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller who explained in an email the reason behind removing the app.
An email to Apple’s CEO Tim Cook from concerned consumer Kevin Starbird regarding the app’s removal was met with a direct email response from Schiller. 9to5Mac independently confirmed the emails are authentic. Here is Kevin’s full email addressed to Cook followed by Schiller’s response:
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Apple removed Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil from the App Store last month shortly after it began offering the ability to AirPlay music from one iOS device to another, effectively making your old iPod touch an AirPlay speaker. Some thought the app removal was due to use of private APIs. Apple gave a statement on the matter:
The feature in question permits any iOS device running the app to play back audio beamed from a variety of sources using Apple’s AirPlay wireless streaming protocol. Apple presently only allows designated products to act in this capacity — such as the Apple TV and (often expensive) AirPlay-enabled third-party hardware
From a post today, it seems pretty clear that Apple just did not want that functionality in the app and that third-party hardware vendors were to “blame.”
You may be asking why Apple would want to prevent users from having this functionality. Only Apple can provide a full answer here. We do know that Airfoil Speakers Touch’s ability to receive audio directly from iTunes and iOS enabled some users to forgo purchasing expensive AirPlay hardware, hardware which Apple licenses. It seems Apple has chosen to use their gatekeeper powers to simply prevent competition.
Perhaps as part of its costly AirPlay licensing, Apple gives speaker manufacturers exclusive rights to the AirPlay protocol. Maybe some of these makers cried foul when Airfoil allowed other iOS devices to sling audio to each other. Apple was then forced to remove it, otherwise breaking their exclusivity agreement. That does not seem too outlandish to me.
Oh, and there is a workaround.
Update May 25: Following yesterday’s story, The Verge reported today that Apple has confirmed it removed the Airfoil Speakers Touch app after its recent 3.0 update introduced the ability to stream over AirPlay from other iOS devices. Apple said it is against Review Guideline 2.5: Apps that use non-public APIs will be rejected. Verge explained:
The feature in question permits any iOS device running the app to play back audio beamed from a variety of sources using Apple’s AirPlay wireless streaming protocol. Apple presently only allows designated products to act in this capacity — such as the Apple TV and (often expensive) AirPlay-enabled third-party hardware
We have seen Apple both reject and remove apps for many reasons in the past. It is often due to an icon or name that is too close to one of Apple’s own apps. Sometimes, however, apps are removed if they boast features that mimic or are too similar to the core functionality of iOS. Today, Daring Fireball pointed us to a post from Paul Kafasis of developer Rogue Amoeba, who wrote that the company’s Airfoil Speakers Touch app that is designed to send audio between Macs and iOS devices has now been removed from the App Store after being available since 2009.
Although Kafasis noted Apple has not given a clear reason why the app was removed, many are speculating it is due to a new feature introduced in a recent update to the app:
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