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Six months with iTunes Radio

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It’s still not available in the UK but it’s coming and what we’ll get here is a tried-and-tested version. I’ve been listening here in the UK since about December – I have both US and UK iTunes accounts so I can legally tune in – and the service has developed even in that short time.

Primarily, it’s added more ads.

You know that it’s an ad-supported service. Every few tracks, you get an ad. Interestingly, they’re usually video ads so while I often have iTunes way in the background behind a lot of other documents, there’ll be a corner visible and suddenly it’ll start moving. Very distracting.

But it’s become more distracting because at first there were so few ads that you noticed how few there were. Now you notice how many – and at times you notice how often the same ones are played. For a while there I could tell you every line of a Macy’s advert.

We can expect that the same thing will happen in the UK: it feels less that Apple has a plan for how many ads it will ramp up, more that it depends how many it gets. A few firms will try it out at first and then it’ll take off it won’t.

But now it also looks as if there will be more programmes, more actual non-music programmes. Right now it has none whatsoever. But US sources – you think that means rumour sites and it does, but – say that Apple is going to stream the World Cup over iTunes Radio.

Exit William.

I do recommend iTunes Radio but it depends on your starting choice. The way it works is that you type in the name of a song, an artist, a genre or perhaps a decade and you get a station. That station might start with the particular song, it might start with that particular artist, or it might not.

After very, very many different stations, I plucked “4 Non Blondes” out of the air because I like What’s Up. And it’s been a great find: I’m sure I must’ve heard What’s Up on it some time but generally I love everything it’s played me as well.

Sometimes I’m iTunes Radioed out and in principle I like the idea of spoken-word shows but I keep coming back. I just want to see what happens when Apple absorbed its new purchase, the Beats subscription service.

Read more about iTunes Radio on Apple’s site

Here’s how Apple’s WWDC keynote will go

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june_2014_posterframeSo there was this journalist, right, who complained that Apple took two hours to do its annual Worldwide Developers’ Conference keynote, “exactly like they always do”. He was covering it for somewhere and it was all how dare they do exactly what they always do. If he’d said they took long on certain parts, I’d have agreed. If he’d said he could’ve read all the news in a press release afterwards, I did agree. I just didn’t know why he wouldn’t do that. If you don’t like the keynote and you know it is two hours long, skip it.

I do like the keynotes.

WWDC is for developers and my own development projects are small. But this one speech is always for every Apple user, it is always the same, it is usually good fun and occasionally it is really interesting. I remember wondering how I’d tell Angela that I was definitely going to buy an Apple phone when she came home saying “did you hear that Apple’s making a phone?” We both got one.

But like or loathe the Apple announcements, the one next Monday 2 June at 6pm UK time will go thisaway:

18:00-18:10 “Good morning!” (It’s 10am in California.) “We’ve got some great announcements for you.

18:10-18:25 Statistics about how Apple has been doing since the last keynote. Expect only good numbers. Be sure that you know how Mac sales are up and that maybe more people buy Android phones than iPhones but they don’t appear to be using them much at all. (With graph.)

18:25-18:30 Retail. There’ll be a count of how many Apple Stores there are now or there’ll be something like how many sales were made in total. There will be a video of a new and impressive store with a new and impressive queue of customers lining up outside it on the first day.

18:30-19:00 These half-hour blocks are interchangeable, depending on what Apple wants to emphasise. But a typical one will cover Mac OS X first. It will do it by revealing new hardware then the latest version of OS X. Expect a wacky name to follow “OS X Mavericks”.

19:00-19:30 Again, may swap with either 18:30-19:00 or 19:30-20:00 but a typical one will cover iOS. Specifically iOS 8. There will be a video with designer Jony Ive filmed against a white background.

19:30-20:00 Potentially the most interesting half hour. It can change if there’s something really new to mention about Macs, in which case Mac stuff moves to here. Same with iOS. But this is where newer stuff goes. It’s also the last half hour so if there is to be one of Apple’s near-patented “One more thing” (Columbo is disputing the patent) then naturally it has to be here.

This year Apple is live-streaming the lot on its website here. I won’t be watching. But only because I’m working that evening. Otherwise, I will be tuning in to the recording later and I’ll probably be avoiding reading too many news sites because it genuinely is fun to see the show. Apple presents very, very well. Just watch a Microsoft presentation, preferably with Steve Ballmer, and then contrast it to an Apple one. Regardless of the products being shown, Apple’s presentation works and Microsoft’s tends to be a bit embarrassing.

I have no idea what Apple will reveal or release this year. They do like saying “available today”, which I like too. I like that they don’t very often talk about products that are coming out eventually or that they intend to make, it’s always about what they’ve made now and what you can buy now, if you so choose.

And I will be buying, if you can call it that. There is no question but that iOS 8 and the next OS X will be revealed, if not yet shipping, and both of those will be free. Both of those I will get. Beyond that, I don’t know.

But I do enjoy finding out. Call me a geek, but.

Don’t be evil (terms and conditions apply)

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Is this true?

Just over 15 years ago, two Stanford University students set out to commercialize PageRank, a brilliant new search engine concept they'd developed to organize the Internet's vast array of information. However, the same intellectual property rights Google now opposes in regard to Android would have prevented Larry Page and Sergey Brin from ever having got their company off the ground back then.

Google's Current Stance on Patents with Android Would Have Prevented Google from Ever Having Existed – Daniel Eran Dilger, AppleInsider (25 May 2014)

It's a detailed and interesting article that takes not only that headline argument but goes into specifics of when Google allegedly played with less than saintly techniques.

Personally I'm still annoyed they killed off Google Reader, though after a year or more I'm finding things have sorted themselves without Google. And I can cut through all the Android vs iPhone arguments and who created what by just glancing at the difference in all smartphones before and after the introduction of the iPhone.

Oh, and I think Google Docs is clunky. And actually Gmail is a bit ugly. But powerful.

Still, I want Google to have and to stick to this “don't be evil” mantra.

Rumour – Apple to launch home automation

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My story's headline begins with the word 'rumour' and there'll be a quote in here with the words “according to people familar with the matter” so I wouldn't hold your breath. But if fancy doing that, you only have to stop breathing until around 10am Pacific Time on 2 June when Apple makes its next announcements.

And allegedly one such announcement will be that:

Apple is readying a new software platform that would turn the iPhone into a remote control for lights, security systems and other household appliances, as part of a move into the “internet of things”.
Apple plans to take on rivals Google and Samsung and make a “big play” in the world of smart home technology at its Worldwide Developer Conference on June 2 in San Francisco, according to people familiar with the matter.

Financial Times

The full Financial Times article requires registration to read but you get the gist.

I don't know if I want Apple to let me control my house. If I did, there are many, many ways of doing it already.

But I do remember seeing a Sony image of the future at a house show a few years ago. Whizzy lights, expensive props, and a journey through the imagination of everything that will be possible soon with Sony's PCs and Sony's technology.

I can't remember the details now but I remember wandering off, disappointed, because every single thing that was promised in this wonderful future I was already doing with my Mac and had been for a long time.

I don't know how that story came to my mind but I wanted to share it with you. Apple doesn't introduce much that's actually new, it just tends to find the way to make things right, so I'm not joining you in holding my breath.

Actually, I'm not holding it for much this time: I like Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference announcements and I'm sure I'll be paying attention to what they say about the next versions of iOS and OS X, the two operating systems that run my life.

I just don't think I want them to run my house too.

Marco Polo found – on iPhone

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Maybe you have to be a Doctor Who fan to be alert to any news with the words “Marco Polo” and “found” but that's how I just discovered a new app that I can't make my mind up about.

Get this new app, run it on your iPhone and the next time you lose your phone around the house, just shout the word “Marco”. Your iPhone will reply at top volume: “Polo!”

I have no idea why the maker chose those words. You can change the “Marco” bit but you won't because there's no changing the Polo response.

Take a look at it on the App Store and be ready to spend your 69p UK, 99c US.

Grab Word Lens right now – it’s suddenly free

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It's the app that looked like a joke: point your iPhone camera at a sign written in French and on the screen, you see it in English. It's the universal translator of Star Trek or the Time Lord Gift of Doctor Who except that it is real. Like many, I downloaded the free app just to see if it were true and it was. But you get only a kind of demo limited unless you buy packs such as English to Russian. I can't remember how much those cost but it was enough that I put it off until I was going to a country. I never once remembered to do that.

Except.

Now we don't have to: the whole thing, in-app language packs and all, is free.

It's free because the development company has just been bought by Google. The mark has turned everything free and I am downloading it all right now.

I'm sure it won't remain free for long. I'm not sure whether it will continue as a separate app, though: you can well imagine that Google is intending to incorporate this technology into its other offerings. Fine. Good, even. But the current Word Lens app may not survive so grab it while you can.

Word Lens on the iOS a App Store

Now, don’t skip this too quickly…

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Apple has released its iOS Human Interface Guidelines as a free iBook. And the thing of it is that even if you don’t like Apple, even if you’re looking at me like that because you can’t conceive of being interested in interfaces, the book is a good read. I think everything is interesting, except football, and behind anything is a lot of thought. Read this to see what lies behind the apps we use every day.

Screen Shot 2014-05-14 at 07.49.47From iOS Human Interface Guidelines, free on the iBooks Store

 

That’s a page recommending that an app just gets on with it. No fancy startup screen, just wallop straight in there.

Startup screens, sometimes called splash screens, are where a company’s logo or the app’s name are displayed at the start. Lots of people hate these and argue that they’d rather get on with using the software but the splash is often there because it takes time for certain apps to load and the alternative is that you have nothing to look at. The alternative is that you wouldn’t be sure it had even started. So they can be necessary. But Apple is really keen on you making apps that load quickly enough that you don’t need them.

I read the old Mac Human Interface Guidelines in paperback a lot of years ago and I’ve never designed a Mac app. It’s still like getting a peek at a philosophy of craft. I don’t believe there’s a Microsoft or an Android equivalent book but I’d read it if there were. Mind you, Microsoft has done something similar in blogs and I did read those until they suddenly took a daft turn into being demonstrably ridiculous. That’s where I read about a redesign of Microsoft Word and its last blog post showed a final screenshot and you could see what huge flaws remained.

Free today – Lists To Do for iPhone

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I've not used it, not even heard of it before two minutes ago – but on being told of it, I wanted to make sure you knew too. This fairly basic-looking tasks app, Lists To Do, is free for today only.

It's usually 69p so it's not like that will destroy your bank balance, but To Do apps are so important that it's worth checking out a lot of them. And a lot of 69p can add up.

So do take a moment to check this one out here.

Video – designing how we use computers

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This hits me in so many interests. Design. Computers. Or more specifically, how we use computers to get our work done. How the efforts of software designers enable every single thing I ever do. And this video grabs me because it's about the history of the user interface. It still feels weird using the word history about a time I went through, but there you go.

John Gruber talks history, design, computers, software and people in this talk primarily about Apple's operating systems. It's from 2011 so it's already lagging behind but I just enjoyed the lot over a late breakfast:

Webstock '11: John Gruber – The Gap Theory of UI Design from Webstock on Vimeo.

France wants to stop emails after 6pm

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You have to be in France. You have to be a manager there, too, because ordinary workers can lump it: if your boss needs you to answer your emails all day and night, you’ll answer them or else. But if a French plan to protect stressed bosses works, it will logically help everyone. Follow. When your boss is not allowed to go on email in the evenings then he or she can’t be emailing you anything. Everybody wins.

In many jobs, work email doesn’t stop when the employee leaves the office. And now France has decided to act. It has introduced rules to protect about a million people working in the digital and consultancy sectors from work email outside office hours. Those are taken to be before 9am and after 6pm. The deal signed between employers federations and unions says that employees will have to switch off work phones and avoid looking at work email, while firms cannot pressure staff to check messages.

Michel de La Force, chairman of the General Confederation of Managers, has said that “digital working time” would have to be measured. Some emailing outside of office hours would be allowed but only in “exceptional circumstances”.

Could work emails be banned after 6pm? BBC News

I’m more sympathetic to this idea that I might have been before. I used to live by the bleep of my incoming emails and now I’ve switched it all off. Almost all. Certain people’s emails make a bleep but the majority don’t. And I switched off push notifications too. Suddenly my battery life is longer and I am able to concentrate on more work because I just don’t get interrupted so often.

And I can tell you exactly where in Damascus I had this blinding revelation. Do read the BBC article because it is interesting but for useful ideas – specifically for useful ideas you can use right this moment – buy David Sparks’s book about Email from the iBooks Store.