Category: Technology

What price free?

It’s been an interesting week for Instagram users. First the company change their terms and conditions and make it pretty clear that adverts are coming and that they will be able to use your photo’s in adverts that they serve. They don’t quite say they are selling your photo’s but for me go pretty damn close. This caused quite a commotion ranging from chatter on Twitter that it’s time to go through to a discussion on Newsnight. Really?

A day later Instagram tried to clarify the position via a wordy blog post, acknowledging that their legal speak had caused confusion for it’s users but don’t worry, we will make the language easier to understand. Meanwhile we will change the terms a bit so it doesn’t appear to be such a major change. Sneaky?

This was a long time coming. Facebook didn’t pay $1 billion purely to stop competition. They have to make that money back somehow and advertising is just one of the ways that they will do that via Instagram. So as a user what choices do you have? Either suck it up and continue to use Instagram or leave and use something else. That’s it. And it’s clear many are leaving because on deleting my account this morning Instagram are actually linking to their clarification blog post.

Instagram now linking to their clarification statement on changes. Seeing a few users leaving?
Instagram now linking to their clarification statement on changes. Seeing a few users leaving?

For me it’s exactly the same as Twitter where they are changing the service into something I don’t want in order to make money but won’t let me pay for something I do want – the service as it stood a few months back. This is the danger of free. Free web services will alter/pivot to suit advertisers and not their customers.

While I have much to say on this topic, Gordon has blogged about this already and covered much of my views so go and read his post and then come back here for some conclusions.

So my Instagram account has been deleted. This is no biggie for me as I took only 14 photo’s via the app. If you’ve taken hundreds and made lot’s of contacts then I can see why it’s not so easy to leave. I’ve had a Flickr Pro account for 7 years and despite looking at 500px, self hosting and new options like openphoto (they have a nice import feature so you can copy photos from Instagram, Facebook and Flickr like I’ve done here) I’ve stuck with Flickr. With the new iOS app update I’m glad I did and I’m hopeful of future improvements down the line. I’ve too much invested to make the move trivial.

Aside from privacy concerns my main problem with Instagram was always fragmentation. I want all my photo’s in one place, and as I was a Flickr user, that one place wasn’t Facebook or Twitter. I never felt a compelling reason to use Instagram. Yes the filters were great and it made it really easy to take and upload an image and also see your friends photo’s and comments quickly, all in one app. Flickr missed a trick in taking 2-3 years to release a decent iOS application. In fact Flickr has been missing a trick since Yahoo bought them but thats a whole other topic. But for me I never got the Instagram bug. I tried but it never clicked.

The lesson for me is to try and stop jumping from app to app, service to service. I pay for Evernote, iTunes Match, Flickr, App.net, web hosting and share my data via Dropbox and iCloud. There’s probably more that I pay for that doesn’t spring to mind which is a problem in itself. App.net shows lots of promise but I have two issues. One is that many of the people I interact with on Twitter haven’t moved which I expected but it has made it far less sticky for me. The second is my time – I find it hard enough to keep up with Twitter (cull coming soon) but adding a second similar social network on top is a time sink. However I need to make more effort with App.net – maybe a Netbot for Mac would help? Even writing that ‘I need to make an effort’ tells me that App.net isn’t working for me. Mmmm.

Will I go all paid like Gordon is musing? It’s probably heading that way. I use Google App’s for all my domains and the podcast and would happily pay a fee each year to keep using those services. Same with Gmail – I’d have no issue paying for a great e-mail service. Where paying get’s frustrating is when iTunes Match goes through a flaky patch yet Googles similar but free service has worked without a hitch so far although I’d expect Google to charge at some point or start showing some ad’s. The excuse that Apple doesn’t get web services is wearing thin.

If I get a great reliable service then I will happily pay – Xbox Live for example has been really good over the years and it’s a service I have no objection to paying for. What I will be doing is shutting down the accounts that I’ve created over the years that I just don’t use anymore. Last.fm jumps to mind – scrobbling from everywhere used to be important to me but not anymore. I will also try and stop signing up to everything shiny and new. Honest.

Well, thats a lie really as I’ve signed up to three new services in the last day or so. When will I learn.

App.net

Just under a month ago App.net launched it’s own Kickstarter style appeal. Give us $500,000 and we’ll launch a real-time social service where users and developers come first, not advertisers. This would be a paid for social network where user and developer concerns outweigh advertisers. This would be a social network unlike any others as you would have to pay every year to continue using the service. A paid alternative to Twitter.

This all stemmed from the threatening and changing tone from Twitter. Where initially they wanted the support of developers (and indeed saw many features grow organically from the user community) over the last 6-12 months there is a definite change in how they work with third party developers and an increase in adverts. A service like Twitter doesn’t come cheaply so the adverts are a necessary evil for a free network.

App.net promise an advert free network and fully open API. It sounded great but I was and still am sceptical. Will it attract the numbers required to make it useful? Will it become a walled garden? Will it get third party support? There’s a pessimistic/realistic post from MG Siegler that sums up many of the problems App.net faces.

The idea still appeals though, hence I’ve signed up. I like paying my way on the internet if I get a better service. I pay for Flickr as it keeps it ad free for me and I still think it’s a great site despite the many free options out there. I pay for web hosting despite wordpress.com as I get more control over how my site works. I’m hoping that by paying for App.net that I’ll get rich conversations, I won’t have to suffer adverts and it should be spammer free – how many spammers and trolls wil pay $50 a year? I guess I also have expectations that may be difficult to deliver initially as it’s a brand new service up against the like of Twitter and Facebook, but if people don’t support ventures like App.net then we will forever be used to selling our privacy and data for allegedly free web services. Like many have said, I’d pay for a premier Twitter account if it could keep me advert free, gave me full search etc.

I hope App.net succeeds but even if it doesn’t I’m hoping that it will at least jerk Twitter into providing a better service longer term. With three days to go it will be touch and go to get the $500,000 funding but they are progressing – the alpha is now live and the API spec is available on Github. Will I see you on App.net?

Mac Apps

So a new Mac and a couple of questions about what Mac apps I use has lead to this post. Scarily I looked back to when I last did a Mac app list and it was 2007. Thought it was only a couple of years ago – time flies when your having fun. So, on with the list in no particular order.

Alfred
http://www.alfredapp.com/
Free, PowerPack for £15

For a longtime I used Quicksilver and then Launchbar as a keyboard launcher but I recently moved to Alfred for a number of reasons. Quicksilver died from a development perspective and I moved to Launchbar as it covered much the same features as Quicksilver but a lot more too. However I found it bogged down from time to time and didn’t index as I would like. Alfred launched last year and I loved the features, the extensions but also the openness of the developer. Alfred allows you to drive your Mac fully from the keyboard – launch app’s, search the web etc. Buy the PowerPack and you can extend via scripts from the Alfred community or ones you write yourself, control iTunes and access a full clipboard history and also snippet library. A lovely app that will become your most used app if you let it.

Dropbox
http://www.dropbox.com
Free with paid options

I think everyone has a Dropbox account so there’s not too much to say with this one. I store all my documents in Dropbox so I can get them anywhere – Mac, iOS or on the web. Its great for sharing podcasts and files with the folk I work remotely with. Although there is only 2GB free, you can earn up to 18GB free and with so many app’s plugged into Dropbox via it’s API’s it’s a great way of sharing between desktop and mobile.

SuperDuper!
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper
$27.95

Still my goto app for backups. What do you mean you don’t backup? Criminal. SuperDuper! creates a fully bootable backup on a drive of your choosing that should your drive or computer fail allows you to fully restore from that point in time. As it’s a bootable backup you can also boot from it should you find yourself in trouble. I’ve certainly needed it a couple of times and it’s never let me down. Backups can be scheduled and once the first backup is complete daily/weekly incrementals take no time at all.

Evernote
http://evernote.com/
Free, Premium account £35 per year

I finally moved to Evernote last year as my digital filing cabinet. Notes, images, pdf’s, web pages, receipts, bills, contacts, recipes, lists etc etc etc all go into Evernote. The client finally allows for rich enough text editing, images are OCR’d to allow for some great searching and there are good options for notebooks and folders. The web clipper works really well and they’ve also bought a number of smaller companies like Penultimate to grow their portfolio and I can only assume improve their note and sketching functionality on iOS. I upgraded to Premium which allows for 1GB of uploads per month, secure notes, collaborative notes and also a history of changes. One niggle – exporting from Evernote still not great so I’m tied into the service more than I’d like.
Continue reading “Mac Apps”

New Air

It’s been two years since my Macbook Pro said fairwell to this mortal world and I picked up an iPad to replace it. While a great device the iPad has never quite fully replaced the laptop for me. I thought about getting a laptop last year but upgraded the imac instead. This was to to be the year – all the rumours pointed to retina Macbook’s of some description. Hopefully an Air and I’d be set.

Macbook Air 2012
Macbook Air

It’s never quite that easy with Apple so I was left with a choice – updated Macbook Air or a Macbook Pro with Retina display. A nice decision to make, but one that I struggled with. Portability of an Air compared to heavier Pro with a Retina. The retina update to the iPad left older screens looking…poor. I visited the local Apple store and saw the screen. Amazeballs. Really really nice. But the weight and price of the Macbook Pro saw me stumping up for an Air but I’ve no doubt that when retina screens hit the Air line I’ll make the move. The screen makes such a difference to text and images. Within 2-3 years most pc’s (not just Apple) and monitors will be retina. Maybe not low end but like the iPhone and iPad, they are setting the standard to which others will follow. I thank Chris for keeping me on the straight and narrow – remember why you wanted the Air in the first place and he was right.

So my thoughts on the Air? What a great machine. Fast, light, cool and quiet. I bought the stock 13″ model but added another 4gb of ram. One of the downsides of the Air line (and the new Retina Macbook pro) is that you can’t upgrade then at all. Ram is soldered and I felt that while 4gb is fine today, I’m not sure about two years from now. It also allows me to run vm’s without any hiccups…but it’s an Air – surely you can’t run vm’s?

Macbook Air 2012
So thin and light

The screen on the 13″ is great. Clear and bright although I do notice a little smearing on scrolling which I didn’t expect. It’s a small complaint though as images pop nicely. The screen isn’t too glossy unlike the Macbook Pro’s which helps too. The backlit keyboard is comfortable and good in use – I hate using a laptop keyboard without a backlight. Must have feature for me. Connectivity is not too bad – two USB 3 ports, a thunderbolt port and a SD slot which is handy for me as the camera’s I have are SD. Not so great is the updated magsafe connector. It’s slightly thinner but seems to pop off with ease…too much ease. Looking online it also seems hardly any thinner than the previous design. But thats a small complaint.

Boot times are great and in use the Air feels so fast. 128gb of flash storage ensures that a machine with only a 1.8Ghz i5 feels much faster. I went with an SSD on the iMac last year and it made such a difference – don’t think I’ll have a computer in the future without flash storage. Finally it’s worth mentioning battery life – 5-6 hours on a machine this light is great.

Macbook Air 2012
Love the backlit keyboard

Setting up the Air was very straightforward thanks to the cloud. “The cloud” is such a cliché but it really helps setting up a new machine, and one that has limited space. On startup I entered my iCloud details and saw calendars, mail etc setup for me. I launched the app store, entered my Apple store details and downloaded/installed app’s without the hassle of visiting websites and digging out serials. I installed Dropbox and synced the folders I really needed – before long I had all my documents and active files on the Air with the knowledge that they are being shared without thought between the laptop and desktop. After 1Password was installed I could login to websites without having to remember passwords although Chrome sync had taken care of bookmarks, passwords etc for the common sites. All fairly straightforward and, well, easy. The final bonus was music as I authenticated the laptop against my iTunes Match account – I now have access to all my music, none of which is installed. Streaming works far quicker than on the iPad and has worked without issue so far.

I mentioned vm’s earlier. Windows 7 running through Vmware Fusion runs really well. Any thoughts that the Air couldn’t be used as a ‘proper’ laptop are dispelled when the vm is running and you can launch Lightroom as well alongside all the app’s that are usually running. Even then, the fan noise is pretty quiet compared to the memory of my old Macbook Pro.

So a great machine – I couldn’t be happier with it. One last thought though – it all feels a bit dull. Maybe I’m too used to OSX and the familiar software, but I used to get a kick out of getting a new computer and setting it all up. I’m not sure if it’s the familiarity or if it’s due to iOS or maybe I’ve just too many devices that overlap. I love my gadgets but sometimes you can have too much? Not sure – the laptop certainly helps with blogging, coding and the podcast which I struggled to do on the iPad and meant I was chained to the iMac. I’ll keep a track on my usage over the coming months – be interesting to see how it pan’s out across devices.

One things for sure – the Air is a great computer.

Winter is coming

By far Twitter is my most used and most loved social network. It’s simple, fast and let’s me talk to people easily. The 140 character limit, unchanged since day one of the service, is still it’s biggest plus point. With no room to ramble information is passed and consumed at a far denser rate than anywhere else. It also leads to the best snarks online.

Launched almost six years ago the first Twitter was pretty bare bones. Web only, driven by texting and with a simple follow model it started slowly and didn’t really take off for another year. Like most social networks I signed up, played with it for a few days and then promptly deleted my account and left. Empty experience, most friends weren’t interested and I just didn’t get it. A few months later I re-registered and loved it. It had seen growth in the tech community, there were loads of people worth following and it had become a useful service for me.

Twitter’s feature growth was driven by it’s early adopters. Hashtags, retweeting and @ replies were officially supported by Twitter long after they had become mainstream amongst users. Third party developers drove Twitters growth via some great clients. Twitterrific was one of the first on the Mac and then the iPhone. Twitter was much more usable on a phone (computer too) via an application compared to the website. Over the last three years there’s been quite the third party market in Twitter clients with many adding features that Twitter doesn’t support – searching, archiving, muting (user, client but by far the best – hashtag) and timeline syncing across devices. All the while Twitter has been focussing on growth which makes for a richer network and brings with it the opportunity to monetise. It’s the chase of the dollar that brings with it some fear.

For many years people pondered how Twitter was going to monetise it’s service. Providing a service like Twitter isn’t cheap nor easy. How many fail whales did we see in 2008? It’s now pretty much rock solid despite it’s growth and that robustness has come at the costs of millions and millions of VC dollars. VC dollars that it now has to pay back.

Last year on it’s developer group Twitter warned third party developers.

More specifically, developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no.

If you are an existing developer of client apps, you can continue to serve your user base, but we will be holding you to high standards to ensure you do not violate users’ privacy, that you provide consistency in the user experience, and that you rigorously adhere to all areas of our Terms of Service. We have spoken with the major client applications in the Twitter ecosystem about these needs on an ongoing basis, and will continue to ensure a high bar is maintained.

As we point out above, we need to move to a less fragmented world, where every user can experience Twitter in a consistent way

Fairly bleak and although very little has happened since then a post on the Twitter developer blog follows up on that warning.

Ultimately, we want to make sure that the Twitter experience is straightforward and easy to understand — whether you’re on Twitter.com or elsewhere on the web.

We’re building tools for publishers and investing more and more in our own apps to ensure that you have a great experience everywhere you experience Twitter, no matter what device you’re using. You need to be able to see expanded Tweets and other features that make Twitter more engaging and easier to use. These are the features that bring people closer to the things they care about. These are the features that make Twitter Twitter.

I don’t need to see expanded tweets thanks very much and I’m sure the point of this post isn’t to tell third party dev’s that they need to show expanded tweets and Twitter cards. It’s adverts. It’s potentially cut down access to API’s. For me it feels like winter is coming.

What makes Twitter Twitter is the interaction with other people. Talking, sharing and learning. It works on so many levels and has brought many people together. It breaks news quicker than any other network and for many has become a key tool…even a part of their life. Now it looks like Twitter is trying to close down on what others can do with their data. That’s the bit that annoys me though. It’s my tweets. It’s my data yet I can do so very little with it.

So many people have put so much into Twitter yet can’t get any of that data back out. Over time Twitter have added more and more restrictions to their initially fully open API. The majority of users can’t see their full Twitter history. Searching across that amazingly rich data set is a joke. Why can’t I export my tweets? Why hasn’t Twitter addressed the spam issues that plague the network? These are all features the majority of users would benefit from but instead we have seen new features recently to view stories on Twitter and make it easier to drive traffic to other sites.

Twitter has opened up it’s service, invited everyone along and is now trying to own it all for themselves. It feels similar to Apple, Flickr and Facebook’s motives but Twitter for years traded on it’s open access policies. The change in tone is jarring.

I do hope this is just a badly worded blog post that is ambiguous in it’s message but I really doubt it. Already LinkedIn have removed ability to view tweets on their site and they directly referenced the Twitter post from today. When the post says “in the coming weeks, we will be introducing stricter guidelines around how the Twitter API is used.” what does that mean for TweetBot, Twitterrific et all?

If it is all about the money bring in a paid for service. This tweet from Aral Balkan sums up my feelings in 140 characters.

Twitter isn’t too big that it can’t fail. Myspace and RIM are two examples of companies that only a few short years ago were leaders in their own space. Be careful Twitter. Your next few steps could make or break your company. I dearly hope it’s not the latter.

Instapaper

Instapaper is one of my favourite iOS app’s. If you haven’t heard of it before it allows you to store articles and longer form content for reading back later on your iOS device, or on the website. It also cleans up the content, stripping out adverts, sidebars etc allowing you to focus on the content. I love it.

Instapaper newly updated for retinae iPad. Click for lots of pixels!

The app and service is produced and maintained by Marco Arment and he blogs openly and honestly about Instapaper and how it has eveolved over the last few years. Once Instapaper got some traction competitors to the service were launched. On iOS and Android you can use ReadItLater which has similar features to Instapaper but is supported across more platforms. Another service is Readability which has been around for a few years but only recently launched an iOS application. They initially were a browser plugin service that Apple also included in Safari to clean up content similarly to Instapaper. A few weeks ago they launched their own iOS app which was similar to Instapaper but without the friends and recommended reading features. However the app looked, in my opinion, gorgeous and featured some great typography to customise your reading experience. Marco blogged about it – Learning from competition.

He admitted Readability had stolen a march in the looks front and made Instapaper look tired. It also fired him up, hence the quick response with Instapaper 4.1 launching yesterday. Competition is good, certainly from a consumer perspective. Bing was good for Google, Google+ is good for Facebook. So how did Readability feel about it?

Timothy Meaney is a strategist at Arc90, the team behind Readability. While he’s every entitlement to feel a bit pissy about features being copied, it’s a font choice. Nothing more. It’s styling – nothing more. To tweet copycat is pretty childish. What’s more, looking back to 2009 when Readability first started, Arc90 had a blog post describing the service. The best part is this quote:

Our latest experiment was partly inspired by Marco Arment’s awesome Instapaper application (and equally awesome Instapaper iPhone app). We hope you enjoy this little tool. If you find any issues, feel free to comment on our blog.

So it’s OK for Readability to be inspired…but competitors are copycats. Good job guys. To be fair Meaney did apologise:

Still, Readability beaing dickish about this will live long in the memory. Looks like I’ll be sticking with Instapaper and recommending it ahead of Readability from now on.

The new iPad

The new iPad. Announced on Wednesday the first surprise was the name – iPad. In hindsight it was obvious when you look at the rest of Apples product range – iPod Touch, MacBook Air, iMac and Mac Pro. It can lead to confusion when selling on your old gear but it’s a clean way of dealing with product ranges, especially compared to the latest Galaxy Incredible Supreme IV.

Spot the model names

Standout new feature is the retina display. The display on the iPhone 4 when compared to the 3G or 3GS was such a step change and I expect the same on the new iPad. In fact it still boggles the mind that this time next week I’ll be using a 9.7 inch screen which has 2048×1536 pixels. Thats around 50% more pixels than a 1080p TV and getting close to my 27 inch iMac. Boggling.

To power that step change the quad core graphic processor got the headlines but I think the 1GB of ram will be just as important. 4G LTE got headlines but is basically pointless in the UK. We may see HSPA+ later in the year in the UK but I don’t expect much. The camera looks to be of iPhone quality and while handy to have I’m not sure how much I’ll actually use it.

Puntastic - the new iPad

With that extra screen I wondered if battery life would suffer. It’s great to get around 10 hours from one charge and if that had been impacted it would have been a real negative. However battery life is the same. How? The new iPad has a 11,666 mAh battery, 70% larger than the battery in the iPad 2.

A 70% larger battery but impressively weight has only increased by 49g. Thickness by 0.6mm. Disappointing was no Siri but a cut down version offering dictation. I’m looking forward to seeing just how successful this is with my Scottish accent. I’d also liked to have seen storage take a bump. 16gb will get used up pretty quickly with apps growing due to the retina display. How big will newsstand magazines be now – most come in around 500MB at the moment. I hope this calls for a rethink in how they are being produced and distributed. Anyway, I’d liked to have seen 32, 64 and 128GB options. Maybe next year.

The upgrade for me is a no brainer. I’m still using an original iPad so the upgrades – screen, speed, camera and the joy of a smart cover are ones I can’t wait for. Amusingly the new iPad will also be thinner (3.6mm) and lighter (a whole 68g) compared to the original that I currently use. I’ve yet again went for black, 64GB and 4G. I do have a lot of apps and content so that space will be well utilised. While I could have used hotspot on the iPhone, I prefer to buy cheap Three sims from Amazon and eBay. It’s worked well for two years, I’m not tied to a contract and it keeps options open should the UK mobile speeds pick up over 2012.

The new iPad looks to be a great update for me as an original iPad user though I can understand iPad 2 owners having a harder time justifying the upgrade…until they see that screen. Roll on March 16th.

Apple Boycott

I saw a few tweets this morning mentioning the Guardian and Apple boycotts. I didn’t think too much off it until I read the article in the Observer this evening and I’m annoyed. The title of the article is Apple hit by boycott call over worker abuses in China. I do tend to keep up with tech news, especially Apple tech news and I didn’t recall any calls for a boycott. The only boycott I’d seen in the last few days was around ACTA or a misplaced boycott Twitter campaign. But Apple?

The article stems from a post at the New York Times – In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad. That report looks at the issues primarily with Foxconn who manufacture the iPad and iPhone for Apple. There have been a few accidents, deaths and suicides at Foxconn and as Apple is the best known brand it makes sense for these journalists to link Foxconn with Apple. However Foxconn make products for a wide range of companies.

You hardly ever see these companies called out though – only Apple. You also rarely see corrections and updates in the mainstream press. A letter from the Business for Social Responsibilty (BSR) who were quoted in the original NY Times article was never mentioned. They blogged about it on Jan 27th – Letter to the New York Times From BSR. Of course that doesn’t get mentioned. Only the original and now slightly discredited piece from the NY Times is mentioned. Why discredit this great story of ours – the Apple boycott. The article does mention the work Apple has done to better conditions in China but calls the publication of the work ‘unusual’. Not good, or a step forward, but ‘unusual’. No other company has been as public or vocal in discussing workers rights in China. Recently Apple has published it’s full supplier list, it’s auditing process and the progress it is making year on year all at Apple.com. I’ve struggled to find similar information for any of the companies listed above that work with Foxconn.

So who was calling for this boycott? I read hundreds of tech posts each day and I hadn’t seen it mentioned? A couple of journalists were calling for the boycott, not hoards of customers, not thousands of people who joined the SOPA protests but a couple of journalists. One of the journalists was Dan Lyons. He was best known for writing the blog Fake Steve Jobs and since it’s demise he’s best known for being a dick. Or a jackass. Time and again he’s called out for his wild stories but time and again newspapers like the Guardian will quote him when it suits their articles and further legitimise his dickness. So after reading who was involved I pretty much dismissed the story.

I read on and it rambled for a bit until I came to this cracking piece of journalism.

Through the iPod, iPhone and now the iPad tablet computer, Apple has revolutionised lifestyles across the world and built up a cult of worshippers.

The Apple cult. Of course, it’s a small cult of Apple users. Thats the only reason why people will buy Apple products. As Fraser Speirs tweeted this morning:

The iPhone sold 37 million units in the last 3 months. The iPad 15.4million. Thats not a cult. Thats just throwing an old concept into an already flawed article. Really disappointed that the Guardian would even publish this as it is link bait rather than an accurate piece of journalism.

Forbes who were quoted in the Guardian piece ran an article disputing much of what has been said – The Apple Boycott: People Are Spouting Nonsense about Chinese Manufacturing. First notable point is that the suicide rate at Foxconn, mentioned by many as shocking and something that Apple has to deal with, is lower than the Chinese average. The article then disputes much of the maths behind death and pay rates in China.

Whether you like or dislike Apple, hopefully you’ll see there is far more to this story than the Guardian has made out. Indeed they don’t even link to other articles mentioned which is a real pet peeve of mine. If you are upset at the conditions in China then it’s not Apple who are to blame but the Chinese government for allowing such conditions to exist.

I’m pretty pleased I didn’t subscribe to the Guardian iPad app now. While I enjoyed the format and many of the articles, it crashed daily so I couldn’t justify spending money on it. Whether I continue to spend money on the paper version is another question. Yes thats petty, but so too was their boycott article.

iTunes Match Update

Just a quick update to my last post on iTunes Match. Since the post Apple have updated their iTunes Match page in America to include a FAQ and video which helps clarify exactly what iTunes Match is and how it works differently for desktops and mobiles for streaming.

Does iTunes Match stream or download songs?
On a computer, any songs stored in iCloud will stream over the air when played, though you can download them at any time by clicking the iCloud download button. iOS devices will start playing tracks from iCloud as they download and will store them so that you can listen to them later even if you don’t have a network connection. Apple TV only streams songs.

So I fired up the Mac Mini and signed into my account – low and behold my library is available from the Mini rather than pointing to my shared library on the iMac – see screen below.

Click on a track and it is streamed after a couple of seconds. It’s not as slick or fast as Spotify but it’s not a million miles away either. When I click on next to play the next track there is a couple of seconds delay while it requests and starts the stream. The same is true for playlists (which are also synced across devices) but interestingly if you let the track finish and move onto next track it is instantaneous. So it looks like it does some pre-loading of the assumed next track in certain scenarios. Like the FAQ states, this doesn’t download the track – just streams. Clicking on the cloud icon downloads the track to the Mini. Nice.

iTunes Match

iTunes in the Cloud has been with us for a few months now. New and existing purchases available in iTunes and also on your iOS devices via the cloud. If you’ve bought most of your music from Apple then your pretty much sorted but what if the vast majority of your music has been bought elsewhere? What about the ripped cd’s and, lets be honest, the music acquired via torrents, sharing groups etc over the years? Thats where iTunes Match comes in. Launched last month in America it was rumoured by some analysts as being well into 2012 for the UK but last Friday after a premature launch the previous day, Match was available for users in the UK.

What is iTunes Match?
iTunes Match is a subscription service from Apple. It costs £21.99 a year ($24.99 in the US but I should educate myself rather than grumble about UK pricing) and once you’ve signed up it will automatically review each year unless you decide to cancel it. Once subscribed your whole music collection is matched and made available online. iTunes analyses your music and those tracks that are already available on the iTunes store but weren’t originally bought from iTunes are called ‘Matched’. The matched tracks are then made available on your iOS devices for download just like iTunes in the Cloud has already done for your iTunes purchases.

All users will still have a percentage of music that is unmatched – not purchased on iTunes and the Match service couldn’t find the same track on the iTunes store. For those tracks Match will upload them to your iCloud account and make those available to your iOS devices (and other computers with iTunes and the same authorised account). The main limitation with iTunes Match is that it will upload a maximum of 25,000 tracks. Thats quite a large music collection and only applies to uploaded tracks excluding those purchased and matched. However Apple have assumed the worst case scenario in that if your music collection is over 25,000 tracks in size then iTunes Match will fail to run. The workaround is to temporarily reduce your library to less than 25,000, subscribe to Match and let it do it’s stuff and once it’s complete, assuming it has uploaded less than 25,000, add the rest of your library. A bit of hassle but it’s pretty easy to do. Another restriction is that Match will only work on tracks at a higher bitrate than 96Kbps but I only have a couple of spoken tracks at that quality from a library of over 11,000 so it’s not a problematic restriction.

So Match put’s all your music in the cloud but the main benefit for me is that the matched tracks are available at 256Kbps AAC DRM-free quality no matter what the bitrate is of your original track. Wow. The second main benefit is not only are the matched tracks of better quality, but they are properly licensed music no matter what the original source was – ripped, torrents, Napster…Limewire even. Double wow.

I’m sure thats why this is a paid service – the online storage that Match requires but also the licensing of the music. One question I had was what happens if I don’t re-subscribe? Do I lose the matched music? The answer is no – you only lose the iCloud storage and the ability to download your library on any of your devices.

Using iTunes Match
The first step for me was to backup my iTunes library. I was unsure as to what if any damage would be done to my library and I didn’t want to lose tracks, album art or metadata in the process. With that out of the way I signed up for iTunes Match on Friday morning. It was quick and easy to do and after a couple of minutes iTunes Match started to analyse my library. Once that was complete (5-10 mins) it then started matching with the 20 million tracks available on iTunes. I expected this to take hours but was pretty speedy. I’m not sure what Match uses to ensure it finds the right track but think it must be a combination of tags, track length and estimated sizes. Scratch that – it is using Gracenote’s MusicID service according to this Cult of Mac post.

Once the match process was done, 6381 tracks out of 11143 were available in iCloud. The nest step was to seed the remaining tracks – all 4876 of them. That was around 11GB of data that was uploaded to iCloud and it took a few hours.

Interestingly the upload never seemed to complete. There was no network traffic but iTunes Match was still trying to upload…something. I think the service got stressed on that first Friday and that’s what I was seeing. I also saw a couple of tweets saying the service had been suspended. 24 hours later and when I relaunched iTunes the Match service spent some time and this time it finally completed. I’m not sure how long this took but I eventually had all of my tracks available in iCloud. Great. Now what?

First test was how Match works on iOS. I grabbed my iPad and enabled iTunes Match and got a message that my music library on this device would be replaced. From other podcasts and forums I’d seen, this meant the iPad music would be wiped and I’d start again.

However the music that had been sync’d to the iPad remained in place and eventually (20 mins or so) my whole library was displayed with cloud icons next to those tracks that were available to download. Playlists are also sync’d via iCloud and you can make changes to the playlists from any device and those changes will be saved across all devices. After some digging, this excellent article from Macworld explains the replacing/supplementing issue – If your iOS device was synced to a music library you’ve connected to iTunes Match, it will only supplement your currently synced content, leaving already-synced songs alone and adding iCloud download icons for those that haven’t been added to your device. If it’s synced with music not in your iTunes Match collection, however, all of that will be replaced.

Download speed over wifi is great, 3G – mileage will vary as expected. The tracks will start playing before they are fully downloaded. It’s not streaming, but pretty close. If I’m honest though, how often am I going to want to download tracks when I’m away from my Mac? I can see it happening the odd time but thats about it.

Upgrading tracks
With Match up and running the next job was to replace my old crummy tracks with spiffy good quality 256Kbps AAC versions. I created the following playlist (hat tip Macworld) which highlighted the tracks available to download that were of better quality than I currently had.

Many of my tracks were ripped from CD and I stuck at 192Kbps at the time. I also had quite a few albums acquired form less honest sources that were of low quality. I selected a couple of test albums, held down the option key and clicked delete. I sent the albums to trash but kept them on iCloud. I setup a second playlist that showed music on iCloud and not on local machine, selected both albums and clicked Download. Thirty seconds later I had two albums refreshed at a higher quality but most importantly my ratings and played count were retained from the old files. With that test concluded, and safe in the knowledge I had backed up everything, I selected all files of a lower quality, deleted them and then kicked off the download.

I them went out for the morning.

On my return iTunes had finished – 6548 tracks downloaded which is just over 53GB in total. Boom.

Is it worth it?
So thats iTunes Match. If I’m being harsh it’s the new form of Apple tax – replacing the yearly subscription that was MobileMe with iTunes Match. However it’s a service that delivers an upgrade to the quality of your music, gives you legitimate copies of your music irrespective of source (when it was announced in June 2011 I couldn’t believe it was the case) and allows you to download your music from anywhere in the world without leaving your machine running at home…or needing to carry it all with you.

One final benefit is that your music collection is backed up to the cloud. In event of a hard drive loss you can download your full music library to an existing or brand new machine. Compared to the Amazon S3 costs, that alone is worth £21 a year for me.

For me it’s highly recommended – just make sure you’ve taken a backup before proceeding just in case.