Tag Archives: apple

Spotify or Apple Music: which subscription to cancel?

It’s been a long way for the music industry to catch up with what users need, but at last, there are plenty of really good choices. I’m listening to Apple Music’s British Talent selection right now (The Southern – Shout it!), the sun is shining bright, I have my late-morning coffee, and wonder which subscription to cancel: Spotify or Apple Music.

First world problems, you know.

Both come for £10 a month, Spotify is an awesome Swedish company, and Music’s curated playlists are just fantastic. Oh, such a hard choice this.

Apple’s service is all new, Spotify is offering all their music for free – an interesting test would be to compare which of those databases is seemingly larger. I’ll do this with a list of bands from my to-be-checked-out list: these are the songs I Shazam, get recommended to, or find in a random music store.

Ten songs on ten albums. Extremely unrepresentative.

The results are in.

The big names and new releases both Spotify and Apple Music seems to have:

  • Seb Wildblood / Foreign Parts
  • Wilco / Star Wars
  • Yo La Tengo / Stuff Like That There
  • Beck / Dreams
  • Maaskant & Adam Marshall – Outside the Cave / Vamp
  • Deradoorian / The Expanding Flower Planet
  • Shigeto / No Better Time Than Now

And some are just missing from both stores:

  • Xiu Xiu / Respectful & Clean
  • Brooklyn Funk Essentials / Funk Ain’t Ova

And the only piece that was available on Apple Music, but missing from Spotify:

  • Jean-Michel Jarre & 3D (Massive Attack) / Watching You

Apple did slightly better on this list, but only sliiightly. And the point is, almost every crazy album and song you possibly want to hear is available online.

There you go, the final result: this is a useless test, and you need to decide based on something else.

j j j

The first iPad – from 2002

As a result of Apple’s recent patent wars we can see now some pictures about the first iPad prototype as it looked in 2002. A piece of history, and also a chance to see how an idea develops into a product before it finally reaches the market – in about a decade.


iPad then and now – more from the old video on NetworkWorld

“I’ll tell you a secret. It began with the tablet. I had this idea about having a glass display, a multitouch display you could type on with your fingers. I asked our people about it. And six months later, they came back with this amazing display. And I gave it to one of our really brilliant UI guys. He got [rubber band] scrolling working and some other things, and I thought, ‘my God, we can build a phone with this!’ So we put the tablet aside, and we went to work on the iPhone.” — Steve Jobs in 2010, at the All Things Digital conference

As for the patent war, I hope that brilliant minds keep chasing their ideas – and don’t mind that others use those to make their own products. In the end, being the only one in the market can be good from the business perspective, but having competitors moves the world forward in a much higher peak. A proof: Apple worked on the iPad for 10 years – for Asus, Acer, Samsung and others it took only a few to catch up.

j j j

Getting rid of Google Maps

Being dependent on someone else’s technology feels bad. Especially if that someone can an does change it’s pricing from time to time – more so, if those changes could completely bail you out of business. That kind of fear builds mountains – or, for iOS 6 a new Maps service that replaces Google Maps.

Every time I design products where we need to use the Google Maps API, I have a certain feeling: the maps are great, we can estimate the short term costs, but the fact is that we are dependent on one vendor. I’m really glad to see that another player is entering the game now.

That’s the business perspective of course. As a user, I’m simply curious. The first screenshots of Maps are not that great (keep in mind that in Europe, we probably will receive that 3D sugar much much later than users in the US), but by doing my research, I’ve found a really promising fact: the new software is based on the services of C3 Technologies, which is a research lab of the SAAB group.

That means, at least in theory, with this technology creating those high resolution 3D maps might be closer than we think. “Since the high-resolution maps are accurately georeferenced, coordinates can be extracted and used for leading indirect fire such as artillery, as well as close air support targeting.”

And, of course, locating the nearest Starbucks.

j j j

Flash support

I dislike Flash websites, but I prefer being able to open them when I decide so. Therefore, I really like Android’s approach, hate Apple’s ignorance, and – hey, what the hell is Microsoft doing?

The Windows 8 Release Preview is out since yesterday, and one new feature is the Flash support in Internet Explorer. Because this operating system is already the one that will be installed on both tablets and desktop computers, it’s a good opportunity to see Microsoft’s strategy on the topic. The desktop version is less interesting (the browser has the full plug-in), but on portable devices Microsoft seems to share Apple’s performance concerns, and tries to solve the problem.

More than a simple integration, they worked together with Adobe to create a power-optimized, touch-friendly Flash player based on Flash 11.3. This stripped-down version will also have a video player and some more added features, but will miss out those which typically cause battery life problems. The interesting part is that it won’t work on every website: Microsoft will maintain a list of sites that are authorized to use Flash on Windows 8.

This is indeed an interesting concept, but it seems like the question is only about the attitude: weather Apple’s arrogance or Microsoft’s compromises, it’s just the matter of time for those old Flash websites to disappear completely. And although I would be surprised if anyone would dare to create a new Flash-only website now, I want to access them somehow in the meantime – therefore, I’m glad to see Microsoft’s efforts.

j j j