General Apple Megathread

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by Wormius

Is there still some shortage of Apple Watches in Canada? I have been looking for a reasonably priced used Sports version, since my Garmin Forerunner bit the dust, but the used watches on Kijiji are not a bargain. It seems like people are offloading them at near the price of new or more.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find kijiji bargains on any product that was only released in the last couple of months.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Wormius

Is there still some shortage of Apple Watches in Canada? I have been looking for a reasonably priced used Sports version, since my Garmin Forerunner bit the dust, but the used watches on Kijiji are not a bargain. It seems like people are offloading them at near the price of new or more.

You are looking for a used item that has just been released and in limited quantities? You aren't going to find much of a bargain on these until they are more widely available on the market and even at that there aren't usually a lot of bargains on Apple tech as they carry higher resale than other brands.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

You are looking for a used item that has just been released and in limited quantities? You aren't going to find much of a bargain on these until they are more widely available on the market and even at that there aren't usually a lot of bargains on Apple tech as they carry higher resale than other brands.

Yeah, that's what I have been finding. I guess my misguided expectation was similar to a used car once it's driven off the lot, combined with getting a really good deal on a 64g iPhone 5s from a user here.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by Russic

Ok Apple users who are for some reason avoiding Rdio and Spotify, iTunes is updating today to have Apple Music included. First 3 months are free, so you might as well give it a whirl.

Personally I'm interested to see if it even works. The streaming component should work as it's just Beats, but it also is supposed to integrate iTunes Match – a service that frustrated me to the point that I ran screaming to Google Music.

I'm one of the apparently uncommon people who really dug iTunes Match. I'm an extreme case though in the way I tag, categorize, and rate music.

I've been a huge fan of Spotify since it became available though and I was positive I'd not find anything in Apple Music that convinced me to switch. I was wrong. Beats1 can pound sand, and Connect is totally useless, but the curated playlist recommendations alone will make me ditch spotify. I spent a bit of time clicking "love" on all my favorite stuff in my iTunes library, which Apple Music uses to put together recommendations.

The result is that I've found more "new to me" music I love (from stuff I missed in the early 2000s to new bands I've never heard of) in two days with Apple Music than I would in weeks with Spotify.

The recommended curated playlists are the key I think. Great playlists around a theme that Apple Music detected a preference for from my library.

I'll keep both until the free trial is up, but today it looks like I'll be switching just for the "For You" tab in Apple Music.

[Cole436]

Apple Music is incredible. I'm not even a person who would be interested by this sort of service and I'm thinking I may go past the three month trial.

[DownInFlames]

Qtip Abstract radio is pretty cool. Run The Jewels had a show earlier too.

The UI of Apple Music isn't anywhere near as good as Spotify's. They basically crammed it into the existing music app. But that can change.

Apparently the sound quality isn't as good as the competition, especially on cellular. Not a big deal when in the car but it might be noticeable using good headphones.

I'm glad that iTunes Match is going up to 100,000 songs. That'll be an incentive to keep it.

Overall I'll reserve final judgement until the three free months are done.

[OldDutch]

I have been trying Apple Music out since it launched. Not a fan so far, and prefer Spotify. I actually didn't mind Beats1 radio was interesting to listen to, but not something that I go to in the car by any means.

One thing I dislike so far is the lag when switching songs. On Spotify as soon as I change songs, even if they are completely different artists the song starts as if it was locally stored. Apple Music has a noticeable up to 3 second pause. Even when on song to the next song on a playlist they created it lags. That just isn't good enough for me.

I do find the sound quality a bit better if you use extreme quality Spotify vs Apple. Not a huge difference but you can tell.

I still have 11 weeks left so I too will keep trying it but for now Spotify wins.

[troutman]

Apple Music: The Good & The Bad

http://www.pastemagazine.com/article...d-the-bad.html

By letting users upload up to 25,000 songs to the Apple Music cloud (rumors say that this will be upped to 100,000 later this year), you can essentially combine your downloaded library with your streaming favorites in one place.

I don't yet understand how to toggle "shuffle" on-off in different playback modes.

[MickMcGeough]

Apple Music on cellular data is disappointing so far. It's quite noticeably low bitrate - and you don't need high-end headphones to hear the difference. Compared a few tracks side-by-side in Spotify & Apple Music in my car with non-audiophile equipment and it's pretty obvious.

This is really strange, because streaming music from iTunes Match on cellular sounds every bit as good as Spotify's 320kbps stream. It's just "Apple Music" tracks that are streamed at low bitrates.

This isn't a huge deal for me since I do most music discovery on wifi and then make stuff I like available offline, but I still really hope Apple at least adds the option to stream at a higher bitrate in Apple Music, like every other service.

Here's some good info on this: https://www.yahoo.com/tech/will-appl...947058099.html

[Russic]

Originally Posted by MickMcGeough

I'm one of the apparently uncommon people who really dug iTunes Match. I'm an extreme case though in the way I tag, categorize, and rate music.

I've been a huge fan of Spotify since it became available though and I was positive I'd not find anything in Apple Music that convinced me to switch. I was wrong. Beats1 can pound sand, and Connect is totally useless, but the curated playlist recommendations alone will make me ditch spotify. I spent a bit of time clicking "love" on all my favorite stuff in my iTunes library, which Apple Music uses to put together recommendations.

The result is that I've found more "new to me" music I love (from stuff I missed in the early 2000s to new bands I've never heard of) in two days with Apple Music than I would in weeks with Spotify.

The recommended curated playlists are the key I think. Great playlists around a theme that Apple Music detected a preference for from my library.

I'll keep both until the free trial is up, but today it looks like I'll be switching just for the "For You" tab in Apple Music.

I should clarify, I loved the idea of iTunes Match, it just failed on me enough times that I became very frustrated with it. My assumption is that I had some corrupt files that were causing problems. I was experiencing the same problems with Apple Music and did some serious culling in my library and things appear to be much smoother.

I agree with you on the playlists. I heard Jimmy Iovine talk at length about the importance of the curated playlist, and I agreed with him. I didn't understand how Apple was going to be any different from Spotify and Rdio in that regard though, as they both had fairly good curated lists. What I've noticed since launch is that Apple has an incredible volume of them in comparison, which I'm guessing have been in development since the beats launch.

I had this idea a while back to organize all my phone photos and videos because they're just a 90 gig mess sitting on a hard drive. My idea was to make a yearly video combining photos and movies starting at the point I had kids. I wanted to use songs that were released in those years, and surprisingly spotify and rdio weren't great at providing a list of songs by year. They have the upload date, but those are obviously different from the song release date. Type 2009 into Apple music and you get multiple playlists broken out by genre for that year. It's very useful.

Then there's the company partnerships. Perusing through the Rolling Stone playlists is pretty fun. It feels a bit like John Cusack in High Fidelity took a bunch of adderall and made 100 playlists. "Songs about fire", "Songs about the 5 Senses" etc... odd stuff I realize. But there's also some gems like "Best B-Sides You've Never Heard" or "Bands that influenced Nirvana" that are fairly interesting.

[MickMcGeough]

Today Apple Music recommended to me this playlist:

Who's the Best MC: Biggie, JAY Z and Nas
These three MCs formed a New York City holy trinity in the 90s - but which one takes the crown? Check them all out flowing over beats by boom-bap architect DJ Premier as you make your choice...

There's no chance I'm not paying for this when the free trial is over.

[Erick Estrada]

I haven't used it extensively but in a couple of hours time I added at least 10 songs to my playlist that I hadn't heard before so I can see the value but I just don't know if I need another monthly nickel and dime billing.

[OldDutch]

Originally Posted by MickMcGeough

Today Apple Music recommended to me this playlist:



There's no chance I'm not paying for this when the free trial is over.

Hah, my first ever Siri search on "Play classic hip hop" or something like that started playing Iggy Azalea. Good to see the recommendations actually work.

[REDVAN]

Been giving this a go the past few days.

I prefer Songza still. Maybe I'm just more used-to it.

[MickMcGeough]

Looks like Apple is adding the option to choose high-bitrate over cellular in iOS9: http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/...-in-ios-9-beta

Going to try this out tonight.

[troutman]

The iPod Isn’t Dead After All

Apple is releasing new, colorful versions of the music-playing device


http://www.spin.com/2015/07/apple-ma...n=spinfacebook

[SuperMatt18]

I just want a new classic, or something with 240 GB storage.

(Rdio and Apple Music make the need for this less...but would like to be able to have all music available when I'm on a plane or a beach somewhere with no internet).

[troutman]

How to Cancel Apple Music’s Auto-Renewal

http://www.pastemagazine.com/article...o-renewal.html

Apple Music officially launched a couple of weeks ago with iOS 8.4 and with it came a free three month trial with every account.

However, like any subscription you sign up for (magazines in Newsstand, Netflix, Spotify, etc), Apple will automatically start charging the payment method on your Apple ID ($9.99/individual plan or $14.99/family plan) when the trial period ends.

Of course, turning off auto-renewal is hidden deep in settings. You can turn the auto-renewal for Apple Music or any other subscription you have by following these steps:

1. Go to iTunes on your Mac.
2. Click on your account name on the upper right of iTunes
3. Select “Account Info”
4. Click on “Manage” next to Subscriptions
5. Click “Edit” next to Apple Music
6. Tick “Off” under Automatic Renewal
7. Click Done

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by troutman

The iPod Isn’t Dead After All

Apple is releasing new, colorful versions of the music-playing device


http://www.spin.com/2015/07/apple-ma...n=spinfacebook

So Apple can make money selling basically an iphone 6 without a cell chip for $199, but adding the cell chip makes it $649?!

I hate the cellphone industry.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

So Apple can make money selling basically an iphone 6 without a cell chip for $199, but adding the cell chip makes it $649?!

I hate the cellphone industry.

Yeah it sucks but you can't blame Apple, Samsung, etc for making big profits when there are so many people addicted to their phones and having the latest and greatest. I know people that get new phones every single year (sometimes tow or three phones in a year) just because they have to have the newest. I usually like to change up at the expiry of my plans so I guess I'm part of the problem but I feel once I upgrade from my 5S to a larger screen phone I may hang on to it for a while as the industry is kind of stagnated as the only thing new phones are offering is marginal improvements in performance and camera operation. It's already starting to happen as Samsung is missing sales targets and after a few years of larger screens Apple's gains will stagnate as well.