"It’s got a touchscreen. It’s got 187 flavor combinations. It’s the Way of the Future™.
Unfortunately, these machines provide an awful user experience."
I was going to write a bunch of stuff about how awful the UI on the touchscreen Coca-Cola dispensers is, the Coke Freestyle, but a bit of googling found that Matt Swanson had pretty much said it all.
Only one person can get a drink at a time
It's not super clear how you get ice
If you leave your cup in the position you get ice, you end up with soda all over your hand/side of your cup
The touchscreen is laggy as all hell
Style over substance. A dispenser that could serve multiple people at once, be used one handed, and was extremely intuitive, replaced by a dispenser that serves one person at once, is confusing for most people, and generally requires two hands.
Here's just a little tip for you. If you plan to watch an awesome historical movie rented from iTunes on your flight home, don't upgrade your iPad to the latest version (for me, 6.0.1) before you get on the flight.
Or, if you do, at least connect to the internet and make sure iTunes reauthorizes your iPad to watch the movie.
Otherwise, you'll get on the plane, hunker down to watch it, and instead, get a nice error message of "Cannot Open" over and over again until you give up and realize it ain't going to happen.
Thankfully, I've got another leg of my trip and I found wifi in between. Open up the Videos app, and all of a sudden the iPad remembers it's allowed to play the movie.
Now I need to go learn about the history of our 16th President and how he ended the vampire plague.
Looking through my iTunes and Spotify playlists, I've been starting to cobble together some thoughts on the best (or at least most interesting music) in 2012. This is just a sampling of this year. It's been a pretty good one, with at least a couple big albums left. (These links go through Amazon, so if you buy any of them there, I make like 4 cents. Just sayin'.)
The Heist -- Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
This album caught me by surprise. It's most notable song is the marriage equality anthem "Same Love", which is a) awesome, and b) a surprisingly coherent argument for marriage equality (or at least pointing out that there's no reason to be against it. But this album also has two ridiculously fun songs in "Can't Hold Us" and "Thrift Shop".
Delta Spirit -- Delta Spirit
Every time Delta Spirit put out an album, I remember how great they are. Then I see them live and really remember how great they are. Awesomely fun live band, and this album is full of great songs. It moves a bit more into the straight rock area, out of the folk-rock world, but for the most part, it works. The best example is "Empty House".
"Myth" -- Beach House
This song won me over the first time I heard it. I'm not sure why, but it just gets in your head and never leaves.
Correct Behavior -- Eternal Summers
Somehow, I'd never head of this band. Then I think I heard a couple of tracks on KEXP and NPR, and I had to seek them out. Some rock, female lead singer, and a driving beat. Always works for me. Always. "Millions" and "Wonder" lead off the album and are two of the best songs of the year.
Shut Down the Streets -- A.C. Newman
Probably the premier writer of good pop/rock music (like The Beach Boys and Beatles used to make), this new album draws even closer to that sound. It sounds like that album from the 70s that you pull out and listen to and wonder why bands don't sound this good any more. Backing vocals by Neko Case on a bunch of songs just make it sound all that much better. "I'm Not Talking" is a brooding 70s-style song, with "Encyclopedia of Classic Takedowns" a much more typical A.C. Newman/New Pornographers track.
There's a great moment in The West Wing episode "Bartlet for America" where, in the midst of an almost unfathomable number of setbacks, President Bartlet is reminded of how his path to office started, a napkin with "Bartlet for America" written on it.
The small, inauspicious start of the (fictional) rise to the Bartlet Presidency.
I don't know if there was a similar moment in President Obama's life, but I'm reminded of that West Wing moment now. Here we are, a couple of weeks away from the election, and by all accounts, the race is close. Everything that could go wrong, has: the horror in Libya (and subsequent politicization); an abysmal performance in the first debate; the slower than hoped for economic recovery.
As a supporter of the President, I could be disheartened. And, at times, I have been. But then my mind drifts to that West Wing episode and I feel that, somehow, it's going to work out.
I really believe this to be a clear cut decision. I don't expect social conservatives to vote for the President's re-election, but that's not worrying to me&emdash;social conservatism (in its current form) is a dying philosophy. But everyone else should see the President as the clearer choice. Tax cuts for the middle class, offset by closing loopholes for large corporations and very high income earners. Getting out of Afghanistan. A measured approach to Iran, to avoid getting involved in another costly war in the Middle East. Obamacare (which, contrary to popular belief, will reduce the deficit by $84 billion dollars). Saving the American Auto Industry. Reducing unemployment to the lowest rate since before the recession.
Do fiscal conservatives and libertarians agree with all of these? Certainly not. But what's your option? The Romney plan seems to imply some magic by which he will grow the military, likely get involved militarily in Iran, and cut tax rates for all Americans. There's been no detailed plan put forth on how that will actually happen. A repeal of Obamacare will grow the deficit (see the aforementioned CBO link).
More troubling, Romney has repeatedly refused to share specifics of his radical plan to simultaneously reduce the debt, get rid of Obamacare (or, as he now says, only part of it), make a voucher program of Medicare, slash taxes and spending, and thereby create millions of new jobs. To claim, as Romney does, that he would offset his tax and spending cuts (except for billions more for the military) by doing away with tax deductions and exemptions is utterly meaningless without identifying which and how many would get the ax. Absent those specifics, his promise of a balanced budget simply does not pencil out.
It's a critical moment in our nation. We're on the cusp of breaking out of a long-term economic depression (arguably caused by greatly lowered tax rates while in the middle of the one of the largest military buildups in our nation's history). We're making progress towards social equality.
Going backwards with a Romney election would be one of the single worst decisions in our nation's history. Instead, let me paraphrase that great West Wing episode:
I’ve been walking around in a kind of daze for two weeks and everywhere I go…planes, trains, restaurants, meetings…I find myself scribbling something down.
"The only impact same-sex marriage will have on your children is if one of them turns out to be gay and cannot get married. What will you do (and I ask this honestly) if one or more of your kids ends up being gay? Will you love them any less? What will your actions speak to them, 15 years from now, when they ask you why they can’t enjoy the same relationship that you and your wife have now? And if your response is ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it’, well, for a lot of people that bridge is here right now. They’re trying to cross it, but the way is barred, and I will do my best to tear those barricades down any way I can because I believe that we are infringing on the free will of other human beings by denying them their basic right to live free of oppression. I love my daughters for their minds and their personalities, not for who they love as adults. That’s none of my damn business, and I will support them in life no matter who they want to marry."
I legitimately love that the single loudest, most coherent, forceful spokesperson for marriage equality is a straight, married, NFL punter. The only way it would get better is if he was a defensive lineman. Could you have a better perceived dichotomy than "NFL player" and "marriage equality supporter".
It's a tremendous sign for society that there are now NFL players willing to come out on the "supporting gay marriage" side of this argument. There have been other players and former players (Charles Barkely, Steve Nash, Matt Cain, and more) who have publicly supported equality. But none of come out quite as forcefully as Chris Kluwe.
Which is probably ok, because it seems to be Chris Kluwe was singularly born to do this. Even in his polite, politically correct response, he still manages to drop a sparkleponies reference.
With iOS6 and the iPhone 5 out, and with iTunes 11 on the horizon (coming in a few weeks), I'm expecting more folks will start using iTunes Match. iTunes Match is pretty straightforward, but there are some little things I think are helpful to know before getting started with iTunes Match.
The most helpful thing is to get your library under control. As best as you can, you'll want to make sure everything is well named (i.e. get info for all of your "Unknown Artist, Unknown Song" tracks). There are loads of apps out there to help you tag your tracks without a lot of manual intervention. The best is probably TuneUp. It's pricey, but it'll help you get as many of your songs tagged properly.
The reason for getting your songs tagged is simple: when you're using iTunes Match, you need to have some way to identify the song you want to download to your iPhone. If you can't tell by the name, you'll have to preview the song, which means downloading it anyway. So, tag your music (or at least the music you care about) to make it easier to grab over the air.
Once your music is all nice and neat, you might as well use iTunes extensive album art library to make your music pretty. There's a simple way: make a playlist of all your music that has no artwork. That'll look something like this:
Then just click on that playlist, select all, and right-click, and choose "Get Album Artwork". Or you can choose "Get Album Artwork" from under the Store menu.
Now that you've got your music well named and full of pretty album art, you're ready to get things onto your iPhone or iPad. If you follow along with Apple's advice, you'll just go into the Music app on your phone, click on a song or album and download them one at a time.
That is perfectly fine if you have a limited set of music (a few albums, maybe a few hundred songs). Once you want to get a few GBs of music on to your phone (you know, your iPhone you spent a bunch of money to get 32 or 64GB of memory), this whole one at a time method sucks. It sucks hard.
There's a solution here, though. And it's an easy, old school one: turn off iTunes Match. Get all of your music ready, sync it to your iPhone/iPad the old school way over USB/WiFi. Get your gigs of music onto your iOS device, then turn on iTunes Match. iTunes Match will say "hey, I'm going to replace your library" and you're good.
iTunes Match will now utilize all of the music that is on your phone, and you can just use iTunes Match to bring over new music as you get it, or when you get the inkling to listen to something you didn't sync to your device originally.
I think if you follow these basic guidelines, you'll very much enjoy iTunes Match the way it should be—without thinking about it. It'll just work.
Even if you don't want to use iTunes Match, you should still pay apple the $20/year or whatever it is, just so you get a full backup of all of your music. That's worth it, in and of itself.
Back in May, we hit the semi-anniversary of iTunes Match. About 4 months later, after the release of iOS6 and Mountain Lion, where do we stand?
For the most part, we're almost in the same spot. In May, the outstanding issues really amounted to:
Occasionally flaky album art updates
Play counts not syncing from iOS devices
Some smart playlists not working the way you'd expect
A somewhat unintuitive way to manage adding songs to your iOS device
What's Better?
Album art seems to be almost completely fixed. I haven't noticed what the change is—whether it's just the initial syncing of the art when you grab the music or doing some smart syncing behind the scenes—but things are definitely better. I have yet to see missing or incorrect art, even when listening and skipping through music without a data connect (i.e. on the subway).
Smart playlists just seem to work now. At least mine seem to. The ones that always seemed out of whack before ("recently added" songs) seem to update appropriately and they match what's in my iTunes, which means maybe they're reflecting the authoritative library date, rather than when they were added to the iOS device. Or, I'm just lucky enough that they sync up right now. Still, it's a good sign.
One thing I've noticed anecdotally is that metadata (ratings, last play date, etc.) seems to sync much faster than it did before. I could very well be crazy, but it seems like both iOS and iTunes are pushing out their changes reasonably quickly, and that means things seems sort of magic. You update a genre or a star rating on iTunes, and before you have time to think about it, it's already on your devices. That's good and sort of the promise of iTunes Match -- "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".
What's the Same?
Play counts still don't sync. The first track you play might update its play count. Nothing else does. I don't get it. I don't get why other meta data updates but not play count. This is very distinguishable from magic.
What's (Arguably) Worse?
Managing music on the device seems to have taken a step back. You still have to flip the switch (in Settings.app, which isn't a huge deal) to show all music, or just what's local. When I want to play something not on my device, I flip the switch and then go to the album (or playlist) it might be on. Except now there's no sign that it's not on my device. The iCloud icon shows up only on the "collection" level -- album, artist, playlist. It doesn't show up on a song by song basis. I can click the song to play it -- but does that cache it and save it to my device (it does). Or, I click the iCloud icon and it will download every song on that list that's not on my device … which may include things I don't want at this moment.
I don't think this is a huge deal for most people. You're either a song buyer or an album buyer, and in both cases, if you want it on your phone, you're getting everything in that bucket. But, it is something to be aware of, and it's certainly something that deserves a nicer interface than what we're given in iOS6.
The Gist?
iTunes Match is solid. It does what you want almost all of the time. If you're someone who is careful about the care and feeding of your iTunes library, you might notice some of the little hiccups, but I don't think the average person will. I think for most folks, they'll end up with their music in both places.
With iTunes 11 coming next month, we could see another iteration of iTunes Match features.
Mostly writing this up so that I'll remember how to fix it the next time it happens. Because, we both know, it will happen again.
I've been traveling a lot lately. Hawaii (vacation), home for a week, Austin (work), home for 3 days, San Francisco (work). So, I relied pretty heavily on my iPhone while I was out and about (checking email, keeping in touch, getting un-lost, etc.)
When out in San Francisco, I wasn't completely surprised when I got towards the end of the work day and noticed that my battery was in the red. I was caught off guard, but I figured "well, I must have crushed it today using the cell signal and GPS and all that." It died just after helping direct me to the local train station to catch the train to the Giants' game.
I plugged the phone in when I got back to the hotel, let it charge up overnight, and figured all would be well. A couple of hours later, my phone was down to 20% battery. And it was ridiculously hot.
This was disconcerting.
I twiddled every setting I could find, turning off GPS, wifi, bluetooth, pretty much anything on the phone I could find. I killed every app. I restarted the phone. Nothing helped: my iPhone was losing its battery at about 1% a minute, meaning it would maybe last 2 hours. If I was lucky.
That was not going to be a fun way to deal with my travel day home.
I googled everything I could. I tried everything I found on the google. Disabling contact syncing. Killing everything, restarting, killing everything again, and restarting again. Spinning the phone around three times while saying "Beetlejuice."
Nada.
I bought a handful of the "System Status" apps, hoping one would show me some process was stuck running. No such luck.
Finally, I stumbled on a link from a site I should have searched right away, Ars Technica. A couple of mentions of "Exchange going rogue."
Huh. I have Exchange. And, when I'm away from work, I end up in a weird state of using a bunch of different clients (my iPhone, iPad, the web interface, and—if I'm lucky—Entourage over VPN). Maybe something had gone wonky.
Delete Exchange account.
Reconfigure Exchange account.
Minutes later, the phone was cool. My batter was staying strong. Sitting in the airport bar, I kept checking my battery, waiting for it to start dying. It hung tough at 25%. 6 hours later, upon arriving in Boston, it was still alive and kicking.
Success.
I should have know. When in doubt, always assume that the battle between Microsoft and Apple will be fraught with danger and innocent victims.
Frenemies
In iOS 6, I this battle extends to Apple and Google. Keep your charger handy.
