Apple Music Hi-Fi is only a rumor. But there’s at least one good reason to think it’s true. Photo: Cult of Mac
Apple Music Hi-Fi, a version of the streaming music service offering higher-quality audio, could debut “in the coming weeks,” according to an unconfirmed report.
What the new streaming rate will be is unclear. But it will have to take an on improved version of archrival streaming service Spotify.
Notetaking comes in all forms, but it is essential when conducting interviews. I’ve done many, and no matter how good I am at using something like Evernote I always feel that much better having the original words in some format on my Mac. It means more accuracy when grabbing pull quotes. It means more notes that get retained for use in a story. Basically, it means I can focus on asking the questions and letting the technology handle what it can do best for me.
That’s why having an app that can handle that is such a huge asset. Whether it’s interviews, meetings, or even grabbing audio snippets directly from the web browser (like I did for my own TEDx talk), it’s an excellent tool to have at your disposal. (After all, even a conversation over Skype is essentially an audio stream, right?)
An example of this type of tool is Audio Recorder Pro (although it does focus on audio streaming more than anything else) and Cult of Mac Deals has it for $4.99 for a limited time.
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One of the best things about owning an Apple TV is the ability to share everything on your Mac’s screen with the flatscreen in your living room. It works perfectly. If there’s video on the Internet that you can’t find on one of the Apple TV apps, you don’t have to worry about it; you just screen share and enjoy.
Google and Netflix are tired of Apple having all the fun with wireless video streaming between devices, so they’ve brewed up their own solution to compete with AirPlay. The new protocol is called DIAL, and like Android, it’s free and already has some big companies backing it.
Meet Leslie Moonves, the man who said no to Steve Jobs.
It’s been rumored for many months that Apple is working on a TV subscription service for delivering streaming video content. The Cupertino company hasn’t been able to make progress for quite some time due to licensing deals and revenue concerns from Hollywood studios.
A recent report reveals that CBS CEO Leslie Moonves said no to providing content to Apple about a year ago. Not only that, but Moonves told Steve Jobs that he didn’t know anything about the TV business. What Moonves really meant was that Apple is planning to disrupt the way the world consumes video content, and that scares CBS to death.
Bloomberg and DirectTV have both announced live video streaming services today that offer on-demand video content for iPad users.
Bloomberg TV+ offers free, live 24-hour coverage from its network on the iPad and the ability to download content for watching offline. DirectTV’s iPad app offers free, live TV for its customers.
Boxee has launched its official, free iPad app, allowing users to watch streaming content on the tablet device and transfer playback from the iPad to the Boxee Box.
Additionally, the new Boxee Media Manager allows you to stream video to the iPad from a Mac or PC. Alongside the new apps, Boxee has brought AirPlay support and Lion compatibility to its set-top box.
Netflix has introduced a new pricing structure that doesn’t bode well for those that still watch DVDs. Instead of the very reasonable price of $9.99 for unlimited DVDs and streaming content, you’ll now have to pay a nearly doubled price of $15.98/month for the same package.
Just like Pogoplug and ZumoCast (the latter currently MIA from the app store), Tonido is a service that’ll let users stream media and access files on a computer from a mobile device. It sort of combines features from both — it’s completely free, works via a mobile app that connects to server software (free download from Tonido) running the user’s computer and allows access to music, videos, photos and even plain ‘ol documents. In fact, pretty much everything on a connected hard drive is accessable.
The big difference with Tonido though, is that virtually nothing is stored in a cloud — not even your account password (“think of the Tonido server like a giant router” says co-founder Venkat Ramasay). Don’t want to use your computer as the server? Tonido sells a remarkably-Pogoplug-looking NAS device for $99 that you can plug an external HDD or USB stick into. Ramasay says the software footprint is also very small, and that’s it’s also intended to run on home routers. The next version will also support Airplay.
The interface seems a little rough around the edges — I wasn’t able to stream music because I couldn’t figure out a way to simply select music to play, for instance — but it’s free, so worth taking a look at.
If you love your music, you’ve probably encountered this situation: you’re streaming songs from the web via one of your favorite sites, and the phone rings, so you need to hit pause. Or your Most Hated Song Ever comes on, and you just want to skip it as fast as possible.
But wait, you have 67 tabs open. And that’s just in the browser window that’s visible. There’s two more windows full of tabs minimised in your Dock. Where’s the music, the pause button, the skip controls? Gah.
Factotum is a tiny utility that solves the problem. It works in Safari and Chrome, and lets you attach your Mac’s built-in media control keys (aka F7, F8 and F9) to a long list of web streaming services (the full list is Rdio, Grooveshark, Hype Machine, Pandora, Last.fm, Napster, Playlist.com, Live365, BBC iPlayer, Songza, Jango, We Are Hunted, Deezer, thesixtyone, and Blip).
Want it? Go here. It’s four bucks in the Mac App Store.