Apple Company

RIP 3.5mm headphone jack.

 

Not gonna lie. I think it's not a great idea.

 

I think Plex might be the best thing I've decided to go "full in" on in a while. It alone makes the new Apple TV my favorite way to watch any of my media. The other day I was thinking that may be time for my The Wire re-watch, clicking "mark as unwatched" and I'm ready.

 

Of course the first thread I checked out was Apple.

 

@Jason Tate Boom @reply. Just realized I made my avatar my photo instead of my profile picture. What a newb move.

 

Haha, that's a good man!

 

Haha. Totally reasonable. I made there really only be one option this time. Like Twitter, Facebook, etc. -- but there's a way to add a photo into the profile if you would like (like on mine in the about section) which I can show you the trick if you want later.

 

@Ryan Gardner Love that that was one of the first things you tried: the @reply. One of my favorite new features by far! It's soooooo handy.

(Also love having people here trying this out now, I'm catching little bugs and minor design things I never would have seen otherwise. Even after months of development and testing and all that ... only so much you can do when it's just yourself shouting into the void. Which I did a lot of. lol.)

 

Testing multiquote. Nice.

Oh cool - I'll have to learn how to add a normal photo later.

Hahah I'm sure! I'll shoot any issues I see your way - so far I've filled out my profile/account and don't have any issues.

(Side note: love that my bioline on forums says "Newbie" here)

 

Nice! Multi-quote is so, so, so much better (and works on mobile). One cool trick: after hitting "insert quotes" from MQ, you can even move around the order of the quotes before quoting. I'm really happy with how that turned out. MQ was a good idea that I hacked together years ago on AP.net, but never really thought through how to use it in practice. I think it's actualized up to its potential here.

Perfect! There's a thread in the help forum as well or just PM me or Slack or whatever! So nice to have fresh sets of eyes around.

 

Whoa I just tried that - that is so cool!

 

I'm iffy on it too but I think Apple will make it work and then I'll be all about it haha

here's my theory - I like the idea of lightning connector based headphones and I think they may introduce charging the iPhone similar to how the apple watch is charged (magnetic clip)

the only issue would be charging your phone and maybe making a hands free phone call while driving

my ideal iPhone is an iPhone without any buttons or ports

 

A phone without buttons or ports is probably a reality at some point, I just can't fathom it right now. But I'm sure given the way engineers work, it's bound to happen eventually. Probably sooner than I expect.

 

I wouldn't mind a phone without buttons, but there's something familiar and "safe" about a home button I think a lot of more regular users find comforting. It's a "get back home no matter what" switch.

My main thing with magnetic charging is I like my docks! I like having something sticking up. So as long as those still work for a few more years, I'll be happy. I don't really feel any need for that kind of charging to be honest. But it will probably be something I don't know I wanted after it comes out.

The main goal of no ports is for pure waterproofing though. That would be cool.

 

@Jason Tate I think for me, it's a day late and a dollar short. I jumped in a few years ago to just buying movie and tv media through iTunes. I got too frustrated with trying to keep up with the organization of hard drives and the time to rip content. Now that the new Apple TV is here I love the content search through dictation. My wife and I cut the cord a while back and it makes searching so easy.

I pulled an old hard drive with media on it and played with Plex and I will say the design is solid, I just hate having to have a "server" running.

 

Yeah, if they open the Siri search API to other developers it's going to be amazing. Siri search for Netflix, Plex, and iTunes all at once would make it so perfect. I bought a lot of stuff on iTunes as well, and still use it, but there's some things that I have in my collection that I just never bought that way. And I had an old Mac Mini and a large external hard-drive that just worked perfect to put on the network and put in the closet and run headless.

 

If Siri search API comes to other developers I'll be in heaven. Being able to essentially just tell it to search for any movie in my database of movies will be so damn cool. Hopefully it won't suffer any real lag, although I'm sure they're on top of it.

Not related to Apple TV, but when the hell are they going to redo iTunes and make Apple Music the flagship? I feel like the desktop streaming aspect is just lacking hard at the moment. Also, hopefully they make an embeddable player but make it easy and clean unlike Spotify. Just watching that Macklemore song go live, everyone is throwing Spotify onto their sites. Not sure how many actual plays come from those, but I don't think it would take a lot of effort on their behalf (coming from someone who knows nothing about code).

 

I'd imagine if they open up the API for Siri it should work the same as all their own things to index the content for searching. It would make sense at least. And the populate the results as they are with that added in. Would be great. Then I don't have to remember if it's on iTunes or Plex or Netflix - I can just search and watch. It'll have to happen sooner or later.

Don't get me started on iTunes. It needs to be rewritten from the ground up. It should have already. I could go off for hours on how to fix that damn program.

I am pretty sure Apple Connect can be embedded, but I haven't looked into it. And I agree a better webplayer like Rdio or Bandcamp would be fantastic.

 

Yeah, I figured that would be what would happen. I'm excited to see it come to fruition though. Siri search is probably my favorite feature on the new Apple TV.

Yeah, iTunes is a fucking wreck right now. I posted something about how I don't know why anyone would use Spotify a little bit ago and I got a few responses from people being like, "Have you tried using Apple Music in iTunes? It's a fucking nightmare" which I hadn't, I just used mobile. So I went and checked and holy shit, it's fucking bad.

I was wondering if it was or not, I don't think I've seen one embedded anywhere, then again, I only read a few sites for music related things, AP being #1 haha, so if it is available, I haven't seen it. But yeah, hopefully they take some ideas from Rdio for a web player, that would be extremely nice and not too far from their own brand in terms of aesthetic.

 

Anybody use or have any third party keyboard recommendations? I tried Swype for a while but ended up going back to the stock keyboard. Microsoft's Word Flow will be coming out for iOS soon, so I imagine I'll check that one out. Have heard some pretty good things about it.

 

I always try one to see if it'll stick ... and then hate it. Haha.

 

Haha yep that pretty much describes my experience with trying multiple ones. I am curious to see how this one feels, but I'm not going to hope on it being better.

 

I love all of Apple's stock apps so I just used them religiously haha

 

Haha. I generally just have an "Apple" folder for all the stock apps of theirs that I don't use/need. Game center, iBooks, iTunes U, etc.