Digital music has continued to evolve since Apple released the first iPod back in 2001. Back then MP3 was the popular format and then Apple switched gears to AAC. The AAC format promised better sounding music at smaller or the same file sizes as the .MP3s they were replacing. Once the iTunes Music Store launched we saw the introduction of "Protected" AAC files (.m4p). These are the files types that were originally sold on the iTunes Store that had DRM (Digital Rights Management) copy protection in them. This of course limits them to only play on your "Authorized" computers and devices. Of course there were ways around this like burning an Audio CD and then re-ripping it back into iTunes.
Luckily those days are behind us as Apple now only sells "iTunes Plus" (.m4a). Legally you're still obligated not to distribute this music to all your friends, but music in this format is not physically restricted to only play on your authorized computers or only on Apple devices. The iTunes Plus music is also encoded at a higher bit rate (256kbps vs 128kbps). The files are larger but should sound better.
My quest to rid my library of All Protected DRM Music
I'm looking forward to the day where 100% of the songs in my library are FREE from DRM Protection. Let's start with the songs I already own that I ripped from Audio CDs. These are already DRM Free. I ripped my music CD collection into iTunes years ago. Back then I ripped them all into .mp3 format. Of course when AAC came along I wanted the benefits of better sounding digital music. Luckily iTunes allows you to put those same CDs in and "re-rip" them into AAC format. It will gracefully replace the .mp3 files with .m4a files keeping all your playcounts and the songs in their respective playlists. I haven't had time to re-rip them again into the higher quality iTunes Plus AAC format, but I will do so eventually. So the music from my CDs was always DRM FREE and just needs to be re-ripped at some point to have higher quality sound of the iTunes Plus format. Great! What's Next?…
Upgrading My iTunes Purhcases – The iTunes Store will allow you to "Upgrade" some of your music into iTunes Plus DRM Free format. The cost averages about 30¢ a song. It's an option of course and you don't have to do it unless you want to. I want to! The problem is that this option is not available for all of my purchased music. In order to offer this option the music lables have to "allow" Apple to offer it. New contracts have to be signed and as a result any band/label that didn't agree to the iTunes Plus format from the beginning was removed from the store. Even if the record label allows for NEW iTunes Plus purchases of songs, that doesn't mean they allow for upgrades of existing songs. With this being the case some of my music has been upgraded. Some of my music can't be upgraded and some of my purhased music is no longer even on the iTunes Store because the label/artist never agreed to the iTunes Plus format to begin with. When you have upgrades available they will appear on the main iTunes Store page in the upper right corner.
How to Replace a Track Manually
Up until this point your upgrading can be done automatically if you are re-ripping from your Audio CDs to get higher quality tracks or if you use the available iTunes Plus upgrades offered by the iTunes Store. That's great, but what if you want to bite the bullet and upgrade a song to DRM FREE at full quaility by buying it again? I know that that sounds like crazy talk right? Why would you re-buy something that you already own? For me it's not that crazy at all and it's not the first time it has happened. I started with 45's and Vinyl Albums. I rebought my favorite albums when CDs came along. I have bought several movies on VHS and yes I rebought some of my favorite ones on DVD and guess what, I'll buy some of them again on Blu-ray. So the concept of rebuying content to increase the quality of it or play it back on different devices is not that strange, at least not for me. If there is a song that I really really really like and play all the time and I want it in a higher quaility format not to mention no longer having DRM restrictions on it, then I'm willing to entertain the thought of buying it again. Once you get past the mental block of re-buying content, the next thing you'll want to know is how to do it in a way that doesn't create a duplicate in iTunes. Also I want to maintain that song's playcount as well as star ratings and of course I want it in all the playlists that it was already in. Sadly when you buy the same song in iTunes without doing an iTunes Plus upgrade, iTunes just downloads it as a duplicate in your library not maintaining any of the stats, playlist locations, etc.
iTunes is just a database. Your music is in folders
iTunes keeps track of all the above information about your music in a database. It references the actual media from your hard drive in the folders that the media is really stored in. Knowing this, it's not that hard to replace the media while keeping all the information intact. Here's how:
1) Launch iTunes and find the song in your Music section that you want to replace. In my case that's the DRM Protected one. It may help you to keep things straight by going up to View->View Options and enabling the "Kind" checkbox. This way you'll be able to easily see the Protected one vs. the "Purchased" one – Apple denotes iTunes Plus DRM Free Music as "Purchased" instead of "Protected".
2) Select the song and you can use the little Ping menu to "Show in iTunes Store". If the song is still available this will search for it. If it finds the song go ahead and buy it. Note that it may bring up the song but from a different album or even a slightly different version. This happens when the original song that you purchased is no longer available on the iTunes Store because it never came back as iTunes Plus.
3) Once you buy the song, go back to your Music library and search for it. They should now both appear.
sadly the new one is a shorter version of the song I originally purchased, but that's the way it goes sometimes.
The 1st iPod was introduced in 2001. Yes that was 10 years ago. It was revolutionary in many respects. Although the original model included a Firewire cable and was Mac Only, Apple followed up with the now standard iPod "dock connector" model in 2003. The dock connector has been great and widely adopted by peripheral and car manufacturers. While the dock connector is cool, I ask the question do we really need to plug in a cable to sync our iOS devices today?
Let's lose the cable!
Of course Apple still makes iPods that don't have built-in WiFi. These low cost models obviously need some way of connecting to your computer to sync the media. For those models the sync cable still makes sense. However, for iOS devices that have WiFi (the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad) I wonder why we still "need" to plug in a cable to sync media? Don't get me wrong, given a choice I'll gladly plug in a cable when I have several gigabytes of data to sync to a new device over doing it via WiFi any day. Yet that doesn't mean that I should have to plug in a cable for day to day syncing.
- Apple TV streams Gigabytes of Movies Wirelessly
- MacBooks, iMacs, Mac mini's, etc all can backup Terabytes of data Wirelessly
- iTunes allows Home Sharing via WiFi
- iOS devices can download Gigabytes of data/media direclty from the iTunes store via WiFi
Still waiting for my dream to come true
I remember having a day dream when I got my first car with an iPod connection built-in that some day I would pull into my garage, reach into my glove compartment and press a sync button on my iPod (or iPhone) and my device would connect to my computer in the house and sync the latest playlists, podcasts, etc. via WiFi. I'm still waiting for that dream to come true and technically there is no reason why it shouldn't be a reality today. My iOS devices have WiFi. Apple already allows you to download gigabytes of data (movies and apps) from iTunes via WiFi directly to these devices . Why not allow us to do it from iTunes to iOS device? Hey, it's 2011: I shouldn't even have to press a sync button. The device iOS device should just auto sync (via a preference) when I enter my WiFi zone!
FAQ
Whenever I bring this up to my gadget buddies, someone always has a "but what about ______" objection. I can usually shoot these down pretty easily so let's go through the common ones.
Q. Isn't WiFi too slow?
A. Yes and no. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be able to use a cable if you want to. I'm just saying that we should have the option to do it wirelessly. Also remember that Apple already lets you download gigabytes of data directly to your iOS device via the internet. My Navigon App weighs in at 1.52GBs and I can download it direclty to my iPhone today from the App Store via WiFi.
Q. What if you were doing a OS update via WiFi and your connection died or battery died?
A. OK, what happens today if you accidently unplug the cable during an update? In other words there are problems that can happen today even with the cable. If Apple were truly worried about this they could require you to use the cable for OS updates or provide the same warnings they do today when updating a MacBook/MacBook Pro when you're not plugged into to power. Lastly Apple could do it more like they do it on the Mac. Let the iOS update download first to the device before installing. If the download/sync were interupted then there would be no harm.
Q. Users would complain that syncing takes too long.
A. Yep, they probably would. Apple could easily pop up an alert stating that syncing more than XXX amount of data may take a while over WiFi. Let me make that choice and of course disable the alert.
The Bottom Line
Beyond the first sync of all your media onto your iOS device, there is little reason that you shouldn't be able to sync via WiFi from that point on. Apple let's me backup my entire 500GB MacBook Pro drive via WiFi to a Time Capsule. Yes, it takes HOURS, but they allow it and even sell devices to do allow you to do it. If I wanted it to go faster I could always plug in an Ethernet cable. Syncing a WiFi enabled iOS device via WiFi wouldn't take nearly as long even if the device were empty. Apple can we please lose the cable? It's 2011!
I've been a fan of Apple TV since day one. I have multiple Apple TV units throughout my home and I love them. I was excited to see an updated model come out as the hardware hasn't really changed in 4 years. Although I wasn't able to watch the Apple September 1st keynote until days after, I did read the reports around the web. So I had an idea of what the feature set was. on day one The one thing I was trying to figure out was what did it offer that my existing Apple TVs didn't? Unfortunately the answer is not much. Hardwarewise the 2010 Apple TV has less ports and no storage. However, it does have a faster (A4) processor and can play 30fps 720p HD video as opposed to the 24fps 720p limit of the older unit. Softwarewise the 2010 Apple TV supports Apple's New TV 99¢ Rentals and existing Apple TV's don't. It also supports Network streaming. Apple has made no announcement regarding any software updates for the existing Apple TVs. By eliminating ports and an internal hard drive as well as making it about a quarter of the size, Apple was able to lower the price to $99 (down from $229). Although a lower price is always welcome, this is one of the first times that an upgrade comes out that makes me think the older model I own is better/more capable!
Renting vs. Owning
It's very clear that the new Apple TV is all about renting vs. owning content. While you can still buy content on your computer or iOS device and stream it to the New Apple TV via AirPlay, you can't "buy" any content directly on the Apple TV itself. Since there is no hard drive built-in if you want to access any of your own content such as music, movies, TV shows, photos, etc. you'll have to leave your computer on. For many users that will be a turn off. With the Old Apple TV, you have the luxury of storing content on the Apple TV built-in hard drive AND stream content from your computer or the internet. With the New Apple TV it's streaming ONLY. With the New Apple TV you can now rent TV shows in HD for only 99¢. I certainly appreciate this because unlike a movie, it's rare that I'll want to watch an episode of my favorite show more than once. So why pay $1.99 (or $2.99 in HD) to own it? The only problem is that even at 99¢, Amazon sells the same shows for that price. Apple now rents shows from ABC and FOX.
TiVo HD On Demand Selection
I have a TiVo HD and can buy the shows there for the same buck. as well as stream content from Netflix and Blockbuster. Still for the flexibility of being able to rent and watch on a computer, iOS device or Apple TV, I'd probably give that dollar to Apple.
Missing Video/Audio Ports
The new Apple TV loses component video and RCA audio ports. It has HDMI and Optical Audio only. This actually makes sense. If you go out and buy any TV today it will have one or more HDMI ports. If you buy any audio receiver today most likely it will have one or more optical audio ports. This covers all but one of the TVs in my house.
Upgrade or downgrade – the Bottom Line
If you already have an Apple TV, there would be little reason to swap it out for a new one. You would have a smaller box, TV show rentals and Netflix streaming, but you would lose the extra video/audio ports and internal storage. If you don't currently own an Apple TV, the $99 entry price is much more attractive than before.
Why is Apple TV still a "hobby" for Apple?
in my opinion I think the problem with the Apple TV is that it doesn't totally replace your other set-top boxes. People either pay for cable/satellite or they want free over the air/internet content. While you could certainly plug in an Apple TV and still get over the air HD broadcasts, you wouldn't be able to get any FREE internet content (besides YouTube and Podcasts) such as Hulu, Pandora, etc without some sort of hack. During the keynote Steve made a point to say that "people don't want a computer on their TV." I agree with this to a point. I think that the reason people do connect computers (like the Mac mini) to their TV is so that they can not only access paid content from iTunes, but also the vast number of FREE internet video options out there. It's unlikely that Apple TV will ever be able to compete with this because it goes against the iTunes revenue stream. Also unlike the Mac and the iOS devices Apple hasn't done a really good job promoting Apple TV. When was the last time you saw an Apple TV TV spot? Most people I know have no idea what Apple TV is? So as long as there isn't a big push from Apple and the public still views this as an "add on" instead of a replacement, the Apple TV may never go beyond Apple's "hobby." Learn more about Apple TV here.
If you have an Apple Mobile Device (iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch) it's actually possible to sync it with multiple computers. You just have to understand the rules. Apple groups things into four categories:
Data – the data or info category consists primarily of things like your contacts, calendar, bookmarks, notes, email accounts, etc. This information can either be sync'd via iTunes or wirelessly via MobileMe or Microsoft Exchange (although Notes currently can only be sync'd via iTunes).
Media – the media category consists of your music, movies, music videos, TV shows, podcasts, audiobooks, ringtones, iTunesU and now iBooks. This content can either be sync'd or managed manually.
Photos – well this category is pretty self explanatory. It's your photo library and all of your photo albums. Your photos can either be in iPhoto or simply in a folders and subfolders.
Apps – last but certainly not least is your Apps that you've downloaded from the App Store.
Now that you know what the four categories are the content from these four categories can live on one, two, three or four different computers. In my house I sync my iPhone, iPad and iPod touch between two computers. I have a MacBook Pro that is my main everyday computer and we have an iMac that is our "iTunes media server". Of the four categories above I sync my Data, Photos and Apps with my MacBook Pro and I sync my media with my iMac. This works great for me because it means that I don't have to keep every song, movie, TV show, etc. that I own on my MacBook Pro.
Loading ...
