Shared movies are also marked as “watched” after watching. Nice!

The November OS 4.1 update of the new Apple TVs (black, $99 – amazon link) brought this new feature that I have not seen covered yet in the press.

This means that the listening habits of the Apple TV — which is bound to be the central media playback device in many households — now count toward Smart Playlists based on Most Played, Recently Played and other similar criteria.

Previously, the only way to accomplish this required “pushing” music from a source library to the Apple TV as an AirTunes destination. Less than convenient — and requires you to bypass the nice Apple TV interface.

I had previously devised an overly elaborate workaround but that is no longer needed. Yay!

More features I’d like to see come to Apple TV music:

• iTunes DJ (altho the Remote app and the “push” method above work fine at a party full of iPhones)
• Set star ratings remotely and/count skips (I’ve got an unrated, newly-encoded Apple Lossless master music library in desperate need of some curating)
• Only display playlists being shared by remote iTunes (all of them show up right now)

Previously:

• Duh, Use Bluetooth Speakers to Act Like Airfoil for iPhone
• Airfoil Speakers Touch app is a great tool for iPhone devs
• Airfoil Speakers Touch released for iPhone and iPod Touch
• iPhone Remote app + Airfoil + Airfoil Speakers = iTunes Heaven

Yesterday, Netflix updated their iPad app to version 1.1.0 which added iPhone and iPod touch support. netflix.com has been crashing my Mobile Safari on iPhone 4 (possibly just an incompatibly with iOS 4?), so I was eager to have an official native app to manage my DVD queue while mobile.

We also wanted to test the movie streaming, so we ventured out and got an Apple Composite AV Cable (amazon.com). These are my impressions:

• The Netflix on iPad allows you to manage your DVD queue as well as your Instant queue.
• The interface of Netflix on iPhone, while way more native than iPad’s rendering of the actual Netflix website, only gives access to titles available for streaming. Therefore, you can only manage your Instant queue on Netflix for iPhone. (There are other iPhone apps of varying quality that will do actual DVD queue management.)
• Removing a film from your Instant Queue on iPhone is not immediately obvious. You must be on the movie info screen and tap the “In instant Q” button, which then brings up a confirmation prompt asking “Remove from instant Queue?”. Even then, nothing happens — the movie info remains on screen until you go back to the Queue. It’s a minor quibble, but it would feel more iPhoney to have a Swipe-to-Delete action or an “Edit” toggle on the main Instant Queue list screen.
• Play quality on the iPhone screen seems nice enough, but I’ve read reports that it is a huge battery drain.
• Luckily the AV cable includes a USB cable for supplying power to your device thru the dock connector. As a bonus, our Sony Bravia has a USB-style port labeled “DMe^x/Service” which happens to supply enough power to kick my iPhone 4 into charge mode.
• Not surprisingly, the “DMe^x/Service” does not have enough power to charge an iPad. You’ll need to use battery power or be close enough to an outlet to use the (included) power adapter.
• Unfortunately, the iPhone 4 bumper case prevents the AV cable from fully connecting due to the larger older-style dock connector. It doesn’t actually matter (yet), because…
• Netflix for iPhone doesn’t support video out via the dock connector (yet, as of v1.1.0). iPad does already — and the dock connector is universal — so we watched this fine Chris Pine vehicle using Netflix for iPad instead.
• Video quality out the iPad via the Composite cable was fine but not great. Being streaming video, I doubt it would make a different, but another option is the Apple Component AV Cable (amazon.com) if your TV supports that input.

The best thing about the AV cable is that it is long. Secondly, the video cable is separate from the R/L audio pair. I can think of many circumstances out in the field where this would be really handy. I also agree with the criticism that the RCA connectors themselves are too smooth on the outside and difficult to disconnect, but I expect they’ll mostly remain attached to the back of our TV so that’s not a deal-breaker. If it is, there are other brands of compatible connectors. Maybe even one that fits thru the iPhone 4 bumper.

In any case, it’s workable. The streaming inventory isn’t too huge on Netflix yet anyway. But other apps like YouTube and iPod support video out, so the cable isn’t going to go to waste. Also, Apple may surprise us at their upcoming Sept. 1 event — maybe these iTV rumors will finally materialize. If not, the boxee box is right around the corner!

Sent via DROID on Verizon Wireless

vs.

Sent from my iPhone

Seriously.

Even if you do know how to change these default signatures, which philosophy would you rather have behind the phone you use?

I’ve posted a few times about ways to use iPhones with Rogue Amoeba’s desktop app “Airfoil” and iTunes streaming.

There’s no great (or official) solution yet for wi-fi audio streaming from an iPhone — but there is definitely plenty of interest still. This blog’s top keyword searches continue to be “airfoil iphone”, “airfoil for iphone”, and “airfoil iphone app”. Until just a bit ago, I totally forgot that Bluetooth was an option.

I haven’t tried any of these devices, but the reviews seem to imply they work well.

I’m not sure the problem is necessarily with Live, but perhaps with DP having to handle so many ReWire inputs — maybe DP (or ReWire) has a 128 channel limit? At least on Snow Leopard 10.6.2 with Digital Performer 7.02 and Live 8.1.1, DP couldn’t handle adding Live’s additional 64 inputs to my existing 64 Reason inputs, 2 Sibelius inputs, and 2 Waves inputs. Note: the Live inputs were not even assigned to a DP input (no rows and no chicklets). Just having Live’s inputs *available* in DP prevented both Reason and Sibelius from passing ReWire audio into DP.

I generally use Live as a standalone DAW, so I don’t need these ReWire inputs in DP. But it’s not immediately obvious how to disable them, and it took me the rest of the 4 hours trying to get DP to forget about Live’s ReWire channels. Turns out It’s stupid-simple. It boils down to setting one preference in Live’s Options.txt file and then deleting two aliases from two different Mac OS X Library folders.

NOTE: Doing the steps below prevents Live from entering ReWire slave mode for all apps. It also completely removes the inputs from Digital Performer’s Bundles > Instruments window. I don’t know what else it might do — proceed at your own risk. :)

To disable Ableton Live’s ReWire slave mode and remove the inputs in MOTU Digital Performer:

1. Quit both DP and Live if either are open.
2. Edit (or create) your current “Options.txt” file for Live, according to Ableton’s FAQ page. Add the (undocumented) flag -ReWireSlaveOff. Setting this flag tells Live not to undo what you are going to do in step 4.
3. Save and close Options.txt.
4. Navigate to /Library/Application Support/ (that is, your top-level Library folder) and trash the alias named “Ableton Live Engine.bundle”. Navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/ (this one is the Library in your Home folder) and do the same thing to that “Ableton Live Engine.bundle” alias.
5. Empty the trash for good measure.
6. Relaunch DP and verify that the Ableton Live channels are gone from the Bundles > Instruments tab.

DP’s VI Instrument Bundles have been a little fickle since v6, so this all may be the result of some bug in DP, or I may be hitting some limitation of ReWire 1.7, or it may be something in Live’s implementation of ReWire. It is curious that every other audio app I have besides Live places a .bundle file in /Library/Application Support/Propellerhead Software/ReWire/ to register their outputs.

Why does Live just stick a lonely alias at the top-level of Application Support? Why doesn’t the file say “ReWire” in the filename like others do? Maybe there is more to that “Ableton Live Engine.bundle” alias than just publishing ReWire outputs. But Live reinstates the alias only when the -ReWireSlaveOff flag is gone from Options.txt. So as long as Live doesn’t repair the alias when -ReWireSlaveOff *is* present, I’d say we’re safe.

What originally started as a quest to fix broken ReWire audio between Sibelius and DP became instead about how DP and Live were working together (or not working together).

Deleting Live’s ReWire inputs from Digital Performer restored ReWire audio from Sibelius and Reason both. I hope that saves you some time.

It’s Monday morning in Melbourne, Australia, where Ben just posted the first beta build (b0.9.2) to the Snowferno website.

If you want to play the game before anyone else — for free! — let us know:
http://www.snowferno.com/2009/05/18/beta-testers-wanted/

We’ll be able to add new device IDs in a week or so. Barring any huge bugs, we are aiming to submit to the App Store in about 10 days.

Apple – Support – Discussions – Double contacts? … shows people with similar symptoms. Why I had trouble getting iTunes to disable local syncing, I now don’t know — but I will no longer be spooked by the option to enable local syncing remaining visible. And I will notice the new text which used to say “Over-the-air sync settings can be changed on your iPhone” now says “You can also choose to sync contacts/calendars with this computer.”

I guess Apple removed the either/or restriction on MobileMe syncing. I suppose this could allow you to sync with a home-based MobileMe account while also syncing with a work-based desktop account.

Update 2 (6/18/09 5:46p): I think I’ve fooled iTunes. It’s not “fixed”, but here’s what I did to get back on track:

1. I created a blank new Calendar and a blank new Address Book group.
2. I deleted all mail accounts on my phone, along with all their data.
3. This left a bunch of calendars and contacts *still* on my phone, so
4. I unchecked “Sync Mail Accounts” (for now).
5. set my phone to sync Calendars and Contacts to those empty groups I just created, and checked the corresponding Reset buttons. (The idea being that I reset all my data to nothing, the only way I could find to erase just the Calendars and Contacts.)
6. Then, after the Calendar/Contact sync finished (erasing all Calendar/Contact data on the phone), in a separate sync I re-added the Mail Accounts.
7. I ejected the phone and disconnected the USB cable.
8. On the phone, in the Settings for my MobileMe account, I turned on Contacts, Calendars, and Bookmarks sync. I also had to launch the Contacts and Calendars apps to initiate the data being pulled in from the MobileMe cloud.
9. After that all finished and I had the correct data on my phone, I deleted the blank Contact group and blank Calendar from my Mac (sync cable still unattached) to verify the Push connection was alive and working.
10. Only once the blank group and calendar disappeared from my phone via a true MobileMe push did I then reconnect the cable to my phone for another sync. iTunes does not show the MobileMe override for Contacts and Calendars, but at least it knows enough and disabled the local syncing.

Let’s hope they address this, altho a quick scan of the Discussion Forums and other online notices seems to suggest I’m the only one on the planet having this issue. Lucky me!

Update 1 (6/18/09 3:09p): Apple Discussion forums are back online. Weird they would go offline right as the download started. Saving bandwidth, or what else…

Original Post
I’m 2 hours into my upgrade and having problems.

Also, why are Apple’s discussion forums (http://discussions.apple.com/) closed? Is it to squash the possibility of an onslaught of negativeness about anything that goes wrong?

My specific problem is that my phone shows MobileMe sync is enabled, but iTunes’ “Info” tab does not agree. As a result, iTunes resyncs my entire Contacts and Calendars every time, despite MobileMe push sync being enabled. I also end up with two sets of Contacts and two sets of Calendar events — one for On My Mac and the other for my MobileMe account.

Notably (or not?), after the upgrade finished, my phone was renamed to just “iPhone”. Developing…

As a composer embarking on scoring my first iPhone game, however, I now see a tremendous use for this. Our audio system has great studio speakers, but iPhone music has to be optimized for audibility over the tiny phone speaker as well. Instead of the laborious “export, mp3, copy to iTunes, sync, iPod play” routine, I can simply hijack Live or DP and beam the audio to my phone. Tweaks made on-the-fly are immediately heard.

A phone call will still interrupt the audio with no option to resume, and I still can’t control the host from within the app… but it did just make my workflow much simpler.

A while back I wrote about my 4-part solution to stream audio across a network and still have your listening count. It’s oddly become one of our highest traffic posts, currently ranking #7 in a Google search for “airfoil iphone“.

My hunch is that most people want a way to broadcast *from* their mobile device to another person’s audio system — a wireless patch cable.

With this app, you still can’t stream *from* your iPod Touch/iPhone in the same way that Airfoil does — it is receive-only. (I guess it would be good for like an office-wide “radio” station (see update below) or something?) Also, since you only receive audio while the Airfoil Speakers Touch app is open, you can’t use Remote to change the song at the music source either.

But maybe if you had one phone running Remote controlling an iTunes streaming thru Airfoil to *another* iPhone receiving…..

Get 'Airfoil Speakers Touch' from the iTunes App Store

I think we’ll have to wait for some of the features coming in iPhone 3.0 before streaming off the phone will be possible. I’m sure if *I’m* getting the Google hits on this, Rogue Amoeba surely is as well and will be on top of things.

UPDATED: I’ve played with this a little more now, and I can’t see much use for it. Perhaps if you were stuck with a crappy PC that had no sound card or no headphones jack, this would give you remote wireless headphones via the phone. And because you have to launch the mobile app before Airfoil can broadcast to that destination, my idea of joining a “radio station” wouldn’t be possible. Using this app out-of-reach of the Airfoil source would just get annoying. Third, a phone call properly silences the incoming music, but that results in audio reverting to the host computer’s speakers… hope that’s okay in your quiet office! Oh, and it doesn’t automatically reconnect (yet?) when the phone call is over.

I love Rogue Amoeba’s apps, but Airfoil Speakers Touch feels like they are just cutting their teeth on the iPhone SDK for when bigger and more useful companion apps become possible.

Previously:

• iPhone Remote app + Airfoil + Airfoil Speakers = iTunes Heaven

It’s called “Snow Dude“, and it’s available today from the iTunes App Store for $1.99. Check it out!

Get 'Snow Dude' from the iTunes App Store

Upgrading is a crummy $0.30 per track, which made sense when a Plus version went for $1.29. But still, it’s only $0.30 to gain a lot of freedom.

DRM does not work. It assumes the consumer is the criminal and only punishes people who actually pay for stuff. People that steal songs get them DRM-free anyway. Kudos to the record companies for finally letting Apple do this.

Click here to be taken to iTunes’ Library Upgrade page, and our pups will get a scoop of food on you:

My iTunes library lives on our laptop, but I’m often on our other “big” computer and want to listen to those tunes. I could stream between iTuneses, but I want this listening to count — i.e. increment play counts, let me change star ratings, etc. You can’t do that with iTunes streaming.

But now, with 2 computers, a wireless network, an iPhone running OS 2.0+, four cross-platform apps (3 of which are free), and a little scotch tape, my dream is possible.

1. You’ll need the following apps: iTunes, Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil ($25), their companion app Airfoil Speakers, and Apple’s Remote for iPhone
2. Open Airfoil Speakers on the destination computer.
3. Open Airfoil on the source computer and select “iTunes” from the source list.
4. In Airfoil, activate the connection to the Airfoil Speakers computer. (iTunes will launch or relaunch, and Airfoil will establish a digital link to the destination.)
5. Get your iPhone on your Wi-Fi network
6. Open Remote, select a tune, and press play!

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We got in line at 7:45a at the Soho Apple Store. We had our vouchers by about 9:00a. It took another 2.5 hours to get phones. The actual activation took 4 minutes per phone.

Below is the last photo taken by my Razr:

***UPDATE***
Our friend who left the line around 9:00a with his voucher returned at 4pm and had his phone by 4:10. :(

Updating Mike’s first-gen iPhone to 2.0 was no problem. As everyone warns, give yourself an hour or more to complete the update. The firmware and software updates finish in about 20min. But because the update performs a full wipe, all your media needs to be recopied and that’s what takes most of the time.

So far, iPhone 2.0 is 95% awesome. Of all the advertised improvements, the most noticeable are Calendar (color distinctions and general iCal-iness now), Contacts (search is handy), Calculator (flipping to scientific mode is just cool), and of course the App Store.

And by far, the sleeper hit of the App Store is Apple’s “Remote“. Seriously, this could be the best thing about iPhone 2.0 for me. More on that ridiculousness in a later post, I think.

In the fallout of the botched MobileMe launch, it’s been hard to determine what issues were temporary and which were just limitations of MobileMe on iPhone 2.0. I’ve spent a little time testing things, and here is my wishlist:

Allow data sync between MobileMe Family Pack accounts
This one is major, and central to the slightly misleading impression given by the MobileMe tagline “Exchange for the rest of us”. Some have said “It’s MobileMe, not MobileUs,” and that’s true. It functions great as “Exchange For Me”, but a tiny change (to features that feel more like bugs anyway) could turn a MobileMe Family Pack into “MobileUs”.

Family Packs provide 1 primary and up to 4 sub-accounts — each with their own Contacts, Calendars, iDisk space, and Email address. There is no sharing of data between them as far as I can tell (confirmed here) except possibly some way to transfer files thru shared iDisk folders. Family Packs are simply a quantity-discount over buying 5 individual accounts.

But Apple, why not take the “Family” part seriously and make Family Packs “just work” the way a family works? Our desktop and laptop computers sync to one primary MobileMe account, so that we benefit from all the integration goodness .mac has always had to offer. We have our own @mac.com email addresses, but we share common calendars and contacts. It’s even fairly simple for a sub-account holder’s iPhone to participate in this little makeshift family workgroup. You just enable only their sub-account Mail and then enable Contacts, Calendar, and Bookmarks for the primary account.

That works great, but the main problem is this: Push Email is an option for sub-accounts only up until any data sync option (Mail, Contact, Calendar, or Bookmark) from the primary account is enabled. An iPhone can only actively “sync” to one MobileMe account, so sub-account holders (or grandfathered .mac Email-Only accounts) must choose between push email or over-the-air data sync. Once anything from the primary account is turned on, “Push” becomes “Fetch” for the sub-account. I have confirmed this on Mike’s iPhone, and a lengthy Discussion Thread on Apple’s support site details it further.

My hunch is that Apple chose to limit the persistent push connections to just one per iPhone. Allowing multiple push accounts would enable runaway connection demands on their servers.

However, MobileMe has certain quirks that essentially make this Push Email vs. Sync decision for you. The biggest is that calendar colors from iCal are communicated to your iPhone calendars only after an over-the-air sync (feature or bug?). Your initial iTunes USB-sync gives your calendars a confoundingly random color scheme. I’m not about to retrain myself on new iCal colors, so if the only way is thru MobileMe data sync, the push email takes a backseat.

Settling for Fetch email is a small price — but it’s annoyingly second-class. Another drawback is only the primary account has web access to the data synced from the desktop. MobileMe’s online apps are amazing replicas of their desktop equivalents, and giving out the master password so all users in your “Family” can access the Address Book just isn’t always an option. To the “get your own individual account” crowd, that still wouldn’t allow Mike to share calendars and contacts with our desktop apps. And to the “use someone else’s services then” crowd, we’re extremely pleased with (and heavily dependent on) our @mac.com email addresses and the .mac integration way-of-life. Going without Push email is annoying, but not enough reason to forego data sync (except Contacts…for now, see below).

There are two solutions to this that I can think of:

1. On an iPhone with multiple MobileMe accounts enabled, allow Push privileges for only one account and force all others to switch to Fetch. (This would retain the one-connection-per-phone limit.)
2. Enable the MobileMe Family Pack primary account to sync selected data with its sub-accounts.

I really hope Apple goes the Family Pack route. Email-only’s are being phased out, and having inter-Family-Pack-account sync happen on the server would be tremendous. Imagine a Family Calendar that all the kids can view on their computers, and a Family Contacts group that means the kids’ AIM Buddies don’t clutter up Mom and Dad’s Address Book. Family Pack users should have the option of treating their accounts as either 5 distinct users or as a true mini-workgroup environment “for the rest of us”.

Re-enable selecting a subset of contact groups for over-the-air sync
A major drawback to over-the-air MobileMe contact sync is that you lose the ability to choose which groups to sync.

When a MobileMe account’s Contacts sync is enabled on an iPhone, iTunes then defers management of Address Book sync to the phone. I had hoped that meant you could continue to selectively sync only certain Address Book groups (in the same way iTunes allows). Alas, all contacts and all groups now sync to Contacts on the iPhone. (Thankfully, there is search now.)

+1 for Push Sync, -1 for feature removal.

A simple iPhone Settings screen or an additional config page on MobileMe’s account settings web page could easily replicate the disabled preferences formerly set in iTunes.

And, that’s it for now for my wish-and-a-half-list. I’m sure I’ll have more to say when I finally get my own phone. And yes, I’ve written all of this to Apple iPhone Feedback, and I encourage everyone do the same for your own gripes. I do think they listen. And I would like to think I encouraged a few features that appeared in iPhone 1.1.x updates. Let’s hope to see some more in iPhone 2.1 — and beyond!