iPhone lock screen tip: audio controls vs large clock, timer

▼ After six years of using one, it's not often that I stumble upon an iPhone trick I didn't know before. But here's one. When looking at the lock screen when audio is playing, press the home button and the audio controls are replaced with the large clock that the lock screen normally shows when no audio is playing.

This is the lock screen when playing music:

The time can be hard to make out on this screen when on the move. So press the home button and voilà:

But it gets better. A while ago I noticed that if you have a timer running, the lock screen will show you the timer. Unfortunately, not when playing back audio. Again, pressing the home button fixes this:

Not a big thing, but very useful!

Permalink - posted 2014-08-27

The state of enhanced podcasts

▼ A long time ago Apple introduced "enhanced" podcasts. These are audio podcasts with chapters, where each chapter optionally has an image and/or a URL. It's a very nice idea, but enhanced podcasts never gained much traction, probably for three reasons:

• Few people care, you typically listen from start to finish without looking at your computer/phone/iPod screen
• The audio needs to be in MPEG4/AAC format rather than MP3, so there are one or two players that are incompatible
• There are no good tools to create enhanced podcasts

David Jackson thinks they're lame. I've never had a podcast of my own, although I've thought about starting one many times. But I have recorded a few presentations over the years and then added images of the slides I used as chapter images, like on the one I did last week.

I can see Jackson's point, but I disagree. First of all, I'm pretty sure that even outside the Apple universe MPEG4 audio is now so widely supported that it's not really necessary to have a separate MP3 version. And because I also value the ability to listen to podcasts while doing other things, I really don't like video podcasts, which require you to sit in front of your screen. Enhanced podcasts provide an extra visual channel without getting in the way.

It's too bad that enhanced podcasts are one of those things that Apple has let slide as they focus on other things. They used to have a "chapter tool" for creating enhanced podcast on the command line, but it no longer works. All podcast support was removed from Garageband, but I disliked the previous enhanced podcast support anyway because Garageband only allowed for low resolution images.

I did find a very useful web service that lets you make enhanced podcasts, though: Auphonic. I recorded the audio for my presentation with my iPhone through the headphones microphone using the built-in Voice Memos application. Keynote (on the Mac) can also record your presentation as you're delivering it, but unfortunately you can then only export it as a (very large) QuickTime movie, not as an enhanced podcast.

As for playing back enhanced podcasts, the new iTunes 11.1 doesn't support enhanced podcasts. Update: that's not completely true. Even though iTunes 11.1 doesn't display the images attached to chapters in any of the places where you normally see album artwork (such as the MiniPlayer), when playing an enhanced podcast iTunes has a "chapters" menu in the menu bar that you can use to navigate the chapters of the enhanced podcast and there are menu options with keyboard shortcuts to skip to the previous/next chapter in the "controls" menu. Also, the title of the current chapter is displayed in the main iTunes window during playback.

The QuickTime Player and Safari do, though. And the AppleTV plays the really well, but as far as I can tell only when streamed from the iPhone. The Podcasts application on the iPhone does support enhanced podcasts, but the text on my slides is really too small to be legible because the landscape slides are displayed in portrait, and when selecting chapters the chapter names are missing. And many but not all third party iOS podcast playing applications support enhanced podcasts.

If you want to see enhanced podcasting in action, subscribe to the Macworld Podcast.

Permalink - posted 2014-01-15

The best way to use iTunes: the MiniPlayer

▼ The MiniPlayer is the best thing about iTunes 11, especially if, like me, you enjoy looking at high resolution album artwork. Here's how it works.

Although I like the "up next" feature in iTunes 11, I went back to version 10 pretty much immediately because I disliked pretty much all other changes. But as of iOS 7, you need iTunes 11 to sync your iPhone. Which I need to get music on the iPhone.

Aside: in this week's episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast, John Siracusa talks about his 2013 todo list for Apple. The seventh item on the list is resurrect iLife and iWork. "They did that. But they kind of did it Pet Sematary-style." I was riding my bike when I listened to that and I laughed hard enough to get some strange looks. If, like John's cohosts, you don't know the Stephen King book or movie, the premise is that there's a pet cemetery and if you bury a pet there, it comes back to life. But it's not quite the same as before. John, Marco and Casey continue with a discussion about the state of Apple's application software. Spoiler: it's not good.

With that out of the way, I'm ready to focus on the positive. One of the things that I missed in iTunes 11 is the artwork viewer. Although the album artwork shows up throughout iTunes now, there's not a nice, big view of it anywhere in the main iTunes window. But you can get one through the MiniPlayer.

You open the MiniPlayer using the Window menu or option-command-3 (open/close the MiniPlayer window) or option-command-M (switch between the regular iTunes window and the MiniPlayer). By default, the MiniPlayer does its name justice:

Controls show up when you hover the mouse pointer over the window:

A MiniPlayer in this vein has existed for some time, and it's useful when you want to be able to control iTunes playback with the mouse/trackpad, because you can click the back, forward and play/pause buttons without activating iTunes.

But what you (well, I) really want is the different UI for the MiniPlayer that you get by clicking the artwork. Then you simply get a square window showing you the album artwork:

To get the optimum "retina" experience, through some trial and error I was able to resize the MiniArtworkPlayer window to make the artwork exactly 600 by 600 pixels on the high resolution screen of my MacBook Pro. This is the size of the artwork embedded in songs bought from the iTunes Store, so that artwork will be displayed with a 1:1 pixel mapping. I really enjoy looking at the high resolution artwork this way. (But if you think this is high resolution, find the matching LP album and prepare to be depressed.)

The maximum window size is 660 by 660 high resolution pixels (330x330 on low resolution screens I assume). I would have used 640x640 for all of this as 640 pixels across is the size of the iPhone screen, but nobody's asking for my opinion.

Like the smaller incarnation of the MiniPlayer, the MiniArtworkPlayer shows more controls—and more info—when you hover the mouse pointer over it:

The speaker icon allows you to change the volume and switch to AirPlay speakers:

I was really impressed when I selected multiple speakers for the first time: even though output to the Apple TV has to go over the network and thus incur a noticeable delay, the audio that comes out of the Apple TV and that that comes out of the computer's built-in speakers is completely in sync. Also note that with AirPlay output selected, the speaker icon changes to an AirPlay icon.

The little chevron in the top right corner brings up a menu to rate the song, play it next, add it to Next Up and add it to a playlist, amongst other options.

Speaking of Next Up: the icon between speaker/AirPlay and search in the lower right corner toggles the Up Next list. Each song it that list has its own little chevron that appears when you hover over a song, along with a close button to remove it from the list. You can also drag songs up and down. The clock icon switches between Up Next and a list of recently played songs.

Last but not least, you can search your music directly from the MiniArtworkPlayer:

You really don't need the main iTunes window all that much anymore; you can even do command-I from the MiniPlayer to change a song's properties. The main things I use the main iTunes window for is to start music playback from a different playlist, and to manage podcasts. Unfortunately podcast episodes are not allowed in Up Next.

But I just can't take my eyes off of that high resolution artwork.

Permalink - posted 2014-01-05

Late 2013 MacBook Pro review: audio

▼ No more bottlenecks: the late 2013 MacBook Pro reviewed

Over the next few days, I'll publish my review of the new 13" MacBook Pro here in several installments. This is the fourth one, looking at the MacBook Pro's audio capabilities. Also see the earlier instalments about battery life, CPU performance and ports and networking

Don't worry, I'll be discussing the high-resolution screen soon enough. But first let's listen to the audio. The late 2013 13" MacBook Pro has three slits along both sides, starting at the front and reaching about two thirds towards the back. The slits are somewhat hidden where the side and bottom meet. I assume they're mostly there to suck in air, that is then directed out the back under the hinge. But they also let most of the sound out from the two speakers that sit right along those slits. The built-in speakers provide clear, bright audio with a modest, but workable amount of bass—more than what the MacBook Air can muster. The maximum volume is also a few ticks higher. It's certainly good enough for some casual listening at your desk.

When the optical drive was excised from the MacBook Pro line, it took the audio line in port with it. Arguably, this was a fairly useless port anyway, as you couldn't use it to connect a microphone. The headphone port on the other hand, does support microphones though the a fourth signal line, just like the iPhone. But it has another trick up its sleeve: optical audio out. With a special plug that connects to a TOSlink cable you can transmit digital sound to an amplifier with a digital input. This is how we played back DVDs with surround sound back in the day—the DVD Player application can send the digitally encoded 5.1 surround signal over the optical cable, and the receiver decodes it.

However, these days the sound is typically transmitted alongside video through an HDMI cable. The new MacBook Pro has an HDMI port and can also connect to HDMI with the right cable over its Thunderbolt/miniDisplayPort ports. You can change audio settings, including audio output over HDMI, in the Audio MIDI Setup program.

Like an optical TOSlink connection, HDMI can carry compressed/encoded digital surround sound. But unlike an optical TOSlink connection, HDMI can also carry 5.1 or even 7.1 channel uncompressed, decoded audio. If you have a receiver/amplifier or TV that can accept this many channels. You'll encounter video with 5.1 (rarely 7.1) surround sound in two main flavors: Dolby Digital AC3 and MPEG4 AAC. There's also DTS and a few higher end Dolby/DTS variants. It's also possible for video files to have multiple audio tracks. For instance, many TV shows from the iTunes store have an AC3 surround track and a AAC stereo track.

For playing back videos with AC3 and DTS surround audio tracks, your best bet is to use VLC and tell it to use HDMI (encoded output) as the audio device. This way, the audio data is sent to the surround receiver as-is, and all the channels will go to the right speakers. When I let VLC decode the audio itself and just use "HDMI" as the audio device, the audio gets sent to the wrong speakers.

Alternatively, use an Apple TV to play them. This also works for videos from the iTunes Store, which VLC can't play because they're protected. You can of course play those in iTunes, but then you once again get audio sent to the wrong speakers or you only get stereo audio.

Interestingly, iTunes can decode videos with 5.1 surround sound in AAC format, and both iTunes and VLC send the channels to the right speakers. But for AAC you can't use encoded audio output, even though I'm pretty sure modern surround receivers have no problem decoding it. The Apple TV, on the other hand, will decode AAC surround sound, but then send the result to a receiver or TV as stereo, defeating the purpose of having 5.1 audio.

• Battery life
• CPU performance
• Ports and networking
• Audio
• General impression and the screen(s)

Permalink - posted 2013-11-08

Some of my favorite podcasts

▼ Anyone who's been reading my stuff on Ars Technica will know that I love podcasts. I'm always adding new ones to my rotation and retiring ones that have run their course for one reason or another. So I thought I'd share some of my current favorites with you.

Two fairly new podcasts that I like a lot are Just The Tip and Clockwise. Just The Tip (RSS, iTunes): "Internet rapscallions Amy Jane Gruber and Paul Kafasis try to make you laugh, in thirty minutes or less." It defies description, but somehow it works. Bonus: unlike most other weekly podcasts, it usually drops early in the week.

Clockwise (RSS, iTunes) comes from TechHive, the home of Macworld and PCWorld. Don't let the gimmicky format used in the first episode deter you, it quickly fades into the background, but it does allow them to get through a whole bunch of topics with a relatively large group of participants in about thirty minutes. A breath of fresh air compared to uninspired episodes of the Accidental Tech Podcast (RSS, iTunes) or The Talk Show (RSS, iTunes)—although I keep listening to those just in case there's an inspired episode, in which case their excessive length is a boon.

The Nature Podcast (RSS, iTunes) and Freakonomics Radio (RSS, iTunes) are a bit overproduced (I really hate that "coming up..." stuff! Come on people, I'm already listening), but not to be missed.

Philosophy Bites is not for everyone, but if you're interested in philosophy, there's a lot of good (bite-sized) stuff there. Be sure to check out the website, because the RSS feed doesn't have the back episodes.

For some strange reason I don't listen to any Dutch language podcasts except public radio programs. If anyone has any tips for Dutch (or English!) podcasts, send me an email or Twitter me.

Permalink - posted 2013-09-13