Posts tagged with "itunes"

Ecoute 2.0 - Small, Powerful Alternative to iTunes

Just like any other alternative to iTunes on the Mac, Ecoute has been around for a while. Since Apple shipped its very own music player and digital hub years ago, many developers have tried to come up with original solutions for all those who couldn’t stand iTunes. And as iTunes grew bigger to accommodate apps, books, podcasts and just about anything you can put on an iPhone or iPod, thousands of users and even more developers started feeling the need of a minimal music player, again. What began as a hobby for a limited number of users (“let’s not use iTunes for music”) evolved into a real segment of a market willing to keep iTunes closed to listen to music libraries. And I understand the position of the users and developers that first thought about jumping out of iTunes: why would one need to stare at iTunes and all its features and options all the time, when you just need to listen to some music?

In spite of iTunes becoming many people’s less used music player over time, the apps that have surfaced in the past years that allow us to just play music are, in most cases, nothing but standalone iTunes controllers that strip away the clutter and focus on albums, artists and songs. They fetch a user’s library, take the music out of it and display it into a minimal, sometimes non-existent, user interface. Coversutra, Bowtie: they are two popular iTunes controllers for OS X that have gained support for other features such as last.fm scrobbling and iOS remote streaming. But in the end, they rely on iTunes.

So did Ecoute 1.0, and so does the just-released Ecoute 2.0. Ecoute is a well-known music player for OS X that plays music from iTunes, but doesn’t require you to keep iTunes running in the background. It automatically finds a user’s iTunes library file and takes content from there. It comes with a neat desktop widget for quick play / pause actions, but it’s also got its dedicated interface. Ecoute 2.0 depends on iTunes, but it adds great value while giving you a reason to stay out of Apple’s software at the same time. Read more

iTunes 12 Days of Christmas: Day 4

Thanks to the iTunes 12 Days of Christmas promotion, every day from December 26th to January 6th users will be able to download a “fantastic selection of songs, music videos, apps, books, TV episodes and a film” completely for free on iTunes.

The free app for iPhone and iPad that lets you receive push notifications for daily offers is available here. Today, you can download Gameloft’s Fishing Kings for free on the App Store. Apple is giving away the regular version of the game to iPhone users, and the HD one for the iPad.

Stay tuned for promotions coming every day until January 6.

Synchronicity 2.0 Released, One Day iTunes Sync Will Work Like This

Synchronicity for iPhone and iPad is one of the best jailbreak tweaks released in 2010. We first reviewed it in August, and I haven’t stopped using it since then: Synchronicity allows you to keep using your device even while it’s syncing with iTunes. Typical scenario: you’re reading stuff in Instapaper but you need to install Rage HD or Infinity Blade on your iPhone. You don’t want to stop reading because iTunes will take 15 minutes to install the app on your device. Synchronicity comes in handy in these situations, when you want to update your device to the latest changes in your iTunes library but you don’t want to be forced to staring at the “Sync in Progress” screen for more than 20 seconds.

The best part of Synchronicity is that it’s lightweight and so unobtrusive you’ll quickly get addicted to it and forget about it being a Cydia hack. One day iTunes will work like this, with changes happening in the background, perhaps over-the-air. A major update to the tweak was released last night: Synchronicity 2.0 gets rid of the red tethering-like bar that appeared on top during sync and put a greek “Sigma” icon in the menubar to inform that an iTunes sync is occurring. The tweak has also been updated with performance improvements and bug fixes; it works really well both on my iPhone 4 and iPad.

Synchronicity is a $2 purchase in the Cydia Store. If you have a jailbroken device, I don’t see why you shouldn’t use this.

Apple Selling Beatles Gift Cards So You’ll Never Forget

They may be gone from Apple’s homepage, but they hold a strong presence in every international Apple Store. The Beatles are such a big deal for Apple they decided to produce dedicated iTunes gift cards for them, as noted by iLounge. After the iPad gift cards and the iBooks ones, the Beatles-themed iTunes cards come in two different flavors: a $149 one that features the band on a white background and should give you access to “The Beatles Box Set” and a standard $50 one which appears to be a regular iTunes card to buy anything you want.

By the way, I almost forgot “the day I would never forget” was more than a month ago. You know, it’s hard to keep track of everything.

iTunes 12 Days of Christmas: Day 3

Thanks to the iTunes 12 Days of Christmas promotion, every day from December 26th to January 6th users will be able to download a “fantastic selection of songs, music videos, apps, books, TV episodes and a film” completely for free on iTunes.

The free app for iPhone and iPad that lets you receive push notifications for daily offers is available here. Today, you can download a free Duran Duran EP called From Mediterranea With Love.

Stay tuned for promotions coming every day until January 6.

iTunes 12 Days of Christmas: Day 2

Thanks to the iTunes 12 Days of Christmas promotion, every day from December 26th to January 6th users will be able to download a “fantastic selection of songs, music videos, apps, books, TV episodes and a film” completely for free on iTunes.

The free app for iPhone and iPad that lets you receive push notifications for daily offers is available here.

Today, you can download a free Christmas Special episode of Father Ted. iPhone game “The Mystery of the Crystal Portal” is given away in other European stores.

Stay tuned for promotions coming every day until January 6.

iTunes 12 Days of Christmas: Day 1

As announced two weeks ago, today Apple launched the “iTunes 12 Days of Christmas” promotion across European iTunes and App Stores. Every day from December 26th to January 6th, users will be able to download a “fantastic selection of songs, music videos, apps, books, TV episodes and a film” completely for free on iTunes.

The free app for iPhone and iPad that lets you receive push notifications for daily offers is available here.

While a first free download showed up on December 17, the promotion officially starts today with “Day 1”. Today, you can download “Promise This - Christmas Bundle” by Cheryl Cole entirely for free. At least in the UK Store, as it appears a Vasco Rossi is given away in the Italian iTunes Store. The Cheryl Cole bundle includes a song and a video to download from the iTunes app.

Stay tuned for promotions coming every day until January 6.

NPR Calls Ping One of “The Worst Ideas Of 2010”

In spite of Apple’s numerous attempts to inject new features and 3rd party online integrations in it, Ping is struggling to take off. Not only does the service seem useless and too tied to iTunes to many, several publications are also calling it one of the biggest flops of 2010.

You can now add NPR to the list of Ping non-fans, as they have named Apple’s social network for music one of the “worst ideas of 2010”. Ouch.

The most popular services — the Facebooks, Twitters and MySpaces of the world — allow users to share links, thoughts, ideas, photos and music to connect with each other. Ping, run through iTunes, was supposed to be an evolution in musical connection. But iTunes, being a self-contained fortress requiring endless software upgrades and with more than a few frustrating quirks, isn’t conducive to the type of sharing Web-based networks enjoy across a variety of devices. I can access all three of the aforementioned sites from my Android phone, and I have a variety of apps that allow me to seamlessly integrate these applications into my life. To use Ping, I would have to be tethered to my iMac.

NPR also notes that Ping is a “weakened” version of Twitter only meant to drive sales to the iTunes Store. Looking at artists’ profiles and the messages they share on Ping, it’s not difficult to understand NPR’s position. Perhaps their hammer went down a little too hard on Apple’s new service, though? Sure Ping is not a massive hit, but it has room to grow.

As it stands right now, Apple wants its users to believe in Ping. The problem is, people sometimes don’t want to wait for things to get better. Here’s to hoping Ping will get insanely better in 2011.

First Free Download Shows Up in “iTunes 12 Days of Christmas” App

This morning my iPhone sent me a push notification to let me know that a new download was available in the “iTunes 12 Days of Christmas” app. I immediately realized that was strange, as we previously reported Apple’s annual promotion (for European users) should be running from December 26 until January 6. Why sending out a push notification on December 17?

The download is an EP by Kylie Minogue called “A Christmas Gift”, but as you can guess it seems to be an error on Apple’s end. As you tap on the download button, you’re brought to the iTunes app which returns an error and says the item is not available.

Perhaps “A Christmas Gift” will be the first free album to download on the 26. If not, well – at least the music introduction Apple put into the app this morning is pretty sweet. Read more