The Ultimate Toolbox for Photos on the Mac
I’m not usually nostalgic about apps. I appreciate classic designs from the past, but I find ‘new’ more exciting. However, for every rule, there’s an exception, and for me, it’s Mario Guzmán’s beautiful, pixel-perfect reimagining of classic Apple music apps.
Guzmán’s latest app is QuickTune, a remote control utility for Apple Music. The app is the spitting image of QuickTime 71 running on Mac OS X Tiger, with a sprinkling of modern features and fun interactions that make it a pleasure to use.
Apple Music kicked off a 10-day event today celebrating its newly-compiled list of the 100 Best Albums of all time. Apple’s press release explains that the list was created by:
Apple Music’s team of experts alongside a select group of artists, including Maren Morris, Pharrell Williams, J Balvin, Charli XCX, Mark Hoppus, Honey Dijon, and Nia Archives, as well as songwriters, producers, and industry professionals.
Apple also clarifies that its 100 Best Albums list is an editorially-created list that isn’t based on streaming statistics.
Each day, Apple Music is revealing 10 new albums, starting with albums 91-100, which are:
Rachel Newman, Apple Music’s senior director of content and editorial, had this to say about the list:
100 Best brings together all the things that make Apple Music the ultimate service for music lovers — human curation at its peak, an appreciation for the art of storytelling, and unparalleled knowledge of music and an even deeper love for it. We have been working on this for a very long time, and it’s something we are all incredibly proud of and excited to share with the world.
The 100 Best Albums list can be accessed at 100best.music.apple.com. From there, you can listen on the web, add an album to your library, share it, or stream it with the Music app. Each album has its own page including written material that puts the album into context and lists each track, too.
Apple is also celebrating the 100 Best Albums list on Apple Radio and giving the creators of each album an award:
All 100 Best Albums recipients will be given an award comprised of blasted anodized aluminum, sourced entirely from recycled Apple products, in a unique polished PVD gold. The design on the back of the award takes its cues from a vinyl LP record and is inscribed with the artist’s name, the album title, and the album’s year of release.
I’ve enjoyed browsing through the first ten albums in this collection and appreciate that it’s being rolled out in stages, allowing listeners to explore a manageable number of albums each day. This will be a nice treat to look forward to for the next nine days.
Yesterday, Apple announced an update to its App Review Guidelines in a brief post on its developer site. The changes to sections 3.1.1(a) and 4.7 of the guidelines, which apply globally to all apps distributed through Apple’s App Store, address three items:
Historically, game emulators were forbidden from the App Store. As a result, an emulator like Delta, which can play games released for Nintendo systems through the N64, could only be used on iPhones through a clever combination of developer tools and a Mail plug-in. In contrast, there are plenty of emulators on the Google Play store for Android users to download.
Revised section 4.7 of the App Review guidelines specifically allows retro gaming emulators:
Mini apps, mini games, streaming games, chatbots, plug-ins, and game emulators
Apps may offer certain software that is not embedded in the binary, specifically HTML5 mini apps and mini games, streaming games, chatbots, and plug-ins. Additionally, retro game console emulator apps can offer to download games.
Presumably, this will allow Delta and other emulators onto the App Store, so they can be used to play game files stored on iPhones.
The change to section 4.7 also says that “mini apps and mini games, streaming games, chatbots, and plug-ins” of the sort found in apps like WeChat must be created with HTML 5, a clarification of the language previously used.
Finally, section 3.1.1(a) of the App Review Guidelines allows music streaming services to link out to the web from their apps so customers can make purchases outside the App Store. The change addresses the anti-steering provisions for which Apple was fined $2 billion by the EU, and Apple has said it will appeal.
This morning I woke up to a pleasant surprise. Apple had quietly added a new Made For You playlist to the Music app called Heavy Rotation that’s updated daily.
As you’d expect from a playlist called Heavy Rotation, mine is comprised of 25 songs, most of which I believe I listened to yesterday and probably other times recently. What’s a little different about Heavy Rotation compared to the other Made For You Playlists is that it’s updated daily, while the other Made For You playlists get updated weekly.
If you listen to a lot of albums, you’ll probably have a bunch of songs by a handful of artists in your Heavy Rotation playlist. That is certainly true of The National’s Trouble Will Find Me, an album I listened to yesterday. However, most of the time, I listen to playlists, which will undoubtedly add more variety.
Curiously, the new playlist doesn’t seem to respect the Focus filter that allows you to exclude listening from your Apple Music Listening History. Both Federico and Jonathan use that feature and told me they each found a track in their Heavy Rotation playlist that should have been filtered out.
Heavy Rotation is an excellent addition to Music. Playing it as I write this, it feels like I’m picking up where I left off yesterday as I walked around my neighborhood with my AirPods Pro. I hope that today’s addition of a new Made For You playlist and the recent addition of the Discovery station are signs that Apple plans to explore even more ways to resurface songs in your Music library.
The music experience on the Apple Vision Pro is excellent. It starts with the device’s built-in headphones and spatial audio, which work hand-in-hand with the visual components of spatial computing. Apple has already shown off the potential for immersive experiences like Alicia Keys: Rehearsal Room, but the music experience goes deeper than that, thanks to third-party developers.
I’ve already covered Juno, Christian Selig’s YouTube player app, which is great for watching music videos and other content, and NowPlaying, which supplements Apple Music with editorial content, lyrics, and more. Today, though, I want to focus on Longplay, Adrian Schönig’s album-oriented playback app for Apple Music.
Longplay 2.0 was released last August. It was a big update that I reviewed at the time and have been enjoying ever since. The app is available on the Vision Pro now too, complete with an immersive mode that I love.
Speaking of Apple Music, Apple appears to be testing ways to migrate your music library and playlists from other streaming services to its own.
Chance Miller, writing for 9to5Mac, reports on the discovery made by users of the Apple Music for Android beta on Reddit:
Now, Apple appears to be testing native integration with SongShift. According to users on Reddit, there is a new prompt in Apple Music for Android that asks users if they want to “add saved music and playlists you made in other music services to your Apple Music library.” There’s also a new option for doing this through Apple Music’s settings on Android.
SongShift is an excellent third-party app that we’ve covered over the years at MacStories. However, I’d be surprised if Apple winds up partnering with a third-party developer for this sort of new user onboarding experience instead of building a similar tool itself. Regardless of the direction Apple decides to take, a migration tool makes a lot of sense for anyone who is deeply invested in another service but is interested in trying Apple Music.
Apple has updated its Replay website with monthly totals for top artists, albums, songs, and milestones, giving Apple Music listeners a reason to visit the site more than once a year. The update bears some similarities to the sort of monthly statistics available from sites like Last.fm, although less detailed.
Here’s what Apple had to say about the new features:
Once logged in [to Apple Music], users can check out their top songs, top albums, top artists, and milestones of the month, every month. They can also listen to their personal top songs chart of the year with their Replay Mix, which updates weekly.
The update extends the existing Replay site’s beautiful, interactive design. Selecting milestones provides additional details about the music you were listening to when you reach each one.
Currently, only January’s statistics are available. The site says February statistics will appear in early March. However, the monthly stats have been added for 2023, too, so you can browse last year’s musical obsessions as you wait for February’s. The deeper year-round statistics are a welcome addition to Replay. I still wish I could access all of this inside the Music app itself, but I love the new level of detail about my listening habits.
Apple Music has added two new personalized stations: Love and Heartbreak. Here’s how Apple describes each:
The Love Station features songs about romantic love, falling in love, feeling amorous, and feelings that these experiences bring. Tailored to each listener’s taste, the Love Station will play songs and artists they know and love along with recommendations. Not exclusively ballads, these love songs are guaranteed to amplify the mood; whether they’ve got that rush of a new crush, or that fully grown long time love.
The Heartbreak Station features songs about heartbreak, unrequited love, breaking up, or sad love. Having your heart broken is awful. Sometimes during these moments, music is the only thing that can make sense of it all. The Heartbreak Station will play a blend of songs from artists listeners know and recommendations, to help them let it all out.
The introduction of the new stations follows the Discovery station, which debuted last summer. It’s great to see Apple expanding these algorithmically-generated stations based on your listening habits because they’re nice complements to the curated playlists from Apple Music’s editorial team.
NowPlaying by Hidde van der Ploeg has come a long way since its start. It’s always been an excellent companion to Apple Music, packed with music discovery features that fill a big gap in Apple’s system app. But, with the visionOS version, van der Ploeg has taken NowPlaying to a new level. visionOS allows users of the app to spread out, focus on the music, and absorb the rich catalog of metadata and editorial content about their music in a beautiful, relaxing atmosphere.
