iPhone4idiots

Well I was wrong about Apple releasing iTunes Match over the weekend. Apple stated it would begin in October and missed the deadline. I think this is probably a good thing for the consumer. It obviously wasn’t ready as most those I follow that were testing it said it was slow and didn’t match nearly a high enough percentage of songs. Apple would be smart to get it right before rolling it out. They made the mistake of launching an immature product with their horrible Cards app which I reviewed here. Don’t make the same mistake again. iTunes Match is coming for sure, it’s just a question of when (remember the delays in the white iPhone!).

Looks like iTunes Match launches this weekend. Those beta testing the music matching service have been told by Apple that iTunes is deleting the libraries today. The likely last step before it goes live. I expect that this weekend. What iTunes Match does is for $25 per year iTunes will scan your music library and match songs with Apple’s own library and then upload the rest of the songs it does not recognize. This makes all your music available on all your iOS devices. It also turns any music you downloaded thorough other means into a legal high quality copy. Anyone planning on using this service?
UPDATE 10/30 – Looks like it’s not happening this weekend. Since Apple said it would go live in October that can only mean one thing. Numerous beta testers have stated the service is slow and only matches about half the songs. It’s still not ready.

Back in the mid 1990’s I used to listen to music a lot. I spent a good bit of money on speakers, amp, subwoofer and Adcom 5-disc cd changer. I’d wake up in the morning load five cd’s and hit random and listen to music at volumes that my neighbor would comment on. New albums would come out at midnight on Tuesday’s and about once per month I’d be there so I had something to listen to at work the next day. Then came Napster and I quit going to Tower Records. About 10 years later it closed. If I needed a song or album I just did a quick search and downloaded it to my computer in minutes. Ripping cd’s and Napster is how I got the majority of music on my Mac today. Currently I listen to music I’ve synced through iTunes or Pandora. Actually, I’ve been listening to Pandora more this week since I downloaded PandoraSkips (a cool Cydia tweak that gives you unlimited skips). I haven’t tried Spotify, but I know it’s popular along with satellite radio. There are just so many ways to consume music these days. Apparently Facebook is planning on getting into the act by offering free music. I don’t see myself using this and figure it will die like Facebook Deals and Facebook Places have. With so many changes over of the past 10-15 years I realized I have no idea how people listen to music anymore. So that’s my new poll question. How do you mainly listen to music today? You can vote for more than one in this poll.

Ever been listening to a song on your iPhone or iPod and wondered what the lyrics were to that last line? Happens to me a lot. While very poetic and talented Kurt Cobain or Eddie Vedder aren’t always the easiest to understand. Remember that hilarious Adam Sandler skit on Saturday Night Live where he sang Evenflow? What made it so funny was his jibberish sounded exactly like the song! Anyway, there have been apps before that would display lyrics, but most either didn’t have a large database of songs or were not polished enough to be simple to use. That has changed with the release of free app called musiXmatch. The app has lyrics for more than 5.4 million songs and its own built in music player that will display the words while the song plays (see the photo). The large database of songs and how easily and quickly it installs, no computer required, really makes this a killer app! Continue Reading…

iTunes 10 was released one month ago (four weeks actually) at which time I wrote about how badly Ping sucked. Ping is Apple’s attempt to create a social network for music. It’s launch had some major issues and while Apple has fixed the spam problem they apparently will not connect to Facebook anytime soon. Thus, I’m officially declaring it a failure and have a few reasons why. It had been a few weeks since I logged into Ping yesterday, but I wanted to see if things had changed. On the positive, the spam problem seems to have been corrected. I checked a few popular musician’s comments with tens to hundreds of replies and found no spam links. However, you can still pose as anyone you want as my account, Kurt Cobain, still exist. Continue Reading…

iTunes 10 came out yesterday and offered one major change – Ping. Steve Jobs touted it as “a social network for music”. You were supposed to be able to follow bands and friends and share what music you were buying, listening to and where concerts were being held. Sounds cool right? Well its not. First, Facebook is blocking Ping so you can’t connect with your friends. The only way you can find them is though search or emailing them directly and who wants to bother with that. Second, the software doesn’t find similar music to what you like for recommendations, but instead only what’s popular. Lastly, the software doesn’t seem to filter spam and will let you take whatever name you want. Thus follow me, Kurt Cobain! Continue Reading…

Apple held its annual September Keynote event yesterday and announced a ton of new products and updates. Updates to iOS 4.1, iPod shuffle, iPod Nano, iPod Touch, Apple TV, iTunes 10, Gamecenter and Ping social music network! It was a lot to take in. I’ll give a few thoughts on all this but for me personally this biggest news is iOS 4.1 coming next week. Steve Jobs claims it fixes the bug that makes the iPhone 3G run so slow on iOS 4.0 and higher. This would be huge for many of you if it really works. Time will tell. Apple’s CEO also stated that it fixed the proximity sensor bug with the iPhone 4. Forget the antenna “death grip” press (that was no big deal), but the proximity sensor on iPhone 4’s is messed up and a fix is welcomed news (again assuming it works). Just try and put your iPhone on between your shoulder and face to free up your hands. You are sure to mute, enable speaker or hang up on your call. It’s annoying, but I will not give up my jailbreak to get this fix. I’ll live with it until the next jailbreak is released. For more in iOS 4.1 and all the other stuff. Continue Reading…

Very exciting news! With the iPad going on sale tomorrow almost 1000 new apps are hitting the iTunes app store. BTW, you’ll probably notice a ton of the apps you already have are available to update. This is because they are going Universal Binary (whatever that means) to support the iPad as well. You really don’t have to update unless you are getting an iPad, but when you have some extra time I’d go ahead and do it. Now why most of these apps are iPad only, this is great news for iPhone and iTouch users as I’ll explain in a minute. But first a quick mention of two of these new apps, Netflix and ABC Player, both of which are free. ABC Player allows you to stream about 20 shows, including Desperate Housewives, FlashForward, Grey’s Anatomy, Lost, Modern Family, and V. I’m not sure how much advertising will be added (I wish it were none). The Netflix app requires a Netflix account of course, but if you have one your iPad has access to TV shows and movies from the catalog of Netflix titles available for instant viewing. Now, why is this big news for the iPhone and iTouch? Because my guess is these apps will work on jailbroken iPhones and iTouches within a few months at most Further, because these apps are only available for wifi, I predict it will be less than a month until the iPad is jailbroken so 3G unrestrictor will work on it. Also, with ABC on board the other big networks are sure to follow very quickly. Live TV everywhere anytime on your iDevice just got one step closer.

A few days ago Apple released iTunes 9.1. First off, if you have jailbroken or plan to maybe jailbreak one day you should never upgrade iTunes or your iPhone’s firmware or carrier settings unless you research it and find out it is safe first! The Dev-Team has confirmed it is safe to upgrade for all jailbreakers expect those that used blackra1n. I used PwnageTool and redsn0w so I upgraded and have had no issues. Now if you used blackra1n there is already a fix out called blackbreeze (don’t you love the names?) but its very new with mixed early reports. Bottom line, if you used blackra1n don’t upgrade until any issues with blackbreeze are resolved. Get ready, with the iPad and iPhone 4.0 coming in the next few months there should be lots of jailbreaking news.

Thought I’d make a guide about unraring files since some people aren’t sure how to do it. It’s really simple and there is also a step by step video at the end of the guide. To see how to convert files to mp4 see our guide here. So rar files are a way to breakup another file into smaller parts. Continue Reading…