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Apple's Music Streaming Service to Eliminate Buffering Lag With Locally-Stored Snippets?
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Not useless but close to it.
It looks like many posters here have not really tried to understand what exactly Apple has patented. It's not caching. Everything is static. They just want to store, say, 5 first seconds of each song (or most frequently accessed songs/files) so that when you initiate streaming of the song the play could start immediately. This is somewhat useful but not that much. If you use a playlist, the lag only affects the start of streaming the first song. The trick may also help with eliminating the lag when song gets skipped but this could also be dealt with by using smart buffering (by buffering not only, say, 30 seconds of the currently played record but also 5 seconds of the next song in the playlist). Notice that the patent was filed in 2009 and have not been implemented still. Today's internet connections being much faster than they were 2 years ago, the chances of this being really implemented are close to zero. Just another "just in case" patent from Apple.
It looks like many posters here have not really tried to understand what exactly Apple has patented. It's not caching. Everything is static. They just want to store, say, 5 first seconds of each song (or most frequently accessed songs/files) so that when you initiate streaming of the song the play could start immediately. This is somewhat useful but not that much. If you use a playlist, the lag only affects the start of streaming the first song. The trick may also help with eliminating the lag when song gets skipped but this could also be dealt with by using smart buffering (by buffering not only, say, 30 seconds of the currently played record but also 5 seconds of the next song in the playlist). Notice that the patent was filed in 2009 and have not been implemented still. Today's internet connections being much faster than they were 2 years ago, the chances of this being really implemented are close to zero. Just another "just in case" patent from Apple.
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Sorry, but you just DEFINED what a buffer is, used by every single streaming app in existence. This is just a small variation of that. It's ridiculous if they allow this patent.
Tony
Good idea but probably impossible. A file ripped from CD can be exactly identical to that same file that someone else ripped from CD and shared.
Because you have a huge library that is way bigger than your ipod can hold. This is less of an issue with music, but it will be exacerbated even more with movies.
But that doesn't help when you hit play on the first song, nor any time you pick a song manually instead of letting the playlist go to the next one. You may not think it's useful, but I'd like to have the option to have all songs start immediately instead of sometimes having a lag before it starts.
For real.. all this streaming stuff is useless for me, I mean my ipad is hardly half full and It has ALL my music, apps and movies on It already
AirPlay
I can see how this would function if Apple were to offer a cloud music service, but what about AirPlay? Could a similar innovation be implemented here? I have to wait for the songs to stream to my AirPort Express, but what if it was possible to sync snippets to the AirPort Express and achieve the same result - no latency!
I can see how this would function if Apple were to offer a cloud music service, but what about AirPlay? Could a similar innovation be implemented here? I have to wait for the songs to stream to my AirPort Express, but what if it was possible to sync snippets to the AirPort Express and achieve the same result - no latency!
Good point, there's definitely a TON of room for improvement for things like AirPlay and Home Sharing. Those can be SO slow even over the fastest wifi connection to a computer in another part of the house, it's hard to imagine a mobile streaming solution when the much simpler case is so laggy.
Me, well I don't have Aaliyah but I have the other 3. I have a wide range of music. Stuff from Sara Evans to Slayer, Willie Nelson to The Misfits, Venom to Stryper. Just because you don't have these bands, other people do.
I'm very excited to see what comes, I am out growing out my iPod and I really don't want to spend money on the 160GB if I don't have too and I can play my music on my work computer without any issues.
I guess this is neat. ...for people who use their computers & devices within 20 unobstructed feet of their wireless access point, and for anyone not using an iOS app relying on an open, clear wifi connection to function.
Forcing anything and everything to run over wifi sucks.
Forcing anything and everything to run over wifi sucks.
No, this isn't that at all. And hyperlinks have been around for 20 years, so your analogy that they're trying to patent common tech is also invalid.
This patent isn't for "buffering", it's for pre-buffering an audio stream, and seamlessly gluing the streamed audio with your static cache, perhaps prior to your first visit to the 'cloud' to get your audio. If web browsers did this, they'd have to display the page partially from your own drive, and from their webserver, prior to your even visiting them.
Do you mean to imply that *ALL* iPads are hardly half full? Are you allowing the possibility that people have more media than you do?
i disagree. THe variation is merging the static content on your iPod with the stream. If it was obvious and ubiquitous, it would have happened already. But, all we have is dynamic buffering of stuff you've already heard.
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I know it was mentioned before, but it looks like some of our friends at Apple like Ace of Base. 
And BTW, I've met lots of people who dont really listen to pop/dance but AOB has somehow earned a spot in their music libraries.
Speaking of: Free (legal) music alert.
Anyway, I see this as useful for people like me: I WISH I could just store everything, but can't, and occasionally, I'd like to be able to play something for a friend and not having to wait a lot for it to load, despite being on 3G, would be nice. As for this being a patent, it's likely just so that Apple can have their own, patented version of this mechanism and not get sued later.
And BTW, I've met lots of people who dont really listen to pop/dance but AOB has somehow earned a spot in their music libraries.
Speaking of: Free (legal) music alert.
Anyway, I see this as useful for people like me: I WISH I could just store everything, but can't, and occasionally, I'd like to be able to play something for a friend and not having to wait a lot for it to load, despite being on 3G, would be nice. As for this being a patent, it's likely just so that Apple can have their own, patented version of this mechanism and not get sued later.
Attachments
This might have mattered 5 years ago.
I can say without reservation that it's completely unnecessary now. I remember before SimplifyMedia got bought/shut down that it was easy to listen to my home library from work or on the go, via streaming, with zero buffering delay.
That's not saying much until you realize that my home internet connection was a 128kbps upload-capped DSL line at the time.
So even with such a limited upload capacity, I was able to stream without any delay, much less intermittent "buffering".
This is just throwing stink against the wall and seeing what will stick.
I can say without reservation that it's completely unnecessary now. I remember before SimplifyMedia got bought/shut down that it was easy to listen to my home library from work or on the go, via streaming, with zero buffering delay.
That's not saying much until you realize that my home internet connection was a 128kbps upload-capped DSL line at the time.
So even with such a limited upload capacity, I was able to stream without any delay, much less intermittent "buffering".
This is just throwing stink against the wall and seeing what will stick.
I am curious to know how many people actually are excited or would even use cloud streaming of their music?
This just seems so Meh to me.
I store locally and hence, have no problems.
Are you excited about cloud streaming music?
Yes, I'm excited about cloud streaming, but that's because my music collection exceeds 1 TB and my video collection is about the same. Until (and I'm being facetious here; I know it's not coming anytime soon) SSDs can store terabytes cheaply, I'll make good use of cloud streaming.
I'm not too sure how well this patent application will work out for Apple, given that both Pandora and Spotify have used this technique since before the Apple filed the application.
Text isn't media? html is text.
Maybe when you can count life in decades, you'll have more stuff. I haven't added it up recently, but I might be able to fit all my audio, photos, video from my computer on two iPod Classics (160GB iPod). Maybe. And I haven't put it all on the computer, either. I know people that have several TIMES as much audio as I.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_7 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E303 Safari/6533.18.5)
The people running the patent office are truly morons. How did apple get a parent for this??!?!?
The people running the patent office are truly morons. How did apple get a parent for this??!?!?
Well said, we have seen this before but like everything else money talks and a patent fight with some dam Patent Troll which will be all over this makes sense for them to get some kind of patent they can fight back with.
