Makes sense now! It's just not feasible with our current cell services, I agree
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Despite Apple's Denial, iTunes Match is Streaming
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Makes sense now! It's just not feasible with our current cell services, I agree
Good... you've ripped all your CDs to lossless and you enjoy them.
Most people don't. And those 15 Billion iTunes purchases and the average person's ripped CDs are not lossless either.
The iTunes Music Store or iTunes Match don't do lossless.
This is clearly not the service for you.
Moving on...
Oh! Thanks for correcting me. I wasn't aware of that.
Well it could be possible. After all, we were able to see an instantaneous play in the video posted by insanely mac. [It's possible that the download speed was very high]
I agree. Caching in this case = downloading. But I wanted to differentiate the two so that there was no confusion b/w the 2 different processes.
Not streaming
This is not streaming. And it will not "provide a better experience for users, especially in areas of unstable network coverage for those on the go."
You can't seek ahead in the song/video until it has downloaded the part you want to seek to. That's the primary difference.
Streaming also allows you to switch to lower bitrates if your connection degrades so the song or video will keep playing rather than rebuffering.
This is a non-story.
This is not streaming. And it will not "provide a better experience for users, especially in areas of unstable network coverage for those on the go."
You can't seek ahead in the song/video until it has downloaded the part you want to seek to. That's the primary difference.
Streaming also allows you to switch to lower bitrates if your connection degrades so the song or video will keep playing rather than rebuffering.
This is a non-story.
There are a lot of Vinyl loving audiophiles who would argue vehemently on that point
If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck...
You can argue semantics all you want, but it's streaming period. The tracks are cached locally but not permanently stored and start playing before they are fully cached. You can only play the tracks with an internet connection. Sounds like streaming to me. One of the big proofs is on a Mac that is using an iTunes Match library from the cloud. When you right click on a track and click on "get info" and look at the summary tab it says:
Kind: internet audio stream
Size: stream
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Before PMPs were around, I carried a portable CD player around. Not my entire library, but always had a better sound quality than any MP3 players. Plugged into it was a quality $50 studio headphones. Perfectly portable and still hi-fi.
And you got it backwards. The technology is hindering my music, therefore not meeting my needs. Technology was made to help people and make life easier. Why should I conform my needs to fit the technology when it is supposed to be the other way around?
I wonder how "convenient" this service will be when you have the connection speed as slow as a snail (AT&T much?) or on an airplane.
I wonder how "convenient" this service will be when it's making an iPhone 4's battery last 5 hours.
I would refute more if I was on my laptop; using MacRumors on an iPhone is a PITA sometimes.
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Yes, he is correct. The difference is much more pronounced on quality speakers, as expected.
Cheap earbuds come nowhere close to lossless quality output. But that doesn't mean you can't tell the difference between iTunes and lossless on them.
Refute more what? I'm not denying that lossless sounds better than lossy.
How was the DAC on your CD player back then? I find it hard to believe your CDs in a portable CD player and $50 headphones sounded better than ALAC files on an iPhone with $100 headphones. Oh... and hundreds of your albums instead of the few, easily scratched CDs in a bulky case.
Listen, this service just isn't for you. You're complaining about potential battery life problems while at the same time arguing that they should allow the streaming/downloading of 40MB lossless files. Do you really think Apple wouldn't do lossless everything if it could? The infrastructure to support your extremely miniscule minority needs isn't close to being there yet. Technology isn't some magic thing where you wish for things that then just happen for you. The technology coming together in this way is pretty amazing yet you complain that it's not your perfect dream of the future now. Get some perspective, appreciate what we have, and know that it will improve over time. Otherwise, start your own company and make your dream happen sooner. You'll make fortune if you can pull it off.
why all the hate for audiophiles? people keep exaggerating their habits.
Yes, it is true: some people like using $200 earphones or more expensive headsets to listen to orchestral, classic, jazz, or other types of music at work, in their apartment, or on the airplane. They really enjoy it. Just like some people enjoy an screen with deep blacks, and can notice 720p vs 1080p, while others can't tell the difference between bluray and DVD.
I am not a true audiophile, but I recognize crap when I hear it. And most headphones and highly compressed songs are BAD. So I sympathize with people who have even better hearing than I.
Also, I don't believe at any point it was suggested that Apple is obligated to provide lossless streaming, merely that "X has no interest UNTIL they provide lossless streaming" which is just an opinion. And since bandwidth can provide lossless streaming, and people may pay for it (as a marketing gimmick or actual preference), then yes, Apple could offer it in the future. For example, iTunes does give the option to NOT downsample music.
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...and re: streaming vs downloading
I have always understood streaming as "playing while downloading". Whether it downloads the whole file and then deletes it, or just parts of it at a time, is of no importance to me or anyone else I think. Its really just a matter of how much it is caching.
Yes, it is true: some people like using $200 earphones or more expensive headsets to listen to orchestral, classic, jazz, or other types of music at work, in their apartment, or on the airplane. They really enjoy it. Just like some people enjoy an screen with deep blacks, and can notice 720p vs 1080p, while others can't tell the difference between bluray and DVD.
I am not a true audiophile, but I recognize crap when I hear it. And most headphones and highly compressed songs are BAD. So I sympathize with people who have even better hearing than I.
Also, I don't believe at any point it was suggested that Apple is obligated to provide lossless streaming, merely that "X has no interest UNTIL they provide lossless streaming" which is just an opinion. And since bandwidth can provide lossless streaming, and people may pay for it (as a marketing gimmick or actual preference), then yes, Apple could offer it in the future. For example, iTunes does give the option to NOT downsample music.
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...and re: streaming vs downloading
I have always understood streaming as "playing while downloading". Whether it downloads the whole file and then deletes it, or just parts of it at a time, is of no importance to me or anyone else I think. Its really just a matter of how much it is caching.
Back to streaming vs. non-streaming.
The way I see it if iTunes called it an internet stream that's the way the engineers made it regardless of the technobabble.
This is a portion of my iTunes library. Please note some songs are already downloaded and some are not but they are called "Internet Audio Streams".
There's a reason they call them that.
The way I see it if iTunes called it an internet stream that's the way the engineers made it regardless of the technobabble.
This is a portion of my iTunes library. Please note some songs are already downloaded and some are not but they are called "Internet Audio Streams".
There's a reason they call them that.
Attachments
Three kinds of people in the world
Speaking as someone who has done audio engineering work, both on location and in a studio, I always love listening to the audiophiles. It's endlessly amusing. I'm really looking forward to my next project, which should let me do some serious trolling.
I'll try to remember to report back on how good they are at telling the difference between two identical files with different names, solely by ear. (For example, one named 'uncompressed' or 'lossless'.)
Speaking as someone who has done audio engineering work, both on location and in a studio, I always love listening to the audiophiles. It's endlessly amusing. I'm really looking forward to my next project, which should let me do some serious trolling.
I'll try to remember to report back on how good they are at telling the difference between two identical files with different names, solely by ear. (For example, one named 'uncompressed' or 'lossless'.)
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_4 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8K2 Safari/6533.18.5)
Never having wifi access with a touch is probably not the best plan.
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Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_4 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8K2 Safari/6533.18.5)
Googles solution seems worse. Sometimes I might only want to stream a song so I don't have to go back later and remove it. Other times I might be listening and building my device library at the same time. Not having a choice seems worse
Tmelon said:
Never having wifi access with a touch is probably not the best plan.
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Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_4 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8K2 Safari/6533.18.5)
sennekuyl said:
Googles solution seems worse. Sometimes I might only want to stream a song so I don't have to go back later and remove it. Other times I might be listening and building my device library at the same time. Not having a choice seems worse
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Yap, seems worse because you don't know how it works.
You have choices: you can choose songs to be available offline always and you can have them only cached
"but what about my 3G data cap? but what about the music quality?"
1. Streaming services are not made for people who have small 3G data caps.
2. Cloud services are not made for people who want to listen lossless music.
You can always continue to use local storage as before. Both cloud services & streaming services are additional services for people who find them useful. If they don't fit to your situation, you don't have to begin to use them. They are not meant for everybody, and nobody is forcing all people to use them instead of traditional local storage.
1. Streaming services are not made for people who have small 3G data caps.
2. Cloud services are not made for people who want to listen lossless music.
You can always continue to use local storage as before. Both cloud services & streaming services are additional services for people who find them useful. If they don't fit to your situation, you don't have to begin to use them. They are not meant for everybody, and nobody is forcing all people to use them instead of traditional local storage.
This seems entirely useless to me if it doesn't support playlists or at least sequential playback/shuffle. If those points are correct then Apple is right not to call this streaming -- but it also means they had no business comparing their service to Amazon and Google's when it launched.
End users might not know understand the difference in the technologies, but they'll definitely notice when they have to constantly stop what they're doing to manually play the next song.
End users might not know understand the difference in the technologies, but they'll definitely notice when they have to constantly stop what they're doing to manually play the next song.
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Not sure where the airplane thing comes from... if you don't have internet, you can't use the service (obviously) and if you do on an airplane it'll be WiFi, so you're more than fine.
Anyway...
I use Pandora, Spotify, Digitally Imported, and other music streaming apps on my iPhone over 3G all the time and rarely have issues. Usually it hiccups when I'm driving 70mph on the freeway and I run into a stretch of low/no coverage, but it corrects itself as soon as it's able. Again, no internet, no service. But 3G is more than able to handle the data rates just fine (precisely because the files aren't ridiculous uncompressed versions like you keep touting).
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What is confusing you?
So I/we was wrong about the learning curve, but I was right about it being the same thing. I do find it amusing that marksman said exactly what I said except in the negative. :roll: no bias I'm sure.
I think people are just getting confused by the meaning and implications of streaming versus downloading.
When you download something, you are downloading a stream. The difference between downloading and streaming is that when you are only streaming a file, then you are merely caching some of it locally and discard the data when you're done.
When you download a stream, it is written in its entirety to disk.
It seems that the confusion with iTunes Match is that it is simply allowing you to listen to a stream as it is downloaded, such that by the time you've listened through the song completely, the whole thing should now be stored somewhere on your device.
It would make no sense for Apple to stream-only, as most users are going to re-listen to favourite songs and albums, so it makes no sense to stream them time and again when you can just keep the whole file from the first play-through and re-play it.
When you download something, you are downloading a stream. The difference between downloading and streaming is that when you are only streaming a file, then you are merely caching some of it locally and discard the data when you're done.
When you download a stream, it is written in its entirety to disk.
It seems that the confusion with iTunes Match is that it is simply allowing you to listen to a stream as it is downloaded, such that by the time you've listened through the song completely, the whole thing should now be stored somewhere on your device.
It would make no sense for Apple to stream-only, as most users are going to re-listen to favourite songs and albums, so it makes no sense to stream them time and again when you can just keep the whole file from the first play-through and re-play it.
Yap, you can mark for offline listening songs, albums, artists and playlists. They will be downloaded.
If you play a song that isn't marked for offline listening it will be cached some time.
Nope, that doesn't seem to be the case at all. Some songs are matched, any that aren't in the apple store are uploaded so they are available to you.
More wrong info, with iCloud you don't have to tell it to download either, just hit play and it plays.
"I wonder how "convenient" this service will be when you have the connection speed as slow as a snail (AT&T much?) or on an airplane."
Actually surveys show that while AT&T doesn't have the best coverage it does have the fastest 3G at least compared to the other major players.
Actually surveys show that while AT&T doesn't have the best coverage it does have the fastest 3G at least compared to the other major players.
Nope, what you described is what happens with iOS 4.x. With iOS 5 and iCloud, touching the song plays the full song.
A couple things - it's impractical to stream all your music over 3G, but it will be great for those times when you want a particular song that isn't on your device.
Also, people seem to forget that you can use it over wifi as well. You wouldn't use streaming in that situation but it would be great for road trips - listen to a bunch of music, next time you're in your hotel room or a coffee shop with wifi you refresh your playlists and download a bunch of new songs. Not to mention things like listening to your iTunes library at work.
I hate to say I told you so, but your old post is completely wrong. The new files can be streamed OR downloaded. And the downloaded files show up in the same place as the other iTunes material on your hard drive and can be copied to other computers and played with no restrictions. No problems playing offline whatsoever, if you want songs on the device (whether it's mobile, or your mac) you hit the download button and you get the file.
Well then good thing it supports both of those things. Which you'd know if you had read the thread.