Following the release of Burst and Decay, which I posted about last week, and the hurricane in Puerto Rico, The Wonder Years have broadcast an acoustic set. Donations are going to Fondos Unidos de Puerto Rico, and they’ve brought in a bit over $5,000 so far. Several songs include a string quartet, and “Cardinals” still kills me.
Nilay Patel wrote an interesting article for The Verge this week, lamenting the “walled garden” headphones are becoming as more and more phones lose the head phone jack. Companies like Apple and Google have decided to forgo to the tried-and-true 3.5 mm headphone jack in their flagship phones, and insteaded developed a software layer on top of traditional bluetooth connections to market their own proprietary bluetooth headphones. In doing so, both companies enable some extra features mostly for their personal assistants.
Nilay:
To improve Bluetooth, platform vendors like Apple and Google are riffing on top of it, and that means they’re building custom solutions. And building custom solutions means they’re taking the opportunity to prioritize their own products, because that is a fair and rational thing for platform vendors to do.
Unfortunately, what is fair and rational for platform vendors isn’t always great for markets, competition, or consumers. And at the end of this road, we will have taken a simple, universal thing that enabled a vibrant market with tons of options for every consumer, and turned it into yet another limited market defined by ecosystem lock-in.
I think this is a very pessimistic take. I love my Airpods: they are fantastic for phone calls, they sound fine, and their wires never ever get tangled. Importantly, they still work as bluetooth headphones. If I want to pair them with a windows PC or an Android phone, they would behave just as any other typical pair of Bluetooth headphones (albeit for a premium price compared to other traditional bluetooth headphones). Consumers are not losing any bluetooth features by adding these additional software layers, they’re gaining them. That is a good thing.
I think there is a case to be made about how much easier it is to unplug a headphone jack from one device and plug it into another, compared to the tedious task of pairing via bluetooth. Thats been my biggest complaint about my Airpods. Switching devices, even between my iPhone and iPad, is not as seamless as I had hoped. Although it is easier than a traditional pair of bluetooth headphones. Nevermind ever wanting to plug them into something like an elliptical machine at the gym to watch T.V. That is my own personal hell.
I’ve been considering writing something regarding how changes to Control Center in iOS 11 have introduced some weird UI decisions. David Spark’s recent post regarding his changes in the iPad homescreen inspired me, particularly because of his suggestion to add Spotlight to the multi-tasking screen. (For what its worth, Apple should add the short swipe from the top for Spotlight in iOS 10 back to iOS 11.)
In general, I like Control Center in iOS 11, although I didn’t have the issues some people had with the iOS 10 Control Center (typically centered around the multiple pages). More than anything, I’m just happy Apple seems to be settling into something. The last several years have each seen a big change to Control Center, and this one seems like its built for the long haul. Its easy to imagine Apple openning this up to developers in iOS 12.
However, lets compare the differences in Control Center between a 3D Touch enabled iOS device, like an iPhone, and a non–3D Touch device, like an iPad, using the “Now Playing” controller. On both devices, the controls are too small as touch targets. If I had a nickle for every time I skipped ahead 60s while listening to a podcast in Overcast when I meant to pause it, I’d have several nickles. As a result, I find myself going into the controller more often than not, and this is where seams between the two devices begin to show. On an both iPhones and iPad, you can’t simply tap on the top half of the controller to enter it. Instead, you can long press. This is a bad UI decision and it makes me feel like I’m swimming through molassas. Luckily on iPhones, you can get through this a bit faster by 3D Touching the controller to enter it. Apple should change this so that a short tap on the top of the controller gets you into it. This is a no-brainer, especially on non–3D Touch enabled devices.
I would also be remiss if I forgot to menion that David Spark’s book Markdown is also what I’m reading as I’m starting this blog.
The 1975 released “Milk” today as a single, which has previously been released as a hidden song at the end of “You” on the Sex EP. This just caught my attention because of how odd it is. I can think of several examples of bands re-recording songs for a new release, but never a band releasing a hidden track a single 5 years later. I wonder what they’re planning.
The Wonder Years released an acoustic EP last week, Burst and Decay. These versions reimagine the songs and highlight how good of songwriters these guys are. The whole EP reminds me of the thought and effort Motion City Soundtrack put into the acoustic songs they released around Even If It Kills Me and My Dinosaur Life.
2017 Has Been A Good Music Year
The National had a new album come out a few weeks ago, Sleep Well Beast, and they did this concert for Pitchfork to promote the new record. I was a bit late in on this band, but really enjoyed their last album Trouble Will Find Me as much as I’ve enjoyed the new record.
2017 Has Been A Good Music Year
Rainer Weiss, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Kip Thorne and Barry Barish, both of the California Institute of Technology, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for the discovery of ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves, which were predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago but had never been directly seen.
For those of you who are wondering what exactly gravitation waves are, they are analogous to the electromagnetic spectrum (light, radiation, etc.) except for time-space. I think it’s hard to overstate it how important this discovery is. We won’t know its repercussion for years, but this is going to lead to an entire branch of science and technology. Imagine living during the period when we were first learning about optics and how to manipulate light. How quickly these researchers got the prize following their discovery speaks to the weight (pun intended) all of this as well.
The tiny desk concert series is always fun, but this one is particularly great. Paramore’s last couple albums have been fantastic, and this doesn’t disappoint.
At Ken 