UNDERDOG of PERFECTION - Page 90 - a blog on technology, music and geek culture from room34

Reflections on (my own) uninformed speculation as pertains to a possible “iTV” from Apple

I don’t have any inside sources of information on the inner workings at Apple. I get most of my information from a handful of well-regarded tech blogs. (See the link list at the bottom of this post.) In fact, I would probably be doing the world a service by deleting my blog entirely and setting up my URL as a redirect to daringfireball.net.

But my lack of well-sourced information doesn’t preclude the formation of opinions, based on what I’ve heard. On rare occasions, those opinions might even merit sharing with others, and today I think may be one of those times.

The topic is an Apple-branded television, and whether or not such is coming in 2012, or ever. I was inspired to reflect on this after today’s post on the topic on Revert to Saved.

Past performance as an indicator of… something

I have a poor record regarding Apple rumors. I insisted in early 2007 that Apple couldn’t possibly be developing a smartphone. (You won’t find any traces of that insistence here, however, as I did have the good sense not to publish anything about it.)

Most smartphones then on the market sucked. I couldn’t envision what an Apple phone might look like, especially one with a touch screen and only one button. Much like The Homer, my mental abomination would likely resemble a cross between a Nintendo DS and the Cinco-Fone. Besides, it would have to be called the iPhone, and Cisco already owned that name. We know how that turned out.

In late 2009 and early 2010, I couldn’t imagine Apple releasing a tablet. (And that time around I had plenty of stupid stuff to say on the matter.) Every tablet I’d seen before that sucked, and I was certain there would be issues with screen resolution.

We know how that turned out.

Now, an Apple-branded TV, or, as the rumors would have it, iTV. Most TVs today suck, and there are few pieces of technology known to humanity more craptastic than a cable TV set-top box. There are open questions pertaining to the potential device’s screen dimensions. (Today’s flood of rumors says they’ll come in three sizes.) And, of course, ITV is already the name of a British network.

Given the eerie similarity of this scenario to the seemingly insurmountable challenges Apple previously faced with the iPhone and iPad, therefore, I am forced to deduce that Apple must have a TV in development, and… we know what it will be called.

Don’t listen to me

Where Apple excels is not in creating whole new technologies, but rather in combining existing and emerging technologies in novel ways, and optimizing the hell out of their performance. And they integrate their hardware seamlessly with software platforms that deliver content and experiences to create a cohesive and engaging ecosystem that no one else can match.

So, my inability to predict or even imagine what Apple has in the pipeline is partly a failure of imagination, and partly a lack of knowledge of the kinds of hardware and software engineering that Apple is keeping under wraps, guarded with jealous secrecy unmatched by any business or government agency on Earth.

So what?

So what, indeed? What is Apple doing, and more importantly, will it be awesome? Scratch that: How awesome will it be?

But the biggest question I actually have right now is: How much of this (hypothetical) iTV was invented before Steve Jobs died, and how much of Apple’s mojo did he take with him? In the coming months we should have an answer. This will be Apple’s first major product introduction of the post-Jobs era, and it will tell us how well that obsessive attention to detail has truly been woven into the “Apple DNA.”

Post script

I cranked out the bulk of this post in the Notes app on my iPhone while standing in a hallway, waiting for SLP. I had the idea in my head and I wanted to get it written before I lost it. I’m not sure what that really says about anything, but I thought it was worth noting.

On doing what you love, loving what you do, and not burning out along the way

There’s been a lot of talk over the past few days about Michael Arrington’s blog post concerning the long hours and dedication it takes to work for a startup.

I’ll keep my general criticism of Arrington to a minimum here, but to sum it up as I understand it: he founded a popular tech blog, stirred up controversy by investing in some of the companies he covered, sold said tech blog to Huffington Post, fought with Arianna Huffington something something CrunchPad/JooJoo something something Aol. Now he’s a VC, to more perfectly promote himself, which is what this all seems to be about anyway. (In short, I’m not a fan, and had solidified my opinion long before this week’s events.)

His blog post, berating overworked startup employees for being whiny crybabies (because they need things like sleep and a life apart from their jobs), while also somehow implying that Zynga is creating something of lasting value to the world, quoted extensively from a 1994 online diary (blogs didn’t exist back then) of former Netscape programmer Jamie Zawinski. Zawinski was, to put it mildly, not happy that Arrington used his words in the service of Arrington’s VC agenda. In the wake of Zawinski’s retort, there’s been a swelling of further outrage on Twitter and by bloggers like Amy Hoy and Rachel Andrew, among just a few links I’ve clicked in the past 48 hours.

All of this is increasingly resonating with my own experience. I’ve never worked for a Silicon Valley startup, but I’ve had a couple of startup-like experiences in my 15-year career as a web professional. I’ve never actually been driven to the point of sleeping under my desk and not leaving the office for days at a time, but the opportunity was there for me, if I had wanted to take it. Instead, I walked away, every time.

First, in 2000, just before the first tech bubble burst, I was brought in to be the “HTML guru” on the first e-commerce venture of a certain big box retailer. It was no startup, but it was being run like one. The .com team took over a (very) large conference room, turned off all of the overhead lights, and built a cubicle maze lit by floor lamps and dotted with potted trees. Aeron chairs and (promises of) vast fortunes in stock options for all! After a few months I started to see through the façade. The likelihood of a separate .com stock spinoff (the thing that was really going to make us all rich) evaporated, and our inspirational, visionary VP resigned the Friday before the site launched. It wasn’t long before I was gone, too.

Then, in 2008, I went to work for a (more-or-less) real startup. It was a “fun” work environment where we were entitled to all of the free breakfast cereals, ramen noodles, and caffeinated sodas we could consume. There was an XBOX 360 with Rock Band (which was still cool at the time) in the breakroom. We could hang out, bring dogs to work every day, ride around the office on scooters, all of that. We were encouraged to think of ourselves as “co-presidents” (actual shares in company ownership notwithstanding). We were also expected to log 36 billable hours a week. Maybe that’s no big deal when you’re fresh out of college, have no external commitments, and can be adequately enticed to stay at work until 11 PM with the promise of free ordered-in burritos. But I was 34, with two preschool-aged kids at home. And having to log 36 billable hours when you’re only in the office for 40 (and have to reserve enough energy to chase two kids around when you get home) can prove just as stressful as working 60 hours a week when you’re sleeping under your desk. (Or so it seemed at the time. I don’t care to try to prove it.) I only lasted at that job for 3 months.

As it happened, just as I was beginning that job I was also subconsciously assembling the pieces of what I really wanted to do, which was to go out on my own as a freelance web developer and consultant. I had acquired the necessary technical skills over a (then) 12-year career working for the two aforementioned companies as well as four others. I had built up a large enough network of contacts that I could tap into to drum up business (if you’ll permit such a ghastly mixed metaphor). All I needed was the confidence to take the leap and do it.

My goal was not to get rich (at least, not directly). It was not to revolutionize the industry. It was just to do what I do well, on my own terms. To please and delight my clients with top-quality work. To do what I love, and love what I do. And let it grow from there.

Three years later, I’m still here. I’m not rich. I haven’t started a revolution. But I’m making a stable living, and I’m meeting my target of 25 to 30 billable hours a week. I have a growing list of satisfied clients, and I’ve built something pretty cool along the way. This business is working, and I’m working on my own terms.

I don’t say all of this to gloat. I am proud of what I’ve achieved (and that I’ve done it without an “angel investor”). But there are a lot of people who’ve achieved a lot more in the Internet than I have, and probably more than I ever will. Still, there’s room for me, and there’s room for more, too. You just need to have the confidence to take the risk. But when you do it, do it for yourself.

Top 5 Albums of 2011: The Nominees

Here’s a follow-up to my recent post introducing (in cover art form) the albums under consideration for my upcoming “Top 5 Albums of 2011” post.

I realized after I wrote that post that although I’ve purchased about 25 new albums this year, I haven’t really listened to most of them very much. This is mostly because I’ve spent a large part of the year working on and listening to my own music, and much of the rest of it listening to 5by5‘s tech podcasts.

In the wake of the “contenders” post, I created an iTunes playlist that consists just of those 25 albums and have committed myself to listening only to the music on these albums. I’m listening to it mostly on shuffle, which of course shines more light on the merits of individual songs than on albums as a cohesive statement, but I figured this was the fairest way to ensure that I actually hear all of the artists.

After a few days of listening, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve definitely been neglecting these albums. There’s some great music out this year, and I’ve liked almost every song that’s come up in the rotation.

But, of course, I favor some albums over others, and so here are the albums I am most strongly considering for the top 5:

Adele — 21
I am really sick of hearing “Someone Like You” everywhere. Much like “Losing My Religion” 20 years ago, it’s a song I never really cared for anyway, but its annoying ubiquitousness pushes me almost to the point of disregarding the artist entirely. Other than that, and a couple of weak songs in the middle, though, I think 21 is a truly outstanding piece of work, with great singing and inventive re-imagining of soul sounds from the ’60s and ’70s.

Foo Fighters — Wasting Light
As with most Foo Fighters albums, this is an easy one to like, if you like hard rock. In many ways I think Foo Fighters are the last remaining standard bearers for classic rock. And “Rope” is probably my favorite song of the year.

Foster the People — Torches
I really don’t want to like this album as much as I do. There’s something about Foster the People that reminds me in a weird way of Owl City, in that it feels like something I should (and, in the past, would have) just dismiss outright. And yet every time one of these infectious songs comes on, it just sucks me in.

Halloween, Alaska — All Night the Calls Came In
I pretty much love anything Minneapolis-based jazz drummer Dave King is involved with, but Halloween, Alaska sounds nothing like his other work, and that’s turned out to be a good thing! Relatively straightforward art pop, with a slight Canterbury prog rock twist.

Joshua Wentz — Look/Look
This is the only truly “indie” (as in, unsigned) album I’m considering this year, and probably is the only one I’ve ever considered. As much as I respect DIY music (and engage in it extensively myself), and as much as I hate the RIAA and the dinosaur major labels behind it, it’s hard to let go of the old hangup of not taking it as seriously as music released by a “real” record company. But I make an exception to that hear. I know Josh and have been following his musical endeavors for a few years now, and this album is as good as anything any major label has released this year, and far better than most.

M83 — Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming.
I became enthralled with M83 with Saturdays = Youth a couple of years ago. This follow-up is a sprawling, atmospheric double album. I can’t avoid the analogy of Fleetwood Mac’s pair of late ’70s albums, Rumours and Tusk. As in that case, I don’t really think this is better than the album that preceded it, but it’s a fascinating journey nonetheless.

Mayer Hawthorne — How Do You Do
Mayer Hawthorne could be counted among a large number of white artists in recent years who have resurrected ’60s soul music. One could cite the long history of white musicians appropriating black artists’ styles and reaping commercial benefits that the original artists never attained, and I guess I just did. But that doesn’t change the fact that this is great music, and I’m glad the style is making a comeback, regardless of who’s performing it. Plus… I had no idea Snoop Dogg could sing!

Steven Wilson — Grace for Drowning
I’ve been a huge fan of Steven Wilson’s prog rock band Porcupine Tree for over a decade. The past few Porcupine Tree albums have been great but are starting to feel a bit too familiar. Taking a break from the band was apparently just what Wilson needed to reinvigorate his seemingly limitless creativity. Enlisting the help of a number of prog rock legends and comparatively unknown but highly talented jazz musicians, he’s created his most ambitious and varied work to date.

New adventures in hi-fi… er, iTunes Match

As successful as iTunes has been in transforming both the music industry and the music listening experience, it has, from the beginning, been hamstrung by restrictions imposed by the outmoded, fearful major record labels.

Little by little, Apple has whittled away at those restrictions while managing to create a hugely successful business — iTunes has for several years been the largest music retailer in the world. First there was iTunes Plus: a boost in quality and a victory for users with the elimination of DRM copy restrictions. And now we have the real game changer: iTunes Match.

For $25 per year, you can now store your music “in the cloud.” iCloud, to be specific. That annual subscription allows you to create a centralized, comprehensive library of all of your digital music on Apple’s servers, and accessible from any of your computers and iOS devices. No more worrying about limited disk space or struggling with syncing issues. It just works.

In principle.

In practice? Well, I put iTunes Match to the test today. My music library poses a few unique challenges to this new service:

My library consists of over 18,000 songs, and more than 140 GB of data.
My main computer is a MacBook Air with a 128 GB hard drive, so I keep a “master” library on an external hard drive and a day-to-day library on the internal hard drive.
My main iOS device is a 32 GB iPhone 4, which has been syncing with the “day-to-day” iTunes library on my Mac’s internal hard drive.
SLP and I have our own iTunes accounts but have long desired to have a single shared music library.
My music library consists mostly of non-iTunes Plus tracks: a mix of DRM-laden 128 kbps iTunes tracks, ripped CDs, and tons of MP3s downloaded from Amazon.com.

With these factors in play, I had some specific goals for iTunes Match, roughly in this order:

Move my “master” library from an external hard drive that sits on my desk, into iCloud where all of our devices can access it.
Free up precious storage space on my MacBook Air and iPhone.
Upgrade old DRMed 128 kbps iTunes tracks to higher-quality, DRM-free, 256 kbps versions.
Consolidate SLP’s purchased iTunes music (around 600 songs) with my main library.
Clean up duplicate tracks.

Spoiler alert: I pretty much knew going into it that the last of those items was going to get worse before it got better. But there were still plenty of surprises (good, bad and ugly) along the way.

The journey of 1,000 miles (or 18,000 songs) begins with a single step

I began my iTunes Match journey about two weeks ago, as soon as iTunes Match became available to the public. (For what it’s worth, I’m registered as an iOS developer, so I had access to the beta, but was never able to get it working properly.) The first goal was to get all of my music loaded into the system, and for the most part that went fine. Which is to say, it went… and went… and went… and w…e…n…t… fine. Loading the 4,000 or so songs I kept on my internal hard drive was fairly inconsequential. The process completed in a couple of hours while I went about my work that day. But then when the time came to fire up the external drive and load the remaining 14,000 or so songs… hmm. How can I put this? I guess the plus side was that I could leave it unattended and sleep, because it took three nights (overnight) to finish.

At that point I left things alone for a while, as I was too busy at the time to devote an entire day to organizing and cleaning up my music library. I did, however, get to play around with the overall iTunes Match experience for a week or so, and I discovered the following:

The good:

Having my complete music library at my fingertips on any device is amazing.
Streaming works great on the Mac, iPhone and Apple TV. Just pick a song and within a few seconds it starts playing.

The bad:

Browsing can be slow, sometimes painfully so, with a large library. This is especially a problem on the iPhone.
Cover art is often missing. I haven’t yet determined if it’s just not being downloaded, or if it’s not attached to the albums in iCloud, either.

The ugly:

Syncing an iOS device with iTunes on your computer can become a real mess. It’s hard to delete anything: like Michael Myers, no matter how many times you shoot him or stab him or stick a hanger in his eye, he just keeps getting up and coming back to get you. OK, bad analogy. But it almost feels that way.
Sometimes you don’t really want to remember just how many songs by Edison Lighthouse, England Dan and John Ford Coley, or Peppermint Trolley Company you own. It would be nice to have more filtering options than: a) just what’s on your device, or b) the whole shebang.

The big day arrives

Today I finally decided that I could afford to put off almost all of my real work for an entire day and devote my attention singularly to the task of getting iTunes Match fully synced, and SLP’s music fully integrated into the main library. To be honest, however, it’s not just today. I began the process at around 8:00 last night, worked until just after midnight, resumed from 7:00 to 8:30 this morning, then worked on it straight from 10:30 AM to 3:30 PM and again from about 7 PM to 10 PM, when I began writing this post. That’s 13 1/2 hours total, or approximately 2.66 seconds per each of the 18,266 tracks in my library. YMMV, as they say, but I’d guess it’s reasonable, if you’re trying to budget some time, to assume that you’ll need about 3 seconds times the number of tracks in your library. (And I’m still not really done.)

I took some notes today as I was going about things. Here are some pertinent observations:

Some things were just plain gone. I’m pretty sure this was the fault of my own carelessness in keeping my various pre-iTunes Match libraries in sync, but it’s worth noting that two conspicuous omissions in my library were The King Is Dead by The Decemberists and The King of Limbs by Radiohead. Coincidence?! I think… well, actually, yes, I do think it was probably just a coincidence. Luckily I was able to track down backups of both of those albums, but now I wonder what else is missing that I’m forgetting about.

“Matched” tracks are hit-and-miss. I’m sure Apple is relying on some very powerful algorithms to analyze each track in your library, in order to determine whether or not it matches a track that already exists on iTunes. It’s clearly not just relying on title-and-artist matching like the longstanding (and semi-useless) “Display Duplicates” option. One of the big selling points of iTunes Match is that if your music is available on iTunes, even if you didn’t buy it there, you’ll get the (usually higher-quality) iTunes version instead of the original version in your library, saving you time and saving Apple server space, as well. (Macworld’s Jason Snell has written an excellent tutorial on how to upgrade your tracks.)

The algorithms aren’t perfect, however, and I was annoyed to discover numerous cases where all but one or two tracks of an album were “matched” and could be replaced with 256 kbps iTunes versions, but the other tracks were rejected, for reasons unknown, and were stuck with the inferior quality versions I had to begin with.

Duplicates are a mess. Apple has done a lot to try to make it easy for you to find and weed out duplicate tracks, but you still have to do it. I appreciate that they don’t just assume which tracks you will or won’t want and automatically delete things capriciously, but I still wish there were a more efficient way to trim the excess.

Cloud symbols and error messages could use some clarification. Neven Mrgan has a great summary of the icons and his interpretations of their meanings, but I encountered too many dialog boxes today with useless statements like “This item is not eligible for iCloud” or “The track could not be downloaded because an unknown error occurred.”

If you’re trying to consolidate tracks from two separate iTunes accounts into a single library, you’re on your own. While the 10-device limit on DRMed iTunes tracks, and iTunes’ ability to be authorized for multiple accounts on a single device, allows for this kind of consolidation, Apple has not gone out of its way to support such activities. In my situation, I was dealing with a large number of SLP’s iTunes purchases that were no longer on any of our devices. I happened to have a spare Mac in my office with an empty iTunes library, so I logged into SLP’s iTunes account on that Mac and used the “Purchased” link in the iTunes Store to re-download all of her music in prep for eventual syncing with the main library.

But it wasn’t that easy. At first, a bunch of the songs wouldn’t download. I realized it was because they were still DRM versions, and that I needed to pay another $25 for an iTunes Match subscription on SLP’s iTunes account to get them. Even then, there were a number of weird issues with tracks being unavailable. Strangely, it seemed that in some cases, if I already had some of those tracks in the master iTunes library, and had already downloaded 256 kbps versions of them, it would not allow me to download them on this second computer. This leads me to believe that there is some hidden mechanism whereby Apple does still keep track of even the DRM-free tracks that have been downloaded, and if they’ve been “transferred” (as it were) to another user’s library, they become unavailable to the original user. This is just a guess, but it seems to fit my experience. (On a related side note, since this second computer was not yet authorized with SLP’s iTunes account, I needed to authorize it — which was triggered by attempting to play a song — before iTunes Match would work properly.)

What if your music is no longer available in the iTunes store? I’m sure this is one of the most commonly asked questions about iTunes Match, and I’m sure Apple has given very reassuring scripted answers, but it still remains as perhaps the biggest risk you take in trusting your music to the cloud. Tracks that iTunes fails to match and has to upload should be no problem, but once you’re relying solely on a “matched” track — or, for that matter, a “purchased” or “protected” track — you’re at the mercy of Apple and the record labels keeping the music available. I initially noted this as merely a point to ponder, but during the process of integrating libraries I encountered the problem firsthand. SLP had an album that was DRMed 128 kbps, but which is no longer available in the iTunes Store, at all. Luckily I had it copied to my master library already, or I wouldn’t have even known it existed. As it was, I was stuck with an album of low audio quality and that iTunes refused to load into iTunes Match. (It was “ineligible.”)

I hit upon a hokey workaround solution, one that is flawed mainly in that it results in further compression/degradation of the sound quality of the tracks, but at least it’s a way to get the music into iTunes Match. I burned a CD of the album, then re-ripped that CD back into iTunes, DRM free. (That’s the old school way of circumventing iTunes DRM, circa 2004.) It worked, but of course I’ll always know that the sound quality is sub-128 kbps. (Not that it matters much to me, as it’s an album I’ll probably never listen to.) This led me to a related discovery…

Burning a CD of DRMed tracks, re-ripping it, and uploading the results to iTunes Match will not get you “matched” DRM-free 256 kbps versions. Granted, my sample size here is pretty small — two tracks — but I suspect this is deliberate (if it’s possible). In addition to the aforementioned unavailable album, I found two other tracks from SLP’s library that stubbornly refused to load into iTunes Match, even though the rest of the tracks from the albums they were on were recognized and “matched” with no problem. So I burned them onto a CD, re-ripped the CD, and loaded the tracks into iTunes Match. No match. Just the further-compressed versions based on the original DRMed 128 kbps tracks.

Corrupted files? Are you kidding me? I had been wondering what might happen if files got corrupted, either during upload or download. Unfortunately, I found out. Just another meaningless error message with no real indication of a solution. I’m a few thousand tracks into the “upgrade” process so far, and to this point I’ve had four songs fail to download due to an “unknown error.” The behavior is the same in most cases: the song appears to download several times in quick succession. As soon as the progress bar gets to the end, it starts over again. After maybe 5 attempts, it stops with an error number (sometimes err = -100000, sometimes err = 11111). I think it may be necessary to contact iTunes customer support to resolve the issue, but I want to wait until I’ve finished downloading all of my music, to see if it happens with any other songs first.

So, is it all worth it?

I still have a nagging fear that some kind of catastrophic data loss is just around the corner, but so far I am inclined to say that iTunes Match definitely is worth it. It was delayed by a few weeks and still seems like it may have been rushed out the door, but I am hopeful that most of the current glitches and usability issues will be resolved over time. It would be nice if it “just worked,” as we Apple fanbois are so frequently inclined to say, but knowing the complexity of the task at hand, it’s a nearly superhuman achievement, even flawed as it is today.

At the moment I still have almost 3000 low-quality tracks that are eligible for an upgrade (using Jason Snell’s smart playlists), not to mention countless duplicates to weed out and a few other stray errors (in my nightmares, clouds have exclamation points) to contend with. But I think the biggest testament to the magnitude of Apple’s accomplishment is that it’s actually gotten me excited about “the cloud,” something I’ve looked upon disdainfully for years.

Top 5 Albums of 2011: The Contenders

It’s become an annual Underdog of Perfection tradition (even more of a tradition than calling this blog Underdog of Perfection). The annual “top 5 albums” post. Another tradition is this preliminary teaser post, wherein I announce “the contenders”: the albums I’ve purchased during the year that are under consideration for the top 5 list.

2011 has been an odd year for me, musically. I have been more prolific in my own musical endeavors than, perhaps, any year in the past — including three albums available on iTunes: my RPM project about Minneapolis, Scenes from the Busy Northern Metropolis, my running-inspired 40-minute electronic epic The Long Run, and the remastered/remixed compilation album Room 34 (Nokomis Beach). At the same time, I have found that many of my long-time favorite artists released disappointing, or worse, irrelevant albums this year, including but not limited to: The Beastie Boys, Cake, Coldplay, The Decemberists, Dream Theater, Fujiya & Miyagi, Radiohead, Wilco and Yes.

The year’s new music wasn’t all regrettable and forgettable, however, with bright spots from Adele, Foo Fighters and Halloween, Alaska, among others. But which albums will make the top 5? Check back in December to find out!