Tag Archives: Apple Music

Weekly output: techno-panics, unsubsidized phones, Apple and Google streaming music

Posted on by
Reply

Hey, August, you’ve been doing a really bad job of being a slow news month. Could you please clock out already?

8/18/2015: How to Survive the Next Techno-Panic, Yahoo Tech

When I suggested this topic to my editors, I had no idea that a day later, Spotify would uncork a self-inflicted techno-panic by… wait for it… rolling out a vague and expansionist privacy policy written by lawyers for other lawyers.

Yahoo Tech phone-prices post8/20/2015: 5 Reasons You Should Pay Full Price For Your Smartphone, Yahoo Tech

I filed the first draft of this story last week, then had to update it twice when Sprint a) said it would stop selling subsidized phones at the end of the year and b) the next day, rolled out a warmed-over version of its old “iPhone for Life” lease plan. You can guess what other, oft-updated work of mine needed repeated revisions this week; look for them to show up online shortly.

8/23/2015: What to do when Apple Music has its head in cloud, USA Today

In an alternate universe, this would have run July 5. Instead, I wrote another, timelier column and put this one back on the shelf until now. That extra time led me to discover a useful option in Google Play Music that’s missing from Apple’s music apps.

Advertisement

Weekly output: Apple’s cloud services, iPhone discounts

Posted on by
1

In addition to these two stories, I filed another that happens to be the first piece I’ve done for the client in question. That debut status means I can only guess if the editing will entail more or less punishment for my prose than it deserves.

8/4/2015: Why Are Apple’s Cloud Services So Weak?, Yahoo Tech

I look at the near-absence of comments on an Apple-centric story–especially one finding fault, at length, with the company’s efforts–and I can only wonder what I did wrong.

USAT iPhone-discounts column8/9/2015: Discounted iPhone the unicorn of smartphones, USA Today

I had another topic in mind for this weekend’s column but couldn’t find the reader e-mail asking the question–either I deleted it by mistake or, more likely, my failure to flag it for follow-up combined with all the correspondence I get about Web ads made this message search-proof. (If you sent me a note about retargeted ads, this could be your e-mail; please re-send!) Anyway, as I was going through my inbox, one item at a time, to try to find that query, I came across a different reader question that I realized would also work for my Q&A column.

Weekly output: owning versus renting music, Tech Night Owl, DSL without phone service

Posted on by
Reply

This week was relatively easy on my schedule. One result: I finally edited and posted the photos I took at CE Week three weeks ago.

Yahoo Tech owning or renting music post7/7/2015: Sorry, Apple Music —I Want to Own My Tunes, Not Rent Them, Yahoo Tech

I started writing this post in 2005, when I dismissed the rent-your-music argument of Napster To Go and then found similar sales pitches from Rhapsody and Yahoo Music Unlimited (remember that?) only slightly more appealing.

7/11/2015: July 11, 2015 — Rob Pegoraro and Bryan Chaffin, Tech Night Owl

I talked about Apple Music’s resurrection of DRM, among other things, with host Gene Steinberg.

7/12/2015: How to get DSL without the phone service, USA Today

I got an update from the reader behind this question on late Saturday night, well after I’d filed the story: He had dumped Verizon, switched to EarthLink DSL, somehow doubled his speed, and finally ported his home number to Ooma. In the bargain, he only had to do without wired Internet access for a couple of days.

Weekly output: patent trolls, Apple Music (x3), robots, digital fluency

Posted on by
1

I had more to show for myself than usual on this holiday-shortened week, and I can thank Apple and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe for much of that.

6/30/2015: Why The Tech Industry Hates Patent Trolls, and You Should Too, Yahoo Tech

I’d written and filed this column two weeks earlier, then shelved it so I could turn around a post on LastPass’s security breach. I’m glad we could finally get this thing out, but I fear that not many people read it on the day that Apple Music launched.

WTOP on Apple Music6/30/2015: Apple Music, the newest player in a crowded streaming field, WTOP

Washington’s news station interviewed me about my first impressions of Apple’s new music service. I emphasized how limited Apple Music’s device support is compared to that of Pandora or Spotify–even factoring in Apple’s upcoming, unprecedented shipment of an Android app for the service.

7/1/2015: CE Week Report: Are Robots Limping Forward or Finding Their Stride?, Economy

João-Pierre S. Ruth wrote up last week’s CE Week panel on robots and was kind enough to give me the last word in the story.

7/1/2015: Will Apple Music Kill Your Data Plan?, Yahoo Tech

I had thought that this would be an easy story to write, but then I realized that Apple had not bothered to document the bit rates used by Apple Music’s streaming–which are significantly higher than Pandora’s bit rate, though not as high as some coverage would have you think. I also had to batter my way through some math, an experience that reminded me how many decades it’s been since my last math class.

7/2/2015: We Do Need Digital Fluency, But We Don’t All Need To Code, Yahoo Tech

I’d written this reaction to the previous Friday’s event with McAuliffe at one of Capital One’s Tysons Corner offices on Monday, but my editors elected it to hold it for a slower time in the week. That made sense to me.

7/5/2015: Some restrictions apply to Apple Music song matches, USA Today

I wrote and filed a different Q&A column on Thursday, then decided that Apple’s undocumented imposition of DRM on matched copies of your own music was a timelier topic. That delayed the start of my long weekend until around noon Friday, but in the bargain I have a completed column in the can that we can run whenever I get around to taking a vacation.

Weekly output: Apple Music (x2), Fios battery-backup beep

Posted on by
Reply

In addition to the items below, I probably tweeted out an article’s worth of copy at the Techonomy Policy conference in D.C. on Tuesday. After that, this week’s other highlights were two only-in-D.C. events: the NOAA Fish Fry, an annual event that sees the Commerce Department’s courtyard turned into an open-air seafood buffet, and a reception at the National Archives hosted by nine different wine/beer/booze-industry lobbies. The catch is that both happened Wednesday night, a first-world problem that made the whole evening that much more like something out of Christopher Buckley’s brilliant novel “Thank You For Smoking.”

Yahoo Tech Apple Music post6/9/2015: Apple Music: The Song Sort of Remains the Same, Yahoo Tech

I covered Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference much as any of you could have: by watching the live video of the keynote at Apple’s site. I was sure the comments on this post would instantly degenerate into the usual Apple-versus-Android flame war, but that did not happen, and I feel like I did something wrong.

6/9/2015: Apple Music, WTOP

I spoke about Apple’s music news with WTOP’s anchors the morning my story ran. It was flattering to hear myself described as the news station’s “favorite geek.”

6/14/2015: How to stop Verizon Fios ‘battery beep’, USA Today

Most of my story research doesn’t require going into my home’s basement, but this item about how Verizon delivers phone service over its Fios fiber-optic broadband did. The column also offers some advice about a service-finding site, Go2Broadband, run by the cable industry.