ITunes Radio

Is iTunes Radio apart of your future? Well it sure looks like its apart of Apple's. They say at the pace that its on, it could surpass Pandora in a month with over 11 million listeners in the first few days. Until we get to that point to find out, find out now if its something you need or want. This is iTunes Radio. 

Think Pandora with the backing of iTunes. What's really cool about iTunes Radio is if an artist has a new song or new album coming out, you can hear that new song or songs from the album streaming live in its entirety on your playlist. Another thing I like is, if you hear a song you like, you can buy it right then and there. You can also tune the radio to your liking. Hit the red information button at the top and you then see a screen where you can purchase the song, create a station from that particular artist or song your listening to. Tune the station by hits of the genre, a variety or set it to discovery and get a whole slew of different songs and song types. Then you can even share it all via air drop, Twitter, Facebook, email or iMessage. The truth is there is a couple of good things to like about iTunes Radio, but again like anything else it does have its faults. 

iTunes Radio has ads. Honestly what doesn't have ads today? Not sure when photos and ads took over human life, but there it is in all its glory. The ads come on about every 4th or 5th song and they are not very long in my opinion. I listen to the smooth jazz station every night as go to sleep and the one problem that I have is that it will stop playing music and ask if I want to continue listening to music. That's a good and bad feature. If you don't answer music cuts off and saves your battery which is good. But the thing is, my iPod/iPhone is off and I am not waking up every few minutes just to answer that question. What would be nice is a auto shut off timer, so I could set it for an hour or let it play until I get up and manually shut it off in the morning. But I am sure as the service grows, so will the features. 

I think that I like the fact that every song in iTunes is available and ready to be added to your radio station based on that artist or that song. I made a radio station based on 2 Chainz. I tuned my services to hits and (even though I skipped all the songs just as a demo) most of the songs included 2 Chainz or had songs by others like him that were in a sense hits on the radio or billboard. The variety tune, gave me 2 Chainz new music off his new album and then the next song was off of Lil Wayne's newest album and the song after that gave new new music off of Drake's new album. I didn't go much further after that. While your listening to the music, you have a star button you can press and that either "play more like this", "never play this", or "add to iTunes wish list".

My Beautiful Playlist

The other features include changing the stations name to what ever you want it to be, sharing the station via email, Twitter, Facebook, and AirDrop support. I shared a link via email with my fiancé and it took her right to my "Bed Time Music" radio station on iTunes on our desktop PC. 

I really don't do a lot of music streaming. When I did, I did use Pandora and that was cool to use when I used it. As for iTunes Radio, I use this every night for bed and other than it asking me the option to keep playing or not (which is not all the time for some reason. Must be a bug) I like the service that it provides. I don't know what differences it holds over Pandora in terms of things that it does over the other. I wouldn't know what would make a person switch between Pandora to iTunes Radio, but I will say that the selection of music is better and I only skipped one song (when I was actually using the service and not demoing the service) and the option to purchase the music right inside the service was nice. I guess the only thing good I can see on it for a person to switch would be the idea of one less app to use or to have on your screen. I like the fact that when I updated to iOS 7, I did delete Pandora and I forced myself to use iTunes Radio to see if I would like it or not. So far so good and I know it should only get better. So my final opinion on this service is that it is a good service that has the potential to be great. I also think you should give it a try and you just might like it. 

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iOS 7

 It has been one week since the gold master version of iOS 7 dropped in an ota update. I have been spending every time that I could using iOS 7 and I must say that the good definitely outweighs the bad. This is iOS 7. 

I have never talked about an operating system, but I guess I should seeing as how there has been Windows 8, any Android updates, and now iOS 7. Soon there will be the anticipated Android 4.4 or Kit Kat and OS X Mavericks, and even Windows 8.1. My computer has been running Windows 8.1 for a couple weeks now and while the new changes are welcomed, there are always time and room for improvements (hint hint). But until those times come, iOS 7 is here now and while its not perfect in any way, I however, do not wish to go back to iOS 6 either. 

What is interesting to me is how the whole operating system has had a major overhaul. Every single app, every single setting, every single thing running on my iPod has been switched over, optimized and ready to go running on iOS 7. What's good about the OS? To me I believe it's all the little things. Of course there are the big things as in the appearance of how it looks and how it runs blah blah blah, but to me it's the things that are little that make a big difference to me and Apple is usually really good about the little things or the minor details to me. So when you hit an app, for example the weather app, the app opens up but as its opening, it flies open onto your screen. And as you hit the home button, it flies right back out of your view into the app it once was. I know some people have complained about it, but I love it. And apps like iMessage, I like how scrolling up and down let's the bubble messages bounce back-and-forth. It's just the little things that make it kind of cool. Another little thing I like is the parallax feature. It's where pictures or background images slightly move with the accelerometer inside of the device. So a picture or background image is then seen slightly leaning left and right or up-and-down as you move or pivot your hand which leaves a nice little effect. 

One of the things I really really like is the updates. I was getting updates for most of my apps about a week before IOS 7 even dropped and then after iOS 7  did drop on the 18th, there was a whole flood of new apps that were updated that were optimizing to iOS 7. It's so crazy how many apps were ready to go and upscaled and do whatever they needed to do to get ready for iOS 7. I also like the multitasking. Double hitting the home button will bring out a row of apps or cards that can let you switch in and out of other apps very quickly. 

If you want to get rid of one of the cards, flick it off the screen, its as simple as that. Or what I also found out is if you want to get rid of two or three cards at the same time, it excepts 2 to 3 fingers and you can just flick them all off the screen at once. 

Smooth Jazz Every Nite For Bed.

Also one of the new features of iOS 7, will not really a new feature more of like a new service, introduced us all to iTunes Radio. Think Pandora with the backing of iTunes. What's really cool about iTunes Radio is if an artist has a new song or new album coming out, you can hear that new song or songs from the album streaming live in its entirety on your playlist. 

Another thing I like is, if you hear a song you like, you can buy it right then and there. You can also tune the radio to your liking. Hit the red information button at the top and you then see a screen where you can purchase the song, create a station from that particular artist or song your listening to.

Tune the station by hits of the genre, a variety or set it to discovery and get a whole slew of different songs and song types. Then you can even share it all via air drop, Twitter, Facebook, email or iMessage.

A fan of the Safari browser, yes that has been me, even though I use Chrome a whole lot more, Safari on iOS has been a very nice upgrade.

Tabs are gone just by flicking to the left just like everything else on iOS 7. But the Browser itself is very appealing and to me it runs a little slow but it doesn't reload as much either. In a whole overview, it seems like iOS 7 is a lot about swipes and gestures even more. One hand operation seems to be a big issue for people at times and because the iPod and any iPhones are the size that they, one hand operation is not a problem and even in iOS 7 it works even better. 

My week with iOS 7 has been a pleasant surprise. I wasn't expecting it to blow my socks off like other people were for some strange reason. But I looks great and I think it has been a very good change for iOS and Apple in general. The direction of the OS you can tell is just the ground work for whats to come later. But the 1st phase of the new look iOS has been great in my opinion. I am not sure of what people are really expecting from Apple. They must want Apple to solve all of their problems with a OS. Everyone complains so much about wanting something different and then when they get it, they complain about how bad it is. I think Apple waited so long to change their OS because they didn't want to change it every time someone told them it was crap. Windows phone is totally different from iOS and Android and people bash it left and right. iOS is not perfect, as in you still can't swipe type (I love that) Safari seems to run a little slow, I have been force closed out of an app twice!, the passbook app is still pointless, weather app still uses Yahoo Weather for some odd reason and now you have unlimited items in a folder. The bad with that is, sometimes you forget where something is or you forget that you just scroll left and right. The gesture that you do when you swipe up is good but I think some of the items on the quick settings need labels to let you know what they are. 

Just small gripes and complaints, but they do matter none the less. I like iOS 7 and I look forward to what they have down the pipeline at Apple. Though I didn't go over everything that was new in iOS 7, I feel that you have to figure it out for yourself if you like it or not. My taste in tech may be different than yours and what pleases you may not so much as effect me. But if you base your opinion on others opinions then if you have not downloaded iOS 7 then today is the day that you should absolutely do so. 

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