Monthly Archives: February 2018

Revisiting iTunes with HomePod

Like many I’ve been using iTunes since it’s first versions. Over the past year that use dwindled a great deal as my music playing was mostly via Music on an iOS device. And in the couple years before that I’d been using Plex on iOS devices and AppleTV to access my iTunes library on the Mac because, frankly, the home sharing was pretty crappy. Alternatively, I would also use the remote app on an iOS devices to control iTunes on the Mac which also worked pretty well. The downside was that I didn’t have a decent speaker. I alternated between various (and cheap) computer and/or bluetooth speakers and the built-in TV speakers. None of them were great but they were tolerable. I live in a fairly small space, a “tiny house” so even poor to average speakers sound okay.

Today I’ve got the HomePod and after a year of enjoying Apple Music on iPads and iPhone I’ve added lots of music that I usually just stream, often from my recently played or heavy rotation lists. But two things have surfaced now that I’ve been using HomePod for a few days. First, as I mentioned in my review of HomePod, I’m not very good at choosing music without a visual cue. Second, I live in a rural location and when my satellite data allotment runs out streaming Apple Music becomes less dependable. Sometimes it’s fine. Sometimes not. Such was the case last night. So, after a year away from the iTunes library on my Mac I opened the Apple Remote app. I set the output for iTunes to the HomePod and spent some time with my “old” music all streaming to the best speaker I’ve ever owned. So nice.

This morning it occurred to me that while I’m back on my “bonus” data (2am-8am) I should consider downloading some of the music I’ve added to my library over the past few months of discovery through Apple Music. And in looking at that list I see all that with each month or two, as I’ve discovered new music the previous new discovery’s roll out of my attention span. There are “new” things I discovered 5 months ago that I enjoyed but then forgot. It’s a great problem to have! So I’ve spent the morning downloading much of the music I’ve added to my library over the past year. I never intended to actually download any of it as the streaming has worked so well. But with the HomePod I see now that keeping my local iTunes/Music library up-to-date has great benefit.

Remote App

So, how well does this new music playing process work? I rarely touch my Mac. It’s a server and I use it for a few design projects that I cannot do on my iPad. So, as mentioned above, I’ve been using the original iOS “Remote” app which opens up an iTunes like interface and which works very well to choose music on the Mac which plays via AirPlay to HomePod. Of course I can still use Siri on the HomePod to do all of its normal features. The only thing I do on the Remote app is choose the music. Apple’s not done much with the interface of that app so it looks pretty dated at this point. Actually, it looks very much like iTunes but a slightly older version of iTunes. But even so being able to easily browse by albums, artists, songs, playlists is very comfortable. It fits a little better to my lifelong habit of choosing music visually.

Why not just access my local iTunes music via the Home Sharing tab in Apple Music app on my iPad or iPhone which could then be AirPlayed to the HomePod? I guess this would  be the ideal as it would allow me to stay in the Apple Music app. Just as the Remote app allows for browsing my Mac’s music library so too does the Music app. But performance is horrendous. When I click the Home Sharing tab and then the tab for my Mac Mini I have to wait a minimum of a minute, sometimes more for the music to show up. Sometimes it never shows up. If I tap out of the Home Sharing library I have to wait again the next time I try to view it. It’s terrible. By contrast, the Remote app loads music instantly. There is, at most, a second of lag.

But what’s even worse is that the Music app does not even show any of the Apple Music I’ve downloaded to my local iTunes library. It really is a terrible experience and I’m not sure why Apple has done it this way. So, the Remote app wins easily as it actually let’s me play all of my new music and does so with an interface that updates instantly even if it is dated.

I suspect that my new routine will be to use Apple Music and discovery via Apple’s playlists and suggested artists when I’m out walking which is usually a minimum of an hour a day. My favorite discoveries will get downloaded to my local library and when at home I’ll spend more time accessing my iTunes library via the remote app. All in all, I suspect that I’ll be enjoying more of my library, old and new, with this new mix and of course, all of it on this great new speaker!

HomePod: Sometimes great, sometimes just grrrrrrrrrrr.

Tuesday Morning
I’m getting out of bed as two dogs eagerly await a trip outside which they know will be followed by breakfast. I ask Siri to play the Postal Service. She responds: “Here you go” followed by music by the Postal Service. The music is at about 50% volume. Nice. But in three full days of use I’m feeling hesitant about HomePod and the Siri within. And the next moment illustrates why. I slip on my shoes and jacket and ask Siri to Pause. The music continues. I say it louder and the iPhone across the room pipes up: “You’ll need to unlock your iPhone first.” I ignore the iPhone and look directly at HomePod (5 feet away) and say louder as I get irritated “Hey Siri, pause!” Nothing. She does not hear me (maybe she’s  enjoying the music?). By now, the magic is long gone and is replaced by frustration. I raise my voice to the next level which is basically shouting and finally HomePod responds and pauses the music. Grrr.

I go outside with my canine friends and upon return ask Siri to turn off the porch light. The iPhone across the room responds and the light goes off. I ask her to play and the HomePod responds and the Postal Service resumes. I get my coffee and iPad and sit down to finish off this review. I lay the iPhone face down so it will no longer respond to Hey Siri. Then I say, Hey Siri, set the volume to 40%. Nothing. I say it louder and my kitchen light goes off followed by Siri happily saying “Good Night Enabled”. Grrrrrrrrrrrr. I say Hey Siri loudly and wait for the music to lower then say “set the Kitchen light to 40%” and she does. The music resumes and I say Hey Siri and again I wait then I say “Play the Owls” and she does. I’d forgotten that I also wanted to lower the volume. But see how this all starts to feel like work? There’s nothing magical or enjoyable about this experience.

Here’s what I wrote Sunday morning as I worked on this review:

“When I ordered the HomePod I had no doubt I would enjoy it. Unlike so many that have bemoaned the missing features I was happy to accept it for what Apple said it was. A great sounding speaker with Apple Music and Siri. Simple.

It really is that simple. See how I did that? Apple offered the HomePod and I looked at the features and I said yes please.

I then proceeded to write a generally positive review which is below and which was based on my initial impressions based on 1.5 days of use. By Monday I’d edited to add in more details, specifically the few failures I’d had with Siri and the frustration of iPhone answering when I didn’t want it to.

I went into the HomePod expecting a very positive experience. And it’s mostly played out that way. But it’s interesting that by Tuesday morning my expectation of failure and frustration have risen. Not because HomePod is becoming worse. I’d say it’s more about the gradual accumulation of failures. They are the exception to the rule but happen often enough to create a persistent sense of doubt.

Set-up
As has been reported. It’s just like the AirPods. I was done in two minutes. I did nothing other than plug it in and put my phone next to it. I tapped three or four buttons and entered a password. Set-up could not possibly be any easier.

Siri
In a few days of use I’m happy to report that HomePod has performed very well. In almost every request I have made Siri has provided exactly what I asked. My hope and expectation would be that Siri on HomePod would hear my requests at normal room voice. While iPad and iPhone both work very well, probably at about 85% accuracy I have to be certain to speak loudly if I’m at a distance. Not a yell1, but just at or above normal conversational levels. With HomePod on a shelf in my tiny house, Siri has responded quickly and with nearly 100% accuracy and that’s with music playing at a fairly good volume. Not only do I not have to raise my voice, I’ve been careful to keep it at normal conversational tones or slightly lower. I’ll say that my level is probably slightly lower than what most people in the same room would easily understand with the music playing.

For the best experience with any iOS device I’ve learned not to wait for Siri. I just say Hey Siri and naturally continue with the rest of my request. This took a little practice because earlier on I think Siri required a slight pause or so it seemed. Not any more. But there’s no doubt, Siri is still makes mistakes even when requesting music which is supposedly her strongest skill set.

The first was not surprising. I requested music by Don Pullen, a jazz musician that a friend recommended. I’d never listened to him before and no matter how I said his name Siri just couldn’t get it. She couldn’t do it from iPhone or iPad either. Something about my pronunciation? I tried, probably 15 times with no success. I did however discover several artists with names that sound similar to Don Pullen. I finally turned on type to Siri and typed it in and sure enough, it worked. I expect there are other names, be they musicians or things outside of Music that Siri just has a hard time understanding. I’ve encountered it before but not too often. The upside, the next morning I requested Don Pullen and Siri correctly played Don Pullen. Ah, sweet relief. A sign that she is “learning”?

Another fail that seems like a learning process for Siri, the first time I requested REM Unplugged 1991/21: The Complete Sessions she failed because I didn’t have the full name. I just said REM Unplugged and she started playing a radio station for REM. When I said the album’s full name it worked. I went back a few hours later and just said REM Unplugged and it worked. Again, my hope is that she learns what it is I’m listening to so that in the future a long album name or a tricky artist name will not confuse her. Will see see how it plays out (literally!).

Yet another failure, and this one really surprised me. I’ve listened to the album “Living Room Songs” by Olafur Arnalds quite a bit. I requested Living Room Songs and she began playing the album Living Room by AJR. Never heard of it, never listened to it. So, that’s a BIG fail. There’s nothing difficult about understanding “Living Room Songs” which is an album in my “Heavy Rotation” list. That’s the worst kind of fail.

One last trouble spot worth mentioning. I have Hey Siri turned on on both my iPhone and Apple Watch. Most of the time the HomePod picks up but not always. On several occasions both the phone and watch have responded. I’ve gotten in the habit of keeping the phone face down but I shouldn’t have to remember to do that. I definitely see room for improvement on this.

I’ve requested the other usual things during the day with great success: the latest news, played the most recent episode of one of my regular podcasts, gotten the weather forecast, current temperature, sent a few texts, used various Homekit devices, checked the open hours of a local store and created a few reminders. It all worked the first time.

There were a couple of nice little surprises. In changing the volume, it’s possible to just request that it be “turned up a little bit” or “down a little bit”. I’m guessing that there is a good bit of that natural language knowledge built in and we only ever discover it by accident. Also, I discovered that when watching video on the AppleTV, if the audio is set to HomePod, Siri works for playback control so there’s no need for the Apple remote! This works very well. Not only can Siri pause playback but fast forward and rewind as well.

Audio Quality
Of course Apple has marketed HomePod first and foremost as a high quality speaker, a smart Siri speaker second. I agree with the general consensus that the audio quality is indeed superb. For music and as a sound system for my tv, I am very satisfied. My ears are not as well tuned as some so I don’t hear the details of the 3D “soundstage” that some have described. I subscribe to Apple Music so that’s all that matters to me and it works very well. Other services or third party podcast apps, can be played from a Mac or iOS device via AirPlay to HomePod. I also use Apple’s Podcast app (specifically for the Siri integration) so it’s not an issue for me.

Voice First: Tasks and Music
The idea of voice first computing has caught on among some in the tech community who are certain that it is the future. I certainly have doubts. Even assuming perfect hardware that always hears perfectly and parses natural language requests perfectly (we’re not there yet) I certainly have problems with the cognitive load of voice computing. I’ll allow that it might just be a question of retraining our minds for awhile. It’s probably also a process of figuring out which things are better suited for voice. Certain tasks are super easy and tend to work with Siri via whatever device. This is the list of usual things people are doing because they require very little thinking: setting timers, alarms, reminders, controlling devices, getting the weather.

But let’s talk about HomePod and Siri as a “musicologist” for a moment. An interesting thing about playing music, at least for me, is I often don’t know what it is I want to play. When I was a kid I had a crate of records and a box of cassette tapes. I could easily rattle off 10 to 20 of my current favorites. Overtime it changed and the list grew. But it was always a list I could easily remember. Enter iTunes and eventually Apple Music. My music library has grown by leaps and bounds. My old favorites are still there but they are now surrounded by a seemingly endless stream of possibility. In a very strange way, choosing music is now kind of difficult because it’s overwhelming. On the one hand I absolutely love discovering new music. I’m listening to music I never would have known of were it not for Apple Music. I’ve discovered I actually like certain kinds of jazz. I’m listening to an amazing variety of ambient and electronic music. Through playlists I’ve discovered all sorts of things. But if I don’t have a screen in front of me the chances of remembering much of it is nil. If I’m lucky I might remember the name of a playlist but even that is difficult as there are so many being offered up.

So while music on the HomePod sounds fantastic when it’s playing I often have these moments of “what next?” And in those moments my mind is often blank and I need a screen to see what’s possible. I’m really curious to know how other people who are using voice only music devices decide what they want to play next.

Conclusion
There isn’t one. This is the kind of device that I want to have. I’m glad I have it. I enjoy it immensely. It is a superb experience until it isn’t which is when I want to throw it out a window. Hey Apple, thanks?

  1. Well, sometimes a yell is actually required. ↩︎

Using an iPad to maintain websites – my workflow

A couple weeks ago I wrote about my website managment workflow changing up a bit due to Panic’s recent announcement that they were discontinuing Transmit. To summarize, yes, Transmit will continue to work for the time being and Panic has stated that it will continue developing Coda for iOS. But they’ve been slow to adopt new iOS features such as drag one drop while plenty of others are already offering that support. So, I’ve been checking out my options.

After two weeks with the new workflow on the iPad I can say this was a great decision and I no longer consider it tentative or experimental. This is going to stick and I’m pretty excited about it. I’ve moved Coda off my dock and into a folder. In it’s place are Textastic and FileBrowser. Not only is this going to work, it’s going to be much better than I expected. Here’s why.

iCloud Storage, FTP, Two Pane View
Textastic allows for my “local” file storage to be in iCloud. So, unlike Coda, my files are now synced between all devices. Next, Textastic’s built in ftp is excellent. And I get the two pane file browser I’ve gotten used to with Transmit and Coda. Local files on the left, server files on the right. The html editor is excellent and is, for the most part, more responsive than Coda. Also, and this is really nice as it saves me from extra tapping, uploading right from a standard share button within the edit window. Coda requires switching out of the edit window to upload changes.

Drag and Drop
Unlike Transmit and Coda, the developers of FileBrowser have implemented excellent drag and drop support. I’ve set-up ftp servers in FileBrowser and now it’s a simple action to select multiple files from practically anywhere and drag them right into my server. Or, just as easily, because I’ve got all of my website projects stored in iCloud I can drag and drop from anywhere right into the appropriate project folder in the Files app then use the ftp server in Textastic to upload. Either way works great. Coda/Transmit do not support drag and drop between apps and are a closed silo. The new workflow is now much more open and with less friction.

Image Display and Editing
One benefit of FileBrowser is the display of images. In the file view thumbnails on the remote server are nicely displayed. If I need to browse through a folder of images at a much larger view I can do that too as it has a full screen image display that allows for swiping through. Fantastic and not something offered by Transmit or Coda. Also, from a list view of either Files or FileBrowser, local or remote, I can easily drag and drop an image to import into Affinity Photo for editing. Or, from the list view, I can select the photo to share/copy to Affinity Photo (or any image editor).

Textastic and Files
This was another pleasant surprise. While I’ll often get into editing mode and just work from an app, in this case Textastic, every so often I might come at the task from another app. Say, for example, I’ve gotten a new images emailed from a client as happened today. I opened Files into split view with Mail. In two taps I had the project folder open in Files. A simple drag and drop and my images were in the folder they needed to go to. The client also had text in the body of the email for an update to one of his pages. I copied it then tapped the html file in Files which opened the file right up in Textastic. I made the change. Then uploaded the images and html files right from Textastic.

Problems?
Thus far I’ve encountered only one oddity with this new workflow and it has to do with this last point of editing Textastic files by selecting them from within the Files app. As far as I can tell, this is not creating a new copy or anything, it is editing the file in place within Textastic. But for any file I’ve accessed via Files it shows a slight variation in the recents file list within Textastic. Same file, but the app seems to be treating it as a different file and it shows up twice in the recent files list. Weird. It is just one file though and my changes are intact regardless of how I’m opening it. As a user it seems like a bug but it may just be “the way it works”.

Using HomeKit

Smart Plugs
Last spring I finally purchased my first smart plug, a Homekit compatible plug from KooGeek. It worked. I bought a second. A few weeks later the local Walmart had the isp6 HomeKit compatible plugs from iHome on sale. Only $15. I bought three. My plan was to use these with lights and to have one for my A/C in the summer to be swapped out to the heater in my well-house in the winter. I’m pretty stingy in my use of energy so in the winter I make it a point to keep that heater off and only turn it on when when I must which requires a good bit of effort on my part. I don’t mind the walking out to the well house as I can always use the steps but it’s the mental tracking of it and the occasional forgetting that is bothersome. Having a smart plug makes it convenient to power it on and off but I’m still having to remember to keep tabs.

Automations
Enter automations. The Home app gets better with each new version. By using automations it is now possible to automate a scene or a device or multiple devices at specific times or sunset/sunrise or a set time after sunset/sunrise or before. Very handy for a morning light but not too helpful for my well-house heater. But wait, I can also set-up an automation for a plug based on a Homekit sensor such as the iHome 5-in-1 Smart Monitor. I put the monitor in the well-house and create an automation to turn on the heater if the temperature dips to 32. I’ve turned my not-so-smart heater into a smarter one which will keep my water from freezing with no effort from myself. Even better, it will reduce my electricity use because of it’s accuracy.

I have a similar dumb heater in my tiny house as well as a window A/C. I might use the same monitor to more accurately control heating and cooling in here. Currently I do that with constant futzing with controls and looking at a simple analog thermometer. It would be an improvement to just have a set temperature to trigger devices.

Lights
I’ve been avoiding purchasing Homekit compatible lights because most, such as those from Phillips, also required purchase of a hub. Also, cost was a bit much. My reasoning being that if I just pick-up smart plugs as they are on sale I can use those for lights or anything else. Cheaper and more versatile. That said, one benefit of the lights is that they can be dimmed which is appealing. So, two weeks ago I picked up one of Sylvania’s Smart bulbs. It works perfectly. I’ll likely get another but in my tiny house I don’t need that many lights so two dimmable bulbs will likely be enough. It’s very nice to be able to ask Siri to set the lights at 40% or 20% or whatever. I have an automation that kicks on the light to 15% at my wake-up time. Very nice to wake up to a very low, soft light. With a simple request I can then ask Siri to raise the brightness when I’m actually ready to get out of bed.

Lighting Automations
An hour after sunrise I’ve got another set of LEDs that kick on for all of my houseplants that sit on two shelves by the windows. An hour after sunset those lights go off and at the same time the dimmable light comes on at 50%.

Home
All of the set-up happens via the built in iOS Home app. It’s a fairly easy to use app that gets better with each new version of iOS. My set-up is pretty simple but Home is designed to scale up with larger homes with more rooms and devices. In my case, I’ve go the Home app split screen with Apple Music on my iPad Air 2. It’s on a shelf within easy reach of my usual sitting spot on my futon/bed. While I do most interaction via Siri or automation it’s nice to have easy visual access. Especially handy for monitoring the well house heater and temperature. Having Music open and ready to play to a speaker via AirPlay is very nice.

AppleTV as Hub
Of course, to really make this work a hub is required. A recent iPad running iOS 10 or one of the newer AppleTVs will work. I’m using the AppleTV because I’ve always got one on. Set-up was easy and I’ve never had to futz with it. The nice thing about this set-up is that I can access my Homekit devices from anywhere. Whether I’m in town or visiting family or out for a walk, checking or changing devices is just a couple taps or request from Siri.

HomePod
Last is the device that has not arrived yet. My HomePod is set to arrive February 9. I don’t need it for any of this to work but I suspect it will be a nice addition. Controlling things with Hey Siri has always worked pretty well for me though I suspect it will be even better with HomePod. Will find out soon.