Tech Introvert

iCloud automatically downloads any new music purchase to all your devices over Wi-Fi — or over 3G if you choose. Which means you can buy a song from iTunes on your iPad at home, and find it waiting for you on your iPhone during your morning commute. All without having to sync

So you’re still making me download files? Is this a joke? Look Apple, where I come from the act of downloading matching files from 1 device to another is called SYNCING. It doesn’t matter if it’s via a cable or WiFi. iTunes in the Cloud still forces us to sync files to our devices.

Un Freaking Real. All that hype…for this.

All I want to do is listen to my music library on my iPhone without having to push gigabytes of data around. iTunes Match should just scan you drive and allow you to stream your damn library online. Maybe I need an Android phone for that.

The iCloud is expected to offer users a means to store their iTunes-purchased music on the company’s servers and then access from Web-connected devices. Sources told CNET yesterday that streaming music won’t immediately be made available on Monday and that Apple has plans to someday store songs users obtained outside of iTunes.

Well that’s awesome. “Someday” I may be able to store the music I’ve purchased on CD and Amazon in the same place as music I purchased from iTunes. They’re all MP3+AAC files, but for some reason where I bought them makes a difference.

This report had better be incorrect, Apple. You’ve already bilked me out of hundreds of dollars to “upgrade” my iTunes library – yes, I actually paid YOU to strip YOUR shitty DRM from files I own. Now your long-awaited cloud solution is only going to work for ~40% of my music library. Brilliant.

Maybe I should have known there’s no way the labels would let iCloud be awesome. Not even the power of Apple can change that.

The URL is dying. People don’t type in www.facebook.com anymore. Some don’t even use bookmarks. They type “Facebook” into their Google search bar, and Google gives them a link to click.

So it’s no surprise that dev builds of Chrome have a “Compact” mode that hides the URL bar. This of course is exactly what Google wants. Every time you manually type in a URL, Google loses a monetization opportunity. Notice how in the Compact Mode the green “Search” box is NOT hidden? Yeah that’s not a coincidence.

These guys are good. Soon it will be virtually impossible to do anything on the internet that doesn’t drop cash or mine-able data into Google’s pocket. This creeps me out.

Whereas right now, it’s all Google/Android vs. Apple/iOS, what happens when it becomes Google/Android vs. Amazon/Android? It’s going to happen. It’s just a matter of “when”.

Imagine how cool an Amazon-branded device could be? Seamless integration with Amazon MP3, Video On Demand, Cloud Drive, Amazon App Store, and Kindle? That’s compelling.

On the PC, it ties back to the recently expanded YouTube rental service with similar restrictions (30 days to watch, 24 hour window once you start watching) and pricing, and makes that per-movie VOD price a bit easier to swallow with its cross-platform support and we even spied a few HD selections for $4.99

Google’s movie service is good news for Android users. But it’s pretty much a subset of stuff available elsewhere. iTunes, Amazon and now YouTube offer pretty much the same crap. Why? Because the studios hold all the cards and control what can be watched and when.

Well, at least Ghostbusters is free on YouTube.