535: State of the Platform: Apple Services

Good episode, and I like the after show idea. Agreed that Apple Arcade is the the shining star, though Iā€™m more optimistic about TV+ than most it seems. I keep finding good shows on it, and itā€™s not as overwhelming as other services with endless content to choose from. iCloud Storage is another area where I feel Iā€™m against the normā€¦Iā€™d love it to be free, but I also donā€™t feel like itā€™s egregious to pay. The prices feel okay (though Iā€™m sure thereā€™s folks who need more than 2TB who are SOL).

Anyway, good listen!

Great episode!
My biggest gripe with iCloud is contacts syncing, wich of often takes several days for me.

Really like Apple TV+, Mythic Quest, For All Mankind, Morning Show and Dickinson are my favorites! Was surprised, that Mythic Quest didnā€™t get a shout out, since itā€™s my favorite show on the service.

As per Copied substitutes, Iā€™ve been using Paste (part of SetApp) on both Mac and iOS devices. While it does not have the transformations, it does the sync and sorting nice and looks really good on macOS.

1 Like

Iā€™ve been happy with Copied ā€“ with one big exception ā€“ and see no reason to switch, even though I agree that it seems to be abandoneware.

I like the text transformations. On the Mac, my fingers know the app very well. And on the iPhone, itā€™s great for those late-night sessions where I cruise Reddit and Tumblr looking for retro ads and old photos and posting a lot of my finds to micro.blog and social media.

The one big exception to my overall continued satisfaction with Copied: Sync between my Mac, iPhone and iPad is badly broken. Always has been for me. This has not proven to be a dealbreaker.

At some point, Iā€™ll probably explore options. Or at least look into figuring out why sync wonā€™t work!

I really enjoyed this episode (and the whole ā€œState of Apple in 2020ā€ series). Regarding the Dropbox vs. iCloud Drive debate, one thing that keeps me on Dropbox is that some of the Shortcuts file actions remain sandboxed in the /Shortcuts/ folder on iCloud Drive, whereas selecting Dropbox allows me to save files anywhere without having to choose the destination folder manually each time. I hope that iOS/iPadOS 14 will fix this.

1 Like

Copy 'Em Paste is not cheap, but it offers screenshots, text transformations, saved favorites, favorites folders, transformations (drag-and-drop images out to preferred image format) and more. Iā€™ve been using it for years. Syncable iOS app is currently in beta too. Paid for itself many times over, one of my must-have macOS add-ons. The only thing close to it is PasteBot.

zv_655
zv_656

1 Like

Been loving Paste too! Only thing that I wished it had is ordered pastes (copies several things in a row, then paste them in that order).

Please, please, do the show on email apps that you mentioned in this episode. I agree with David that there isnā€™t an ideal mail app. I jump from Apple Mail to Airmail to Spark (and maybe another 2 or 3 along the way), and move on because of some frustration that pops up. I have accounts in iCloud, gmail, yahoo, for a total of probably 6-7 accounts. Iā€™d like to know what others think.

Also, speaking of browsers, that could be a show (I havenā€™t checked to see if itā€™s been done lately). I agree that Safari works the smoothest, but I have gone to MS Edge. Safariā€™s got a couple of missing features that really irks me. First is tab width. I donā€™t want a tab to go across the app if itā€™s the only tab thatā€™s open. Give me fixed widths unless there are too many to accommodate them. The other is no option to close all tabs to the right. I use this all the time. Oh, yeah. Extensions (or lack thereof) in Safari is a big drawback.

As far as clipboard, Copyā€™em Paste works well. Itā€™s Mac, but thereā€™s an iOS app in TestFlight. Iā€™ve had very good luck with that app, moving clips between platforms.

A couple of thoughts.

Tony

It was interesting to hear that Apple Notes uses its own synchronization technology. Perhaps this explains why there isnā€™t more pressure to fix some of the odder little synchronization issues that have persisted so long (although losing your folder structure doesnā€™t feel so little).

I was the one who posted about using text expander to do multi line text replacement on iOS. My 1-minute of fame!

So if one opens text replacement on the Mac and unfolds a multi-line snippet into it then it syncs as a multi line snippet to iOS, which is sadly otherwise impossible to do on the Mac or iOS: multi line text replacement. I am sure it will be added within the decade

I wish @ismh and @MacSparky had more significant experience with Spotify. I think they may have a lesser opinion of Apple Music based on how awesome Spotifyā€™s discovery engine is and how Apple Musicā€™s is severely lacking. Iā€™ve switched over for multiple reasons to Apple Music but Iā€™ve given up on using their discovery engine in finding actual new music because of how disappointing their recommendations are.

Iā€™m in a slack with a bunch of music fans who are split 50/50 between the two services and everyone on AM says the same thing about how bad their discovery engine is, and its more the integration with everything else is why we use it.

2 Likes

I would agree with Apple Music being a B close to an A, but my biggest issue is the feature parity from The Mac to iOS. I would love to see smart playlist creation on iOS.

I agree Spotify is better at its discovery UX on the homepage/initial view. I donā€™t think its actual recommendations are better although Spotifyā€™s higher volume of recommendations give it more room to be divergent, at the expense of confidence in the picks. Itā€™s hard to closely compare since both get smarter as you put time into the service.

That seems to be the problem with iCloud. Sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesnā€™t. And the problems donā€™t appear to be the same for all users.

I canā€™t remember the last time I had a problem with iCloud syncing applications. Safari bookmarks, Calendar, Contacts, Keychain, Photos, and Reminders are all working OK. I can make a change on one device and it normally shows up on all my others within minutes. But I can put some small files in an iCloud folder and they may not even start to sync for hours.

I hate to do this, but I really love Spotifyā€¦ Here are some personal ā€œSpotify does it better than Musicā€ things for the macOS clients, beyond the mostly-agreed-upon better discovery:

  • Less ā€˜dead spaceā€™ in the UI than Music (and thus, better utilization of the space)

  • The appā€™s window is still perfectly usable at a much smaller size than Music can be used

  • Each artist has twenty ā€œFans Also Likeā€ (related artists) to Musicā€™s ten ā€œSimilar Artistsā€

  • The artist ā€œAboutā€ page is tidier and contains clickable links to any bands / musicians in the bio, in addition to being able to include a gallery of band images

  • Shows monthly listener data, followers data, and how many ā€œplaysā€ every song has had (global play count, not just your personal play count)

  • Shows the top five cities people are listening to the artist from

  • Browse categories are almost always laid out in a gallery view rather than in a carousel like Music, and there are more genre and mood categories on Spotify that are accessible through less mouse clicks

  • The ā€œTop Xā€ songs charts have icons to show whether songs are moving up or down the charts, plus there are additional ā€œViral Songsā€ charts

  • Built-in concert listings that include the lineup of the concert with links to the other bands playing and some other information

Iā€™m sure there are a few other things here and there Iā€™m missingā€¦ And sad to say, but I canā€™t really think of things Apple Music does better than Spotify than being much more integrated into the ecosystem / Siri controls / etc.

3 Likes

Agreed. When I subscribed to Apple Music after the Beats purchase I primed it with many tracks of eclectic interests (Medieval, Balkan, Mali-Blues, French Bistro, etc.). It couldnā€™t generate anything of interest. Spotify has provided a steady stream of artists much-aligned with my interests.

Apple Music has stronger integration with Siri and Shortcuts.

But I subscribe for content; not ease-of-control.

One thing that keeps me in the Apple Music realm: I have a bunch of previously-purchased music (some of it that I purchased on CD and then ripped). Access to that music wherever I want it is one place where Apple Music beats Spotify. On Spotify, I can use that music ā€” but only locally on a device. With Apple Music, I can stream it anywhere I like.

1 Like

@MacSparky So the promised photo of the desk? :wink:

I forgot about this ā€“ that is a killer feature for sure. Can you stream FLAC/ALAC files that way?