All Apple All Day

The Verge wrote today that Spotify is in the process of renegotiating its deal with the US record labels.  Those negotiations are reportedly focused on 2 areas: first, Spotify wants to lower the royalty payments that it makes to the record labels into line with its revenues. Secondly, Spotify wants to make its free, ad-supported tier available on mobile platforms, such as the iPhone.   The second point is exciting. If I could access and control Spotify from my iPhone, then essentially every song ever written would be available for streaming, at all times.  Moreover, this would (potentially, perhaps even likely) allow control of Spotify over AirPlay - maybe natively within the app, or if necessary, by double-clicking the home button, swiping to the left, and AirPlay streaming the entire iPad or iPhone.  All of that excitement comes with quite a few troubling caveats, though. The first point, re: royalty payments, for instance. It's been reported for some time that

Our first plans for expanded built-ins!  It's been a while, but finally, we know where we're going.   As promised, here are the first (very rough) plans for how our built-in cabinets will look after the renovation.  The only question at this point - can we do this ourselves?  I'm thinking that the answer is "yes", with one exception - the media cabinets (or at a minimum, the cabinet doors) will have to be purchased.  The open-shelving portion of each new bookshelf will be a DIY project, as will the crown molding and baseboards. 

I was at our local Best Buy on Sunday - not really looking for anything in particular. Nest thermostats, AirPlay stereos, maybe a new TV for the office. ASIDE: Back in college, I worked at a Best Buy for a month around the holidays. It was excruciatingly boring, and I quit as soon as I left for home at Christmas break. I have no trouble spending hours in a Best Buy on my own, but the minute they start  paying  me to be there, I'm crawling up the walls to get out.  I walked into the Magnolia room - after all, I was just browsing, and they have the best stuff in Best Buy - and I noticed a display of in-wall speaker systems.  "Aha!", I thought. "This is the solution for the living room home theater - expand the built-in shelving, and incorporate in-wall speakers!" There's going to be an open space where the mantle overhangs, directly to the left and right of the TV... this could work. 

I need to pick up some HDMI cables immediately. We've been using a set that we purchased from Monoprice about a year ago.  Unfortunately, they aren't quite long enough to run through our walls, and their nylon jackets make them rather stiff and inflexible.  If I'm going to be tearing my drywall apart and cutting notches in the studs to fish HDMI cables through, I want the thinnest, most flexible cables that I can buy. (Also, I want them to be cheap.) We're also looking at speakers - we currently have a Bose Acoustimass 5.1 double-cube speaker system in our living room. It gets the job done, and the speakers are very small.  We could certainly use some wall mounts and incorporate the Bose cubes into the new home theater system. It would look fine, and would cost nothing.  But we're also considering in-wall speaker solutions.  (We'll look at the options for in-wall speakers tomorrow. For now, let's look at in-wall HDMI cables.) 

I'm looking for a used AirPort Extreme. In all the usual places - eBay, Craigslist.  I'll probably get one this week. Why? It's a long story.  A while back, I picked up an AirPort Express A1084 router on Craigslist, and found that it was incompatible with my AirPort Utility and wireless-n network, even though it looked *identical* to the current model of AirPort Express.  So, I wrote a post on this blog about the different types of AirPort Express routers, noting that if you're looking for used Airport Express routers to extend your AirPlay network, you'd better seek out model A1264. In the months that followed, Apple updated the AirPort Express again, changing the form factor (it looks like a little white AppleTV now), adding simultaneous dual-band support, and giving it model number A1392.  ASIDE: I'm not totally convinced that the form-factor change was an improvement. The A1264 plugged directly into the wall, which was incr

No one talks about the iPod anymore. I only know of two types of people using them these days - preteens using iPod touches for gaming, and people using old Nanos or Shuffles for running.   And, I suppose, my sister, who has an iPod permanently residing in a dock and acting as her home stereo system. But for about 6 years, from 2001 until the iPhone's announcement in 2007, it was THE gadget.  Music only, and we liked it that way. When the iPhone was just a rumor, one critic memorably said "I love my iPod. I don't want it to ring ." These are the 5 "Greatest" iPods. They're not necessarily the 5 "best" iPods - obviously, the Touch is the most capable, "best" iPod. But can it really be called the "greatest", when it's practically an afterthought in the Apple product line? And these iPods aren't being graded on a curve, either. Obviously, the original iPod was the most revolutionary for its time

We've been in the new house for about six months, and there's still a huge pile of HDMI wires running from our TV over the fireplace, to the AV stand holding our components.  It works great, it looks terrible.  It's time for a change. I could bury the HDMI cables in the wall horizontally, or run them through the basement and back up.... but the former plan requires expensive drywall work, and the latter has a fireplace in the way and might be impossible. Time for a bold plan. Time for wall-to-wall built in cabinets!