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Apple has disabled the Walkie-Talkie app for Apple Watch due to a bug that could allow users to eavesdrop on others, reports TechCrunch.
I mean, I get it, and that’s probably the right thing to do, but has anyone involved used a walkie talkie before? It’s like a CB. Everyone’s using the same bandwidth, and if your conversations are private, they’re private only through luck, not the technology.
I kinda miss that wide-open use of radio waves. It was fun to pick up conversations back in the good ole days. (Remember when the first cordless [home] phones didn’t have encryption? Those were interesting eavesdropping times too…)
Update 2: Now Apple's apparently getting serious about HD radio in the touch and iPhone. From AppleInsider. I can't see how HD radio makes it without this sort of mainstream adoption. I don't think it's happening in cars, but teaming up with ultra-portable computers makes more sense. Wonder what sort of data they'll ship that'll put them over the top -- imagine getting broadcast video with your radio or, what's got to follow, DTV reception...
Update: Now that I have one, I find that track tagging isn't a sign of HD Radio and that the nano does not, in fact, support HD. HD Radio really is a technology without a purpose. Does anyone really dislike FM? Do you really need CD quality tunes in anything short of a Maybach? Well, short of the cars the top 10% drive?
If one could do anything for radio, it'd be to use digital metadata (or any metadata, honestly) to make it easier to discover sports radio, political, blues, rock, etc in a new area. I'm not sure why I have to tune for an hour to find a new station. I should be able to hit "Sports" on my radio and have it looking even before the last station is out. GPS enabled searching? Even better.
Back to the old, horrendously flawed post from 9/9/09: I think it's finally a lock. The new iPod nano supports "iTunes tagging" of songs on the radio -- but when I say radio, I mean FM HD radio. (And no, HD doesn't mean high definition. It means, "HD sounded cool, resonated with TV, and we decided to use it.")
But now that an iPod supports FM and at least track tagging from HD, this route of using metadata to monetize radio is going to get pretty popular. That the FM+tagging stream is backward compatible and doesn't redefine the medium in a fell swoop should also help adoption. Reasonable remediation/reformation + popular platform supporting the reform == hats o' caish.
Developed by Apple and implemented in new iPod speaker systems by companies such as Polk Audio and JBL, iTunes Tagging enables an HD Radio tuner to record information about the currently playing track, save it to an iPod, and let the iPodโs user easily find that track in the iTunes Store for purchase.
In other news, I lost my old iPod nano today (for realz) and decided that the move to larger Pringles cans are not only to convince you that $1.50 is a good price for what used to be $1.20 of chips, but is also designed so that, since you're expected to have occasions where you'll eat until they're gone, you'll eat more of them. Imagine that?
So far I've been buying less Pringles in spite of their best laid plans, but I don't think it's enough to buy a new nano.
"On radio, Howard to me was a populist. The truck driver, the average guy would listen in the cafe, the truck, the old car thatโs 50 years old and still has an AM radio,โ said Mr. Leno in the interview. โBut I donโt hear him quoted anymore. People donโt say: โHey, did you hear what Howard said today?โ โ
Frankly, I'm surprised satellite radio hasn't done better. Last week was the first time I'd listened to it in a car (versus simply taking a listen inside of a big box store), and the sound quality was great. None of the cruddy cutting out of DTV with one heck of a selection. We could go from 24/7 NFL reporting to Disney to whatever the heck we wanted, minus local info, I assume. Pretty neat.
For those commuting, I suppose local works, but for those who drive -- salesmen in particular -- I'd think satellite would be unbeatable.
Except at night. I'm continually impressed with how well AM performs in the dead of night when you're on the highway. AM 1530 out of Cincinatti provides Fox Sports Radio all over the Carolinas, which is where I usually find myself driving, including all of the Westwood One Thursday, Monday, and Sunday night NFL games. You can catch NBA games (which, unlike those in the NFL, tend to be played at night) galore once the sun starts setting. If you can stand the, um, intricacies of the reception, AM really shows its stuff.
I've always felt the real advantage of radio is the installed hardware, so to speak, just like Leno remarks. Though he and I share an affinity for obsolete hardware (he loves old cars, so it's no surprise that he'd mention one 50 years old as if it mattered), walk into a store today and compare the price to receive AM versus Sirius. I don't think setellite is dead as a format. Its future potential is incredible. But I do enjoy seeing it fail today, if only in that it helps show that digital isn't always better.
iTunes Tagging lets consumers โtagโ songs broadcast by a digital FM station by pressing a button on a radio. The HD Radio stores song metadata that transfers automatically to an iPod when it docks to the radio. Later, when the iPod is synced with a PC, all the userโs tagged songs will appear in a playlist for previewing and buying.
Let's not play dumb. Like Firefox and Google, Clear Channel is doing this because they'll get a kickback for each track sold this way, or they're at least paying Apple up front to play, right? If Apple's paying them, I've misjudged Apple's clout, though it's still a win for the Jobsaphiles.
But this brings me to my second concern, the digitization of the public airwaves. I know analog radio's full of adverts already, but there's something extra creepy about the content carrying commercial metadata like digital mules. It seems like the public benefit, the content the advertisements are supposed to support, from broadcasts are getting harder to find.
And that's the point of digital, right? If nothing else, we can package any sort of non-physical content with digital without having to redesign the method of delivery. iTunes tagging is one way commercial interests can shove their way into what used to be independent content. HD radio is another -- how long before we have HD 2.0? 3.0? etc?
I was recently looking at the Honda Nighthawk, and the motorcycle's been pretty much the same for twenty years. Up until Feb of next year, we could use most any TV made in the last half-century to get our CSI or American Idol fix. How long before TVs are "upgraded" as quickly as video game consoles and our VHS, ur DVD, um... Blu-Ray players?
Poorly written blog, I know, but this iTunes tagging is representative of the future in a way I don't quite yet fully comprehend, but it's setting off the proverbial warning bells.
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