[iPeng Announce] Easier to share, lower price (iPhone)

[epoch1970]

I have to agree, explaining how simple it is to get a discount on a key feature (at least on iPhone, IMHO), when at the same time full price is not outrageous… makes things look a little complicated.
Even if discounts are really simple to get, now (I agree on that, too.)

When I upgraded to iPad3 I willingly bought playback once again. I had been using iPeng daily for 2 years (?) so it felt only fair to chip in again, and that was the only way I could do it.

For me the newsworthy item is the drop in iPeng for iPhone (iPod) pricing.

[erland]

About a year ago, we discussed the possibility for ipeng to copy music from lms to ios. Any news from that ? That'd be lovely and a more acceptable alternative for everyone like me that don't want to go fully the apple way (or people who's employer does not allow it).

No. Apple doesn't let you just add stuff to the library on the device so it's complicated and I don't really see a demand for all of that work, yet. Nobody has asked for it for a long time. People keep asking for streaming from iPhone to a Squeezebox but not for syncing content to the iPhone. I suspect those who want to do this have a solution for it.

Syncing music with LMS would be great, but to make it useful it needs to be able to convert my FLAC library to lossless MP3 (or AAC) when syncing.

My issue currently is that the music library on my iPhone is never updated, the issue is that the music library in iTunes is never updated because I really hate iTunes and I hate the fact that it doesn't support FLAC (which is the format my music uses). The result is that I rarely listen to music on my iPhone except for using Spotify because getting the music into iTunes and later into the iPhone is just too much work if you have a FLAC library.

What I would like is to:
1. Easily sync my FLAC library to the iPhone as lossless MP3/AAC. It needs to make it possible to select a subset of the library because the whole FLAC library is not going to fit on the iPhone even if it's converted to MP3/AAC, and my FLAC library is still pretty small.
2. Ability to play the synchronized music locally on the iPhone without any network connection.

This could be a completely separate app and I would easily be willing to pay another $10 (or more) for it. I guess the advantage of including it in iPeng is that you might be able to reuse some code but from a user perspective I don't really care if it's iPeng or another standalone music app which is able to synchronize with LMS and play the synchronized music without network connection.

Do you know if there are any restrictions how much data (music files in this case) an app is allowed to store in it's own application storage on the iPhone ?
Are there any issues with applications storing a lot of data ? How will iCloud backups work, is there any way to avoid that they also include all my music in a scenario like this as that is going to result in that I run out of iCloud backup space.

The only thing I'm a bit nervous about with the above solution is that it's not really in line with Apple's way of thinking so I suspect it's just a matter of time before Apple will shutdown the possibility because they want people to play local music through the Apple iPod app instead.

[maggior]

I am a iPeng user and there are a large number of Apple iPod products in our household. Since the iPod supported gapless playback of LAME mp3 files, I've been a strong supporter of iPods.

I also own some Android devices...

In response to Erland's post, I have to say that his requests would fit more in the Android world than iOS. There are 2 Andriod music player apps (PowerAmp and ProPlayer) that are under active development that support both mp3 and FLAC with gapless playback. In relation to the squeezebox ecosystem, squeezeplayer works quite well in combination with either squeeze commander or orange squeeze.
iTunes never really bothered me. When you come from Sony's SonicStage, you have a pretty thick skin :-). When you move to an Android device, you break free of being tied to certain software. For syncing my android devices, I use Media Monkey - works great!

For those that demand a choice of codecs with gapless playback on a platform more open than iOS, Android is an attractive choice at this point. This is especially true now that a number of non-phone Android devices are out there (Galaxy Player, Motorola Xoom, and all of the other tablets).

I like both platforms and think both have good things to offer. Just some things to consider...

[pippin]

when at the same time full price is not outrageous…

Please tell that to those who are outraged and keep giving single-star-rating on the App Store because they find iPeng too expensive....

[maggior]

Anybody that complains that it is too much money is out of their mind. When my daugter got her ipod touch, i was all set to pay for the playback feature again. I didn't have too. Plus you get free upgrades for eternity. there's no pleasing some people!

[schiegl]

No. Apple doesn't let you just add stuff to the library on the device so it's complicated and I don't really see a demand for all of that work, yet. Nobody has asked for it for a long time. People keep asking for streaming from iPhone to a Squeezebox but not for syncing content to the iPhone. I suspect those who want to do this have a solution for it.

I've asked this a long time ago and lost hope also a long time ago. I went the way to auto-convert my flac-library to mp3 (already was in place for my non-Apple Players), import those files to a otherwise non active iTunes installation and use iTunes Match to sync my music. Involves a few extra steps but i can't imagine a better solution today (for me)

have a nice day,
Markus

[epoch1970]

Please tell that to those who are outraged and keep giving single-star-rating on the App Store because they find iPeng too expensive....

I am afraid arguing would be useless. Considering the use of iPeng more or less designates you as the owner of one player, one PC, one stereo, one iThing, and a lot of music, whining about an expense similar to the cost of an album is quite misguided, I think.

About iPhone (iPod music app)/iPeng integration, the thing I wish I could do is continue listening to a song/album on the SB when I arrive at home. Some sort of SwitchPlayer feature, from the iPod app to iPeng. I will survive without the feature.

I would really be curious about what can be done with iPeng/srvPowerControl integration, since the iThing never goes off, is context aware (location, perhaps surrounding noise), usually belongs to one designated person, and always connected. This is fringing with the murky topics of home automation/internet of things, and I can understand you'd prefer concentrating on music.

[pippin]

I am afraid arguing would be useless. Considering the use of iPeng more or less designates you as the owner of one player, one PC, one stereo, one iThing, and a lot of music, whining about an expense similar to the cost of an album is quite misguided, I think.

Well, the complaint is usually not about the price of the App itself (people who think it's too expensive don't buy it and then can't complain on the App Store) but more that you have to pay for the playback as an extra or that you have to pay separately for iPeng for iPhone and iPeng for iPad.

"Simple" _is_ a valid point here because obviously some people did not get the fact that they don't have to pay again for playback on additional devices. But as things stand, I don't have a way to make it simpler, if you use iCloud, something probably most of today's iThingy users do, it's really _very_ simple now - you just don't have to do _anything_.

[garym]

Please tell that to those who are outraged and keep giving single-star-rating on the App Store because they find iPeng too expensive....

unbelievable. Worth 3 times the price! (I've rated for both my ipeng and ipengHD purchases at the app store....unfortunately, you can only rate one time....on the other hand, this may be a good limit, as the whiners can't post low ratings over and over....

p.s. this doesn't surprise me. Lots of people want everything either free or at 99cents (their music, their apps, etc.). Look at the grief Erland has received over charging for his labor. His stuff is a major benefit to users of SB products and worth every penny. A lifetime license to all his plugins are well worth it for any non-basics user of SB products.

[pippin]

unfortunately, you can only rate one time....on the other hand, this may be a good limit, as the whiners can't post low ratings over and over....

Actually you _can_ rate an App again. It will not change the rating in the "overall" rating but the new rating will affect the one specific for the current release which usually is all a new buyer sees.

So yes, it pays to rate again for a new release.