If you watch a lot of Joss Whedon ‘s Dollhouse on TV, you ‘ll know that the Attic is a very bad place to be. However, Attic on the iPhone is a whole different ball game, and if you love the idea of rediscovering old music (and the memories that go along with them), or you’re simply a fan of beautiful new interfaces, then you ‘re going to love visiting Attic.
[click on any picture to see a larger view]
Attic is the Momento of music on your iPhone: a little crawl space populated with 15 albums so you can re-connect with forgotten tunes. I keep a pretty tight leash on my iTunes music library, and I sync the whole thing to my iPhone. so there ‘s a pretty good chance that I ‘ll like what Attic digs up. However, if you don’t like even a portion of what Attic’s 15-album selection, it can be a little difficult to change things around. There is a setting to re-scan your music library’s metatags and re-fill the Attic with different content, but this process takes nearly a minute on my iPhone 3GS, and I can’t help but feel this should be faster. At the very least, a manual process to kick specific albums out of the attic would be appreciated if a faster scan time isn’t possible.
Playing in the Attic
Selection niggles aside, playing in the attic has never been more fun. You don’t have to wipe dust off of any albums you find: you just drag the LP over the player at the bottom, watch the album slide and mechanically click into place, and then listen to the whole album (with track info displayed over the album cover). If you tire of one album, you can simply drag another one in, activate shuffle mode (top-left), or tap on the magic wand (top-right) to have Attic play a dynamic playlist. The songs play over your iPod, so you can actually leave the Attic and attend to other things on your iPhone, while still listening to music. If you ever want to find out more information about your Attic albums, simply double tap on one — most of the 15 albums within my Attic hadn’t been played in 142 days!
Enjoy the Novelty
If you were to really analyze the visuals in Attic, you’d probably wonder why the LP’s are played in something that more closely resembles a CD player, but I’m guessing this is probably because a record player would have taken up more screen space, or required a more complicated set of animations. However, we can all probably agree that Tapku Software has treated the LP much better than iTunes has 🙂
As I stated when I first posted the news about Attic: when you really think about it, this is just a really pretty paint job on a set of smart playlists that pull up your least played, or oldest “last played” music. But if you think about Attic like that, then you’re already positioned to miss out on all of the fun.
The app is definitely a great way to rediscover old bits of music (however inflexible the system may be), but it’s also a great little novelty app with an amazing attention to detail. Interface buttons audibly *click* and are depressed when you tap on them, track info shows up like ribbons tied to the album covers, and the whole app really feels like an experience worthy of your $0.99, especially if you’re really into your music.
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Attic is available for $0.99 purchase in the App Store.
The app was provided by Tapku Software for review on Just Another iPhone Blog. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.
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