Welcome to our weekly installment of Picks of the Week at iSource where we provide our expanded coverage of Apple accessories and applications. Here we will promote our favorite iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac and Apple TV related items, as well as bring you occasional tips and tricks. Hopefully many of our favorite items will also be of interest to you. Please feel free to comment on our selections, and suggest picks of your own. Check out this week’s picks after the break.
Spotify [ v 0.5.0 ]
Picked by: Alex Jordan
Until very recently, I had not paid much attention to Spotify, a music streaming service that wasn’t even available in the U.S. until last last summer. The other day, the Spotify app was in a prominent spot iOS App Store, and I though, “why not?”. I downloaded it, logged-in with my Facebook credentials (don’t be creepy) and immediately began listening to music that I like. On demand. Whatever I wanted to hear. There are other feature, such as offline playlists, and computer to device streaming, but the meat of the service lies with streaming whatever you want to listen to, whenever you want to hear it. This is very liberating compared to Pandora, which functions much more like traditional radio.
Upon signing in for the first time, a 48-hour trial starts immediately. After that, you have three options for the service: the free account which is ad-supported and allows a limited number of playback time, the unlimited account for $4.99/month that gets rid of ads and allows unlimited playback, and then the premium account which gives access to a number of other features, besides unlimited playback. Also, the iOS apps are very well designed, and easy to navigate. The iPhone version is nice, but the iPad version is exquisite.
Over the long run, I believe Apple is right, insofar that the majoritu of people want to own their music, instead of renting it. But to my mind, Spotify fills a gap, for those who do want to rent, and those of us who like to discover new music, that they will then later purchase.
You can download the Spotify software for OS X, Windows, and other platforms from their website–and of course, the iOS version is free on the App Store.
Free [ iTunes ]
Free [ App Store ]
iTranslate Voice [ v 1.0 ]
Picked by: Thomas
iTranslate Voice (separate from the plain “iTranslate” app) has been making the rounds on Twitter recently. It licenses Nuance’s voice recognition technology (the same tech used by Siri on the iPhone 4S) to recognize and then translate what you say from one language to another – in mere seconds. Speaking into the microphone usually does the job, but you’re free to edit the resulting text, in case something isn’t recognized properly.
Automated translations still aren’t natural and they won’t easily pass for native speech, but I’ve already had my $0.99 worth of fun by using iTranslate to hear what “In Soviet Russia, car drive you” sounds like in Russian.
Free [ iTunes ]
Spotify [ v 0.5.0 ]
Picked by: PatrickJ
My iTunes library has got quite large – so now managing it (regular backups etc) and paring down music to allow to sync to my iPad without chewing up all its storagre space lead me to start thinking about streaming music services. I had taken a quick look at Spotify when it first became available in the US and liked it, but never really got hooked on it. Last week when they released an iPad app (made their iPhone app a universal app) it prompted me to take another look – and now I am absolutely hooked. I’m using Spotify heavily on my MacBook Pro, the iPad, and my iPhone every time I go to work out.
I’m sure there are things that veterans of multiple streaming apps can nitpick about in terms of the app’s UI on iOS and Mac, but it does everything I need and more. I’ve been creating playlists, discovering plenty of new music, sharing songs or playlists when the mood strikes, and basically having Spotify as the soundtrack of my day nearly every day of the week. I’ve got 32 days from the day of the iPad app install of free trial of the Premium service, which is required in order to use the iPad app – and I’m already sold. I’ll pay the $9.99 per month when the trial is over to carry on using it on the iPad and everywhere else.
Price: Mac and iOS apps are free – premium level required for iPad app use beyond free trial period is $9.99/month
Free [ iTunes ]
Free [ App Store ]
There you have it! Hope you enjoyed this week’s installment of Picks of the week. Please let us know what you think, and share with us some of your favorites in the comments section below.
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