Multizone | All our technotes
If we've published it, you can find it here.
I finally flipped with Apple Music
On Saturday I wanted to buy a music track (Kometenmelodie 2 by Kraftwerk from Autobahn if you must know), to complete an album in my music library. It was important to me to listen to it right then as I was emotional about the passing of Florian Schneider and this was a track that was important to me as a boy. I had the CD, in a box somewhere but I thought it would be quicker, easier and only 99p to buy the track digitally. But even though I tried and tried, I still could not figure out how to buy it on iTunes. All paths in what was originally hailed as a
"revolutionary and simple Audio CD ripper and music organiser"
seemed to lead to subsciptions to Apple Music. As an esoteric fan of physical media and ownership of my music collection, I have Apple Music turned off in my preferences, as I am never going to sign up for a monthly streaming audio account for music I care little about, despite my childrens' attempts at conversion. I suppose this means I am not the Apple demographic for Apple Music now. Perhaps I never was.
- Details
A MacBook Pro is an essential tool of my trade. When I buy one I have usually done an incredible amount of research and bought the top of the line brand new model on the first day of availability, with a plan to keep it for five years, or the top specified refurbished model on the day the new model came out, again with a long term ownership plan knowing that Apple MacBook Pro computers hold a lot of residual value. But that changed with the USB-C Macbooks and what to me was a distinct lower level of reliability. I had numerous of these newer models with logic board and other failures. The keyboard problems were well reported although to be fair I did not experience them, I just didnt like the lower travel in the keys.
I recently needed a new MacBook but what to buy? I need something with bulletproof reliability, that had a wide range of connectivity, and importantly that can run the latest versions of macOS and its developer tools. This means reasonably modern, a fast processor, loads of storage and plenty of memory.
If you can do without USB-C / Thunderbolts 3 then the Apple MacBook Pro 13-Inch Retina Early 2015 with a Core i7 processor is the perfect MacBook for this workload. Which means its pretty much ideal for everything else you might want to do with it like video conferencing, writing, music, and content creation.
To find it you need to use model number A1502 with the 'MacBookPro12,1' model identifier, or use the information below.
- Details
Read more: MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) MacBookPro12,1
Flutter
Flutter is an open-source software development kit created by Google. It is primarily used to develop cross platform applications from a single code base for Android and iOS. It also supports Linux, Mac, Windows, Fuchsia and the web.
At the launch in December 2018, at the Science Museum in London, I could already see that Flutter had a lot of potential and I became an early adopter. That potential was now a reality in the fast effective production of quality apps for Android and iOS. I have built or managed more than 30 apps to production on the App Store and Google Play now based on Flutter and developed by talented teams of professional developers.
- Details