Dan Moren, writing for Six Colors:
You’re listening to a song on your Mac when you have to leave the house. And, if you’re anything like me, there are few things more annoying than stopping a song mid-play. Great, now I have a guaranteed earworm for the rest of the day.
Of course, you could queue up the same song on your iPhone, fast forward to the same place in the track, pause it on your Mac, then press play on your iOS device. Just the kind of delightfully smooth experience we’ve come to expect from Apple, right?
Automatic music handoff from one device to another is on my wish list too. And while we are wishing, please add in integration with my favorite podcasting apps.
But that only works with a Dan Moren-sized music library, where he can store all of his music on his iPhone. 🙂
We’re talking about cloud based functionality, so iTunes Match would be a prerequisite obviously. 😀
It wouldn’t be instant, though; you may have to download the file on the iPhone. And, depending on bandwidth and file size, that could take several minutes.
Using handoff would likely be a heck of a lot quicker than exiting any open apps, searching for the song in spotlight and fast-forwarding it to the relevant place. With handoff the process would be select the handoff app from the appswitcher or swipe up on the lockscreen, let it play the song and then just sit and wait for it to buffer (this really shouldn’t take that long since songs generally aren’t gigantic files like movies and other media are).
Or you could AirPlay from your iPhone and listen uninterrupted at home and work and everywhere in-between. I’m set up to do this now If I were so inclined, Home stereo on Airport Express, work speakers on Bluetooth, car stereo on line-in (with Bluetooth backup), and Jawbone headset.
The song doesn’t need to be downloaded completely. iTunes Match streams songs (it downloads a small part, starts playback and downloads the rest while playing), so it should start in a few seconds if your connection is 3G or better.
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That would mean it all originates from your phone when the scenario suggests the initiating device should (like how handoff works) be any iCloud enabled device. Goes against the whole “just works” mantra if a specific device needs to be the catalyst.
What about when you return home? Do you want to open your Mac and Handoff the music, or switch from headset to stereo as soon as you step through the door? AirPlay just works in that case. Yes, for that one scenario of handing music from Mac to iPhone, Handoff sounds good, but it doesn’t cover every part of the underlying goal of continuous music.
You don’t have to download the file. But you would have to deal with data usage and possible delays due to stream quality
This is a nifty idea but far from my most pressing iTunes want.
There is no reason Handoff can’t use airplay to communicate – I’m just saying I would rather it communicate to iTunes (like it does with AppleTV) than just to the speakers. The main reason is if I have great non-airplay speakers connected to my iMac, why get rid of them when the device can interface with the software rather than the hardware? This is a feature that should be inclusive rather than rely on third-party hardware – especially when iTunes is right there.
Why would you have to get rid of them? A used AirPort Express costs $30, uses the same 3.5 audio jack as an iMac, and turns the same speakers into an AirPlay set. That’s how my home stereo is set up. Admittedly, that is an extra $30, but now your iMac doesn’t have to be turned on to enjoy music. Admittedly, it would be nice if OS X had AirPlay reception built-in, instead of relying on AirServer or Reflector, but $13-15 is not a lot if you plan on getting use out of it.
Rdio has this right now. Of course, it’s subscription music, but still.
Totally not disagreeing with you, but it isn’t very inclusive which is more of apples style, like how you didn’t need to get anything for the phone to be rerouted to the computer. It should be a feature, not a hack. Apple has always been about not necessarily giving you want you want but giving you want you didn’t think you needed. This falls squarely in that camp, I feel.
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See, I could have sworn that this was a previously announced feature, but one that I never figured out how to use. I thought that it was part of the “Up Next” area, and one that (was SUPPOSED to) travel from iTunes to iPhone.
…Guess I was wrong?