Expanding on iTunes

iTunes started life as one of those little programs that was made to let you rip your CDs and listen to your music via your computer. As an app it was pretty quant back in the day. However, with its purchase by Apple and its pairing with the iPod the app suddenly became useful and with great meaning. Then the iTunes Store opened and that made sense. Why bother buying physical if you are just going to rip anyway?

However soon the iTunes Store began offering movies, TV shows, and apps for iPods and iPhones! Of course, if you are going to buy something in the iTunes Store it is only logical that the iTunes app be where you access them. Right?

Well, with the newest section of the library, Books (which has a whole separate app, iBooks, on the iOS) I am pretty fed up with iTunes being such a catch-all. So I propose some kind of closely knit set of apps in OS X that might best be called the iLibrary.

(It is either this or overhaul iTunes into some kind of iMedia program that melts in iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD. That would be a bad idea for many reasons, including the before mentioned bloat of the app. Of course, they don't want to alienate Windows users.)

The iLibrary Apps:

iTunes - Has your music, podcasts, audio books, ringtones, (better than now) streaming radio stations, and maybe even music videos.

iVideos - Has your movies, TV shows, music videos, and has a robust Internet video viewer that can let easily watch and download videos from YouTube and other sites.

iPhoto - Like it is now, but with a less odd library system and a more full integration into my life. Yeah, I use it now, but only because it is there. Most of the time it seems like Finder's abandoned child/frame.

iBooks - Can store any form of text document from .doc to .PDF to any of those other crazy ones AND it can read most of them so that you could theoretically search for specific passages within documents. It would also be able to provide you with bookmarks, highlighting, personal side notes, and other meta-editing. I would also hope that Apple might be able to introduce a new ebook open standard that puts these sorts meta-edits into a common file type.

iApps - Where you iOS apps are. I would hope that pretty soon we can run iOS apps across platforms from the iPhone to the iPad to OS X. This is an off the wall prediction, but I don't feel like it is too crazy.

iKnow - This is only kind of silly. Redo the Address Book app and turn it into something more socially connected. Connect Twitter, Facebook, etc to make my contacts more dynamic and useful.


Each of these would have a permanent app in iOS. Because we would be used to the apps being separate on our computers it would stop being so jarring to find that I have to close my iPod app and find my iBooks app to read a book then go back to my iPod app to watch a movie. Considering that all of this media is in one central library app right now does anyone else find this annoying?

From here the "iLibrary Apps" would include a number of editing and creation apps that should do more than the quick adjustments that might be around in the storage and meta-data management apps.

They would also be able to easily interact with the media libraries that our computers seem to be becoming more and more these days, at least if you are a Mac user. They would also be easily integrated into both iOS and OS X as apps both places.

iBand - Keeps the usefulness of GarageBand, but also can provide a simpler interface for people just wanting to make ringtones or to edit down any other .mp3. This will give GarageBand the respect it deserves while at the same time eliminating the need to hunt for Lifehacker articles on how to make a ringtone every time T.I. drops another single.

iMovie - It exists now in both desktop and iOS form and is actually pretty good for what it does. If Apple just keeps these apps up to snuff they will stay useful to people like me who just need to edit simple raw video.

iProgram - Apple should buy out GameSalad and turn it into a native app. I think we have reached the point where Apple can loosen its stranglehold on its apps and the AppStore. This would also encourage Apple and larger programers to keep their own products fresh.


We also need something that deals directly with the settings on our Apple gear:

iDevice - Directly reads and deals with any iDevice connected to the computer. Looks like iTunes is sort of doing this right now with AirPlay, but this is more. Here you will edit your iDevice's settings (be it pod, pad, or phone), manage what is stored on it, etc. No more having to go to iPhoto if I want to put any photos from the device onto my main library. It can just do it. Also, I should be able to use it as a kind of flash drive, gotdangit.


While I am expecting some major iOS integration into 10.7 (Lion?) I would like to see these things added in as well. We are still several years away from OS 11 which I can only see merging together OS X and iOS much more fully, but until then these updates to the core functions of the Apple software could make the entire product line into some much more functional.

Wealth

A little over a week ago I got an iPhone. I have to say that I love it. As an avid Apple user it meets all the demands I have for a phone that wants to connect me to the Internet. While there are complaints about it from some slightly more hardcore users, I find it fits my needs fairly well.

As I was getting my iPhone activated I noticed a skuzzy looking guy who was probably some sort of manual laborer getting an iPhone as well. That said I recently saw an article on /. that said that even lower-middle class people are getting the iPhone. Now this makes sense seeing as how the plan it only slightly more than what most people are paying for cell service now and the phone itself is not to prices. This bit of news and the economy have got me to thinking about money and buying power.

The day I bought my iPhone we had a discussion about the idea of wealth in my economics class. One student said that thanks to the market "crisis" he didn't feel that wealthy. To this I and a few others tried to correct him by suggesting that he has yet to worry about getting food or anything else despite the slowdown with the professor chiming in, "The US, where a problem is that the poor people are fat." Our point was that we are so wealthy that we feel poor even when we are able to be overweight if we so please.

This is such a stark contrast to a few generations ago. My grandparents, all of whom have passed, were all never high ranking people. They all came from modest backgrounds where they all made decent livings and knew how to save and make a dollar into more than it was when they first got it. These were people who live through the Great Depression, went to war, and worked until they were able to retire comfortably. For them by the time they were ready to retire they were wealthy.

Now, they were not wealthy in the way that they could have gone out and bought manor houses and rare art. They were wealthy in that they could buy large meaty meals every day and feed me just about anything I could have wanted whenever I was over. They loved watching me eat. They also liked giving me nice things like clothes and toys, but it was being able to see me provided with a thick juicy steak that really made their hearts sing. Not that I am blaming them for my being a bit overweight for a good part of my life. I am just saying that they saw intense value in food and wanted me to have it.

My brother has a kid now, making my parents grandparents. However, I don't think that they will get the same sort of joy out of feeding my niece as my grandparents had for me. This is because they have never felt like food wasn't something people simply just have without much question. Now the quality of food, that will always be something to want to improve, but food itself...

I say this because in our troubled economic times when we are riding a roller coaster of an economy trying to find its way in a post-housing bubble world, we need to have some perspective. We need to appreciate that we are so comfortable with our food supply that even the proletariat can buy what might be considered high technology. We don't have to decide between iPhones and butter. We have both, and by most people's standards we here in the US are pretty wealthy.

My Phone

A few months ago I came into a Blackberry 8800. It is a nice smart phone with push mail and a decent calendar. It also has a GPS which I can use with Google Maps and a web browser that allows me handy access to the Internet. I am rarely without my phone. As my contact with the world and my nanny (that great calendar) I would be lost without it.

That said, I am not sure if I would like another smart phone again any time soon. There are many times I find myself wanting to create a .doc file or see a web site in flash. I know there is at least a program for me to have a BB version of Word, but is it worth the money when I would only use it every so often?

Because I have it I plan to use it to the best of its abilities, but I am already dreaming of my next technological step. I know this is the pitfall of a geeky guy, but hear me out. I think I would like a laptop that I could carry with me everywhere I go. Right now I have a nice 17' PowerBook G4, this is an awesome computer and I plan to make it work for me for the next several years. I don't run anything too fancy just Firefox and NeoOffice mostly, along with iTunes when I am not needing some quite, but I would like a smaller notebook that could go every where with me. Those MacBooks are looking really nice...

Now this might be the pipe dream but it is what I want. I would like a phone then with at least a 3G connection (none of this EDGE I have right now) and the ability to connect to my computer as a sort of modem. That way I can always be sure to connect my computer to the World even without a hotspot.

Until then my Blackberry and I will honor each other. We still have over a year and a half before we are done with each other.