[video][iPad] deck. A replacement for iOS 5's horrible Music app. • Hacker News Board

Re: [video][iPad] deck. A replacement for iOS 5's horrible Music app.

#11

Post by jmreid » Wed, Feb 15, 2012, 5:39 PM UTC

jokull wrote: post #9

Maybe mention that it plays songs from the standard music library.

Ya, that's important to understand. This is really just another UI for your existing music (works great with my iTunes match library for instance). You can even switch between both the built-in app and deck to control if you want.

Re: [video][iPad] deck. A replacement for iOS 5's horrible Music app.

#12

Post by jmreid » Wed, Feb 15, 2012, 5:41 PM UTC

One complaint: When browsing artists, why don't you move though the Artist -> Albums -> Songs hierarchy? If I have an artist with 10 albums, selecting that artist just gives me an alphabetical list of all their songs across all 10 albums. This is lame when you want to start an album from the top and listen through.

(Yes, I'm aware that you can navigate by album name, but who remembers all your album's names?)

Re: [video][iPad] deck. A replacement for iOS 5's horrible Music app.

#13

Post by joejohnson » Wed, Feb 15, 2012, 6:10 PM UTC

tareqismail wrote: post #6

joejohnson wrote: post #4

This app looks really nice, but what was so bad about the native music app? Third party apps that try to replace a native iOS app are usually unable to replace all of the built-in functionality. For example, will this app show the album art on the lock screen?

Good question, Joe. Not all apps that replace native iOS apps are the same nor use the same techniques. Since our app uses the built-in iPod Music controller, we activate all the same features that the Music app does. So, your example of showing the album art on the lock screen does in fact work. This is different than different category apps, like Safari replacements, that can't take advantage of all the built-in co…

Oh, that's cool. I didn't know that was possible.

Re: [video][iPad] deck. A replacement for iOS 5's horrible Music app.

#14

Post by unoti » Wed, Feb 15, 2012, 6:22 PM UTC

gavinlynch wrote: post #8

Big buttons are better, but this still replicates an incredibly annoying UI paradigm that kills me: >> or Back, Play [Pause], Forward Whether it's an audiobook or music, I'm hitting the play and pause buttons all the time. I don't have particularly thick fingers, but my genius self still manages to accidentally hit the Back or Forward button's instead of Play or Pause about 2 times out of 10. In an audiobook, loosing…

I think the world needs an app especially for listening to audiobooks, because that's a special case needing different UI from listening to music. A purpose built app for listening to audiobooks needs a rewind 30 seconds button, like Audible has. It would also need special UI features for moving forward and back through the audio-- the normal slider method works really terribly when listening to a 4 hour long piece of audio where 1 pixel is like 7 minutes.

Re: [video][iPad] deck. A replacement for iOS 5's horrible Music app.

#15

Post by tareqismail » Thu, Feb 16, 2012, 1:59 AM UTC

unoti wrote: post #14

gavinlynch wrote: post #8

Big buttons are better, but this still replicates an incredibly annoying UI paradigm that kills me: >> or Back, Play [Pause], Forward Whether it's an audiobook or music, I'm hitting the play and pause buttons all the time. I don't have particularly thick fingers, but my genius self still manages to accidentally hit the Back or Forward button's instead of Play or Pause about 2 times out of 10. In an audiobook, loosing…

I think the world needs an app especially for listening to audiobooks, because that's a special case needing different UI from listening to music. A purpose built app for listening to audiobooks needs a rewind 30 seconds button, like Audible has. It would also need special UI features for moving forward and back through the audio-- the normal slider method works really terribly when listening to a 4 hour long piece o…

Very true. We tried to accomodate for audiobooks and podcasts by adding 30 second back button and a larger slider that's easier to scrub. It isn't perfect, but is much better than the Music app.

You're right though, an app especially for audiobooks with bookmarks, notes, etc. would be great.

Thanks for the feedback!