121–130 of 329 posts
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Wait, having to pay for a license to listen to radio? Where?
Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Sweden, ... Even more countries have similar rules for TV. Generally to support public stations.
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It's funny, I really like listening to a number of local stations for the variety of music I get introduced to; but somehow, the fact that there is a real person curating it makes me enjoy it. Listening to spotify, it doesn't do it for me. Something about having someone come on, make a little human conversation, that's part of the experience for me. Algorithms don't cut it.
Doesn't the Apple Music radio, Beats 1 or what was it, have human-curated streams too?
I don't get it, why do manufacturers bother adding an FM chip if they never activate it?
What's going on with Wired? This page has an autoplay video ad below the article text and an anti-AdBlock full-screen subscription nagger that pops up a few seconds after page load.
No anti-adblock message with uBlock. That video (assuming we're seeing the same one) seems to be a short Wired production; unrelated content rather than advert.
It's not free to design or sell, even if the audio parts used "have the capability". If Apple thought they'd sell more phones, they'd do it. Back when I was fighting the good fight against Apple, MP3 player vendors kept adding FM (and eventually HD Radio) in the hope that it was what Apple users were missing... The radio industry liked that strategy too. P.S. Headphone antennas are kind of shit.
The chances are that the system was designed to enable it and the choice to disable was made commercially. It seems most likely to be like hardware with more memory or faster clock speeds where the manufacturer just cripples it to make the cheaper model.
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Because of contracts. Every single phone on the market can turn itself into a wireless hotspot, but in US carriers have an ability to disable that option completely for users who haven't paid for a "tethering" package. It's crazy if you ask me.
I mean I knew American telcos were scum, but this is utterly ridiculous. What if you buy a device from abroad?
To answer the question in the headline: Because it is better to have no function, than a crappy function. It's another useless app, another menu item to browse through and for the company, another source of complaints and support cases.
Firstly, why is the choice between no function or a crappy function? Why would every FM radio app necessarily be crappy? Secondly, why would it be useless when millions of people still listen to FM radio? In the UK for example, according to RAJAR (the UK radio body) 56% of radio listeners use FM compared to DAB or internet, which is around 26 million people. Thirdly, why does the hardware have an FM receiver at all i…
Fm is not useless, but bad Fm is.
The third question is silly. Who's side are you arguing? The chip is there because it's more expensive not to have it. It's not like Apple adds Fm so they can laugh at the feature you almost had.
It won't allow you to listen To BBC. At least none of the FM enabled mp3 players I've touched would allow you to listen to FM in anything remotely reasonable.
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I mean I knew American telcos were scum, but this is utterly ridiculous. What if you buy a device from abroad?
Doesn't matter. If you have an iphone then US carrier can send a command to it that completely disables tethering, I believe the option actually disappears from the menu. With android phones it's not as clear cut, some phones will respect that command some will not, obviously you can always make it work by rooting your phone, but most people don't do that.
Apple isn't activating it because it "might undermine Beats One"? Oh give me a break. You can stream just about any FM station you want with apps like TuneIn Radio.
If Apple didn't want you to have an FM radio, they wouldn't put it on the phone. It's the _carriers_ that oppose it.
[1] http://www.igeeksblog.com/best-radio-apps-for-iphone-and-ipa...