soundcheck;641551 Wrote: > Just a comment from my side. > Thanks :) > > If you'd ask me. I'd say. No I wouldn't need those social media > functions. > Probably I'm not in that addressed target group though. > Lot's of programming effort and money goes into those from my > perspective rather questionable features. > Well, that kind of depends on the user, doesn't it? I wanted it a lot for the reasons I stated and on facebook I can see that it's indeed being used. > > What I'd like to see: > > I hope that we see one day a better consistant (dark) "theme" on the > iPeng interface. > Consistent with what? Right now it's consistent with Apple's Apps and Apple's interface guidelines.
Dark background may look cooler but it's really bad for the eyes if you have small print. That said: it's coming, I have to develop a dark interface now for the upcoming iPeng redesign and will probably make that an option. > > I know, that this is ususally said to be a matter of taste. I wouldn't > agree at this point. GUI style mix is not considered to be the most > successful strategy for applications to make its users feel well. > Yep - there's IMO quite some space for improvement. The mix-up of > blue-white & black screen designs and those old style blue framed > pop-ups (taken from 1st generation iPeng I guess), i'd consider all but > consistant. > With "blue pop-ups" I assume you mean the context menus? That's actually not old but the newest addition to the interface. The idea is to show the difference between a normal menu and a context menu because they are functionally different. It's an important distinction because in a context menu you can destroy a playlist with a single tap, like in an "album" menu, which is why these are distinct, too. The dark cs. light scheme is the same one Apple uses:dark means "NowPlaying" functionality, light means library. The only exception is Settings->Player Settings if you use that. > > I assume you had a chance to look at SqueeezPad, it looks really good > and consistant - it just lacks iPeng functionalities. ;) I keep the > fingers crossed that you gonna do something about it. > Well, SqueezePad allows itself the luxury of wasting >50% of the screen for visual effects only, it's content area is just a little bit bigger that iPeng for iPhone's. You can of course do that on iPad (and I always said I'm not happy with iPeng for iPad's overall layout) but you can't do it on iPhone. It's easy to make a playlist look the same way as a stored playlist if they are always in different places, you can't mix them up, on a small device you need to create visual clues. Also, regarding the functionality: One of the reasons SqueezePad has a somewhat cleaner design than iPeng is that bluegaspode refuses to add functionality at the price of simplicity. > > Obviously a lot of time goes into programming of new iPeng features, > which do not relate to playback and media-/database management anymore. > That I consider a pity. > Wikipedia was something like a 1h hack, really not a lot. Facebook and Twitter for me are absolutely playback and media management features because it's for me a way to be finally able to play music I could not play on my Squeezebox at all so far - a growing pain (see my comment above). On library management the situation is simple: I can't do anything more before Squeezebox Server 7.6 is out, the performance for a significant part of iPeng's user base would simply suffer too much. Even now, the things iPeng does in addition to standard Squeezeplay hurt performance and I'm frequently getting complaints to that respect, it's simply not an option. > > Bottom line. I don't think those social media things will keep you in > the lead. The wikipedia idea is not bad. Still, fighting the > Googles/browsers and other spezialized apps etc. IMO won't work > out on the long run. > That would be a pity because it would mean that the Squeezebox will die out because that will be where the music will come from in the long run. > > Via a web-browser you get to artist homepages, Amazon reviews and asf. > in a very flexible way. > Yes. But without iPeng you can't actually PLAY that music. It's still an issue for me because two of the most frequently used services among my friends (rd.io and SoundCloud) are not supported at all by the Squeezebox. > > I do and will keep doing my research-while-listening with my bowsers. > Maybe we are different, but I'm not prepared to try to find out for half an hour how I can actually play that link somebody sends me, it has to be faster and if faster means I have to use something else than the Squeezebox this is going to be an issue for my Squeezebox. I've caught myself playing music through AppleTV! > > Idea: I find myself using very often the browser to enter the > html-based setup dialog of the SB server. > Would be great if I could do all that from iPeng. That's what I also > consider very useful. I could change plugin parameter settings and > advanced > settings, asf from inside iPeng. No need to switch apps. > I often thought about supporting that when you have the iPeng plugin installed. I'll have to check whether that still works with SBS 7.6 though. There is absolutely no sense in re-programming that stuff in iPeng, it will be a huge piece of work and can change with each minor version or build of SBS meaning I would have to make a change in iPeng. > > I'd find it nice if the tap2play function of iPeng as it is done on the > iPhone would also be made available on the iPad. Tapping the album art > from the collection-overview layer to start immediate album playback, > should also work on the iPad. It could be introduced as a new-old > selectable feature to be activated under settings. (Shouldn't be such a > big deal) > We've tested it during the beta and believe me: you don't want it. It's too confusing because you can also open submenus by tapping artwork. It just doesn't work. > > And... ...once in a while you should also have a look at the > competition outside Logitech land, such as Sooloos, Linn etc, just to > get some further inspiration. ;) > Believe me, I do. But you'll also have to see that Soolooos and Linn are a small section of the competition, others like Sonos, Apple and the likes are much bigger and more likely to drive the market, you also have to see what they do because it defines what the majority of users will expect in the future. -- pippin --- see iPeng, the Squeezebox iPhone remote and *New: iPeng for iPad*, at penguinlovesmusic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ pippin's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=13777 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=88724 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
