Follow along as we dive in and take a look at all of the great new features, updates and tweaks of your next operating system.

Mountain Lion is a huge leap forward for OS X

Notification Center

Notification Center is one of the biggest improvements in Mountain Lion

One of the most important new features in OS X Mountain Lion is Notification Center, which unifies notifications throughout the entire OS. If you’ve ever used an iOS 5 device, you should feel right at home using Notification Center. Right now only a few Apple created apps support the notifications, but from what I’ve seen, it does everything you’d expect.

Perhaps the most outstanding feature of Notification Center is the ability to have notifications pushed to you even when apps are not running. Make no mistake: this is a killer feature. Usually I have Twitter, Mail, and a Facebook Notifications app running at all times, but with Mountain Lion those can all be replaced by push notifications.

If you’d still like to use Growl notifications in Mountain Lion, check out Hiss, it integrates the user experience of Notification Center with the ubiquity of Growl Notifications.

Not only is this a huge benefit to your system’s performance, but it also goes a long way towards simplifying your OS X experience. Clicking the “dart” icon in the righthand corner of the menubar launches you into the Notification Center, which shares more than a passing resemblance to it’s iOS brethren, but Apple also went one step further by introducing a new finger gesture, a two finger swipe from the right of the touchpad.

This is the first OS X gesture to take advantage of where your fingers are on the touchpad, and it’s pretty intuitive. All things considered, Notification Center should make the switch to Mountain Lion worthwhile for almost any user, from beginners to professionals.

Notes

Notes is just about what you'd expect from an app called "Notes"

Notes has been a familiar face in the Apple world since the original iPhone, but for whatever reason Mountain Lion is the first time its been included on the Mac. Notes is essentially identical to what you’re used to on an iPhone or iPad, it has the same aesthetic, and the same basic feature-set.

In my opinion, this is a really nice stealth addition to OS X, it syncs seamlessly with all your other iCloud devices and I actually wrote a good part of this article within the app. Notes is also really lightweight, as a dedicated user of WunderKit (which takes almost 15 seconds to load), it’s nice to have an app just open an up in a split-second and get your thoughts written-out. It doesn’t do much, but thanks to the iCloud integration, I can see Notes becoming an integral part of my daily workflow.

Messages

Messages is really just a new skin on top of iChat with a little iMessage mixed in.

Messages is the most obvious addition to OS X Mountain Lion, finally allowing you to send and receive iMessages from your Mac. Sadly, right now it’s a just mess of good ideas that are poorly executed.

First off, Messages is really just a new skin on top of iChat, with some iMessage goodness mixed in. Right now, that’s not quite a winning combination. iMessages often failed to reach both my Mac and/or iOS Device, and when they did get delivered, the experience was too buggy to be useful.

In addition, FaceTime is still a separate app, which can be activated from within Messages. This really makes no sense, but that seems to be a reoccurring theme in this particular app. Messages is not doomed to fail, in fact, it has the potential to be an essential part of OS X, but in order for this to happen, Apple needs to clean up the interface and focus more on utility instead of aesthetics.

Game Center

Game Center's interface is highly stylized, much like the iOS version of the service.

Apple is really pushing their online gaming platform, Game Center, and there seems to be no exception in Mountain Lion. Once again, if you are familiar with the iOS version of the service, the OS X version shouldn’t be too surprising.

Since Game Center is only currently available among developers, I couldn’t really try it out, but if it works as advertised you’ll be able to play against friends and strangers in a platform-agnostic experience.

In plain english; if you have a game on your Mac and your friend has it on iOS, you’ll be able to compete head-to-head. This might present some gameplay issues, but thats really up to developers to fix. It’s nice that Apple has included the ability to use Game Center, and it’s certainly a good sign for the future of gaming on OS X.

Twitter and Share Sheets

In OS X Mountain Lion, Apple has included their version of OS-wide sharing, aptly named “Share Sheets”. It works nearly anywhere with Twitter and Messages, and for photos and videos it supports Flickr and Vimeo, respectively.

You’ll probably notice that Facebook and Youtube are missing, among others. Apple is very picky about what services they’ll allow on their platform so I wouldn’t be surprised if this is intentional, but hopefully it’s just an oversight that will be eliminated when the OS is released.

While certainly not groundbreaking, Share Sheets should be a pleasant addition to your OS X experience, despite the fact that Apple seems to have been rather picky about which services to allow.

Airplay Mirroring

If you’ve ever used a PC with Intel’s Wireless Display technology, you probably understand how much Mac users are missing out on. Luckily, Apple’s own variation on the same idea of wirelessly extending your computer’s display onto your TV works just as well, if not better.

You’ll need an Apple TV to use AirPlay Mirroring, but at only $99 it’s not a hard purchase to justify. The ability to beam your music and video content to the TV wirelessly is just another amazing addition to Mountain Lion. Of course, since I was using a developer preview, the connection dropped occasionally, but Apple usually has these minor kinks worked out before the OS hits market, so I’m not worried. So if you’ve been holding out on an Apple TV, OS X Mountain Lion might just be enough reason to take the plunge.

Reminders

Reminders looks alot like its iOS counterpart.

Reminders is another app taken almost verbatim from iOS, and for most people, that’s a good thing. Functionally, it’s almost the same as the iOS app, allowing you to set reminders for yourself -and that’s it. You’ll lose the geo-fencing capability, but that’s probably just because your Mac doesn’t have GPS anyway, so we won’t shed to many tears over that lost feature.

In addition, you can export your reminders as Calendar events, which should be nice if you plan to take your task management full circle. Unfortunately, since Reminders is directly taken from iOS, it also includes a less-than-stellar interface which, in my opinion, looks a little childish. While some people may like it, i wish Apple would stick with classic UI elements instead of attempting to clone the physical world.

Security Settings (Gatekeeper)

Gatekeeper is perhaps the most controversial addition to OS X, as it locks down your Mac from potential security threats by preventing non-Apple approved apps from being installed. While this setting can be changed in System Preferences, it is symbolic of the shift towards an App-Store-centric universe.

If are a developer looking to make sure your app isn’t rejected by Gatekeeper, you’ll have to get a security certificate as part of the Mac Developer Program.

If you’re reading this article, you probably know a little about Macs, so Gatekeeper is probably more of an inconvenience than a feature, but from grandma’s point-of-view, it’s a lifesaver. Honestly, it’s not unrealistic to imagine that OS X 10.9 will do away with non-Apple approved apps altogether, but until that day comes, Gatekeeper is just one more setting for the true Mac geek to change when they set up their computers.

iCloud

If there is one thing I can say definitively about Apple’s strategy for the coming years, it’s that iCloud is really important. It’s everywhere now and Mountain Lion really pushes that concept.

For the first time, iCloud is beginning to dig deep into system level operations and that’s led to a far more robust user experience. When you first install the OS you are asked to set up iCloud and from that point on it is integrated into nearly every possible part of the experience; from syncing your notes to playing your music.

Although I found it to be considerably more useful than iCloud in Lion, there are still some glaring omissions. For example, “Documents in the Cloud,” isn’t really much better than it was in Lion. One notable addition is the ability to save files to iCloud directly from the “Save” dialog in some apps, but oddly enough though there’s no way browse those files you’ve uploaded. This particular feature might just need to be updated from within iWork, but I hope Apple addresses it before the OS is released; documents could use a little TLC. Otherwise iCloud in Mountain Lion is just plain useful; it works almost without fail in the background, and most users won’t even know it’s there.

Everything Else

Apple has integrated system updates with app updates through the App Store

Mountain Lion is really a huge update to OS X, and there are dozens of little tweaks you’ll likely notice. Below are the ones that stood out the most.

• Safari – The URL bar and search bar have been combined, Chrome style.
• Dashboard – For whatever reason, Apple hasn’t integrate the Dashboard into Notification Center, but they still seem interested in updating it. In Mountain Lion the interface to add and manage widgets is now similar to that of Launchpad, and the remove widgets feature has been updated for the 21st century. It looks like Apple still has a place in its heart for good ol’ Dashboard.
• Launchpad – You can now search in Launchpad. Why you’d want to do this instead of using Spotlight is really beyond me, but it’s there if you want it.
• Chinese Services – Since China is Apple’s fastest growing market, it makes sense that in OS X Mountain Lion they are integrating some popular Chinese services. Baidu now works in Safari and services like 126 and 163 are also included. I obviously didn’t test any of these, but they seem to really be Chinese extensions of Share Sheets.
• Software Update – Software Update is dead. In its place, Apple is managing system updates through the App Store. This is a pretty common sense move, and it works pretty well. It’s also a little zippier than what you’d expect from the old dedicated update app, so I’d imagine it will be a welcome change for most users.
• Mission Control – Hovering over fullscreen apps or spaces now shows you a zoom effect similar to the one in the dock. It’s not much, but at least it looks pretty.

Final Thoughts

Mountain Lion is a really impressive update to OS X. The sheer number of new apps and features is almost unbelievable for what Apple considers an incremental update. I’m excited, but I’m also more than a bit worried. Is this the end of OS X as we know it?

While I love many of the new features, the similarities to iOS are pretty outstanding. So one has to wonder, is Apple determined to unify their operating systems, at the expense of their power users? Sadly, that seems to be the way things are headed. Hopefully, though, that’s in a distant future; for now we can enjoy the massive improvements Mountain Lion brings to the operating system formally known as “Mac” OS X. Come this summer, Mountain Lion will be a must have update.

(Via Mac.AppStorm.)

(Via Engadget.)

I’ve been playing around with Screens 2.0 all day and I love it. The app allows you to connect your Mac or iOS device to another computer on the network, see its screen and interact with the computer. I tried it on my Mac and iPhone, but haven’t gotten around to the iPad yet, but I haven’t had a single problem. It took a couple of tries to nail the position of my finger when using the iPhone version, but that’s a minor user thing.

(Via The Loop.)

Apple has today announced the successor to its popular Mac OS Lion operating system, unveiling Mountain Lion, the ninth major release of its desktop platform which will bring more of its iOS features to the desktop.

Gone are traditional messaging apps like iChat, in comes Messages, Notes, Reminders and even Game Center for Mac, mimicking the iOS features on your iPhone and iPad, also delivering Notification Center, Share Sheets, Twitter integration and AirPlay.

If you wanted iOS on the desktop, you’re about to get it.

Apple has released the operating system as a developer preview, building iCloud support directly into the OS, making it easy to use and easy to operate with the integration of apps. As Apple works to fine-tune the platform, Mac users will be able to upgrade to Mountain Lion via the Mac App Store in ‘late summer 2012′.

“The Mac is on a roll, growing faster than the PC for 23 straight quarters, and with Mountain Lion things get even better,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “The developer preview of Mountain Lion comes just seven months after the incredibly successful release of Lion and sets a rapid pace of development for the world’s most advanced personal computer operating system.”

Below is an overview of Mountain Lion. We have referenced the great article by Jim Dalrymple & Peter Cohen over at The Loop to do so. Again, a big thanks to Jim once again for his assistance.

iCloud

Given the fact that iCloud now has 100 million users, Mountain Lion is built to maximise the service and has support built into its core.

By registering iCloud in Mountain Lion, the service will then set up a number of apps and services on your system, integrating tightly with Mail, Contacts, Messages, FaceTime and a whole number of other services. So, if you have a lot of information already set up, the service will make it all available for you.

Apple will push Documents in the Cloud with Mountain Lion, perhaps serving as a Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365 rival.

Given it’s just a beta build at the moment, new features are set to be introduced until its release in ‘late Summer’.

GateKeeper

Apple wants to protect its customers, so it has released GateKeeper to block malware and malicious downloads.

The Loop explains the feature:

Mountain Lion is going to make it safer for users to install software and be free from the threat of malicious downloads. As part of the GateKeeper program all developers will be given a unique Developer ID, allowing them to sign their applications.

GateKeeper has three basic options. Allow only Mac App Store apps to be installed; Mac App Store apps and apps signed with a Developer ID; and Anywhere, which allows any app to be installed.

For me, using the Mac App Store apps and apps signed with a Developer ID seems like the best choice. I would imagine all of the developers that make the apps I use will sign them with their ID.

Using this setting I can download apps from a developer’s Web site and install it without any issues, but still be safe.

If GateKeeper is triggered by an app, you can still manually install or open it. All you have to do is Control-click the app and chose Open to reveal a dialog box that will allow you to install the application.

Social, Everywhere

Apple will allow data and information to be sent from anywhere on the computer with its new Share Sheets feature.

Share Sheets are available wherever you look in Mountain Lion and provides the ability to share files and media with Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo, AirDrop, Messages and Mail services. The button is built into apps – Safari, for example, allows you to share via Twitter, Messages and Mail.

Mountain Lion works with your Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo and AOL accounts from a system level. Whether Facebook will be added to this remains to be seen, there is bad blood between the two companies.

Messages

Apple has decided that its instant messaging application iChat needed an overhaul, this has resulted in iMessage for Mac. With Messages, a user simply needs to dial in their Apple ID or phone number and they can start messaging iOS devices and Mountain Lion users from their desktop.

The app still supports AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk, and Jabber, so it’s iChat but with a little bit of iMessage built in.

All conversations are synced between devices, so you can chat on the move and then come home to your iMac or MacBook and continue the conversation where you left off.

If text isn’t enough, chats can be switched to FaceTime for that face-to-face conversation, and the app will deliver read receipts and typing indicators so you can be aware of whether someone is away from their keyboard or iDevice and isn’t just ignoring you.

Messages is available for Mac owners today as part of a beta preview, you can download it here.

Notes, Reminders and other iOS apps

Apple brings Reminders and Notes to the desktop too, syncing your to-do list between your mobile devices and computers for easy on-the-go access.

Notes supports photos, attachments, bullets and links and all you have to do is drag a link into a note whenever you want to save something on your desktop.

Like the Stickies app, you can pin reminders and notes to the desktop. Double-clicking a note opens it in its own window and it will stay open even if the app itself is closed.

Notification Center

If you were a big Notification Center user on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, you will be pleased to see it has been ported to Mountain Lion, allowing you to see messages and other notifications at-a-glance.

You might have loved Growl but Apple is set to do away with the neat little app with Notification Center. It will sit in the top right of your computer screen, by the Spotlight search icon on your menu bar.

Using a two-finger slide-down gesture on the right hand side of the screen will access the Notification Center, showing everything that has occurred since it was last accessed. In the current developer preview, the apps it supports includes:

• Game Center
• Calendar
• Reminders
• App Store
• Safari
• Messages
• Mail.

Like on iOS, you can choose which type of alert you want, picking either None, Banners or Alerts. Banners display for a short period and then disappear automatically, Alerts wait to be dismissed.

Game Center

By bringing Game Center to the Mac, Apple is going to push ahead with desktop app gaming and help connect users between devices.

The app allows users to find friends, discover new games that their friends play, recommend games, access a leaderboard and see the achievements they have earned.

Perhaps borrowing a page from Microsoft’s playbook, Apple has introduced a feature that allows users to play Game Center on any device, so Mac users will be able to play iPhone, iPad or iPod users.

(Via The Next Web.)

What Is iTunes Match, Really?

iTunes Match is cloud storage for up to 25,000 songs. Wherever possible, your music files are matched to a DRM-free, 256kbs high quality version on Apple’s server, if available. If not, your songs are uploaded as is.

You can overwrite your local, lower quality media, with higher quality 256kbs version from iTunes Match. And yes, this includes songs you have pirated, downloaded, borrowed off a mate, or ripped at a low quality from your own CDs. Bear in mind that a 256kbs file is going to be twice as large as one encoded at 128kbs though.

Once in the cloud, your entire music library is available to download or stream on up to 5 devices registered to your iTunes account.

Limitations

• Songs less than 96kbs cannot be matched.
• Only music and music videos are valid for matching – not audiobooks (there is a workaround with that if you classify audiobooks as media type: music and if they are ripped at 96kbs or better, they will be uploaded and stored in the cloud with every other track).
• Your ID3 tags will not be overwritten – if you have a track 01, iTunes will NOT automatically fix that for you. It will replace the audio with a higher quality version, but it will not give you missing tags, artwork, or lyrics. The meta-data associated with each song remains the same, even if it it’s broken. On the upside, this means your handcrafted ID3 tags won’t be replaced either.
• As mentioned, there is a 25,000 song limit, on up to 5 devices.

Getting Started

Once subscribed, you’ll see one of the following icons next to every track.

iTunes is then in the process of scanning your tracks to see which it has a match for.

Out of 7,400 songs in my library, it matched roughly 2,800 songs. The additional items took a total of about 4 days to fully upload, but you can start using everything else that has already uploaded in the meantime, and begin upgrading tracks that are eligible.

To Upgrade Songs to 256kbs Versions

This isn’t as easy as it should be, but basically you need to delete matched songs from iTunes, then download them from the cloud. The problem is figuring out which songs are eligible for an upgrade. To do this easily, create a new smart playlist with the following options:

• Media type – music
• Quality – less than 256kbs
• AND ANY OF THE FOLLOWING (option click on the + symbol to create this ANY rule)
• - iCloud Status is Purchased
• - iCloud Status is Matched

Any songs on this playlist are matched in the cloud and therefore a higher quality version is available to replace any you have locally. To trigger that upgrade, you need to delete those tracks from your library – by either right clicking and selecting delete or pressing option-delete.

When asked if you’d like to delete the tracks from iCloud too, make sure you DON’T. However, do move them to the trash / delete from your local computer. The tracks won’t disappear from the list though, instead they’ll be there still but with an iCloud download icon next to them. Highlight them again, right click, download.

Once downloaded, they’ll disappear from this smart playlist – that’s because they’ve been replaced with 256kbs versions, and therefore don’t match the list criteria anymore. Congrats, you’ve upgraded them. Continue for every other song on the list.

Note that this isn’t necessary for your iOS devices – they will automatically use the higher quality matched version when you attempt to stream or download to the device. This playlist is only to facilitate replacing the existing, lower quality songs on your computer.

Setting Up iTunes Match On iOS Devices

From the Settings -> Music menu, enable iTunes Match from the top of the list. You’ll be given a warning about the music on your device being replaced with iTunes Match. Continue.

Give it about 10 minutes to sync up with the cloud. Now when you launch the iPod / Music app, everything in your iCloud library will be there. If you still have some songs in the process of uploading, they’ll be greyed out.

You can either stream songs just by clicking to play them as usual (I experience about a 5 second lag before it starts sometimes), or you can download them to your device by clicking on the iCloud icon.

If you want to download a full playlist or genre, artist etc, just scroll down to the bottom of the list where you’ll see a button to download all.

Conclusion

I just upgraded about 2,800 songs to high quality 256kbs, legal DRM-free versions, which I can keep forever, legally. I can now stream my entire music collection to any of my iOS devices (including family if you share an iTunes store account). Of course, any music you add in the future to your library will also be automatically matched, if available, or uploaded if not. The library remains in sync across all devices. This is personal music streaming done right, and it’s even legal, which always gives me a nice fuzzy feeling inside.

What do you think of iTunes Match (assuming you’ve actually signed up)? For you, how does it compare to similar services like Google Music? Got any problems or questions about the service? Ask away in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer!

(Via MakeUseOf.com.)

Even if you think you’ve maxed out the usefulness of your iPad there’s still opportunities to squeeze even more utility out of it. Read on as we show you how to use your iPad as a supplementary monitor for your PC or Mac.

The iPad is an enormously useful little tablet computer but when you’re sitting at your desktop or laptop you can’t easily use it in tandem with the larger computer. Rather than let it languish unused when you’re at your main computer, use it to extend your desktop. Whether you’re extending your laptop monitor for an instant second screen at the coffee shop or using it to park your Photoshop palettes while working at your desktop, the iPad screen is just the right size for parking IM windows, application interfaces, and other small but useful widgets and gadgets that you’d like to keep an eye on but don’t want to clutter up your main screen with.

(Via the How-To Geek.)

Facebook Timeline has been on the back burner for months now, after it was first announced at the company’s f8 conference in September. Despite much delay, it is finally rolling out to the public, starting with New Zealand. That means it’s only a matter of days before it comes to you, so brace your News Feed, because the fans and protestors are coming in full-force. In the meantime, here’s everything you need to know about Facebook Timeline.

New Features

The new features are significantly different than any other upgrade to Facebook before. Timeline presents a way to digitally document your entire life, from birth to present, via wall posts, photos, announcements and events. Consider it a neatly organized social scrapbook with a visually pleasing interface.

The New Facebook Profile: Timeline

Timeline is a radical departure from previous versions of the Facebook user profile. The most prominent feature is the addition of a cover photo at the top of the page. Users can change this to whatever they’d like it to be.

Click here to view this gallery.

If you haven’t already received an invite to Timeline, and don’t want to wait any longer, you can enable it now in eight simple steps.

Timeline was supposed to be released to the public in September. October. November. The feature was set back, possibly after a copyright infringement lawsuit was filed against Facebook by Timelines.com. Later, Facebook admitted it was taking its time to roll out Timeline to users, relying on more technically adept people to experience the features first. Mashable‘s Lance Ulanoff explains, “Facebook is trying to educate the media on the fundamentals and benefits of Timeline.”

What to Do With Your New Timeline

So, if or when your Facebook Timeline is activated, what exactly should you do with it?

That’s up to you, and how much you want to reveal to your friends and followers. But there are a lot of new features that have the potential to create a captive, visual biography. Regardless of how much information you choose to fill out, there are a few different methods and privacy-related points to consider.

1. The Timeline Menu Bar

As you scroll down your new Timeline, a floating menu bar will appear at the top of your screen. Use it to add new events.

Click here to view this gallery.

What does all of this mean for Facebook’s more than 800 million users? That depends on your stance about the new features.

Facebook Timeline is a way to document your entire life, from birth to present, but because the company began in 2004 for college students, it might take some time and effort to manually fill out.

Creative Inspiration

Some have already jumped into Timeline and are getting creative with their profile presentation, most specifically cover photos, which is a new feature that includes a personalized image at the top of the page.

SEE ALSO: Facebook Timeline: 5 Sites for Customizing Your Cover Photo

When Timeline entered beta in September, we gathered some stunning and mind-blowing takes on the new layout.

1. Ekkapong Techawongthaworn

Playful and fun, we’re big fans of Ekkapong’s rainy creation.

Click here to view this gallery.

What About Privacy?

Some have clamed, in criticism of Facebook Timeline, that by encouraging users to fill their profile, the company is seeking to capture more user data to further appeal to advertisers. Others have expressed concern that it is now easier to discover information about a person that was previously difficult to access. Further more, some believe these additional features regarding users’ personal information may encourage identity theft.

SEE ALSO: The New Facebook: How to Take Control of Your Privacy

(Via Mashable!.)

Word on the street is that YouTube has a slick new design. It’s a revamped homepage with some pretty tight Google+ social integration and content discovery features.

But if you’ve fired up your trusty Internet machine and the new YouTube hasn’t yet appeared for you, don’t fret. Our friends at The Verge have figured out an easy way (via Google+ user Mortiz Tolxdorff) to turn on the new features right the heck now.

At present, the trick only seems to work in Firefox and Chrome. Open up your browser’s development tools:

In Firefox: Ctrl + Shift + K (Win) | Cmd + Shift + K (Mac)

In Chrome: Ctrl + Shift + J (Win) | or Cmd + Alt + J (Mac)

Then add this string of delicious and nutritious code to the console:

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=ST1Ti53r4fU";

Close your development tools, then reload The YouTubes. Voila! A fresh homepage for videos. Here’s what’s new:

1. Welcome

Once you get the new design, a message will pop up, prompting you to take a tour.

(Via Mashable!.)

The three major contenders offer similar products with a similar mission: Allow users to buy new music and access existing libraries from multiple devices, via the cloud.

Here’s how the services compare to one another in terms of ease of use, pricing, mobile accessibility, and track selection.

A disclaimer: I am a Mac owner. As a result, my desktop experiences are based around Mac OS X Lion. Windows integration may differ. For this test I used the new HTC Rezound, the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 and the Amazon Kindle Fire.

Pricing

Google Music is free to all users. This includes access on the web, desktop and mobile devices. Google does impose a library limit of 20,000 songs. Purchased tunes don’t count.

iTunes Match is $24.99 a year. For that $24.99, users get the ability to upload 25,000 songs, excluding any iTunes purchases. Macworld offers a fix for users who have more than 25,000 tracks in their iTunes library but still want to use the service.

Amazon’s Cloud Player is free for for up to 5GB of uploads (not counting Amazon.com MP3 purchases). Plans with 20GB of storage (for any type of data) start at $20 a year; the space for music is unlimited.

Winner: Google Music, because it’s free. Still, $20 for unlimited song storage is worth a gold star for Amazon.

Buying Music

The iTunes Music Store first went live in 2003. Within five years, became the biggest music retailer in the United States. What has kept iTunes in the number one spot — despite competition from Amazon, Walmart and Best Buy (now defunct), eMusic, 7Digital, Sony, Microsoft and dozens of others — is that finding and buying music is very, very easy.

iTunes is bloated, especially on Windows. But it boasts one of the easiest search and purchase processes on the Internet.

Amazon has a section of its website dedicated to purchasing MP3s, but the search and purchase process can be hindered by accessibility issues. Depending on where you search, your artist selection could come back as a physical CD or as an MP3.

Google’s new music store has a clean layout like iTunes. The problem with Google Music: it lacks a shopping cart. You must purchase a track or album on the spot, and can’t group a bunch of purchases together for later.

Likewise, there is no “wishlist”, which Amazon and Apple offer. Google also makes navigating sections more difficult than it should be.

All three services make purchased tracks accessible across devices immediately. iTunes Match also makes all past purchases available. Amazon will store purchases made after March 2011, but previous purchases need to be manually uploaded. Since Google Music is so new, it’s a given that all of its purchase history is available.

Winner: iTunes. It’s still the fastest way to search for and find songs with minimal hassle.

Cloud Listening

A big promise of all three services is the ability to listen to your songs and playlists without having to download them.

All three make good on this promise. Apple uses iTunes as its central music hub. You can authorize up to ten devices for use with iTunes Match — five can be computers with iTunes — to stream or download songs.

Streaming songs within iTunes, as we described in our iTunes Match review, is almost indistinguishable from listening to a local file. Songs and albums show up in iTunes regardless of whether they have been downloaded locally or not.

Amazon and Google both use web-based playback systems. Amazon’s is the clunkiest of the bunch. Yes, you can browse by album, artist, song title or playlist, but navigating through the interface can be a chore.

Google has clearly spent a lot of time on its web-based music interface. But I found that songs or playlists would occasionally take a long time to switch from one to the next. Like Amazon, Google Music doesn’t work well with compilation albums — an annoying problem for someone like myself who has hundreds of them in her collection.

Where Google gets major props is that its cloud player is optimized for mobile devices as well. Amazon has an iPad interface for its Cloud Player, but no iPhone or mobile phone interaction.

Winner: Google Music. It’s the only service that lets you access your library from mobile and desktop browsers across platforms.

Uploading and Downloading Songs

Listening to music in the cloud is great. But first you have to get it there.

All three services support uploading purchases or songs obtained in other ways (ripped from CD, downloaded off the web, and yes, even pirated). Depending on the size of your library, this process can take quite some time.

This is where iTunes Match becomes worth its $24.99 yearly fee. The service can match tracks already in your library with songs in its database. If it finds a match, you don’t need to upload those tunes. Where it can’t find a match, those files are uploaded to the cloud.

This process works quite well. In my tests, iTunes Match has not once confused one file with a different version of the same song (which is useful when dealing with live tracks, alternative takes or remixes).

Amazon and Google both provide file uploading utilities. Google’s Music Manager can integrate directly with iTunes and monitor your iTunes folder to upload new tracks and match existing playlists. The program runs in the background, continuously uploading new iTunes tracks to your Google Music library.

Amazon also links with iTunes playlists and uploads albums and songs to Amazon Cloud Drive. This application needs to be launched to work; there isn’t an auto-sync option.

When it comes to downloading files, Google Music in its current state is painful. Users can only download tracks from the web interface twice. Using the Music Manager, however, users can download all of their files.

The problem with the Music Manager: there isn’t a way to select what files you want to download, or to auto-download new purchases.

Amazon makes downloading new purchases a snap, and also makes it easy to download existing songs for albums from the Cloud Drive interface. Amazon can also automatically add downloaded tracks to an iTunes or Windows Media Player library. If you also have iTunes Match, those Amazon files are usually just moments away from being synced and matched to the cloud there too.

Winner: iTunes. It’s the only system that is truly hassle-free. Amazon’s option is better than Google Music, which is a real pain.

Mobile Access

It isn’t enough to listen to music from your computer. We also want access on the go.

Apple’s mobile solution is the most limited in terms of device access. Playlist syncing and file access is only available on an iOS device. For iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Apple TV owners, this is great. But users of other mobile systems are out of luck.

Amazon makes things a bit easier by providing a mobile app for Android and an iPad-friendly web view of its library. Though not currently in the App Store, the app aMusic is a good way for iOS users to access their Amazon Cloud Player files. With any luck, it will be back in the App Store soon.

Google should be commended for making its music store compatible not just with Android, but with other browsers too. Visit music.google.com on an iOS device, and users are treated to a well-designed HTML5 app player.

The app player doesn’t offer offline playback, but the interface is similar to the Google Music Player for Android. The unofficial gMusic app is also a great option for iOS users. It doesn’t offer playback editing, but all other files are accessible and can be downloaded for offline listening.

Winner: Google. It’s the only service that is truly cross-platform friendly.

Overall

All three cloud music and storage platforms have their share of pros and cons. For iOS users, iTunes Match is going to offer the best user experience. For Android users, Google Music is a great option with a lot of flexibility for mobile — despite some limitations on the desktop side. Amazon is more of a mixed bag. The service is great as a way to buy and download MP3s, but it doesn’t really take advantage of the cloud as well as it could. Still, it’s a worthy option.

(Via Mashable!.)

Twelve South, the same South Carolina-based outfit that’s been keeping the Bass(Jump) coming, has just outed the best MacBook power adapter accessory… ever. Almost. The PlugBug is an iPad / iPhone / iPod / USB-based-whatever charger that snaps right on top of your existing MacBook or MacBook Pro AC adapter, allowing you to charge your Mac laptop as well as a single USB-based device at the same time. It’s a ten-watt adapter, so your iPad and those other high-powered gizmos should take take to it just fine, and it’s actually capable of acting on its own should you ever need to dismount it. Unfortunately, those in need of a non-US adapter will be out of luck, but on the upside, this converts international adapters for US use should you head over this way. It’s on sale now for $34.99 at the source link below, and if it only had more than one USB port, we’d recommend it without hesitation. Ah well — there’s always version 2.0, right? Promo vid’s after the break.

(Via Engadget.)