I mentioned some of the Beats Music technical issues in my last post.  Beats Music sent out emails and also posted a statement about these issues on their blog.  You can read the entire statement via this link, but, in short, they are aware of their problems and working to fix them.  

I have had questions related to whether the user can just get to the search function without seeing all of the "curation" features.  I will put together a few print screens from the iOS app (still having issues with the web browser) that may help people get a better understanding of the app.  From what I remember, the web interface is similar.  

When you login via iOS, you get the "just for you"  page or "the sentence".  The "just for you" page is based on the choices you make when you first login to the service:

This screen is the first thing that typically pops up.  In the upper left portion of the screen, you see three horizontal lines.  If you click on it, you get the following screen:

Unlike the MOG search engine, you don't need to specify whether you want artist, song, or album.  You type it in and they bring up all results.  Below, is the screen that pops up when I chose "The Who - Artist":

When you scroll down, you get the following:

Clicking on "See All" next to the "MUSIC" title, will bring up an album list:

As you scroll to the right, you get "Compilations":

All Songs:

If you click on the icon that looks like a funnel on the top, left side of the screen, you have several options related to the order you want it to play (or see):

After you select a song to play, it will show up at the bottom of the screen (note: the last song played was "Blues Connotation").  You can then click on the album cover and get this screen:

Be aware that the big circle in the middle of the screen keeps track of how long the song has played.  It can also be used to fast forward , reverse, or pause a song.  The symbol on the bottom left will allow you to tweet or post on Facebook.  I have not tested this feature.  Clicking the heart will let the service know you like this music, which will help them choose music for you:

The "+" symbol will allow you to add the song to your playlist or library:

This is just one basic feature.  I may post more of these features in the future.

As I have mentioned numerous times on my blog, I am a huge fan of MOG.  This is the music service that came out with great features like 320 kbps files and a slider that would allow you to make a radio station with one artist and add more similar artists as you moved the slider to the right.

The service also had a desktop app, an iPad app, and a "New Releases" section.  When I heard Beats bought the service a while back, I had high hopes that the merger would take MOG's first class service and combine it with Beats marketing that has taken a relatively expensive headphone that critics usually dismiss and made it a household name.  If they can do that with a so-called "mediocre" product (I have never owned a pair), what could they do with a great product?

Well, the beginning of this service has seen the end of the iPad app, the desktop app, the "new releases" section, and the radio slider.  If that wasn't disappointing enough, the service had connection problems all night.  I tried to log in via the iPad, iPhone, Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Firefox.  I was able to sign in a couple of times and get it up and running, but it would simply stop working.  I actually logged out of wifi and tried cell service on both the iPad and iPhone, but I had no luck.

Luckily, I got a chance to try it out earlier in the day.  The service starts with some balloons that have a genre name in it...jazz, country, vintage soul, etc..  and has you hold down the balloons to tell them you don't want the genre, tap the balloon once if you like a genre, or tap the balloon twice if you love the genre.   Once you make those choices, it will do the same with some artists in the categories you choose.  The interesting thing was that I had this screen come up several times when I would try to sign in and it would get me through the process and then come up with a "connection problem" notification. 

Once I was in the app, I missed the easy to use menus that MOG offered:  "Search", "New", "Que", "Editor's Picks", "Charts", "Playlists", "Favorites, "Just for you", and "My Downloads".   All on the first page of the app.

 With Beats, you get a "Just for You" section, "The Sentence", "Highlights", "Find it" that you swipe through on the iPhone.  There is also a drop down box that lets you search "Music and Users", and sections for "My Playlists", and "My Library".

The "Just for you" section will show albums and suggested playlists that they recommend based on your choices.  I found this to be the most interesting aspect of the service.  Just based on a few choices, they hit the mark a lot more often than they missed it from my choices.  It is actually better than MOG's "just for you" section even though MOG has years of my music choices to make their recommendations.

"The Sentence" lets you pick from a list of activities.  It is a bit like the classic "Mad libs" books that were out years ago.  "I'm _____ & Feel like ____With ___ to ______.   After you make the choices, it will play music to suit the activity.

"Highlights" doesn't really care about your choices.  I had rap and electronic music deleted from my balloon choices, but the sections top two choices were rap and electronica.  Luckily, there was a "Blue Note: Classic Jazz" Feature lower on the page, so I was able to use the section.  

"Find it" consists of "Genres", "Activities", and "Curators". "Genres" has choices like "Beats Alternative", "Beats Americana", etc..  Each section has several playlists to choose from. For example, "Beats Alternative" has "Best of Industrial Rock",  "Tom Waits: The 70s", "Under the Influence: Radiohead", etc.  This is also where they hid new releases.  You have to go to the Genre, click on the name of the Genre at the top of the page "Beats Country", for example.  When you scroll down, you will see playlists and under that, you will see new releases.  They also show "Their Picks" on this page.


  "Activities" is similar to "The Sentence", but has activities like BBQing, Being Blue, etc.. listed with several playlists in each section.

"Curators" also looks interesting with sections like "Downbeat Magazine", "Grand Ole Opry", "Rolling Stone", "Target", "Alternative Press" etc..    Each section can have several playlists by the Curator that is listed.  Interestingly, Ellen DeGeneres is listed as a Curator, so that may mean more celeb lists in the future.   

The search function is also different than MOG.   MOG would allow you to search by artist, song, or album. With Beats, you get one search box and it will pull up everything that has the name in the title.  It seems to put artists at the top if you choose an artist name, so I like that aspect.

The look of the app is busy compared with MOG and takes a lot more swipes and clicks to get through their menus.  Also, I clicked on a song that was playing to see the album cover and it had a big symbol in the middle to pause the song and show how much of the song that had played...like a big stop watch.  I would prefer to have all of the controls at the bottom and to actually see the album art...like MOG.  You can pick the album art from the top of the page and it will blow it up, but you lose the option to control music while it is up.

Right now, I am on the fence about whether I want to keep this service or move to Spotify or Google (both have 320kbps streaming).  Many of the features seem really interesting, but the service has tech issues that make it impossible to really get a feel for everything at this point.  If those issues are resolved, there is a strong possibility that I will stick with them.  If not, Spotify is next up on my list.

More about the service here.

I have had a MacBook Pro Mid-2011 for a couple of years and thought it might be time for an update.  After some reading, I though that an SSD update would be of the most benefit.   The main reason I didn't get the MBP with an SSD to begin with is that there was just too much of an up charge for the feature, but I was pretty sure the price would eventually go down.  The Samsung Electronics 840 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Single Unit Version Internal Solid State Drive was $162.99, so I felt like it was time to jump in.

Before you make this decision, there are definitely some choices that have to be made.  Do you want to just exchange your old drive with the new? If so, everything needs to fit on the new drive if you want to do an exact backup.  Do you just want to add a drive and keep you old drive?  There are more considerations when you go that route.

When Apple started coming out with Macs without disk drives, I wasn't impressed.  A  millimeter of extra thinness for less functionality didn't seem like much of a trade off.  However, I have been using my disk drive less and less and I have a USB Blu-ray drive that I can use in a pinch.  I also considered the fact that I am running Windows 7 via Bootcamp/VMWare Fusion and preferred leaving it on the old drive.  As a result, I decided to get rid of the optical disc and keep the 750GB drive.  

Well, now that I decided to replace the optical drive, I needed a Hard Drive Caddy Tray.  This allows the hard drive to snap in place and be placed into the slot in the computer.   I also needed a Torx T6 tool.  I ordered one, but it wasn't here before the weekend, so I decided to just buy a cheap one at Home Depot.  I had ordered a magnetic tool from Amazon, but the Home Depot set wasn't magnetized.  If you go this route, do yourself a favor and get a magnetic T6.  I have some tiny Phillips head screwdrivers laying around, but they also include one (non-magnetized) with the caddy tray.

One of the things I kept reading on the web was that the drive you use to boot the machine should not go in the optical drive slot.  I took that advice and moved the old drive to the optical bay and put the new SSD where the old drive was.  This required more work, but it only took an extra five or ten minutes.

After installing the drive, I closed up the case and booted my machine with the "option" key held down.  I selected the old MacHD and booted up.   I then went to Disk Utility and "erased" the new drive ( apparently, I should  have gone a different route through RAID, but this worked.  When I went to CarbonCopy Cloner to make an exact copy of the MacHD on the new SSD, it made me go back into utilities and create a recovery drive.   It took a while to copy, so I left it running and checked on it quite a while later.

Once everything was copied, I rebooted the machine while holding down the "option key".  I selected the new SSD drive and it took a minute or so and I was up and running, just like in the MacHD, but a whole lot faster.  I then went into "System Preferences" and changed the "Startup Disk" to the new SSD drive and rebooted. Everything was working.  I decided at that point to put a copy of the old hard drive on the desktop.  

After all that was done, I made a Time Machine copy on a Synology NAS.  I am probably going to delete most of the files on the MacHD and then load my entire music collection on it.  I was using the Cloud, but I think I would prefer having the ALAC quality.  

I found a few articles and videos that helped with the process.  I am not sure the video below is the exact video (this is not my video), but the one I watched did not show the battery being disconnected and I don't think the video below does either.  I disconnected the battery whenI made the change.

A few notes final notes:

You can mess up you computer when you open it, so be careful.

The inside is very dusty.  Don't wear your Sunday's best if you attempt this.

I am not a computer tech person.  You can ask me questions, but I may not be able to answer them.  I had to visit several sites to get all the answers I needed.

I installed TrimEnabler when I was done.  I have the free version, but I may add the $10 version down the road.  This program is supposed to give the SSD a longer life.

CarbonCopy Cloner does not move the Windows partition (Bootcamp drive), but it does move VMWare Fusion, so I was able to boot into Windows without an issue.  

After the update, my fans were spinning like crazy.  I discovered that the Mac was re-indexing for Spotlight searches. Once it was done, everything went back to normal.

Be prepared for super fast performance!

As I mentioned on the "Mac Attack" page,  I mainly created this website after reading sites like "Sweet Mac Setups".  I found that site and others to be an inspiration when I was setting my home office and I was hoping to inspire others with a detailed description of my office.  

Unfortunately, "Sweet Mac Setups" hasn't seen an update in a long, long time.  As a result, I have switched to reading "Use This" .  While "Use This" is very interesting, I wish they had photos of some of these setups.  Unfortunately, the site only includes a pic of the person interviewed, so you have to imagine the work area they are describing.

Last week, I was approached by the author of a site called "What They Use" for an interview about my office.  I checked out the site and it has photos with an accompanying interview.  My setup is featured at "What They Use/Derek, iMac+MBP+Mac Mini, Photo & Audio Work".   However, I would also recommend browsing the other setups because it is interesting to see how others are using their setups.  I will be bookmarking the site because I LOVE reading about setups for inspiration and just out of curiosity.