Frank Bi | The Verge

Spotify is testing lossless audio. Can you hear the difference?

2017-04-05T12:11:25-04:00

Is lossless audio really worth it?

In March, Spotify briefly A/B tested a new lossless audio version of its streaming service. Spotted by Reddit users and confirmed to The Verge by a source inside Spotify, the new tier, currently dubbed Spotify Hi-Fi, will cost an additional $5 to $10 a month on top of the service’s $10 monthly price for its premium ad-free streaming service. Though a Spotify spokesperson declined to confirm the existence of the new tier, the move would not be unexpected; streaming service competitor Tidal already offers high-fidelity streaming for $19.99 a month.

Up until now, Spotify has compressed audio down to a bitrate of 160 kbps on desktop or 96 kbps on mobile devices — Spotify calls this rate “normal.” Paid subscribers also have a “high quality” option of 320 kbps audio on desktop. High-fidelity or lossless audio has a significantly higher bitrate of 1,411 kbps.

When a song is compressed, an algorithm removes bits from the track that it believes the human ear can’t pick up, which reduces the overall file size. So objectively speaking, there’s less audio there for your ear to interpret. Lossless audio cuts less bits.

But in actuality, the difference is very difficult to discern. Couple that with a range in the quality of soundcards and speakers, and it’s almost impossible for the average listener to pick which is which. Can you tell the difference?

Below are three songs, each presented in three different versions: a lossless version at 1,411 kbps, a “premium” version at 320 kbps, and standard version at 160 kbps. Try and see if you can pick the lossless audio out of the three.

This quiz works best on Chrome browsers.

Here’s how the Galaxy S8 stacks up against the iPhone 7

2017-03-29T13:31:09-04:00

After months of anticipation, the Samsung Galaxy S8 is finally here. And Samsung’s latest flagship is an incredible-looking device with what might be the best design we’ve seen from a mainstream smartphone.

The ultimate Apple I/O death chart

2016-06-29T12:46:51-04:00

The internet has been ablaze the past few weeks about Apple potentially removing the headphone jack from the next iPhone — a move that’s been heavily rumored for months, and has everything from blurry leaked case images to Wall Street Journal articles backing it up. We don’t know if it’s going to happen, but there’s a bunch of fun pieces to read about the pros and cons of removing the jack, and other fun pieces to read about how Apple might do it.

Also, I hate this idea, and wrote about it.

But anyway! One of the most strongly-held arguments about Apple removing the headphone jack is that Apple has historically been first to drop a legacy technology, sometimes even before the rest of the industry is ready. Apple’s vertical integration, passionate userbase, and scale (both historically small and now immensely huge) allow it to push big changes in a way that few other companies can pull off. The floppy, SCSI, optical drives, VGA — all killed by Apple years before vanishing from the rest of the industry.

But how long does it really take Apple to kill legacy tech? We threw together a chart to map it out. (It would be fun to do this across the entire tech industry, but finding all that data seems virtually impossible. If you figure it out email me and we’ll run it!)

What I never realized is that most Apple I/O standards last about 15 years, give or take. Even the floppy, which seemed like a monumental change when it was removed from the iMac, was only around for 15 years. We take the traditional USB connector for granted, but it’s also been around for about 18 years, and you can see how the new MacBook is ushering it out in favor of USB-C. It’s an interesting cycle.

Second, you can see that all of the heralded “Apple kills X” products like the iMac really just set the stage for Apple to slowly transition various tech out of its lineup. So while the iMac killed ADB, SCSI, and the floppy drive, Apple still shipped all those things in various other (mostly pro) machines for another couple years, because it had lots of customers who wanted those things. That gave the market for USB devices time to mature — creating temptation for those same pro customers to upgrade to newer machines that could take better advantage of all those USB devices.

Some notes on the chart: we only used Macs, iPods, and iOS devices, and we mapped out support against both ports and standards, since it’s really complicated to split them up. The original plastic MacBooks, for instance, supported VGA but had mini VGA ports. Then Apple moved to mini DVI port, then mini DisplayPort, and now Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 use the same port as mini DisplayPort. So the port is still around, but the standard it connects to is radically different.

But then we had to account for the new MacBook’s USB-C connector — it clearly deserves its own line on the chart, even though it’s the same standard with a different port. It’s quite a puzzle! So we did our best. You can find a massive spreadsheet of every Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad and their I/O options here, thanks to our reviews coordinator Michael Moore. Feel free to take this data and make a better chart — I’m curious how else you might break this up.

Of course, you can see the one constant piece of I/O across every Apple product since 1984 — the headphone jack. It’s been there since the first Mac shipped in 1984, and it’s one of the few things on this list that hasn’t even really had an upgrade to the underlying standard, like USB to USB 2. It’s just… the headphone jack. You can see how most Apple I/O standards come to a quick end after the first phase out, but the headphone jack has been the one constant Apple connector for 32 years, twice the usual lifespan. We’ll see if this thing can keep cheating death, I suppose.

HIGH-END HEADPHONES FOR IPHONE'S LIGHTNING PORT

Swift Playgrounds sells coding as simple and fun — just like rest of Apple’s products

2016-06-14T10:50:17-04:00

Apple announced its Swift Playgrounds app at WWDC yesterday, which will teach kids to code in Swift. Interwoven between CEO Tim Cook’s talk of freeing kids’ minds with code and setting them up for successful careers was a familiar storyline and business blueprint. Apple’s efforts to market Swift mirror its selling strategy for the rest of its technology. Swift and Swift Playgrounds look like any other Apple product, function like the rest of its devices, and fit in with the company’s established business model.

Functionally, Swift Playgrounds fits in with Apple’s technology lineup. “Swift is powerful but it’s also simple and approachable,” Cook said yesterday. Just like the MacBook and iPhone, Swift is easy to learn and use. It’s without a doubt an improvement over Objective-C, Apple’s primary programming language before Swift, which is bulky and old-fashioned compared to Swift’s elegant syntax and modern programming paradigm.

Swift is easier to read and more intuitive than its predecessor

And for a programming language, Swift is easier to read and more intuitive than its predecessor, which are the exact words Apple uses to describe its other products on its website. There’s no doubt that “intuitive” is accurate. The ease with which new technology adopters can pick up and use an Apple device contributes to Apple’s success. Swift looks easy to understand for a novice programmer while Swift Playgrounds is as simple as playing a game, which is a big change from traditional coding lessons.

The biggest draw to Swift Playgrounds is that it’s approachable compared to programming books that look like textbooks and read like technical manuals. Aesthetically, Swift Playgrounds is a whole lot prettier than those old coding books, too. The app fits in alongside Apple’s other products — look at those emoji! “Writing swift code is fun and interactive,” Cook said yesterday. This sounds similar to the vibe Apple sent with its classic iPod commercials.

Swift Playgrounds is more approachable than older programming books

But most importantly, Swift Playgrounds fits into Apple’s proprietary business efforts as it has a vested interest in teaching kids to code in Swift; apps built in Swift only work on iOS devices. With Swift Playgrounds, Apple is hoping its programming language will be the gateway to coding that encourages a new generation of App Store developers. That being said, we should note that Swift is open source, so it’s possible it’ll be more widely adopted on Linux and eventually show up on Android.

Locking people into its ecosystem is kind of Apple’s thing (Ehm, iMessage). “Because Swift is so easy to learn, it has the potential to bring more people into coding,” Cook said. The more, the better. And what’s more enticing to young people and parents than a free app?

Updated 6/14, 3:46 PM ET: Updated to note that Swift is now open source.

Nissan app developer busted for copying code from Stack Overflow

2016-05-04T16:56:40-04:00

Copying and pasting code from the internet is one of the biggest open secrets in computer programming. And trust me, we all do it. That’s because there are question-and-answer sites like StackOverflow.com, where any developer can post a programming-related question and get a response from a fellow developer.

Anyone who may or may not have copied his best friend’s English essay in grade school knows the rule: don’t copy word for word. You have to come up with the same conclusion using different words, otherwise you risk getting busted.

A developer working on the NissanConnect EV mobile app just got caught red-handed when a verbatim Stack Overflow answer showed up in the most recent app update.

A screenshot from the latest version of the Nissan ConnectEV app… pic.twitter.com/Tseyvwyg3R
— Scott Helme (@Scott_Helme) May 4, 2016

But the fact that a line of code copied from the internet somehow made its way through the quality assurance process (there is a QA process for Nissan apps, right?) and deployed as an update — to an app that manages a car nevertheless — doesn’t give me a ton of confidence to Nissan or other connected cars in general.

So the lesson here? Never, ever copy and paste code from the internet you don’t understand. I repeat: never copy and paste code from the internet you don’t understand.

Seriously, don’t copy the following code snippet and paste it into your terminal.

Bringing Ubuntu to Windows is a step in the right direction for Microsoft

2016-03-30T19:07:21-04:00

Ever since college, the way that I’ve been told to study computer science was to avoid Windows for writing code. In class, we used Ubuntu, a flavor of Linux to complete our assignments. Students who showed up to class on the first day with a Windows laptop (myself included), were told to install Ubuntu as a second operating system or face a semester of hardship. Simply put, no one wanted to be partnered with a person who was adamant about sticking to his or her Windows dev environment.

But with today’s announcement of Ubuntu on Windows at Build, the belief that Windows is a bad operating system for developers is coming to an end. At the surface level, this means you’ll be able to run a Bash shell on Windows 10, without having to install a third-party interface like Cygwin, which many seasoned veterans remember as a nightmare.

With this addition, developers on Windows will be able to count the number of words in a file by simply typing “wc” into a command line whereas before it was possible, but required a deeper knowledge of several commands working together. Even the seemingly trivial aspects of listing all the files in a directory, `ls` in Bash or `dir` in Windows, will make it more likely for a Linux or OS X dev to help troubleshoot someone else’s code on a Windows machine instead of the oft-reply that they should just get another operating system.

Beyond the benefits of a Bash terminal, the integration of an undiluted (or so Microsoft claims) version of Ubuntu built into Windows 10 will allow developers to finally have access to a slew of programs written for Linux, thanks to its partnership with Canonical. This may even be enough for OS X developers to be jealous of, considering not even they have access to Canonical packages.

the belief that Windows is a bad operating system for developers is coming to an end

Today’s announcement is being praised in developer circles, as it should be. To many, it can be interpreted as Microsoft admitting to prior mistakes when the company decided not to align with the rest of the industry, instead creating its own ecosystem of expensive dev tools and proprietary code. To be clear, that existing Windows ecosystem will continue to exist, but the addition of Bash will create a bridge between the two by welcoming traditional developers into a familiar environment instead of forcing them to learn new things which are only useful on Windows. Even better, Microsoft is aligning itself with one of the biggest proponents of open-source software, Canonical, to bring Windows back into consideration both as part of the dev stack and as an ally to open software.

Will Windows eventually work its way into computer science courses anytime soon? Probably not, considering a copy of Ubuntu is free. But today’s announcement shows how Microsoft is changing its stance from a “get off my lawn” attitude towards developers to one that’s finally realized that the neighborhood’s gone and it’s time to adapt.

Kavya Sukumar and Curtis Schiewek contributed to this post.

Unofficial Netflix catalog helps you find a movie not available in your area

2016-01-25T13:10:02-05:00

While Netflix goes on the offensive against customers who use VPNs to stream videos not available within their own country, a new website is taking some of the guesswork out of regional hopping.

The Unofficial Netflix Online Global Search (or uNoGS) is an online searchable database of the videos available in the 244 regions where Netflix is currently available. Updated daily, users can search the catalog based on everything from Netflix and IMDb rating, to genre and the availability of subtitles. The website goes as far as to suggest a VPN provider in countries where the video is not available.

Vacationing in Antarctica? You’ll have access to more movies than South Korea

Netflix does not release their full catalog offerings — the company closed its public API several years ago — and so far it’s unclear if this unofficial catalog violates any of the company’s terms of service. But a searchable database is likely something that Netflix would fight to take down as it faces pressure from copyright owners to take action against the users who are gaming the regional licensing agreements.

Even if you’re not looking at global streaming options, the catalog does give an interesting look at which countries have access to the most videos — and the top five are probably not what you’d expect. Behind the United States, the Caribbean island of Martinique has access to the most videos, followed by the French territory of Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Aruba, and the Caribbean Netherlands. Vacationing in Antarctica? You’ll have access to a hundred more movies and shows than South Korea or Israel.

For the full list of movies and shows available, check out uNoGS or use the table below to see how countries stack up.

The Donald Trump programming language is not for dummies or losers

2016-01-21T17:45:11-05:00

I have a love / hate relationship with computer programming. As the resident developer at The Verge, I’ve been living the juxtaposition of how a few lines of code can perform a task that would otherwise take dozens of human hours or how one overlooked typo can cripple a project’s deadline and destroy my sanity.

As far as languages go, Python gives me the least headaches. Its elegant syntax and feedback to bugs makes it a good language for beginners to learn as an introduction to programming, which is exactly what TrumpScript — a programming language based on Python but inspired by Donald Trump — is not.

To code in TrumpScript is to write in malformed sentences consisting of only pre-approved words (all other words are stripped out) and only a small subset of logical operators afforded in other programming languages. “True” or “false” are instead “fact” or “lie,” and error messages only criticize your code rather than help track down your bug.

For example, if you use a word that’s been banned, the error message will read:

“Trump doesn’t want to hear it”

Or if you use a word that’s not common English (e.g. not one of the 2,164 approved words):

“We have a country where to assimilate you have to speak English”

Some more “features” of TrumpScript:

No floating point numbers, only integers. America never does anything halfway.

All numbers must be strictly greater than 1 million. The small stuff is inconsequential to us.

There are no import statements allowed. All code has to be home-grown and American made.

In its raw form, TrumpScript is not compatible with Windows, because Trump isn’t the type of guy to believe in PC

The language is completely case insensitive.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, TrumpScript is satirical. Created in under 24-hours at a Rice University hackathon by a team of undergraduate computer science students, not all the features are working yet. It’s still short of the perfection that Trump would likely seek in something that has his name on it. But like Trump, the language won’t admit to its failures.

TrumpScript didn’t win the hackathon’s grand prize, but it’s managed to at least find a lifeline outside the hackathon weekend. Since the project was posted to Github, dozens of suggestions have been made to make the language more “Trump worthy,” including that the language require an SSL certificate from machines that interact with it or implementing the ability to deport modules.

If you want to try TrumpScript, follow the instructions on the project’s Github page to set up. And once you’ve installed, try this TrumpScript program I’ve written for you!

ProDrone’s Byrd drone can be folded into the size of an iPad

2016-01-09T14:05:35-05:00

There are dozens of drones at CES this year in the area of the show floor my editor colloquially calls “the drone zone.” So one obvious challenge for these companies is figuring out how to differentiate their products from each other, whether they do it with splashy drone concepts or by ditching the common multi-rotor form factor altogether.

But ProDrone is relying on something else to make its new Byrd model stand out: ultra-portability.

The Byrd has a standard quadcopter design, but can be folded into the size of an iPad, albeit a few inches thicker. The four arms fold into the body and the propellers tuck in without a need for dissembling. The drone’s built-in landing gear can also be folded manually to the bottom of the drone and then stored in a backpack or purse. Finally, the Byrd has a camera gimbal that can be removed without a need for a wrench, making it one of the more modular drones on the market today.

Drone cases are notoriously expensive and some manufacturers sell backpacks or cases specifically designed for travelling, but they’re often cumbersome to lug around. This advantage of the Byrd should make it an appealing and affordable product for drone users of all levels.

Despite its foldability, the Byrd is still relatively heavy, weighing in at four pounds. That’s mostly due to its 7000mah battery, which gives you 29 minutes of flight time — more than DJI’s Inspire 1 or Phantom 3. But it also has great lift. It can carry a payload of up to five pounds, meaning the Byrd can carry lighter DSLR cameras. ProDone sells gimbal mounts that support a range of Sony DSLRs as well as the Canon 5D.

At $949 for the standard edition, it’s $50 less than the Phantom 3 4K, but the Byrd only comes with a 1080p camera. If you want a 4K camera on the Byrd, you’ll have to shell out $1,399 for the Premium edition, which also comes with infrared and Follow Me as bonus features. The Byrd Standard edition will begin shipping at the end January while the Premium and the $1,049 Advanced edition will start shipping in March.

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Can this smart lock solve America’s gun troubles?

2016-01-08T18:02:55-05:00

Smart guns have been in the news this week, boosted by an executive action from President Obama calling for increased research into the field. But the technology to prevent guns from being used in the wrong hands isn’t new — researchers have been working on it for decades. Yet widespread adoption of smart guns have been rejected for a variety of reasons, especially over fear that any smart lock could be hacked.

The heated political debate over the right to bear arms has certainly limited funding and development for smart gun locks, but it was still surprising to find out that at CES 2016 — the biggest consumer electronics show in the world — there was only one company that was demonstrating the technology.

The Identilock is a biometric gun lock that requires a user to touch a fingerprint reader before granting access to the firearm’s trigger. It’s an alternative to gun safes, which are expensive and impede access to a firearm when there’s an emergency. The Identilock takes less than a second to unlock, whereby the trigger guard is meant to drop harmlessly onto the floor after authentication. It’s this near instantaneous access that makes the Identilock appealing to the law enforcement community says inventor Omer Kiyani.

But the $319 Identilock wasn’t made primarily for law enforcement, says Kiyani. Instead it’s for the gun that a family might keep in the home for protection. The hope for Identilock is to help curb the hundreds of deaths that happen each year in the United States due to accidental firings, or deaths from teenage suicide in which a firearm is the overwhelming instrument of choice.

The Identilock allows several fingerprints to be registered with the device with each fingerprint grouped to one of three profiles, which can be revoked or changed by one superuser. A physical key can also unlock the device and can be used in case the biometric sensor runs out of power. The battery life is more than half a year and fully charges in two hours via USB. Aside from the USB charging, the lock doesn’t require an app or computer which should curb some fears about hacking potential.

The Identilock is available to preorder or $319 — roughly half the price of a new glock pistol, which was used for testing. It’s expected to begin shipping this summer.