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Mike,
with an iPhone starting at $499, the cheapest plans starting at $60 /
month, the activation fee of $36 and even a dead simple USB cable for
charging the iPhone costing $19, I can hardly see Remote Buddy's
price as being a concern, sorry - even if you only use the iTunes
controller features. It's peanuts in comparison to what an iPhone
costs you every month and you get a continued (or, better: even
growing) value that's not limited to the iPhone in return. ;-)
Regarding your questions:
Why isn't Now Playing built into the Music section? It seems
logical that you would select a song and then it would go to Now
Playing (like on an iPod). I understand that it might be a
bandwidth issue, but won't most people utilizing this functionality
be on WiFi anyway?
The technical reason is that the menu engine (used for all menus) is
not specific to the music browser.
Then, I'm also going by my usage pattern, which is that I want to
switch between tracks real quick and with minimum effort. When I
listen to Music, I often skip tracks that I don't like as soon as I
recognize them - or just want to quickly listen to the first xy
seconds of the tracks to get a quick, first idea of what the entire
album sounds like.
Both of these would require additional taps if it would switch over
to the Now Playing display automatically. Also, if it was only
available when you select a track, you couldn't just "tune in" at any
time, to any tune you want to listen to.
The way it is now, you can quickly browse through and switch tracks -
and reach "Now Playing" with two taps from anywhere when you just
want to use your iPhone as a display for the music that you currently
listen to.
That said, the design is flexible enough to provide shortcuts between
the two, but I keep believing that the current solution actually
gives you quicker access to the functions (I'm always open to counter
arguments, though ;-)
also,
Can i request the ability to list artist by name? Instead of just
the first letter of the alphabet with the number of artists
included within that letter listed next to it.
I don't know, whether I get you right, but if you want to view a list
of artists/albums/.. instead of an A-Z shortcut view, a tap on "All"
will bring up such a view.
Best regards,
Felix
