TIL the Apple TV remote has multi-touch.

She gets me.

Getting bit by a tick that makes me allergic to red meat would be a nightmare scenario for me.

All of the talk of the Thunder trading Westbrook is so dumb. They would lose their fan base (including me) if they traded the guy who chose to stick with us when KD left.

I may be throwing good money after bad, but it looks like the Bronco is going to live again with a three year full powertrain warranty.

Something something sunk cost fallacy.

Ben Thompson nailed his analysis on the difference between the two driving philosophies for tech companies: Platforms expand your ability to do things and aggregators do them for you.

Apple is a platform and Google is an aggregator. Both are needed.

Chris Bowler:

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about people making their own home on the web. Not on places like Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. You can achieve success there, but it never feels to me like I’m getting a fuller picture of the person behind the persona. However, with a personal website, one complete with writing, examples of someone’s work, and a healthy dash of personality, you get a more complete sense of the author’s humanity.

This gets exactly to why I want to spend more time writing here than I do on social media.

Since getting the HomePod, I have been using Apple Music Radio Stations way more than I ever did in the past. It has become pretty normal for me to start up a radio station on the HomePod when I get home from work and just let it run in the background until we are ready for bed.

Unfortunately, the type of music that I usually listen to (red dirt country¹) does not have a built in curated station; so I have had to create my own. Over the last few years, I have trained Apple Music using a station based off of Wade Bowen’s Songs About Trucks.

While I have built up a pretty good station that I can listen to, the process of making one is not very good. Here are a few things that I think Apple could do to improve radio stations in Apple Music.

Renaming the Station

When you create a custom station, it is just given the name of the song or artist that you created it from. So when I want to play my red dirt station, I have to tell Siri to “play my radio station Songs About Trucks”. It would be much more natural to tell her to “play red dirt music” (or even “play my red dirt station”).

Better Discovery

It should be easier to track down songs that have been played by the station (as a way to discover new music). The easiest way to do this would be to show the station’s playback history. From that history, I should be able to tell it to play a particular song more or less often (more on this in a bit).

Another thing that I would like is an option to have Siri play DJ a little and tell you out loud what the song is (I can’t decide if I would want this before or after the song plays, but I am leaning toward before). I would not use this on my phone or my watch where I could just glance at my screen to see what it is, but it would be great on the HomePod. I can currently ask what the song is and it will tell me, but the last thing I want to is interrupt a song I have not heard before to ask about it.

Better Presets

The only way to tell Apple Music what type of songs to play for a station is to use Siri to tell it to play more songs like the one playing or less². So other than the initial song, the only way to tell it to play more of a certain song is to hope that is comes on.

I want to be able to go to individual songs, albums, artists, and playlists and add them or exclude³ them from a station the same way I would add them to a playlist. I also want to be able to open a view that shows all of these options for the station so I can edit them.

Up Next Management

Currently when listening to a station, it will show the song that is coming next. I want to be able to add or exclude that song from the station before it starts playing. If I chose to exclude it, it should be removed and replaced by a different song in the Up Next queue.

I also want to be able to tell it to play a particular song next without leaving the station⁴. If Carney Man by Cross Canadian Ragweed comes on, I want to be able to tell it to play Ringling Road by William Clark Green next. If I do this enough for particular songs, it should learn that and do it for me in the future.

Sharing Stations

Much like playlists, if I put a bunch of work into creating a station I should be able to share it with other people too. My wife should be able to tell Siri to “listen to Ross’s red dirt station”.

Bonus point if they allow multiple people to make edits to it or allow them to duplicate it so they can make their own adjustments without affecting mine.

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Stations have improved quite a bit since Apple first introduced them, but I still think there is a ton of room for them to improve. With these improvements, I could see myself replacing every playlist I have with a custom station instead.

Or Apple could make a curated red dirt station and I wouldn’t need any of this.

I went overboard and purchased four dot app domain names today. Workshelf.app and Stickerbook.app are live now, but you will have to wait for the other two.

The new Google Duplex feature that they showed off for their Assistant looks like it is from the future. I am holding off Siri judgement until WWDC, but Apple has a ton of ground to make up and I don’t have much confidence that they can actually pull it off.

Well it looks like the Bronco’s engine is shot. So it is either $3500 or a new car.

Ollie is having a little trouble saying his T’s and is using the F sound for them instead. So a “tree” is a “free” and a “train” is a “frain”.

I will leave it up to the reader to figure out what a “truck” is. Hint: the r is not emphasized nearly enough.

Every once and awhile I accidentally go a few weeks without listening to the Turnpike Troubadours and every time I come back to them I am reminded how incredible their music is. So so good.

This is becoming too common a sight.

Star Wars tickets acquired! 2D IMAX at 9:30a on the 25th.