Apple Streaming: Too little too late?

I'm in the UK, and if there is a family plan it has passed me by and I am wasting money with the two accounts I have for the Mrs and my son!  Edit - I've just realised that you are referring to the 50% off for each additional subscription, the Apple offer is a lot more generous and a 'true' family subscription.

Understood, I guess they had to make it really competitive seeing as they don't have a free tier. 

Now if they did something like that with lossless they may be on to something

I would suggest that the vast majority of consumers simply aren't bothered whether spotify or Apple Music etc is lossless or not.  

They've probably patented it too, Spotify will owe them a fortune for copying them

Dear Wat,

You do have a strange view of computing!

I'd hate to try to do photographic work with 24Mpix images on that Amiga as it would take for ever, and it won't even be able to display the colour properly (I use a calibrated 10 bit workflow).

Apple are also the ones who have frequently been very "economical with the truth", implied things that are untrue and, at numerous times, spread disinformation about competitors products.  Their current so called 'open system' can only run on propriety hardware and contains propriety code to ensure this - not very open then!  It's Apple's business practices that tend to be sailing particularly close to the wind more than most others in their respective fields.  This makes it difficult to trust their claims, but the Apple 'ecosystem' locks people into their proprietary systems anyway, so they don't care.

On the other hand they have made numerous excellent product innovations, produced a large number of excellent products and those products do work together well and easily, even if this does come at prices carrying a considerable premium.

...which is precisely why Apple haven't bothered to tell us. If they did, most people wouldn't understand. Of those that did, most wouldn't care. That just leaves us!

Well, it launches June 30 with the first  three months free. What's not to like? 

Its lossy and its Apple?

FAR from your only asset

However, on topic, I wouldn't trust Apple to produce a system that appears to be open to all, without the concern that later (once they feel they've got sufficient of the market 'locked in' to their service) they may introducing some 'premium' services (lossless?, other unspecified 'higher quality'?, synchronous multi-room streaming?, etc., etc.) that are only available to people using Apple hardware, or possibly even downgrading the service for other users.

Their 'open' operating system (OSX) is only 'open' if you run it on Apple hardware and don't try to completely recompile it or modify some bits of it, or reverse engineer those bits - so not really open at all.  The claim to openness, only arises because it's derived from FreeBSD and the MACH microkernel (which, themselves, really are open), therefore they claim that OSX is open, even though

1  some of the core bits of it are proprietary and are absolutely essential to it's operation

2  It can only run on their hardware

I fear they may take the same sort of approach to a streaming service.

It's not too little but it is much too late.

See that ship on the horizon? That's called Spotify and it sailed a long time ago with everyone under 30 inside. 

In truth, Apple have very rarely been first to market with a concept (arguably iPad, but little else), but they've been brilliant at doing things better, moving the game on a whole generation in a single product.  Their genius has been fast following with brilliant execution - and whatever you think of the iWatch (and I'm not personally interested in one) it's a pretty typical Apple launch and will do well. But this streaming thing won't - too dull, too samey and just waaaaaaaay too late. 

And the magic number is 256

@wat Ha ha! They defo should've gone with 237. Or 257, just to be awkward. Multiples of 16 are so old hat.

I find 320 just about ok for trying new music before buying, but 256 is quite bad. In these days of cheap storage and high bandwidth I find it strange they can't do better. Isn't Spotify the same price per month for 320? Not sure. 

Still, you have to admire Apple, who have the potential to reduce entire industries to iPhone features.

Ah, the Apple replacement for an NDS and a Hugo... the iPhone7!

I find 256 AAC to sound about the same as 320 mp3.  AAC, to me, does sound a bit 'better' than the same bitrate mp3.

I've not done the comparison recently, but it seems many agree with you. 320 MP3 does not seem (in others' opinion) to sound any better than 256 AAC (perhaps worse). Still, it is a disappointment to me that Apple are not streaming at least CD quality. Having said that, I don't really hear that much difference (advancing age, system not good enough, whatever etc), the desire for higher quality is probably more psychological for me. We will sign up for the free trial period at least, and see what we think.

Never too late. Competition is always good thing for consumers.

Can't agree.  CD sounds, to my ears, much better than 320mp3 or 256aac.

320mp3 and 256aac do sound much the same but I think you would be pushed to tell 320mp3 and 256mp3 apart as well.  To me there is an ugliness to the sound of all off the compressed formats.

There is a simple test, keep turning the volume up until it becomes unbearable!  Mind you this does not take into account recording/mastering quality.

Sadly so.

Until some clever bugger comes up with a brand that makes capital from the fact that the quality is better than elsewhere.  If you can sell Beats headphone by the thousand to kids as 'quality' headphones it should be possible to sell quality music to go with them with the right brand and image

I wonder if Naim will add Apple music to their streamers in the same fashion as Spotify Connect since SQ will be about the same?

Oh God, not another service to add to Naim's streamers, I hope you realise what a can of worms you are opening asking that question?  It was bad enough with Quobuz and Tidal without adding in another lossy one 

  I know sore subject...