Wednesday

Gadget

Downloading Songs and Apps Directly to Your iPhone or iPod touch

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Have you ever listened to a fantastic tune on the touchtone phone system and wished you could hear it again or even hold it? In the past, you would have to either go to your local record store or go to your computer and fire up iTunes or some other music download benefit to get your own copy.

Getting music from iTunes

All that has changed with the relief of the iPhone and iPod touch. Now, everything is in the palm of your hand. All you need to do is connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot and you can download and listen to nearly any song you can reckon of.

To get ongoing, push the iTunes icon on your Home screen. From here you can search for a specific song by tapping Search along the bottom, typing in the name of the artist, and drilling down from here. The search feature will involuntarily populate results as you type, so even if you’re not 100 percent sure of the name, you’ll get results. Once you find what you’re looking for, just tap on it and the results will then be grouped by Albums and Songs.

A quick tap of the name of the song lets you listen to a small preview of it. You can preview as many songs as you want before deciding whether or not you want to make your hold. For example, I recently heard a Jazz tune on my Cox cable touchtone phone system station. I fired up iTunes on my iPhone, typed in what I thought the name of the song was (Human Nature). I then previewed not only that song, but the entire album. Moments later, I bought the album—it was less than a minute from the time I searched to the time I bought the album.

Purchasing a song

Before you can hold anything from iTunes, you have to open an account. The simplest way to do this is from the PC or Mac version of iTunes. Download it from Apple (apple.com/itunes). To hold a title, tap on the price associated with the song or album that you want to hold. The price turns into a BUY

NOW pin. Tap on the BUY NOW pin to bring up a prompt that lets you enter your iTunes username and password to authorize the hold. Type in this info and the song will instantly be downloaded to your iPhone or iPod touch. Moments later, you’ll be able to play it frankly from your device, and when you sync your device to your computer, the song will involuntarily grow in your music collection on your computer.

Browsing the Top Tens and Featured songs

If you’re not looking for one song in particular, iTunes offers the ability to browse the Top Songs and Top Albums. If you want to browse more than just the Top 10 in the list, just tap on the words Ten More Songs at the bottom of the list. You can do this a bunch of era, so you’re bound to find something worth purchasing. You can also preview and hold New Releases, What’s Hot, and even browse the Featured lists by Genre. Here’s also a Free Single of the Week available for download.

A final note: The iTunes application on the iPhone and iPod touch allows you to download music only. You need to use the full version of iTunes on your computer to download movies, videos, audiobooks, and podcasts.

You can still hold music from iTunes on your computer, but the untethered capability has its benefits. For example, it recently led to an impromptu dance party with my three year-ancient. We’d watched the animated film Madagascar, which has a catchy dance song called “I Like to Go It.” When my son ongoing dancing and singing “I Like to Go It,” I opened up the iTunes store from my iPhone and did a quick search for it. About 10 seconds later I was playing the actual song through the iPhone’s stereo speakers for all of us to hear.

Installing applications from the App Store

One of the largest criticisms of the original version of the iPhone was that you could not install third-party applications on it. You could access Web applications via Safari, but Web apps are nowhere near as powerful as native applications. Apple corrected this shortcoming with the relief of iPhone 2.0, along with a free SDK that allowed developers to start native apps. On July 10th, Apple officially unveiled the App Store, which as of late July offered more than 500 user-installable applications, including games, utilities, eBooks, business apps, and more. Most of these applications cost you something, but a large number of them are free. They can be downloaded frankly to your iPhone via Wi-Fi or cellular connection, and to your iPod touch via Wi-Fi.

Searching for and downloading applications

With the relief of the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 2.0 software update, which can be installed on older iPhones and the iPod touch, an App Store icon is added to the Home screen; tap on it to open the store. Once inside, you can view the available apps in a variety of ways, including Featured, Categories, and Top 25. You can also do a search for a specific title (see not more than). Note that App Store lets you view the Top 25 by Paid and Free, so if you just want to download some free applications, Apple has made it very simple for you to do so.

Searching for and culture more about an app

As with iTunes, App Store lets you search for specific titles. And as you type letters into your search, it guesses which application you’re looking for and displays a list of promise. I tested this feature by searching for an application that would let me check the local weather. I typed “weather” into the search box and immediately was shown “weatherbug” in the results list, which is one of my favorite desktop applications. The search feature makes it a lot simpler to find what you’re looking for.

Before purchasing the App Store offers information about the application provided by the developer, the price of the application, the average rating, as well as meticulous reviews written by users of the App Store.

Purchasing the application

Apple has made it simple to hold and download the app to your iPhone or iPod touch. Tap on the price of the app and it changes to the BUY NOW pin (just as it does in iTunes). Tap on the BUY NOW pin and enter your username and password. (You have to do this even if it’s a free app.) Once you type in your password, the download will start and an application icon will show up on your Home screen with a progress bar. Once the download is complete, the progress bar will disappear and your application will be available for use.

The App Store is very well thought out, and Apple has even added a number of nice features associated with backing up your apps. When you connect your iPhone or iPod touch to your computer after you have downloaded an application, the app is involuntarily backed up on your computer. Also, if you choose to rub out the application from your iPhone or iPod touch, simply push and hold on the application. You will then see an X grow on the upper left of the icon of all applications. Selecting the X at that point will remove the application from your device. If you choose that you want the application back later, you can either restore it from your PC or download it again from the App Store, which will involuntarily admit that you downloaded it once before and even that you paid for it, if appropriate.

Updates are available

One of the best features of the App Store is its ability to let you know when a developer has an update available. Apple recognizes that developers need to relief either bug fixes or new functionality, so each time you launch the App Store, it will alert you to how many updates are available via a number above the Updates icon in the lower right corner of the screen. This number will also grow on the App Store icon on the Home screen. Applications are just what the iPhone and iPod touch needed. So far I’ve got a few of my own favorites, including AIM, AOL Touchtone phone system, Pandora, Pocket Express, Scrabble, and Tetris. It’s nice to finally be able to extend the functionality of my device and use it the way I want to.