AMP v1.0 Worklog - Page 45

LightningMac · 10-06-2006, 12:10 AM

I'm guessing I know what it is. a dynamic weather page, or a weather icon showing you the current weather based on your location. by clicking on the icon it will take you to a weather screen... I brought up this idea a few days ago along with a traffic page

aychamo · 10-12-2006, 10:51 PM

Hey guys,

I know I've been pretty quiet lately. I got burnt out on AMP for a while, and was working on a different side-project for a while. My side-project was a "home-theater" version of AMP. As you know, AMP was my first app in Cocoa/Obj-C, and I learned a lot while working on AMP. So I took what I learned and started my side-project from scratch.

I tried designing the interface to be usable with a six-button Apple remote. This led to quite a few challenging logic decisions, as I don't have one to play around with! But it made me keep the interface simple & clean.

Well, you may be able to call it AMP 2.0. It's so much more incredibly better than AMP 1.0 already, and it only has the extreme basics. Here are some improvements:

1. No more importers, it reads from your iTunes & iPhoto .xml file on startup, and startup only takes about 3-5 seconds (for my 7,000 item library on a PBG4). So if you add new media, all you have to do is restart the version of AMP, you don't have to run any importers, etc.
2. Resolution independent - it should work with essentially any resolution.
3. Modularized - no more monolithic chunks of code. If you are a developer, you will enjoy much more working on this app than the previous version of AMP.
4. You can select "All" artists, "All" albums, and see playlist items.
5. It's all controlled from like six buttons, so touch-screen buttons will be "extras", but all the essential controls *can* be through a hardware device (such as a PowerMate, NuL00q, etc).
6. Since it's modularized, the playing, etc, is delegated out to other objects, so, well, the way it works is just pretty damn awesome

7. It offers all the same browse modes as the iPod does, so you can browse music by Artist, Album, Songname, Genre, or Playlists, and you can browse your videos by Movies, TV Shows, and Music Videos.
8. In addition to the videos from your iTunes library, it also lets your browse through your own file structure in ~/Movies, so you can just dump whatever media in there, in whatever directory structure you want, and you can browse it like that.

The only *con* is that it has to keep iTunes open to get your album art. But that's a pretty small thing. This is because Apple changed the way you access album art in iTunes 7.0 (they keep it in some random external file now.)

I have just a few tiny things to workout with my little side-project before I can upload a demo (I have to finish some school work tonight, and I can work on it some tomorrow to finish up the little odd bits) to show you some of the things I've got going.

If you would like, I can upload the version of AMP I have now, without any of these changes, but with the Google Earth support, so you can have that until I can combine AMP1.0 with the new changes in AMP2.0.

Below is a screenshot showing some of the things I have in mind. Now, I know it's a bit ugly. I'm no designer! I got the design from a post I saw in iTheater's forums, where a guy mocked up a user-interface. The screenshot below is an actual implementation, it is *not* a mockup. A lot of the visual stuff you see is me trying to figure out what I can do with NSViews. For example, the clock uses NSBezierPath paths, and it let me learn a lot (and you should see how long it took me to remember how sin/cos & deg/rads work to calculate the time :-) ) So those aren't necessarily things I will keep, just me trying to learn.

http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/3982/picture2rc6.png

:-)
Aychamo

JakobMetzger · 10-12-2006, 10:56 PM

AWESOME!! just keep amazing me aychamo. Im loving all the new improvemtns and other program you are creating. Im also eager to see the AMP w/google earth version too!

MacMobile · 10-12-2006, 11:23 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by aychamo

Hey guys,...
No more importers, it reads from your iTunes & iPhoto .xml file on startup, and startup only takes about 3-5 seconds (for my 7,000 item library on a PBG4). So if you add new media, all you have to do is restart the version of AMP, you don't have to run any importers, etc.
....Aychamo

1. Great, that mean I will be able to make an AppleScript to rate my song in the car !
I have more than 17000 songs but they are not all that good and the only time I have to listen to music and rated them is in the car, Thank.

2. I would really appreciate if i could play a song and video in the same list without having to change program. AMP 1.0 was almost doing it.

3. While driving, I don't spend to much time looking at the screen, but when I do a quick look, I wish I could see a very large artwork of the album (even bigger than in front Row).

4. Maybe a virtual Keyboard to filter a list like in itunes.

One day I hope I could help with the coding.

Thank again Aychamo !!!

Good work.

Franco

LightningMac · 10-12-2006, 11:37 PM

Awesome news!

thanks so much for all of your hard work Aychamo!

Maybe you can make this a dual mode program, so you can switch it from car to home theater mode? All it would do is change the front skin (the one for the car would be touch screen and the one for home theater would just be used with the apple remote), but the functionality would be the same in both programs?

qkslvr · 10-13-2006, 12:50 AM

Completely unrelated, but The Owls Go is one of the most addictive songs ever. The first time I heard it, I was like "What the hell is this?" Then I couldn't get it out of my head. And of course I had to buy it on iTunes... Ha.

The program looks AMAZING. These new features should work perfect and I cannot wait to see both it and the GE versions!

Thanks for all the effort!

aychamo · 10-13-2006, 07:15 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by qkslvr

Completely unrelated, but The Owls Go is one of the most addictive songs ever. The first time I heard it, I was like "What the hell is this?" Then I couldn't get it out of my head. And of course I had to buy it on iTunes... Ha.

Haha

Isn't Architecture one of the oddest bands?? I had the exact same impression the first time I played that song and cd. Now I play the whole cd through. It's really enjoyable music!

qkslvr · 10-13-2006, 08:48 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by aychamo

Haha

Isn't Architecture one of the oddest bands?? I had the exact same impression the first time I played that song and cd. Now I play the whole cd through. It's really enjoyable music!

Odd is one way to describe them, yes...

aychamo · 10-15-2006, 12:14 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by qkslvr

Odd is one way to describe them, yes...

I saw "Man of the Year" tonight, and was surprised to hear their song "Souvenirs" from "Fingers Crossed" in the movie! I tried telling my friends, and they looked at me with blank stares (which, coincidentally, is the same reaction I get when I tell them I code this program!)

aychamo · 10-15-2006, 01:48 AM

Ok guys, I'm making a bit of progress in getting the two AMPs merged or whatever (it's so late, look at the time in this pic,, haha). It's starting to look "AMP"-like ,or should I say FrontRow like? Remember I said it will be resolution indepdenent, so after the movie I got the little sidebar and scroller working. I'm actually really happy with it, and it's great cause it will draw for whatever size, so it comes in really handy and will be useful in differnent parts of the app. Anyway!

http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/2415/dsdsru2.png

betito · 10-15-2006, 02:30 AM

Hi Guys,
First of all, I would like to say great work! I have been reading some of your posts, and I am happy to see people supporting the mac for onboard carputers.
I have began to toy around with Cocoa, so I am still on the rookie stage. However, I am hoping with a few months of practice (OK maybe more like a year) I can get close to par with some of you guys.
Anyway, I think in the mean time since I won't be able to contribute with any code

, I can share a couple of ideas I have as far as added functionality to AMP.
1. Internet Radio
2. Bluetooth Support
I work in the Telecom sector, so I get to play around some with voice/data capabilities of wireless networks. Yesterday I took my macbook for a ride around Dallas with a Samsung ZX20 3G phone hooked up to it via bluetooth. I was able to stream music from Pandora (pandora.com) @128kbps for almost the entire ride. Only a couple of hickups, but I expected it 'cause the 3G network here hasn't even been optimized. Since FM support for the mac is not that great (I tried the RadioShark) and FM stations are horrible anyways, I was thinking that streaming music could be a viable solution. Off course, 3G is only available only in major cities for now, but with time services such as this will be as common as voice coverage. BTW, I can also cruise the web with burts of close to 500kbps DL.
Also, speakerphone capabilities for bluetooth enabled phones. Since my mobile phone would be paired up with my mac while in the car, I was thinking that I should be able to place, accept, and route calls through the mac.
Anyway, these are just a couple of ideas that came to my mind.
BTW, can you guys point me to some docs, books, sites on Cocoa programming? Again, keep in mind again that I am newbie to this stuff, so be gentle

Thanks!

aychamo · 10-15-2006, 02:36 AM

Hi Betito

That's pretty cool you could stream music from Pandora over your phone! That's a pretty ideal situation! Constant really nice music coming in that is all interesting and to your tastes! I'm not sure how much of Mac-integration you are looking to do in your car, but since you posted in AMP's thread, you could add the Pandora site as a bookmark in AMP's browser and go to it there. Pandora doesn't really have any interface I can interact with programatically, so it's just limited to really loading it in a browser

As far as learning Cocoa. Honestly, the best thing is to Google "cocoa tutorirals." It worked for me. Also, you can check out http://www.cocoadevcentral.com and http://www.cocoadev.com and of course, the best and most useful site, http://developer.apple.com

a

LightningMac · 10-15-2006, 02:47 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by aychamo

Ok guys, I'm making a bit of progress in getting the two AMPs merged or whatever (it's so late, look at the time in this pic,, haha). It's starting to look "AMP"-like ,or should I say FrontRow like? Remember I said it will be resolution indepdenent, so after the movie I got the little sidebar and scroller working. I'm actually really happy with it, and it's great cause it will draw for whatever size, so it comes in really handy and will be useful in differnent parts of the app. Anyway!

http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/2415/dsdsru2.png

Looks awesome, for some reason, it looks even better (sharper/clearer) to me! Great work and it looks like you're moving at a great pace!

thanks again for all the hard work and a great program!

JakobMetzger · 10-15-2006, 08:58 PM

ya, about pandora...
i tried incorporating it into my xbox through XBMC(xbox media center) and after a little digging and searching i found that its impossible to stream pandora through anythign other than pandora.com. It pretty much just a bunch of liscensing and other mumbo jumbo that makes it illegal to port it. The best I can think of is open pandora.com before you open AMP and have it stream from there, I know there is a widget in OS X that lets you do that but im not 100% sure how it works, ive never looked at it.

bcohen5055 · 10-17-2006, 07:43 PM

If you don't need to use pandora you can use the itunes internet radio sites. i know the presets suck but you can add your own. This actually sounds like a good intro into cocoa programming for you. if you can get your app to access an internet feed and interprit that data (dont know how internet radio is really streamed) you'll be set. There may even be a way to do it through quicktime in wich case its probably a snap.

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