MacRumors

Apple Music and Tidal are well known for their exclusive releases and both streaming services have been around since 2015. In that time, Apple Music has become the most popular streaming service in the US, but Tidal has a dedicated subscriber base for a variety of reasons.

Dubbed as the artists' music platform, Tidal is owned by Jay-Z and a variety of other successful music artists, and the company makes a point of paying artists more per stream than ‌Apple Music‌. But is it a better service for the average listener? Read on to learn what both have to offer.

Subscriptions and Plans

An individual Apple Music subscription costs $9.99 per month in the United States, with slight price variations in other countries and territories. Membership means you can stream Apple's music catalog, download music and videos for offline listening, and get exclusive access to new releases and exclusives, as well as a back catalog of shows broadcast on Apple's Beats 1 radio station.

Tidal also offers a $9.99 per month individual subscription, although again prices may vary in other regions. For the audiophiles out there, Tidal also offers a $19.99 per month individual subscription with lossless "High Fidelity" sound quality and high definition videos.

An ‌Apple Music‌ student subscription costs $4.99 and requires you to sign up using your educational institution credentials. Tidal offers two student plans: $4.99 for the Premium service and $9.99 for the HiFi service. Note that students need to re-verify their eligibility every 12 months for both services.

‌Apple Music‌'s family plan costs $14.99 a month and allows up to six people to access the services using a personal account for each family member. Members can also share iTunes purchases amongst each other in addition to catalog content, but using the same credit card is required to verify the family status. Tidal's Family plans are $14.99 for the Premium service and $29.99 for the HiFi service. In a unique offering, Tidal also offers special individual subscription rates for active military personnel, with the Premium and HiFi plans priced at $5.99 and $11.99, respectively.

Both ‌Apple Music‌ and Tidal memberships automatically renew each month, but you can cancel renewal at any time and your subscription will last until the end of your current billing cycle.

Free Trials

‌Apple Music‌ offers a free three-month trial of its paid service, which converts to a paid membership unless the user cancels before the trial period is over.

Tidal currently offers a shorter 30-day free trial, which also becomes a paid membership if not canceled before the trial period.

Libraries and Offline Listening

All paid ‌Apple Music‌ and Tidal plans give you access to a huge catalog of songs when you sign up. ‌Apple Music‌ boasts 50 million songs in its catalog, while Tidal subscribers get the pick of over 57 million songs, so regardless of which one has the most content, both allow you to build up a large collection of music.

In addition, Tidal also boasts over 200,000 high quality music videos, which is a more extensive catalogue than any other rival streaming service, perhaps with the exception of YouTube Music Premium, so this may appeal to you if you like to consume your music with a visual element.

‌Apple Music‌ and Tidal have battled for exclusive artist rights in recent times, so if it's important to you, ‌Apple Music‌ is currently first to get albums from Drake, Taylor Swift, and Pharrell Williams, while Tidal gets first dibs when it comes to Jay-Z, Beyonce, Kanye West, and Rihanna.

‌Apple Music‌ users can download a maximum of 100,000 songs to their library, and thanks to Apple's iCloud Music Library feature these can be synced across devices signed in to the same Apple ID. With Tidal, you can download as many songs, albums, and playlists as you want for offline listening, and these will be synced to any device using the same account, but you can only use five devices in offline mode simultaneously.

Streaming quality

Starting in June 2021, ‌‌Apple Music‌‌ will support Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio, two features that are being provided to ‌‌Apple Music‌‌ subscribers at no additional cost. Both of these features will significantly improve the ‌‌Apple Music‌‌ listening experience.

Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos will provide an immersive, multi-dimensional audio experience that allows artists to mix music in a way that makes it sound like the notes are coming from all around you. Apple has had a Spatial Audio feature available for television content, and now it is expanding to ‌‌Apple Music‌‌ audio content.

Apple is upgrading its entire music catalog to Lossless Audio with the ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) that preserves the details in the original audio file. ‌‌Apple Music‌‌ subscribers will be able to hear songs exactly as the artists recorded them in the studio.

When Lossless Audio launches, 20 million songs will support the codec, with all 75 million songs available in Lossless Audio by the end of 2021.

• Apple Music Lossless: What Devices are Supported?

The standard Lossless tier will start at CD quality, which is 16-bit at 44.1 kHz, and it goes up to 24 bit at 48 kHz. There's also a Hi-Res Lossless tier available at 24 bit 192 kHz, but Hi-Res Lossless requires an external digital-to-analog converter (DAC).

If you're not interested in taking advantage of lossless audio, ‌Apple Music‌ streams 256kbps AAC files across the board.

Historically, Tidal has catered to the audiophile more than any other music service. Tidal subscribers on both Premium and HiFi plans can choose between Normal and High quality streams.

In addition, Tidal has partnered with MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) to deliver guaranteed master-quality recordings directly from the master source, which is billed as "an audio experience that the artist intended." The rationale behind this is that while HiFi audio is a superior sound, it's still limited to 44.1 kHz / 16 bit resolution, whereas MQA audio is the highest possible resolution (typically 96 kHz / 24 bit). These MQA recordings come included with the highest tier $19.99 HiFi plan mentioned above.

Apart from audiophiles, most listeners probably won't notice much difference between the highest-quality streams of the same song, but Tidal's option to select the bitrate can come in handy if you're worried about using up your cellular data.

Mobile, Desktop, and Web Apps

The ‌Apple Music‌ catalog is accessed from within the Music app, which has a clean white interface and comes pre-installed on every iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, and also is available as a separate downloadable app on Android devices. The mobile app is organized into tabs to access your music library, browse the ‌Apple Music‌ catalog, and listen to radio stations, while a "For You" tab lets you check out suggestions based on your listening preferences.

The Tidal app, available on both iOS and Android, has a slick black interface, but a more minimalist feel, with tabs for checking out new releases and recommendations, browsing Tidal music, searching the catalog, and accessing your music collection.

The Tidal app also includes an offline mode so that only downloaded content appears in the app, as well as helpful overlay tips for using the app the first time you launch it. By contrast, Apple's Music app isn't as easy to get familiar with, with some options hidden away in 3D Touch menus and off-screen panels that you have to swipe up or long press to access.

Both apps include fullscreen media players that showcase album art as you listen. These screens also put add-to-playlist, sharing, song queuing, create station, and audio device options at your fingertips.

‌Apple Music‌ in iTunes (available for PC and Mac) is largely based on the same format as the mobile app, but it's not quite as pretty. It's also a little less navigable, but it does have one trick up its sleeve: Smart playlists. These can be automatically generated by iTunes based on genre, date added, loved/disliked, and so on, meaning you don't have to manually build playlists yourself if you don't want to.

Tidal also offers apps for Mac and PC. They recreate the mobile interface for desktop well, and are slimmer and easier to navigate than iTunes, which feels bloated in comparison. In addition, Tidal offers a handy web player for accessing the service from any web browser, which is convenient if you want to access the service on a computer that doesn't have the Tidal app installed (your office PC, for example). ‌Apple Music‌ still lacks an equivalent, but subscribers can use a free third-party web player called Musish, although it's currently in development and still missing a few features.

Discovery Features

When you sign up for ‌Apple Music‌, Apple asks you to select some of your favorite artists so that the service can get a sense of your tastes. Using this information, ‌Apple Music‌ populates its regularly updated For You section with new releases, daily mixes and playlists to appeal to your preferences. Playlists can take on a style (pop or jazz, for example), a particular artist, or even a particular activity like studying.

Tidal doesn't have an equivalent system to learn your music tastes immediately, although most users choose the service because it tilts towards hip hop and its sub-genres, so this isn't usually a big issue. Besides, it doesn't take long for the service to learn your preferences once you've started to add to your collection. You can also block tracks and artists from mixes and radio stations and Tidal does a good job of learning from these interactions.

In terms of Tidal music discovery, the app's Home tab is where it's at. The Home screen showcases new arrivals in a top carousel, with suggested new tracks and albums for you below, along with popular and featured playlists/albums, top charts, video playlists, podcasts, music shows, and concerts. Home also features TIDAL Rising, dedicated to lesser-known artists from around the globe who have passionate fan bases and want to reach a wider audience with their music.

‌Apple Music‌'s non-personalized content lives in a separate Browse tab showcasing trending artists and playlists, top charts, and music videos. Browse is also home to a TV and films section that features Apple-made programming like Carpool Karaoke and artist documentaries.

‌Apple Music‌'s Radio tab features curated music stations tuned to your listening habits as well as Apple's Beats 1 radio station. Beats 1 offers live radio 24 hours a day, and also plays a big part in the platform's music discovery. The Radio tab also has an archive of the most popular Beats 1 radio shows and playlists from years past. Tidal doesn't have any radio programming, but it makes up for this lack with its music-focused podcast library and original music documentaries.

Music Sharing

‌Apple Music‌ allows you to follow friends who are also subscribers and share playlists with them that you've personally created. ‌Apple Music‌'s For You tab will also show you what your friends are listening to if you've connected to them.

Tidal doesn't have native equivalent social features, but the service does allow you to connect to Facebook and so you can see tracks from friends who subscribe to Tidal. You can also share song links via text or over social media and link to last.fm to log your listening habits.

Speakers and Voice Assistants

As an ‌Apple Music‌ subscriber, you can use Siri as a personal DJ to control song playback, queue up songs, find song facts, add songs to your library, play your favorite playlists, or even play something new. This is a big advantage ‌Apple Music‌ has over Tidal, which requires a more complicated solution through ‌Siri‌ Shortcuts and lacks many equivalent features.

Apple's HomePod speaker is designed to be used in conjunction with ‌Apple Music‌. In fact, one of the main uses for ‌Siri‌ on ‌HomePod‌ is to control your ‌Apple Music‌ collection. There are ‌Siri‌ voice commands for accessing content like playlists, genres, moods, liking or disliking songs, playing more music based on something you've heard, starting a new radio station, and much more.

None of these functions will work with a Tidal subscription. You can stream audio to ‌HomePod‌ from a device running the Tidal app, but that's it. On the other hand, Tidal supports Chromecast, Android TV, Sonos speakers, and Squeezebox, while ‌Apple Music‌ only works natively on ‌HomePod‌ and Amazon Echo devices.

Listening in the Car

Apple's CarPlay system supports Tidal and, of course, ‌Apple Music‌. If a car doesn't have ‌CarPlay‌, most newer models have their own entertainment systems, which often make it easy to connect your chosen streaming service. Usually you can do so either direct from a built-in app, over Bluetooth, or via a cable connection. You can also listen to ‌Apple Music‌ and Tidal through your vehicle with Android Auto.

Apple Music highlights

• Seamless integration with Apple's eco-system
• Beats live radio and archive
• Human curated recommendations
• Social features
• Support for uploading/matching your own music files
• Works natively with ‌HomePod‌

Tidal highlights

• Emerging artist category
• Optional lossless plan
• Extensive video content
• Official web player
• Larger music catalog

Summing Up

Tidal holds a unique place in the streaming market, thanks to its HiFi streaming plans and its efforts to showcase emerging artists. Tidal's alignment with the hip hop scene is also a big draw, with curated playlists from the likes of Jay Z and Beyoncé. In addition, the service offers one of the largest collections of music videos, concert videos, and a good selection of original music-related programming.

On the other hand, Apple's service tends to be quicker off the mark with its music suggestions, while its content is more balanced in terms of appealing to various music tastes. ‌Apple Music‌ is also probably a better choice if you're invested in the Apple ecosystem. At the end of the day, both Apple Music and Tidal are solid streaming services, and which one you decide on will likely come down to your musical tastes.

Last month, the editor-in-chief of MacRumors sister site TouchArcade, Eli Hodapp, announced that he planned to step down from overseeing the iOS gaming site to focus on a new venture. This week, Hodapp has provided more detail about his move to GameClub, a startup that plans to preserve premium mobile games in the wake of Apple's ongoing updates to the iPhone and iPad, which leave many classic games unplayable on modern devices.

As Hodapp explained on TouchArcade, Apple's frequent updates to the ‌iPhone‌ have caused ongoing problems for iOS developers on older App Store games. The first of these major issues hit during the release of the ‌iPhone‌ 4 in 2010 and its introduction of an increased resolution, which meant all developers needed to update their games with higher resolution textures.

While some developers decided to do this, others couldn't justify spending time and money to modernize their games. Of course, this issue grew exponentially worse with the introduction of iOS 11 in 2017, bringing with it the removal of all 32-bit apps from the iOS ‌App Store‌. TouchArcade kept an ongoing list of every 32-bit app that was no longer supported with iOS 11, including the TouchArcade app itself.

Throughout this process, I started to realize that, entirely by accident, TouchArcade had become this weird museum of the glory days of iOS gaming. Loads of games that passionate developers were excited to release to a hungry customer base now only exist in TouchArcade reviews, or TA Plays videos.

We’ve grumped about this a bunch, in multiple editorials, too many episodes of the podcast to count, a near infinite number of Tweets, and basically every other place you can air a grievance online. These complaints were often framed around, “I wish someone would do something," or “Why isn’t anyone doing anything," as our digital history vanished like a photo of the McFlys.

Now, Hodapp is leaving TouchArcade to address this issue with GameClub, a developer with the intent to bring the best of these forgotten and unplayable iOS games back to life. To achieve this, GameClub will handle all of the updates, ongoing maintenance, and support for each game, in essence becoming the new developer of the game.

These refurbished games will then be added into the GameClub library of games accessible by players. At this time, GameClub isn't disclosing the payment model that will be available to customers, but the company has stated that more news about the pricing structure will come later. The first announced title is Rocketcat Games' Hook Champ, which released in 2009.

Those interested can head to GameClub's website to sign up for early access to the beta program. Invites will start to go out on Monday, March 11. Hodapp also provided more details about vanishing ‌App Store‌ games in a piece shared on gamesindustry.biz.

Hunter Douglas has finally brought Apple HomeKit support to its PowerView Motorization system, which is designed to control Hunter Douglas motorized window shades.

The PowerView Motorization Hub lets users control, time, and set their window shades to raise, lower, and tilt on an automatic schedule. Originally released in 2017, the system only supported Amazon and Google services out of the box, but the company said at the time that support for ‌HomeKit‌ would come later the same year. However it appears to have only just surfaced.

After applying the update, users with the Powerview Hub Gen 2 should be able to enjoy ‌HomeKit‌ integration and control their window shades and blinds via Siri voice commands. If the support works as it was originally promised, users should also be able to incorporate shade settings into ‌HomeKit‌ scenes for full-home automation.

(Thanks, Jeff!)

Apple supplier Dialog Semiconductor on Wednesday reported a slight rise in fourth-quarter operating profit, but warned investors that its revenue in 2019 would decline as it finalizes a deal with Apple to license its iPhone power management technology.

According to Reuters, shares in Dialog rose by nearly 4 percent after its forecast of a single-digit percentage revenue drop this year came in above analysts' predictions of a 9 percent fall.

Last October, Apple agreed to a business arrangement with the German chipmaker to license its ‌iPhone‌ power management technology and transfer technical assets, in a deal worth $600 million.

As part of the agreement, Apple acquired some of the Anglo-German chipmaker's assets and 300 of its R&D staff, or around 16 percent of Dialog's workforce. The deal represents a huge investment for Apple, which will take over Dialog facilities in Italy, Germany, and the U.K., expanding its chip research and development significantly across Europe.

Dialog's shares rose as much as 34 percent on news of the deal, their highest since 2002. The firm's partnership with Apple makes up around 75 percent of its revenue.

The agreement followed a report earlier the same month claiming Apple would design its own power management chips as early as 2018, which came as a serious blow for Dialog, the exclusive designer of the current main power management chip for ‌iPhone‌, iPad, and Apple Watch models.

LG today announced that its new smart TVs will receive a software update in mid 2019 with support for AirPlay 2 and HomeKit.

LG first revealed plans to add ‌AirPlay‌ 2 and ‌HomeKit‌ to its latest smart TVs at CES in January. At the time, it said the features would arrive in 2019, and today's announcement narrows down the timeframe to the middle of the year.

New LG TVs will receive an upgrade mid-year to support Apple AirPlay 2 and Apple HomeKit for easy streaming of video and audio content and connectivity to Apple's smart home products. 2019 LG TV owners can also expect to receive a firmware update that will add Amazon Alexa support to complement Google Assistant which is included out of the box…

AirPlay 2 support will allow users to stream videos, music, photos, and more directly from an iPhone, iPad, and Mac to eligible LG smart TVs, complete with lock screen controls. ‌HomeKit‌ support will enable users to easily control the TVs using Siri voice commands or the Home app on ‌iPhone‌, ‌iPad‌, and Mac.

‌AirPlay‌ 2-enabled TVs from LG will include its 2019 OLED, NanoCell SM9X, LG NanoCell SM8X, and UHD UM7X models, according to Apple's list.

Samsung, Sony, and Vizio also plan to release ‌AirPlay‌ 2-enabled smart TVs this year. Last month, Samsung's new 2019 lineup of QLED 4K and 8K TVs with AirPlay 2 support became available to pre-order in the United States. MacRumors also reported that Roku is in talks with Apple about AirPlay 2 integration.

Need help deciding whether Apple or Google has the right music streaming service for you? Then keep reading. Apple Music launched in 2015 and was a relative latecomer to the streaming services market, but Apple's continual development of the platform has made it into one of the most popular choices for enjoying digital music. Google's music strategy on the other hand has been confusing in recent years. The company's original service, Google Play Music, has been rolled into YouTube Music, so that's what we'll look at here.

Google Music

Google launched its original Play Music streaming service in 2011. Like Apple Music, Play Music gave you access to a vast music library, music recommendations, radio stations, and offline listening, all for a monthly fee. In a unique contribution to the streaming services field, Google Play Music also let all Google account holders (i.e. not just subscribers) upload up to 50,000 tracks from their existing music library to the cloud, for storage and online streaming.

In May 2017, Google launched an on-demand ad-supported music streaming service called YouTube Music, shortly followed by YouTube Music Premium – a revamped version of its ad-free YouTube Red subscription service with a renewed focus on original programming. The rebranded service includes personalized playlists, intelligent search, support for background playback on mobile and music downloads for offline listening. It also offers access to remixes, covers and live versions that aren't available on other platforms. YouTube Music has replaced Google Play Music, and existing subscribers have had their playlists, collections, and preferences migrated automatically.

Subscriptions and Plans

An individual Apple Music subscription costs $9.99 per month in the United States, with slight price variations in other countries and territories. Membership means you can stream Apple's music catalog, download music and videos for offline listening, and get exclusive access to new releases and exclusives, as well as a back catalog of shows broadcast on Apple's Beats 1 radio station.

A standard YouTube Music subscription also costs $9.99 per month. That gets you access to Google's music catalog, music recommendations, radio stations, offline listening, and access to YouTube Music Premium, which has the same features as YouTube Premium such as background listening and video downloads, but with those features locked to the YouTube Music service only. An Apple Music student subscription costs $4.99 and requires you to sign up using your educational institution credentials. YouTube Music doesn't appear to offer an equivalent plan, although eligible students can subscribe to YouTube Music Premium for $4.99 a month.

‌Apple Music‌'s family plan costs $14.99 a month and allows up to six people to access the services using a personal account for each family member. Members can also share iTunes purchases with each other in addition to catalog content, but all family members must use the same credit card for App Store/iTunes purchases. Google also offers a $14.99 a month YouTube Music Family Plan. When you subscribe to the family plan, you and up to 5 family members can stream music on up to 10 devices each and share eligible purchased items on YouTube using Family Library. (Each family member still has separate Google Accounts, playlists, libraries, and offline content.)

Both ‌Apple Music‌ and YouTube Music memberships automatically renew each month, but you can cancel renewal at any time and your subscription will run out at the end of your current billing cycle.

Free Trials

‌Apple Music‌ offers a free three-month trial of its paid service, which converts to a paid membership unless the user cancels before the trial period is over.

Google offers all users a free three-month trial of YouTube Music, which is probably the best way to get a taster of what Google's music streaming service offers.

Libraries and Offline Listening

All paid ‌Apple Music‌ and YouTube Music plans give you access to a huge catalog of songs songs when you sign up. ‌Apple Music‌ boasts 50 million songs in its catalog, while YouTube Music subscribers get the pick of 40 million songs, so regardless of which one has the most content, both allow you to build up a large collection of music.

‌Apple Music‌ users can download a maximum of 100,000 songs to their library, and thanks to Apple's iCloud Music Library feature these can be synced across devices signed in to the same Apple ID. YouTube Music users can download as many songs, albums, and playlists as they want for offline listening (Google doesn't specify a maximum number).

Streaming quality

Starting in June 2021, ‌‌Apple Music‌‌ will support Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio, two features that are being provided to ‌‌Apple Music‌‌ subscribers at no additional cost. Both of these features will significantly improve the ‌‌Apple Music‌‌ listening experience.

Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos will provide an immersive, multi-dimensional audio experience that allows artists to mix music in a way that makes it sound like the notes are coming from all around you. Apple has had a Spatial Audio feature available for television content, and now it is expanding to ‌‌Apple Music‌‌ audio content.

Apple is upgrading its entire music catalog to Lossless Audio with the ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) that preserves the details in the original audio file. ‌‌Apple Music‌‌ subscribers will be able to hear songs exactly as the artists recorded them in the studio.

When Lossless Audio launches, 20 million songs will support the codec, with all 75 million songs available in Lossless Audio by the end of 2021.

• Apple Music Lossless: What Devices are Supported?

The standard Lossless tier will start at CD quality, which is 16-bit at 44.1 kHz, and it goes up to 24 bit at 48 kHz. There's also a Hi-Res Lossless tier available at 24 bit 192 kHz, but Hi-Res Lossless requires an external digital-to-analog converter (DAC).

If you don't opt to use Apple's lossless tiers, ‌Apple Music‌ streams 256kbps AAC files across the board, while Google Play Music users can select the streaming bitrate from low (198 kbps), normal (192 kbps), and high (320 kbps AAC) quality. YouTube Music currently appears to have a maximum bitrate of 128 kbps, but that's likely to improve in time.

Apart from audiophiles, most listeners probably won't notice much difference between the highest quality streams of the same song, but YouTube Music's option to select the bitrate can come in handy if you're worried about using up your cellular data.

Mobile, Desktop, and Web Apps

The ‌Apple Music‌ catalog is accessed from within the Music app, which has a clean white interface and comes pre-installed on every iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, and also is available as a separate downloadable app on Android devices. The mobile app is organized into tabs to access your music library, browse the ‌Apple Music‌ catalog, and listen to radio stations, while a "For You" tab lets you check out recommendations based on your listening preferences.

The YouTube Music app, available on both iOS and Android, has a similar clean interface, but a more minimalist feel to it, with tabs for accessing the YouTube Music catalog, your own music library, recently played content, and recommended listening.

Both apps are easy to navigate and include fullscreen media players that showcase album art as you listen. These screens also put add-to-playlist, sharing, song queuing, and audio device options at your fingertips. Users familiar with Gmail and other apps by Google should feel right at home in the YouTube Music app, although Apple's Music app has the advantage of Force Touch support on compatible devices, which can be used to quickly access additional menus.

Both apps allow you to add any existing music you own to your library, but offer different routes to achieving this. YouTube Music lets you sync up to 50,000 tracks from your computer using an upload client app or the web player, after which they become available for streaming from any device signed into your Google account. ‌Apple Music‌ uses ‌iCloud‌ Music Library to match any songs you have in iTunes to tracks in the ‌Apple Music‌ catalog, which are then made available on your other devices.

‌Apple Music‌ in iTunes (available for PC and Mac) is largely based on the same format as the mobile app, but it's not quite as pretty. It's also a little less navigable, but it does have one trick up its sleeve: Smart Playlists. These can be automatically generated by iTunes based on genre, date added, loved/disliked, and so on, meaning you don't have to manually build playlists yourself if you don't want to. Apple doesn't offer a native player for web browsers, though third-party workaround service Musish lets you listen to Apple Music on the web.

YouTube Music can be played through browsers on your Mac or PC.

Discovery Features

When you sign up for Apple Music, Apple asks you to select some of your favorite artists so that the service can get a sense of your tastes. Using this information, ‌Apple Music‌ populates its regularly updated "For You" section with new releases, daily mixes and playlists to appeal to your preferences. Playlists can take on a style (pop or jazz, for example), a particular artist, or even a particular activity like studying.

Discovering new music isn't as straightforward in YouTube Music, especially when you first sign up. However, the Home tab soon starts to populate with personal album and playlist recommendations after you've spent some time liking/disliking songs in the media player, and if you sync existing music to your library, Google will use this to get a better idea of your tastes.

While YouTube Music's Home tab also features new releases and "Made for everyone" playlists categorized into genres and moods/activities, ‌Apple Music‌'s non-personalized content lives in a separate Browse tab showcasing trending artists and playlists, top charts, and music videos. Browse is also home to a TV and films section that features Apple-made programming like Carpool Karaoke and artist documentaries (Apple is currently investing heavily in programming, so expect more content to appear here in the coming months).

‌Apple Music‌'s Radio tab features curated music stations tuned to your listening habits as well as Apple's Beats 1 radio station. Beats 1 offers live radio 24 hours a day, and also plays a big part in the platform's music discovery. The Radio tab also has an archive of its most popular radio shows and playlists from years past.

YouTube Music sideloads its Radio offering in the Browse tab under various categories including genres, activities, moods, and decades. The UI presentation is a little dull, but listening to YouTube Music's stations is probably the best way to encounter new content on the platform that you might like, and the more thumbs up/thumbs down you give to songs, the better Google's algorithms are at generating new music recommendations for you.

Music Sharing

‌Apple Music‌ allows you to follow friends who are also subscribers and share playlists with them that you've personally created. ‌Apple Music‌'s For You tab will also show you what your friends are listening to if you've connected to them.

YouTube Music has no such social features, but it does let you share song links via text or over social media.

Speakers and Voice Assistants

As an ‌Apple Music‌ subscriber, you can use Siri as a personal DJ to control song playback, queue up songs, find song facts, add songs to your library, play your favorite playlists, or even play something new. This is a big advantage ‌Apple Music‌ has over YouTube Music, which requires a more complicated solution through Siri Shortcuts, and even then, it lacks many equivalent features.

Apple's HomePod speaker is essentially made to be used in conjunction with ‌Apple Music‌. In fact, one of the main uses for ‌Siri‌ on ‌HomePod‌ is to control your ‌Apple Music‌ collection. There are ‌Siri‌ voice commands for accessing content like playlists, genres, moods, liking or disliking songs, playing more music based on something you've heard, starting a new radio station, and much more. None of these functions will work with a YouTube Music subscription. You can stream audio to ‌HomePod‌ from a device running the YouTube Music app, but that's it.

If you own a Google Home speaker though, you're in luck. As you'd expect, Google's smart speakers fully integrate with YouTube Music, so you can invoke Google's voice assistant to carry out many of the same spoken commands mentioned above. ‌Apple Music‌ is not available as an integrated option on Google Home devices.

In addition, you can combine YouTube Music with the Google Assistant mobile app. When you do, YouTube Music combines your preferences with real-time information — like location, weather, and more — so that its voice assistant can recommend the right music for what you're doing, how you're feeling, or what you want to hear. However this does involve allowing Google access to a raft of privacy permissions on your mobile device, so you may want to think twice before you enable them.

Listening in the Car

Apple's CarPlay system supports Google Play Music and, of course, ‌Apple Music‌. If a car doesn't have ‌CarPlay‌, most newer models have their own entertainment systems, which often make it easy to connect your chosen streaming service. Usually you can do so either direct from a built-in app, over Bluetooth, or via a cable connection. You can also listen to ‌Apple Music‌ and Play Music music through your phone's or car's speakers with Android Auto.

Apple Music highlights

• Seamless integration with Apple's eco-system
• Beats live radio and archive
• Human curated recommendations
• Social features
• Support for uploading/matching your own music files
• Works natively with ‌HomePod‌

YouTube Music highlights

• Cloud storage for existing music library
• Official web player
• Excellent music suggestion algorithms
• Minimalist mobile UI

Summing Up

When Google Play Music migrated to YouTube Music, all of Play Music's features survived the transition, and YouTube Music is a good choice if you own Android devices and you're already a heavy user of Google and YouTube apps and services.

On the other hand, if you're invested in the Apple ecosystem (perhaps you own an Apple TV or a ‌HomePod‌ as well as an ‌iPhone‌) then ‌Apple Music‌ is the clear winner. Apple's service is quicker off the mark with its music suggestions, offers a better user experience in the mobile app, and includes some neat social features, where YouTube Music virtually has none.

Apple has objected to an apple logo trademark that Norway's Fremskrittspartiet or Progress Party filed for back in November, according to the Norwegian Patent Office.

The image in question features a red apple with a stem and a green leaf that also has a white "F" on the front, an icon used by the Fremskrittspartiet.

In an objection letter provided to Norway's Patent Office, Apple says that the trademark that the Fremskrittspartiet has registered "resembles" the "very well-known" trademarked Apple logo and is likely to be confused with Apple's prior trademarks.

The Fremskrittspartiet has applied to use the trademark for computer software, digital media, stationary and other paper products, household items, textiles like flags, clothing and headgear, buttons, and games and toys.

It's not yet clear how this will play out, but Apple plans to provide additional documentation to support its case in the future. Apple is asking the Norwegian Patent Office to repeal the Fremskrittspartiet's trademark registration.

(Thanks, Sander!)

Over the weekend, it was discovered that Facebook had hidden a "Dark Mode" toggle in the latest version of FaceBook Messenger.

On Monday Facebook confirmed the release of the hidden feature but also promised a full roll out in the "coming weeks."

Dark mode in Facebook Messenger can be enabled by sending a crescent moon emoji in Messenger. Facebook describes the process as "Simply send a crescent moon emoji – 🌙 – in any Messenger chat to unlock the setting and prompt to turn on dark mode." That said, many have found they may need to force quit Messenger or even reinstall it for the Dark mode to activate. There's been no word on a dark mode coming to Facebook proper.

Facebook also demonstrates that you can improve the look of your chats by tapping on the name, and selecting a custom color or gradient.