sflagel

So here is a question: why is there a function to play music through your Watch from your iPhone? If the iPhone is near enough to connect to the Watch, it is near enough to connect to the AirPods, why go through the Watch?
Just putting this out there, but can Music on Apple Watch just be the same as on the iPhone (play stored and streamed, with a menu item for "downloaded music" for those that do not wish to use their data allowance); and a separate Music Remote app to control music and speakers, including AirPods, on the iPhone?
[I assume the Watch channels streamed music through the iPhone so that it can use Bluetooth instead of WiFi. But if that is the case, it would have been less confusing if the Watch were restricted to play stored music only, and forced users to use the Music Remote to control the iPhone to stream]. 
Presumable, the iPhone can send information about what is being played to the Watch or the Cloud so that, if you want to continue to listen to the same music on the Watch after you move away from the iPhone, you can (Netflix manages to do this with movies, I can stop watching on the TV and seamlessly continue on my iPad).
Just separate Music and speakers on Watch, from remotely controlling music and speakers on the iPhone.

NumNuts said:

  I thought that control centre ‘speaker’ image above was something to do with walkie talkie! Same yellow colour and sort of looks like one! (In case relevant, I’m a new Apple Watch owner...only since Christmas.)

The yellow icon is for walkie talkie. The one that has an orange square around it is "Airplay".

stageofhistory said:

lkrupp said:

As for Apple Music and the Echo it’s no surprise at all. The iPod started out exclusive to Apple and iTunes became cross platform later. If Apple wants to grow in the services area then they must go cross platform. Apple’s customer base will still buy Apple products. I bought an Echo just to see what it was all about and it’s not all that superior a product. It’s just relatively cheap and cheap has never doomed Apple in the past even with pundits predicting it would.

 Ultimately, the HomePod will always be a no-go until my wife can ask Siri to 'Play BBC Radio 2,' although that's not Apple's fault of course! 

A speaker has to be able to play the radio without requiring you to find the phone, take it out, swipe to TuneIn, click on the app, click on favourites, click on a radio station, and click on the AirPlay icon, and finally click on the speaker. Technology should not make life more complicated, it has to be as simple as it was: walk into the kitchen, hit one button. Done, music plays.

Maybe the days where the big four Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook each tried to compete with each other in every category are coming to an end and they will start concentrating again on some core competencies..... in a perfect world, we'd have Apple building hardware and software, Amazon selling and shipping stuff and related AI, Google on AI, and Facebook, on, well, whatever Facebook does.

Seriously, could this be the start of the end of Amazon Prime Music? It was always inferior and probably only done to keep the license fees payable to Spotify low.

Its is not just the selfie-camera. Any person shot in portrait model also looks over-processed. There is a real "Apple-filter" look to them, especially in low light. While they are not bad-looking, it is quite unnatural and I expect people to get tired of this standardized look over time. I do wish there was a slider for this...!