CG

It would really be nice if there was a more accessible switch for spacial headphone mix when not in automatic mode - kind of a headphone button.  I think this is where the confusion over which headphones are supported came from. If you are using Apple wireless headphones and some Beats, the app knows you are wearing headphones and generates a spacial mix. But if you are playing to another source be it wired, bluetooth or Airplay, the App has no idea if it should being generating a stereo mix for headphones or speakers. Not so much fun to go into settings and change to Always only to have to go back and turn it to Auto or Off when listening to stereo speakers.

Their demos where "all you need are some headphones" are kind of silly. If it is coming through headphones, it is a STEREO mix - two speakers one right, one left.  If it were only for headphones artists could  have been making spacial audio mixes pretty much since stereo headphones were invented.  There are some attempts at this that are pretty amazing (search Kraftwerk Headphone). What the demos seem to not demonstrate or explain is that Dolby Atmos provides a way to make spacial audio work for multiple speaker surround systems and spacial headphone mixes.

Nitpicking aside, pretty awesome new features!

"To use Spatial Audio, users need to be using AirPods, AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, or Beats headphones equipped with the H1 or W1 chip for wireless communications. "

I am not sure this makes any sense. Am I just missing something or what?1? It is a stereo mix down of a Dolby Atmos track using delays and eq to simulate a 3D space using stereo headphones. That is all done by the app - Apple Music will simply be sending right channel and left channel audio to headphones. This is not a head tracking kind of thing that requires feedback from the headphones so it should work with any stereo headphones (as the faq on the Apple Music site states).  Hopefully it will also output Dolby Atmos tracks to a receiver using Apple TV for real multi channel Dolby Atmos.

Appleish said:

Yeah, that's fixable. But the annoyingly loud click of the buttons are not.

And why the hell did they move the play/pause button up one? They should have left it and the Siri button where they were and put the mute button on the side.

And speaking of the mute button. Really? Why would you mute rather than pause whatever you are streaming? You'd just have to scrub back to the point where you muted. That button is absolutely useless to me and until muscle memory learns that they moved the play/pause button up one, I will be muting the damn system by accident.

This remote is better in many ways, but is so baseline annoying in others.

I have already muted so many times already when I meant to pause. However, while agree for watching content pausing makes more sense, I am strangely addicted to a Sudoku app that has the most annoying music playing and turning down the volume was very annoying so I will just get used to it. A music "off" setting in the app would have fixed my only need for the mute button.  I also, don't really see a need for the power button, it was just a long press and enter to turn everything off before (including a TV that used IR). Watching my mother use the old Apple remote probably explains most of Apple's decisions - it confuses her in a way that I can't seem to get her past

He is using the pad to scrub NOT the wheel. Pick up your finger put it on the wheel and pause until a little circle appears then start scrubbing on the wheel.

Mine went through and I did not receive an email! I have no idea why I was so excited to get a credit card. It was slightly different than the instructional video.  After pressing the + button, it went to the regular screen that shows different credit cards and a continue button.  After clicking the continue button it showed the Apple Card as an option.  Not exactly a confusing step but I had been expecting the first screen after clicking the + to be as shown in the video, so it might have been available before this morning.