News archive (4 / 2022)

Sometimes history is shaped by small steps, leading into giant leaps. Those steps were taken in late 1990s by several tech companies - and as the result, the entire music business industry went through a shock that changed it permanently. One of those catalysts was a small Windows music player.

Legendary Winamp was arguably the first user-friendly audio player capable to play MP3 audio files. The very first version of Winamp was released back in 21st of April, 1997. So, it has been now 25 years since that event.

With hindsight, it is easy to see how various factors were in play back in those days. German tech institute Fraunhofer had developer the first digital audio file format that produced good enough quality with small enough filesizes.

CD-ROM drives were getting more and more popular, allowing people to transform their CD discs into digital MP3 files. And finally, along came the first MP3 player that made it easy and fun to manage massive music libraries - and not to hog your slow Pentium PC's all resources while doing all that.

Since those days, MP3 players have mostly vanished in favor of streaming services, such as Spotify. Even Winamp has been in hiatus for ages now - despite making a small comeback back in 2018 with its latest version.

After the initial developer edition, Google has now launched the first official beta version of Android 13 operating system.

While the developer edition, launched back in February, was meant for .. well, developers, the new beta version is meant for all Android enthusiasts. Obviously, those willing to test the new OS are supposed to be users that can tolerate inevitable bugs, missing features and even data loss. But also for those who are willing to sacrifice such minor things in order to get a taste of the future.

Compared to the developer edition, Android 13 beta 1 doesn't cater much new to play with. Most notable changes involve the way media players work in Android.

In previous Android versions, if an app requires an access to files stored into the device, user must grant full permissions for the app to do so. With Android 13, app can specifically request access to only selected file types, such as images, videos or music - thus, mitigating the risk that the app could get into more sensitive data stored on the phone.

Another media related enhancement is for audio playback. Now Android can tell the app what output devices are available and which one of those the app could use. This should made it easier to add smart functionalities to media apps, like ability to choose the output device directly within the app (say, you might want to blast your Spotify playlist to your Bluetooth speaker while also having several other BT devices connected to your phone).