Makes No Sense At All » iPad

MPoD & MPaD version 1.6.3 available

Berrie — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 09:07:31 +0000

v1.6.3 for both MPoD and MPaD is available from the AppStore now. The most important change that many people have asked for is better handling of compilations. The apps now use the album-artist tag to group songs, and will also properly display compilations under the artist ‘Various Artists’ or whatever you have named it. Complete release notes:

Feature: Added proper handling of compilations by using the album-artist tag to group songs and display ‘Various Artists’ albums.
Feature: Made artist capitalization optional.
Feature: Show track details in browse mode.
Feature: Add ‘back to top’ button in browse mode.
Feature: Show art and number of albums in artist view (MPoD only).
Feature: Popup to quickly change between connections (MPaD only).
UI Change: Improved voice-over labels in playlist screen (MPoD only).
Bugfix: Fixed bug where data was not refreshed or inconsistent after the local cache was updated.
Bugfix: Move to discogs v2.0 api for cover art retrieval.

MPaD version 1.6.2

Berrie — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 19:54:22 +0000

MPaD v1.6.2 is available from the AppStore. This is a bugfix release:

Bugfix: solve cover art retrieval from Amazon.
Bugfix: solve filename handling for liner notes.
Bugfix: solve slow search performance.

MPoD & MPaD version 1.6.1 available

Berrie — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:22:38 +0000

MPoD & MPaD v1.6.1 are available from the AppStore. These new versions contain numerous new features, enhancements and bugfixes:

iPhone & iPad

Feature: add long press gestures for iOS 3.
Feature: capitalize all artist names to prevent duplicates.
Feature: use hostname for bonjour based servers instead of ip-address.
Feature: Added the possibility to start from another app or website via mpod://mpod.
Feature: Added possibility to play complete library from ‘Edit playlist’ action sheet.
Feature: Added actions for long press on genre lists.
UI Change: Added progress indicator back into playlist view.
UI Change: Immediate search while typing.
Bugfix: Improved stability of local cache reload.
Bugfix: Fix problem where connection to mpd server was frequently lost.
Bugfix: correctly pick up local cover art for albums with 2 artists.
Generic: tested with iOS 5.

iPad

Feature: add track time labels.
Feature: add possibility to show liner notes for an album (if available on the server).
UI Change: Don’t automatically load current artist when switching to info view.
Bugfix: only show ‘playlist’ popup once, even if edit button is hit multiple times.

MPoD & MPaD version 1.6 available

Berrie — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 08:10:25 +0000

Since a few days MPoD & MPaD v1.6 are available from the AppStore. These new versions contain numerous new features, enhancements and bugfixes:

Feature: Cover art in album (MPoD) and song lists.
Feature: Added actions for long press on song, album, artist and directory lists.
Feature: Added actions for long press on playlist for ‘add to favorites’, ‘remove from playlist’, ‘move after current track’.
Feature: Playlist editing (MPoD).
Feature: Save playlist directly from playlist window.
Feature: Show album details in album view.
Feature: Added settings to enable/disable individual sources from which to fetch cover art.
Feature: Added function to clear out all cached cover art.
Feature: Added setting to toggle the mpd consume on/off.
UI Change: Sort entries in playlist table alphabetically.
UI Change: Multiline display in playlist.
UI Change: Add/replace button replaced by setting for default click action with 4 modes.
UI Change: Separate function to clear playlist now (from edit button) in addition to clearing the playlist through hitting stop twice.
Bugfix: Improved handling of low memory situations.
Bugfix: Fix two-finger swipe under iOS 4.3.
Bugfix: Better display of stream information.
Bugfix: Fix crash on iOS 3.x when going into settings.
Bugfix: Restore correct album popup size if iPad is rotated during popup animation (MPaD).

MPoD & MPaD version 1.5.3 available

Berrie — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 17:29:41 +0000

Since a few days MPoD & MPaD v1.5.3 are available from the AppStore. Release notes for MPoD:

Feature: Extensibility via http-commands for play/stop/speakers.
Feature: Cover art retrieval via Discogs.
Feature: Song search now also looks at composer, performer and comment tags.
Feature: Improved help screen explaining all MPoD features.
UI Change: Play/pause buttons combined into one.
UI Change: Hide/show control buttons on playlist view through two-finger swipe down/up.
Bugfix: Properly present ‘play all’ in search results (related to iPad bugfix).
Bugfix: Fix lastfm support for mpd 0.16.

And for MPaD:

Feature: Extensibility via http-commands for play/stop/speakers.
Feature: Cover art retrieval via Discogs.
Feature: Support on-the-go mode (play stream directly on the iPad).
Feature: Choose artist info from last.fm or allmusic.
Feature: Song search now also looks at composer, performer and comment tags.
Feature: Improved help screen explaining all MPaD features.
UI Change: Play/pause buttons combined into one.
UI Change: Improved display of cover art.
UI Change: Hide/show cover art on playlist view through two-finger swipe down/up.
UI Change: Show bitrate after tap on cover art.
Bugfix: Fix crash that occurs when searching in the Artist view.
Bugfix: Cancel button for search now always active.
Bugfix: Fix lastfm support for mpd 0.16.

Note: there is a problem with the two-finger swipe down/up on iOS 4.3 that was not detected during testing. This will be resolved in the next release.

When? Now!

Berrie — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 18:06:25 +0000

The wait is over: MPaD is now available from the AppStore. It offers everything that MPoD does (with the exception of on-the-go mode), and then a lot more:

MPaD makes full use of the larger iPad screen.
Main functions are always available.
Full cover art display for album, artist and genre view.
Album details via popup window.
Editable playlists (remove and re-order tracks).
Large artist info view based on last.fm.

MPaD screencast

Berrie — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 18:15:18 +0000

Here’s a screencast of the current state of MPaD, which is MPoD’s bigger brother for iPad. Let me know what you think.

By the way, this is a flash movie (Jing is the only proper free screencast solution I could find) so you can’t view it on your iPad.

iPad: popup view out of another view

Berrie — Mon, 17 May 2010 19:59:13 +0000

For one of my projects on the iPad I wanted to popup a detail window out of an existing image view, using some animation while popping up. CoreAnimation was the way to go, but I was facing difficulties to:

a) find out how to do it and
b) get it working.

The animation should combine movement (from the location of the clicked image to the location where the popup is shown), scaling (from the image size to the popup size) and rotation (for a nice effect). Google searches delivered bits and pieces, the best sample I found was MFFlip from Mike Lee. This didn’t include scaling and movement like I wanted it, so I added this and then packed it up nicely into a single class ViewFlipper with a single factory method that takes 2 views as parameters and does all the calculations and animation. The ViewFlipper class can be included without further dependencies into any project, except that you need to include the QuartzCore framework.

I’ve created a little sample iPad program around it that you can download here. I’ve put some documentation in the code that describes the what goes on inside. I hope this is useful for others who are struggling with this too.

Note: initially I kept having trouble with all of the examples I found, it turned out this was caused by the fact that I had one view with 3 subviews: a UITableView covering the entire view, the imageView and popupView (which were shown above the UITableView). I managed to solve this by moving the imageView and popupView onto a view of its own. I gave this extra view a transparent background, so that the underlying UITableView was still visible. This extra view also has the advantage that you can catch touch events on it which you can use to popdown the popup.

iPod & MPoD => iPad & MPaD???

Berrie — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 10:24:05 +0000

From what I’ve seen so far, I believe the newly announced iPad will be a great way to control mpd. It can be used even more intuitively than an iPhone, and allows to include various info all in one place, like cover art, artist info, playlist, buttons.

If you have good ideas on what MPaD should look like, why not share them here?