Finding true wireless earbuds that balance hi-res sound, strong noise cancellation and comfort often means paying premium prices. Brands like Sony, Bose and Apple dominate the high-end, but Soundpeats has been building a reputation for delivering excellent value. Their latest release, the Air5 Pro, aims to offer flagship-style performance at a far more accessible cost. I was so eager to try these, I actually opened them & started using them straight away. Normally, I would take photos of earphones before using them, but I live by a loud road & it’s getting harder to hear my podcasts on my daily walks, so I was desperate to test out the noise-cancelling. I’ve not been disappointed. As usual for sound peats, they come well packaged & they feel premium. The charging case is great & I’ve only needed to recharge it once since getting the Air5 Pro’s.

With support for aptX Lossless, LDAC, adaptive ANC and multipoint Bluetooth, the Air5 Pro look like an audiophile-friendly option on paper. After several weeks of testing them across commuting, home listening, workouts and calls, here’s how they perform in real life.

Specs Overview

• Bluetooth: 5.4 with Snapdragon Sound
• Chipset: Qualcomm QCC3091
• Drivers: 10 mm bio-diaphragm (PU + PEEK)
• Supported codecs: SBC, AAC, LC3, LDAC, aptX, aptX Adaptive, aptX Lossless
• Noise cancellation: AI Adaptive ANC (up to 55 dB claimed reduction)
• Microphones: 6-mic system with cVc 8.0
• Battery life: 7.5 h per charge, 37 h with case
• Charging: USB-C, 10 min fast charge = ~2 h playback
• Water resistance: IPX5
• Weight: 4.8 g per earbud, ~50 g total with case
• Extras: Multipoint connectivity, touch controls, PeatsAudio app

Design and Comfort

The Air5 Pro use a familiar stemmed design with a compact charging case that slips easily into a pocket similar to that of AirPods. The earbuds weigh just 4.8 g each, making them feather-light and comfortable for long listening sessions. The silicone tips create a snug seal, and the stem design helps keep them stable during movement. I’ve found the medium silicone tips to very comfortable, and even without ANC, the design blocks out quite a bit of ambient sound. Build quality feels solid and these have become my go-to earphones for all uses, even supplanting my AND headphones. The charging case is solid with a strong hinge and the magnets hold the buds securely in place. With IPX5 water resistance, they can handle sweat and light rain, making them workout-friendly. I’ve worn these out in the autumn rain and they have been flawless.

Sound Quality

This is where the Air5 Pro shine. Powered by a 10 mm bio-diaphragm driver and Qualcomm’s QCC3091 chipset, they deliver audio quality that outperforms most rivals at this price point.

• Bass: Punchy and controlled, with enough weight for EDM and hip-hop without muddying the mids. Perfect for rock, metal & grunge. You can select EQ’s directly on the chipset via the app.
• Mids: Clear and natural, keeping vocals and instruments well-defined.
• Treble: Crisp and lively, adding sparkle without becoming harsh.
• Soundstage: Impressively wide for budget earbuds, with good instrument separation.

The real game-changer is codec support. With LDAC and aptX Lossless, the Air5 Pro can stream hi-res music if your device supports it. Listening to Tidal HiFi and my FLAC files, the earbuds revealed details and dynamics usually reserved for higher-end models.

Adaptive Noise Cancellation

Soundpeats claims up to 55 dB of reduction with AI-driven ANC. I’ve had great results with the ANC, now listening to my podcasts without vocal boost and only needing about 20% volume. With standard earbuds, I was at 100% volume and a vocal boost, due to the traffic noise on local roads where I walk daily. In practice, results are very strong:

• Commute: Engine and train rumbles are cut to a low murmur.
• Office: Background chatter and typing are reduced significantly.
• Outdoors: Wind is handled decently, though strong gusts can still sneak through.

The Transparency mode is effective for quick conversations or staying aware of traffic, though there’s a slight digital hiss in very quiet settings. While ANC doesn’t quite match Sony or Bose flagships, it’s excellent for the price.

Call Quality

With six microphones and cVc 8.0 noise reduction, the Air5 Pro are reliable for calls:

• Indoors: Voices are natural and clear, great for Zoom or Teams.
• Noisy streets: Background noise is suppressed well, though your voice can sound thinner.
• Windy conditions: Still usable, though some noise makes it through.

For work calls and everyday conversations, they’re more than adequate.

Connectivity and Features

Using Bluetooth 5.4, the Air5 Pro maintain a stable connection with no dropouts, even in crowded areas.

Multipoint connectivity works smoothly, letting you switch between phone and laptop without re-pairing. Latency is low enough for streaming video in sync, and casual gaming is fine.

The PeatsAudio app adds useful features like EQ presets, touch control remapping, and firmware updates. It’s not as advanced as Sony’s Headphones app, but it covers the essentials.

Controls

Touch controls are responsive and cover playback, volume, ANC, and calls. The learning curve is short, though accidental taps can happen when adjusting the fit. Thankfully, the app allows remapping or disabling certain gestures.

Battery Life

• 7.5 hours per charge with ANC on (longer with ANC off)
• 37 hours total with the charging case
• 10 minutes quick charge = ~2 hours playback

In daily use, they easily last a full workday plus commute. The case recharges via USB-C, though there’s no wireless charging option.

Long-Term Impressions (After 4 Weeks of Use)

After several weeks, the Air5 Pro still hold up well:

• Comfort: Lightweight fit remains comfortable for long listening sessions. Tips keep their seal.
• Battery: Runtime hasn’t dropped noticeably, and there’s no sign of idle battery drain in the case.
• Connectivity: Multipoint switching between laptop and phone works seamlessly. No random dropouts experienced.
• Durability: The earbuds resist scratches well, though the case shows fingerprints. IPX5 protection has survived sweat and rain during workouts.
• Sound: Still detailed and lively. After “burn-in,” mids feel slightly smoother, making vocals richer.
• ANC: Continues to handle commuting noise effectively, though not at flagship levels. Transparency mode remains practical.
• App and Updates: Firmware updates via the app are simple, showing that Soundpeats is committed to long-term support.

Overall, they’ve proven reliable beyond first impressions — not always the case with budget earbuds.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Excellent hi-res audio with LDAC and aptX Lossless
• Punchy, detailed sound across genres
• Effective adaptive ANC for commuting and office use
• Lightweight, secure and comfortable fit
• Stable Bluetooth 5.4 with multipoint pairing
• Strong battery life and fast charging

Cons

• No wireless charging for the case
• Companion app is basic

The Air5 Pro stand out for Android users who want lossless audio at a budget-friendly price. I tend mostly to use iOS, but they are wonderful for my use case and have become my go-to earbud. At this price, I’d say they are an AirPods Pro challenger & a no-brainer purchase for those wanting a premium earbud and ANC at a fraction of the cost.

Verdict

The Soundpeats Air5 Pro are among the best value wireless earbuds of 2025. They combine hi-res audio support, adaptive ANC, multipoint connectivity, and excellent battery life into a lightweight, comfortable package.

They don’t fully dethrone flagship models from Sony or Bose, but they come surprisingly close at less than half the cost. For listeners who want premium features without the premium price tag, the Air5 Pro are an easy recommendation — and they’ve proven durable in the long run.

Verdict: A superb choice for budget-conscious audiophiles and commuters alike. Keep an eye out for these on the upcoming Amazon Prime Day, as I hear they are going to have a significant discount available.

A week later I had the OneOdio A30’s in my hand, and I was instantly impressed with this little gem. I wasn’t expecting great things given the sub £60 price tag, but I’ve got to say I’m blown away by how good these headphones are. My expectations were low due to price, but that was misplaced. They are wonderful.

They are on over ear design so the soft ear cups naturally block out a lot of ambient noise. Trigger the ANC switch though & you have 26db active noise cancelling which is brilliant. Like all noise cancelling, it is better at blocking out constant pitch of noise such as the hum of an engine, but these do well to block out most sounds, even sudden bangs and crashes in the environment.

Without the noise cancelling active, the sound response is decent from the 40mm drivers. Bass is punchy but not overpowering & treble doesn’t get muddy like it tends to on a lot of Bluetooth headphones. I’ve paired them with my MacBook, iMac, Apple Watch & iPhone, and they work flawlessly with each device, also allowing for easy switching between devices as they favour the current connected device which is outputting audio. Simply pause on one device and start playing on another and the audio source automatically switches. I have found that they work best without any EQ settings on iOS. I had a bass booster turned on for my earpods, but have switched it off for use with these. It was too bassy.

The multi function buttons on the side allow you to power on/off the headphones and also feature volume up and down buttons. Tap the power button to pause and resume and long press the volume buttons to skip tracks. The controls are always at hand, but I tend to use my Apple Watch to control my music, so not a function I use often.

One problem I did find was when pairing with my MacBook & iMac, the Bluetooth codec would default to SBC which is the basic Bluetooth reference codec & means audio will go out of sync with videos when playing. However, not stated on the box is that these headphones support the AAC codec which is the native apple codec on Mac/iOS devices. AAC is normally reserved for much higher end hardware & I’m surprised it isn’t advertised on the specs as it would make these even more desirable with apple users. Running the following commands in terminal on my iMac and MacBook enabled AAC support & audio/video streaming was in sync & the audio much better quality. I also enabled aptX for other headphones.

To enable AptX support
sudo defaults write bluetoothaudiod "Enable AptX codec" -bool true

And AAC support

sudo defaults write bluetoothaudiod "Enable AAC codec" -bool true

The headphones charge using a USB C cable which is supplied & the OneOdio A30 headphones also come with carry case, wired cable for use when battery is low or on older non Bluetooth devices & an airline adaptor to allow you to use them on a plane.

The headphones are made out of plastic, which doesn’t feel premium like the alloys used in other brands, but they feel robust and hard wearing. The ear cups are a comfortable synthetic leather & I haven’t had any issues with hot ears or itching. The headband is padded in a similar vegan leather and one aspect I really like is that the top of the headband where the logo is, is also padded. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve banged my beats against things like car doors and not wanted to look at the scratches & gouges. A nice touch.

Battery life is excellent. Specs quote that you will get 15 hours using Bluetooth and noise cancelling, while you should get 25 hours with noise cancelling disabled & 45 hours of just noise cancelling without Bluetooth switched on. This all from a 500mAH battery. For my usage, listening to music, meditating & watching films while I work, I find that I’m charging them once a week. I don’t tend to use ANC when sat in the office, but will when meditating or walking outdoors & I’ve found it a really handy feature. It really does help. These headphones also have mics built in for hands-free calling which is a feature I’m using a lot during lockdown.

For under £60 on Amazon these are a no brainer. Great price, great product and wonderful value for money. As good if not better than headphones I’ve used at 5-6 times the price. Their support of AAC makes them perfect for iOS & Mac users & if you stream from Apple Music, you will notice that the audio is crisp and pleasant as intended. A highly recommended purchase.

After a little use I noticed my CPU was constantly maxed out and I could also hear the HDD seeking a lot. Digging in I found 4 processes related to Apple’s new Music app running wild in activity monitor

The four processes in question where AMPArtworkAgent, AMPLibraryAgent, AMPDeviceDiscoveryAgent and AMPDevicesAgent. I assume from the naming of these processes that the first is used to download additional album and artist artwork, the second manages the library, the third looks for devices such as iPhones and Apple TV’s on the network and the fourth manages the wireless syncing of my old iPhone 4 in our kitchen dock which is used for music playback. The one that was causing the most trouble seemed to be the AMPArtworkAgent.

I had a look in my Music preferences and under the advanced tab I noticed that the Automatically Update Artwork tick box was checked. I unchecked this box to troubleshoot but still saw the process was eating up CPU cycles.

So last night I finally found a fix, but first a few caveats before you try this. My own library of ripped music is huge. I have 37k+ tracks stored locally & I used Cloud Music (formerly iTunes Match) to match and store them all safely in the cloud. I keep them locally because I listen to them all the time, I have the storage space, it allows me to continue to sync to my old iPod and iPhone, as well as play them back on my media centres and Sonos over NFS/SMB. Also, my iMac still works perfectly, but it is technically unsupported, so I went into this troubleshooting not knowing if it could be resolved given that the OS shouldn’t really run on my machine.

Anyway I finally managed to fix it & went the nuclear route.

1. Make sure the ‘Automatically Update Artwork’ check box remains unchecked in preferences > advanced.

2. De authorize your music app from apple. Head to Account > Authorizations >De-authorise within the music app toolbar.
3. Sign Out your Apple ID within music. Again Account > Sign Out.
4. Close the music app
5. Open Activity Monitor and search AMP. Force quit any processes beginning with AMP (assuming AMP is standing for Apple Music Player/process)

6. Go to your music folder and delete everything. Make sure you either have your own music stored in iTunes match or copy it onto an external drive for backup. This will delete any locally stored music, so if you don’t use match please do make sure you have backups of your own ripped music.

7. Go to the following folder and delete everything. This folder contains the SQLite that seems to control the artwork caches and also stores the artwork which Music caches from the embedded artwork in music files, probably to speed up UI rendering during playback/streaming.
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.AMPArtworkAgent/Data/Documents/

8. Hold the option key and click on the Music icon to open the app. Keep holding option until a dialog appears regarding your music library. Opt to create a new library and call it Music (if it asks you to overwrite please do).
9. Once music opens, before you sign in with your Apple ID, go to preferences and make sure the checkbox for downloading artwork is still unchecked. This is a must or you will have the same problem.
10. Click on account in the top toolbar, sign in and reauthorise your music app.
11. You should now see your Apple Music start to populate (if you subscribe) and your iTunes match/cloud music start to return. It will take some time for the artwork cache to refill so be patient. AMPArtwork Agent and the other processes will run for a while, but this is simply to extract the artwork embedded in your music files and to populate the cache. Give it time and all of your artwork will come back.
12. If you use iTunes match, start playing your music or downloading your tracks again. The same goes for Apple Music. All should be well.

I still have the AMPArtwork agent process running, but it doesn’t get out of control. My artwork cache is now fully populated after around 8 hours of idling and use. Music is fast & snappy again and I can use it without issue. I’ve always managed my own artwork for my own ripped music, so I can do without the auto fetching of artwork from Apples Servers.

My own impression is that the process starts to loop. It is trying to extra artwork from the mp3/m4a meta of my own music files & also trying to populate the cache with additional artwork while trying to update my artwork (if the Automatically Download Artwork services is checked). The SQLite database must start to choke and the process runs amok. Mine is purring along again with around 85% idle CPU when using Firefox and music. Even on my unsupported workhorse iMac its working perfectly again.

I hope this post helps some of you out. One thing that drives me mad is wasted CPU cycles & HDD seeks/writes, especially to fluff out meta I’d rather control myself. Let me know how you get on.

I’ve got a Nike+ Apple Watch Series 3 with Cellular and I tend to use my watch a lot to listen to music on the go. It means I can keep my iPhone in my pocket or backpack & not worry about being disturbed. It’s also amazing to use the apple watch to work out. I already use the fitness trackers on the apple watch, but now combined with the SoundPEATS Q12 headphones I can listen to music and track my workout.

The Soundpeats Q12 headphones are a similar design to my older Q30’s. They still have the magnets built-in so they connect like a necklace when not in your ears, and the left & right headphones are still connected by a wire which I really like. The one thing which has stopped me buying Earpods is the thought of having nowhere to put them when I stop to chat.

The wire connecting the left & right earbud on the Q12 is a better design than on the Q30. The cable is flat and much less prone to tangling. It also sits comfortably around my neck when not wearing the earbuds, and looks a little slicker too.

The Headphones come with various sizes of ear bud and ear hooks, so you can customise the fit to your ears. I’ve found a really snug fit with the large hooks and medium earbuds, almost to the point where they are noise cancelling like earplugs. Much of the outside world is blocked out by the close fit, meaning you can keep your volumes lower & protect your ears.

Another major benefit of the SoundPEATS Q12 is the ability to pair via bluetooth with two devices. I’ve got mine synced to my apple watch & to my iPhone, and can easily switch between the two without having to un-pair & re-pair the bluetooth connection.

The sound is very good from these earbuds. They take a little getting used to regarding fit, you figure out the right angle and depth to insert these earbuds & when you do the bass response is great & even at low volumes the sound fidelity is good. On a song such as Trains by Porcupine Tree, there is a good dynamic range, and I can hear good seperation in bass and treble between the hand claps and bass lines. For the price (currently only £19.99) these headphones are a great choice for people who appreciate decent sound without breaking the bank.

There are a selection of colourways for the Soundpeats Q12 headphones, but I opted for black with luminous green earbud inserts. They really suit my colour pallete.

In the pack you get three sizes of earbuds, three sizes of ear hooks and two cord clamps for hooking them to your T-shirt collar. The headphones come in a small faux leather pouch for storage and transport, and the pouch works great to keep them clean & dry in my backpack when not in use.

The headphones themselves weigh only 15g and are sweatproof so have survived my 40km daily bike rides with ease. I’ve also worn them in the rain & cold and have had no problems. The headphones are an advertised 8 hours battery life from the built-in lithium-ion battery, but I’ve found they will do around 10 hours between a charge on the volume setting I select.

The SoundPEATS Q12 also come with a 12 month warranty, so I’ve not been afraid to use them as advertised, and I work out in them for a few hours each day. I’ve never had issues with pairing on sync and they always performed as expected.

These Soundpeats Q12’s also support AptX And are specced as Bluetooth 4.1, so if you have an android phone or device supporting AptX, you will benefit from a better audio/bluetooth compression codec & the headphones should generally sound better.

I would never expect in ear headphones to perform as well as full size cans, but these work well with my ios devices & I’ve not noticed a difference between them using bluetooth & my wired apple earbuds. When playing on the iPhone I use Tidal Hifi and the sound is rich & defined.

If you want audiophile quality sound i would always advise you buy wired full size headphones with a built-in DAC, but for the casual daily user or someone who needs a lightweight & versatile pair of headphones, I would fully recommend the SoundPEATS Q12’s.

I’m currently using mine predominantly with my Apple Watch Series 3. The in line controls work perfectly with the apple watch for volume, play/pause & skipping of songs.

Manufacturer specs as follows :-

Over the last few months, I’ve been trying out Apple Music, Spotify Premium, Amazon Music Unlimited & Tidal. I also have my own music collection which is ripped to iTunes. My own collection is around 26,000 tracks, ripped from CD in Apples 256kbps AAC codec format using iTunes. I combine this with iTunes match both to backup my collection on apples’ servers in case of a disk failure & also to give me access to my music on my Apple & iOS devices. For years this has served me well & is a habit I will keep, but I was definitely interested in new music discovery so ventured into the world of streaming services.

I’m not going to write much about Spotify, Amazon or Apple Music. After trying all three I’ve got to say I found Spotify the best for music discovery but Apple Music the best for sound quality & overall experience. Bear in mind that I use iMacs, MacBooks, iPhones & iPads so I’m heavily into the Apple Ecosystem already.

I did find however that Apple Music offered no significant benefits over my locally stored AAC, so I cancelled that subscription & went back to sourcing & curating my own library.

On the whole, I’ve been very happy with 256kbps AAC. I mostly listen to music using my iMac and Creative Inspire 2.1 2400 speakers with bass sub (these powered speakers with sub are ancient & connect via a 3.5mm jack).

These speakers are pretty old now but they’ve always sounded great & as an average consumer I’ve never felt the need to upgrade them. I’m sure many people reading this will have fancy monitor speakers & separate DAC’s, but this is aimed more at the home user so you could probably skip the rest.

Last week I decided to give Tidal a go on their free trial. I’ve always played with the idea of Tidal, but with only a one month trial & a £20 a month price tag I’d always dismissed the service. I don’t personally know anyone else who has a Tidal account so it’s just not been on my Radar. After visiting Bang & Olufsen in Truro and hearing the most amazing sound, only to notice the owner was running tidal off his own iMac for that sound, I just had to give it a go.

What can I say, I’m blown away by Tidal. I signed up for the Hi-Fi account which offers 320kbps AAC, but also all tracks are available as lossless quality FLAC files. The FLAC streams sound incredible, even on my modest setup. I can hear aspects of favourite songs I’ve never heard, such as plectrum scratches in Steven Wilson tracks & high-frequency percussion in Porcupine Tree tracks.

I can hear a lot more high-frequency sounds, and vocals sound much crisper and cleaner. When compared to my AAC the sound is a lot more clear & less muddy. In comparison to my 256kbps AAC, it’s like listening to normal audio and listening with a towel over the speaker.

I’ve got a few albums in FLAC, but storage of my entire collection has never appealed to me due to the time it would take to manage the files & the various backups I’d have to keep. I’m now keeping my music collection in AAC for personal use & use on the go, but predominantly listening to tracks on Tidal if they are available.

Then we come onto the Tidal Masters. I could probably get even more out of them with better monitor speakers & an external DAC plugged into the mac, but as an average consumer listener, I’d rather hear the best I can with the kit I’ve already got. Masters do sound wonderful even on my kit, and although the MQA streams will be software decoded & downsampled slightly for my sound card in the iMac, there is no doubt the audio quality is sublime.

I’ve had no issues with buffering of the streams & I even love the Tidal interface, especially the spinning disc effect on full-screen mode.

I’ve got no problems at all with my personal collection staying in 256kbps AAC. The Matched tracks on iTunes match are deleted from my machine & re-downloaded so I have Apple’s own iTunes store copies/rips of the tracks. I’m not prepared at this point in my life to spend thousands on pro audio gear or a listening room. I just like to get the best out of the stuff I have & mixing my own collection in 256kbps AAC with a Tidal subscription seems to be a great compromise.

At £20 a month it is quite expensive, but well worth it if you listen to more than a few hours of music every month. I’m really enjoying the Tidal experience & the extra boost in sound quality seems to be worth it. I can cancel at any time & fall back on my own vast collection, but I’ll play it by ear month on month.

Tidal also sounds great played in hi-fi on my iOS devices, even when outputting to Bluetooth speakers, there is a definite improvement over my AAC tracks.

In the living room, we have a stereo pair of Sonos Play 1’s. We live in close proximity to neighbours & have a modestly sized living room as I expect most of my readers will, and the Play One’s in stereo are more than sufficient in terms of both sound quality & power output. I’ve added My local music library to the Sonos system & I’ve now added Tidal as a music service. Tidal works really well with Sonos & again it’s a definite sound upgrade from my AAC. Sonos will only support the Hi-Fi FLAC streams at the moment, but these are of CD quality on the whole so it’s a clean and crisp sound.

The Tidal App for iOS also supports Sonos as an output device so you can use the Tidal App and output your audio to your Sonos system. This is great for music discovery or to resume your listening when you come from outside listening on Headphones or in the car.

When using earbuds on my iPhone 6 with Tidal, the improvements are more subtle. Tidal tends to have a little less bass than Apple AAC files, but the sound on Tidal tends to be more rounded & a slightly nicer experience. When listening to my Sony headphones, there is definitely an improvement over AAC.

All of my kit is pretty standard and consumer level. It’s by no means audiophile quality, but most people I know are not that interested in investing thousands to listen to their music. I have a few Audiophile friends who have spent upwards of £20k on kit, and while it sounds wonderful, it’s a little bit of a diminishing return for the size of the improvement.

For now, I’ll enjoy all of my favourite tracks on Tidal and keep my own curated library in AAC to supplement and archive my music. It’s not a great deal to pay out each month & the quality improvement is of tangible value. 256kbps AAC to FLAC is a big jump in quality. Anything above that on consumer kit just seems like overkill for the size of the improvement you would see.

If you decide to give Tidal a go on a Mac, make sure to adjust your streaming settings to max out at Master, and also give Tidal exclusive use of the built-in audio device. This way Tidal will adjust your soundcards sample rates to take advantage of the improved audio streams. This really helped Masters to sound better on my machine (yes I know so downsampling will occur as my sound card can’t support that maximum sampling rate) But it does seem to max out my sound cards abilities & sound as good as it can on my current kit.

I know I’ll get a million audiophiles telling me I’m doing it wrong, but after reading all of the reviews & What Hi-Fi magazine I was still struggling to figure out what would sound good on my relatively primitive & low-end setup. I expect most people will want to maximize what they have rather than invest heavily in a lot of extra audio gear. If that is the case, I suggest you give Tidal a go on their free trial. It has definitely changed my music listening & I’m even seeking out awesome sounding albums like Led Zeppelin & Talk Talk.

Let me know your thoughts on this post & be nice.

So far Apple Music is an hour old in my hands & I’m already loving it. The initial setup was pretty easy with the exception of some awkward genre bubbles to select when setting up your profile. There seems to be a ton of artists available to stream and iTunes match has been integrated into a My Music tab.

I’ve followed a few of my favourite artists already & played with the streaming quality which seems responsive & crisp. No load times to speak of & nice bitrate streaming. I would like to see a way to limit the bitrate for use on mobile like in the Google Play app, hopefully apple will adopt that for users with smaller data plans.

The UI also seems pretty good. I keep losing the now playing as it minimises to a bar which needs to be clicked to bring it back. Will get used to it in no time but weird as users are used to looking at the bottom or top of a screen for minimised windows.

As it’s a brand new platform, a lot of the connect features are yet to be populated. Artists will need to start using the service & scrapers will need to start collecting content for the artists. I also found that bands such as Tool are not available to stream, but this is pretty standard as they aren’t on Spotify. Also Steve Wilson’s new material isn’t available. I’ve already found a bunch of music which isn’t available to stream so this will compliment my library & iTunes match as opposed to replacing it.

Anyway this is all new & I’m still playing with it, but I’ll write another post when I’ve got to know Apple Music better. Until then, a bunch of screenshots for you.

The three big announcements this year where iOS 9, OSX El Capitan and Watch OS – With a little extra bit at the end for Apple Music & Beats 1 radio. All exciting things & a lot to get your head around.

The thing I’m most excited about is OSX El Capitan. Whilst the name won’t be to everyone’s liking the underlying improvements should be. Improving the architecture of the OS and utilising Metal to boost core graphics and core animation by almost 50%, not to mention improving efficiency by providing low overhead access to the GPU should be of great benefit to OSX users. This is achieved by shifting more processing over to the GPU without the overhead for faster processing and a snappier feel. The demo that Epic gave of the upcoming title Fortnite ran crisp & smooth on the test hardware. Also with Swift now going open source I expect to see a lot more development using swift & with more integration of swift into El Capitan we should see some great stuff from developers.

I will be really interested to see if Metal and other improvements will run on older hardware. I’m still using an early 2009 iMac as my main development machine which is still more than capable and as yet not worth the upgrade. We do have a newer Macbook pro but I will be over the moon if this runs well on our older hardware too. I had to revert back to Mountain Lion on the main machine as Yosemite was very buggy & full of memory leaks. It ran at an acceptable speed but nowhere near as fast as ML. From the App Store reviews it seems a lot of people have had issues with Yosemite so I reverted back to ML until such a time that stability is improved.

iOS 9 was also announced at WWDC and some of the new features do look great. Most notably the new News app looks like a game changer. It’s essentially a proprietary RSS aggregator using apples own mark-up but the articles and formatting did look great on the demo. I wonder how it will work now more & more news content is going behind a pay wall? I tend to use the BBC app on iOS for my news and Feedly for all of my other RSS feeds but in the days of twitter I tend to follow the major sources of news such as Cnet, The Verge, The Register etc and read their articles as & when they tweet a link. With tweetbot this works great as I can view them in reader view. If news works as suggested & the news outlets do adopt the platform it will be amazing, if they decide not to support News it may just add to the already fragmented news/article reading experience.

Also in iOS 9 apple announced new multi tasking & keyboard functions along with split screen multi tasking. Granted the Split Screen will only work on Apple’s flagship iPad Air 2 but for future generations it’s the right direction to go for tablets. The new keyboard functions including using two fingers to create a trackpad with cursor have been a long time coming. How often are you trying to edit text in iOS, it magnifies where it thinks you want the cursor to be then starts jumping all over the place. Not Cool.

The new multi tasking does look great & should help people be even more productive with a tablet. As an old school techie I would never be without a desktop computer *shivers*, however many people now only have a smart phone or tablet for all of their computing tasks so the more capable these machines are the better for everyone who designs or develops apps & websites. The more people we have actively online the greater potential we have to achieve great things with our work.

Also announced for iOS 9 are new Maps which include better walking & transit maps. Granted these will only support major cities so the majority of people will never benefit from this, however it should be a good improvement when visiting unfamiliar cities, especially by integrating mass transit into maps itself. It will give you detailed instructions including transit times and numbers along with detailed internal maps of stations. I’m a bit of a mass transit geek so don’t often struggle with figuring out subways and trains, however for many people this is a hugely daunting task so can only be a good thing.

Finally apple announced a more energy-efficient iOS 9, with an estimated 1 hour extra of battery life under general usage & a new low energy mode to conserve upto an additional 3 hours of battery time. That’s got to be a good thing as smart phones become more and more etched into our lives. A few other things were announced for iOS 9 but I’m just covering the things that got me excited.

With regards Watch OS I’m not really that excited. The Apple Watch is a great device, I’ve played with them & love them, however I just don’t have a need for one yet. I may in the future pick one up but right now it’s just not something I want or need. The fact that apps will run natively in Watch OS 2 is great for developers. I’m sure developers will come up with uses for the apple watch that apple never even dreamed of. I’m just not prepared to be an early adopter on this so not much to say on Watch OS.

Just as we all thought the WWDC keynote was over we heard Tim Cook mention we have something else to talk about. I for one was preying it was an Apple TV update but alas it was something completely different. Apple Music & Beats 1 was announced. As always when apple bring in musicians to talk to a room of developers it all gets a little awkward and weird. Almost like they have had the worst actor in the building quickly learn a script that goes totally wrong. I was happy to see Trent Reznor talking about Apple Music & his involvement and the service does look good. I’ll be happy to get my 3 month trial on the 30th June when iOS 8.4 comes out.

Apple Music is essentially all the best bits of Spotify, myspace of old, twitter, instagram, facebook and music news websites all rolled into one. With connect you can follow your favourite artists, see latest releases & checkout stuff they are working on & generally connect more with your favourite artists. This has been a long time coming. Since the shift from physical media to MP3/AAC/Streaming storage & acquisition of music has become far easier, but the social aspects of music & music discovery have faltered. I used to love going to a record shop(s) and browsing the racks, seeing new releases, chatting with like-minded people & hearing new music in store. I loved swapping CD’s with friends & discovering new bands. In the age of iTunes & streaming this has all but disappeared. I’m hoping that the new connect service goes some way to bridging that gap & hopefully artists will promote music they love & not just self promote. The new discovery tools are apparently user curated & not algorithm led so hopefully the suggestions will be just as good as those made by your mates/peers back in the CD/Tape/Vinyl days.

Alongside the Apple Music subscription service they announced beats 1 radio. Broadcasting out of London, NYC & LA it’s meant to be a 24 hour global radio station. I hope that they bring some more countries into the mix as broadcasting from two US locations & London hardly seems representative of the world. I’m glad to see they brought in Zane Lowe. I didn’t like a lot of his Radio 1 stuff but that’s simply because I don’t rate mainstream chart music, however in his early MTV days & in his own music taste this guy does know what he is talking about. It may finally shake up the old chart system & broadcast radio nonsense & finally expose some new genuine talent.

So that’s my quick recap of WWDC 2015. I hope I managed to express what parts of WWDC I most enjoyed. Did you guys watch? What in particular are you looking forward to?