Tra i blog tecnologici americani rimbalza della notizia della prossima disponibilità sull'iPhone Store, della applicazione per la ricezione dei canali radiofonici dei satelliti Sirius sul telefonino della Mela. A dispetto di una situazione finanziaria difficile, Sirius XM gode di ottima stampa e molti attendono con trepidazione il definitivo rilascio di uSirius Starplayr, finora disponibile solo per Windows, anche nella versione iPhone. Quello che segue è l'intervento di Arik Hasseldahl sui blog dell'autorevole Business Week. Il settimanale economico osserva giustamente che questa apertura al mondo delle Web/iPhone radio potrebbe risultare tardivo per un operatore che annaspa in una situazione debitoria molto grave.
Sirius App For iPhone Coming, And What That Says About Satellite Radio
Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on January 29
Perhaps I’m in the minority, but I really like satellite radio. I was an early customer of XM, but switched to Sirius when a year’s worth of the service came included with a new car. Now that their programming lineups are mostly integrated following their merger into the combined SiriusXM, you don’t have to feel like you’re missing anything.
It’s great to have in the car, especially on long trips, but I’ve never really taken to playing it anywhere but the car. I didn’t really want to spring for a second home radio and pay the extra monthly fee. And while I took advantage occasionally of listening to Sirius’s Web-based streams from time to time, it was such a hassle — the streams were and maybe still are encoded in Windows Media format and thus aren’t exactly as Mac-friendly as they should be, not even after I installed Flip4Mac — so I never really bothered with it. Instead when I wanted a good music stream I’d turn to any one of the variety of free streams found on iTunes or on the Web, or maybe Pandora, or Last.fm. More recently I’ve been playing around with the excellent FStream app both on my Mac and my iPhone.
Still, satellite has some great programming that is a shame to miss for the simple reason that you’re not in the car: Wynton Marsalis’s terrific jazz show “In The Swing Seat” or Bob Dylan’s magnificent “Theme Time Radio Hour” come to mind.
So I was delighted last weekend to discover Rogue Amoeba’s latest app Pulsar. If you are a subscriber to either one of the satellite radio services you can sign in with your existing account information and listen to the streams live. I downloaded and installed a trial version and decided within about 10 minutes to shell out the $15 so I could listen for longer than 20 minutes. In a word its terrific, and shows more or less how the satellite radio companies should have worked harder than they did to embrace the idea of streaming online, they have might not have reached the terrible, horrible, no good business circumstances in which they find themselves today.
Had XM and Sirius worked with third-party software vendors sooner, and made their programming streams easier to use for general online users — even made a little bit of their programming available for free — it might have worked to sell more people on the idea of satellite radio in their car or home. Or maybe not.
Even so, I’m delighted with the rumors making the rounds that an Sirius streaming app for the iPhone, called uSirius Starplayr is on its way to the iTunes App store. I’m sure I’ll try it right away, as I’ve tried most of the other streaming music apps for the iPhone (Pandora is my current favorite.) Sadly for SiriusXM, it might appear that this whole new era of openness with the streaming world is coming way too late.
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