Did Apple purchase Signal?

No, Apple has implemented their own solution.

Did Alloysoft patent the idea?

No, as there was prior art even back when Signal was first created.

What happens now?

For the immediate future the plans for Signal remain unchanged. The native iPhone client is still under development and will still be released as planned. This will be a great new feature for all Signal users, including many requested changes and offering substantial performance improvements over the web client on the device. Winamp and Windows Media Player users will of course continue to benefit from all of Signal’s functionality, and for iTunes users Signal already offers features that the Apple product lacks such as the ability to queue up tracks, view internet radio station info, and automatically fetch album art.

Following the native iPhone release the Windows Mobile client will receive a UI update as promised, and there are plans to further expand the web interface to provide support for additional devices and even simpler controls from other Macs and PCs.

So while a free Apple product may well have an impact on the business, Signal isn’t going away anytime soon. Be on the lookout for continued software updates.

Signal’s story actually begins back in 2001. A bunch of friends and I had just moved to Denver after all being hired straight out of college. After adjusting to a new city, a real job, and actually earning income(!), it was unanimously decided that Life Was Good. This naturally led to more than a few parties, and our place being the biggest (and coolest) was usually the venue of choice. Of course any good party needs good music and this function was served by an MP3 collection delivered through Winamp on my PC. People could queue up songs, add new songs into the library, or just go jump to something particular in the playlist. This all worked out great except for one problem: drunk people kept spilling stuff all over my keyboard.

Now, if you’ve ever had the misfortune of someone at such gatherings having a taste for Aftershock you know that it looks, smells, and tastes like melted Altoids. What you probably didn’t know is that it has an additional hidden property: when someone sloshes it all over your keyboard it instantly and permanently bonds with plastic. This is decidedly not cool when you try to actually use said keyboard post-bonding. This stuff does not come off. A solution was needed, preferably one that stopped turning my keyboard into a makeshift mousetrap.

At work I had been doing some development on Pocket PCs, and while working on the project one day it suddenly dawned on me that using one of these to control Winamp would not only be cool, but also keep the shaky-handed monkeys away from my computer. So after a few hours of work, RemoteAmp (the Remote for Winamp) 0.1 was born. It was a buggy, horrible piece of software, but it worked and people liked it so it slowly gained features and fixes over the next few weeks until it became a fairly functional and stable remote control.

At the time I was completely unaware that people could actually take software like this and sell it on their own, so RemoteAmp existed only as a private utility and occasional hobby for quite a while. Some time later I came across Handango and PocketGear and learned that there was a whole community of people doing exactly this. What’s more, some of these products had the same idea as RemoteAmp - turning your Pocket PC into a media player remote. After trying these out I was left with a strong belief that I could build a better product. So after a few months and far more work than I had been prepared to expect, RemoteAmp 1.0 went out and my journey as an independent software developer began.

There were bugs, features, competitors, promotions, licensing deals - it was a fun and wild ride. RemoteAmp turned out to be a great solution for a lot of people, and is still used by many today. But as time passed interest in the Pocket PC in general began to fade, and despite a lot of cool features being in the works for RemoteAmp 3 the project turned into a lower priority item.

Then came the iPhone.

From the moment I held one I knew it would be the perfect remote. The size was right. The screen was gorgeous. It connected to Wi-Fi almost instantly. And the browser had full AJAX support. When RemoteAmp’s sales had begun to slow I started work on a web-based remote control solution using a completely rebuilt server designed to work on both the Mac and PC. This new server absorbed RemoteAmp’s Pocket PC capabilities as well and the combined product was what would later become Signal. All the pieces were there, I just had to put them together. What followed was weeks of frenzied work finishing the iPhone web interface and testing on actual hardware. Days went by without sleep and were barely noticed, and without a doubt I’ve never been more pumped about a project in my life. Finally the app was deemed ready and Signal 1.0 was released to the world. And so began the adventure.

• Hidden iTunes playlists are no longer displayed within the media library
• Selecting speakers with a CD selected in the iTunes window now works
• Fixed playlist sorting to sort playlists starting with lower-case characters properly

I’m happy to say that not only has your request been heard, but done one better - in the upcoming 1.2 release Signal is moving to a System Preference Pane. This allows Signal to run completely in the background with no UI whatsoever unless called upon. As an added bonus Signal will now start when your Mac starts, so it’s always available whenever you need it.

When the AirPort Express first came out, I was incredibly excited. Here was a way to put together a whole-house audio system that integrated seamlessly with iTunes, all that was missing was a slick way to control it via Wi-Fi. Of course, I soon discovered that there was in fact no way to control AirTunes through the iTunes API. Ok, no problem, I’ll just file a feature request (rdar://problem/3821346 for any Apple folks). I’m sure they’ll add it soon.

That was nearly four years ago. It’s still not there.

Meanwhile, the requests for AirTunes support kept pouring in, sometimes on a daily basis. Finally I had to relent. So with no support from Apple, and no clever back-door into iTunes available, how can we add support for this feature? Really, there’s only one way: Simulate the user’s input in the iTunes interface. In other words, send mouse clicks exactly at the positions where you would make them to select a speaker through iTunes. This is known as UI scripting and should make every developer who hears those words cringe.

At first glance UI scripting doesn’t seem like such a bad thing. Simulate a click on the speaker selection drop-down, how hard can it be? There’s just one problem. That drop-down? It moves. Try clicking around between different playlists and source types and you’ll see how its position changes. What’s more, in order to send those mouse clicks iTunes has to be the foreground window and there are all kinds of reasons why that might not be the case. Here are just a few of the things that Signal has to account for in order to make those simulated clicks work reliably:

• The user’s language
• The type of playlist selected
• The iTunes window being hidden
• The iTunes window being minimized
• The Mini Player view being selected
• The screen saver being active

And of course, my personal favorite:

• The user’s language not being English, with the radio tuner playlist selected, with iTunes in the Mini Player view, minimized, with the screen saver active, plus some random process that just happens to act up right then and slow everything down.

You have no idea how much cursing was involved in the creation of this feature.

The worst part is that despite all the efforts to make this work as smoothly as possible, it’s still based on a broken model. If Apple decides to update the iTunes interface and move the speaker selection drop-down to a new location it will break. If there is some odd mouse or application behavior that Signal doesn’t account for it will break. And of course, although Signal can send the mouse clicks it can’t get any information back about whether those clicks worked or what speakers are actually turned on.

Sure, Signal could start taking little screenshots of iTunes and try to figure this out from the image. “Well, that kind of looks like ‘Computer’ in Simplified Chinese, I guess we can check the box”. But then I would go insane and then there would be no further product development.

Applications will always have bugs, but a good application tries to be as reliable as possible so that it “just works”. When the limitations of an API prevent your application from doing that, it’s incredibly frustrating. All of which is to say to Apple: Please, please, for the love of shiny plastic, put AirTunes control in the iTunes API.

• Albums are now sorted by disc number before track number
• When adding or playing an artist with only one album tracks are now sorted properly
• Resolved an issue that prevented the remote speakers menu from appearing for some Pocket PC users

The update is available now via software update or direct download, with the full list of changes available in the release notes.

One of the handy but less obvious features of Signal is the ability to access the web interface from your iPhone or iPod touch using your computer’s Bonjour name instead of its IP address. Since not all devices support Bonjour, to ensure maximum compatibility Signal currently displays a web access URL using your computer’s IP address, but you can still access the interface using the Bonjour name. In the future the application will be updated to display both, with some guidance as to which is appropriate for your device. For now, here’s how to access Signal using Bonjour.

Mac

First you’ll need to find you computer’s network name. To do that, open System Preferences and click Sharing. Near the top of the screen you’ll see a message similar to “Computers on your local network can access your computer at:”. The name that follows is your computer’s network name.

To access Signal using Bonjour, just replace the IP address portion of the web address shown in the Signal application window with the network name and enter this address into your iPhone or iPod (you can leave out the http:// part):

That’s it! As long as your computer name remains the same you’ll be able to access Signal at this address no matter what the IP address is.

Easy access from other Macs

In addition, with Signal 1.1 it’s now much easier to access the web interface from other Macs on your network using Safari. Here’s how to do it:

1. Click on the Show All Bookmarks icon in the Bookmarks Bar
2. Click on the Bonjour collection
3. Double-click on the entry for Signal in the list

This will open the Signal web interface without you needing to type anything at all. Bonjour will automatically keep this list up-to-date so you’ll always be able to access any Signal server running in your network from here.

Windows

Although Windows does not support Bonjour by itself, Windows users can take advantage of the same discovery capabilities by installing Bonjour for Windows. Once it’s up and running, the first thing you’ll need to do is find your computer’s network name. To do that:

1. Click on the Start Menu
2. Right click on My Computer (XP) or Computer (Vista) and select Properties
3. If using Windows XP, click on the Computer Name tab

On the dialog that appears you’ll find your computer’s network name. To access Signal using this name, replace the IP address portion of the web address shown in the Signal application window with the network name displayed in the dialog, followed by “.local” (it’s a Bonjour thing). Then enter this combined address into your iPhone or iPod like so (you can leave out the http:// part):

That’s it! As long as your computer name remains the same you’ll be able to access Signal at this address no matter what the IP address is.

If you tap on the album art image to display the additional controls, you’ll notice a new icon for multiple speakers. Tapping on this will take you to the speaker selection screen, and here you’ll see the list of all AirTunes speakers in your network as well as an entry for your computer and a switch to toggle between single and multiple speaker modes.

When set to single speaker mode tapping on a speaker name will redirect all audio output to that speaker, just like selecting it from the speakers drop-down within iTunes. This allows you to quickly send audio to a single room or back to your computer.

When set to multiple speaker mode tapping on a speaker name will toggle that speaker on or off, just like using the “Remote Speakers” window in iTunes. Signal will automatically remember the last speaker mode setting used, so if you’re always operating in multiple speaker mode you can just set the option once and never worry about it again.

The first time you use the speaker selection option on a Mac you may see a message asking you to turn on “access for assistive devices” on your Mac. This is a Universal Access feature that enables UI scripting, and it’s how Signal works around the fact that iTunes still does not include a proper API for AirTunes control. Signal will open up the Universal Access system preference pane for you, so all you need to do is check the box and you’re set.

But wait, there’s more!

It’s been a couple of months since the last update, and the time hasn’t been spent idly. In addition to the new speaker controls, 1.1 also includes some other great new features:

Alphabetic Media Library Jump

To speed media library navigation when browsing, an A-Z button is now included at the top and bottom of every media library group that spans more than a single page. Tapping this will bring up an alphabet overlay, allowing you to tap on a letter and have the media library scroll directly to the first entry starting with that letter. Coupled with Signal’s existing speedy search capability finding just what you’re looking for should be easy!

Landscape Support

Mobile Safari loves its landscape mode, and while for most web viewing it’s a great feature, for web applications it can sometimes get in the way. Since there’s no way to turn it off, why not use it! Signal will now properly re-arrange itself when in landscape mode, allowing you to utilize all controls and giving you more space to see media library artist and album names.

Back Button Support

Safari’s back button can now be used from anywhere within the Signal interface to take you back to the Now Playing screen with one tap. If you’re in the middle of browsing for something in particular but you want to skip a song or make a quick change to the volume, just tap the back button. When you’re done, tapping Safari’s forward button will take you right back to where you were.

Improved Podcast Organization

Podcasts are now a top-level category in the media library, organized by show rather than artist and sorted by date so you can easily find the latest episodes of your favorite shows.

…And the Details

• New icon!
• WebClip icon
• Previous now acts as backtrack in iTunes
• Bonjour advertisement for the HTTP interface
• The usual assortment of fixes and minor changes covered in the release notes.

This is a release that I’ve been looking forward to for some time now, and I’m very excited to see it get into your hands. It’s available right now on the downloads page, I hope you enjoy it!