
Plug – Native OS X client for Hype Machine - alex_marchant
http://plugformac.com 
======
cobralibre
This looks lovely — great job with the UI.

I can see from the Hype Machine blog [1] that Plug was developed with the
approval and assistance of Hype Machine. Nevertheless, it's unfortunate that
the client requires the end user's username and password credentials rather
than using an authorization framework like OAuth 2.

[1] [http://blog.hypem.com/2014/04/we-
are-9/](http://blog.hypem.com/2014/04/we-are-9/)

~~~
nnnnni
I'm _happy_ about that. I'd rather have a separate login (with unique
password) for each service than log into everything using the same account.

EDIT: I misunderstood the complaint! I thought that they wanted to login using
a Google account or something similar rather than having a place in Hype
Machine to allow Plug to connect and use a token to pass the permission to the
program. Oops! I completely agree with the poster's comment in this case.

~~~
lucian1900
You misunderstand. This app requires you type in your password inside it, as
opposed to using some form of token from the website (which is how OAuth2
works).

~~~
nnnnni
Ah, I thought that they were complaining about not being able to login _using_
a Google account! I will edit my original comment to clarify and hopefully
avoid more downvotes.

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alex_marchant
Side note: I recently ported all of Plug to Swift (dev build, not yet released
of course). Swift is a great leap forward!

~~~
aaronharnly
Any observations?

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alex_marchant
Optionals are really interesting. In theory it's a really smart concept. In
practice it seems to add a bit of complexity. Will be interesting to see if
the concept pays off in the long term.

~~~
eddieroger
I'm intrigued by optionals, but I feel like returning nil for objects in ObjC
- a pattern I've always used - is kind of the same thing in a different like.
Do you have experience with returning nil instead of objects? How does that
compare to optionals?

~~~
alex_marchant
Yes, i did use that same pattern. And if you want to, you can kind of force
Swift to do this (String! is an "unwrapped optional" and can be nil or have a
value) but it feels unnatural. You definitely have to design a bit differently
than ObjC. Luckily Swift's enums are amazing and you can return multiple
values (through tuples), so there are great ways to return different types of
values.

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650REDHAIR
So much <3! Hype Machine is great and this definitely feels like something
that would have come from them with the amount of polish and detail.

Keep up the good work!

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jmduke
This is great: as a hypem addict, I'm excited to play with a desktop app. A
few points:

\- When is playlist support planned? (I'm pretty sure it's only been out for
like two weeks so the delay is understandable.)

\- Where can I report bugs?

\- Consider allowing horizontal resizing or a marquee effect on table cell
hover: track names getting cut off is sort of frustrating.

~~~
alex_marchant
> When is playlist support planned?

Playlists are awesome. Hard to say, Plug is a hobby project so we add features
as we can. But we usually prioritize features by how many requests we get.

> Where can I report bugs?

Hit us up at @plugformac

> Consider allowing horizontal resizing or a marquee effect on table cell
> hover

Totally, this is very high on the to-do list

~~~
po
Been using Plug for a month or so now and want to say thanks. Another bug
report for you:

It sometimes has trouble playing more after it is playing down to the last
song that has already been loaded in the list. I think it needs to query for
more songs when it gets down to the last few.

~~~
alex_marchant
Roger roger. Thanks for reporting!

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schrodingersCat
If for some reason I wasn't up-vote banned, I'd give this +1. I cannot stress
how nice this UI looks. Had not really looked into hype-machine prior to this,
but I really like it so far.

~~~
alex_marchant
Shoot, well, appreciate the intention. Glad you like it, keep in touch with us
at @plugformac if you can.

~~~
schrodingersCat
Huzzah! A HN admin saw this thread and re-enabled voting (Thanks Daniel!). Up-
voted...

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ddoolin
This is awesome. I hadn't even heard of Hype Machine but your app made me
curious (looks great btw). Two nice little surprises, I'll have to start
checking them out.

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jordanbrown
Hands down this has been my favorite mac application since the first version
came out. I hope the rest of the cocoa community takes notice.

Keep up the good work Alex & Glenn!

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baseten
Nice work, nice ui. I had to go lookup my hypem login info cause i hadn't
visited in a while. at first glance this is something i will be using.

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dewey
I really like this. I'd love to see scrobbeling to last.fm integrated. Is this
something you'd consider for a future release?

~~~
alex_marchant
That actually already works. Just need to connect your last.fm account at
[http://hypem.com/find_friends](http://hypem.com/find_friends).

~~~
dewey
Saw the tweets about the scrobbling feature in the meantime. Thanks, it's
working now. It looks like it's not using the "Now playing" feature [0]
though, any specific reason for that?

Another question: Is there a reason why it's not possible to resize the
window? Some tracks are cut off and it'd be more comfortable to have a little
bit wider window because the long track names are not scrolling by so you
never see them.

Apart from that, enjoying the app so far! Thanks.

[0] [http://www.last.fm/api/scrobbling](http://www.last.fm/api/scrobbling)

~~~
fascinated
Anthony, founder of Hype Machine here.

We used to have the Now Playing Last.fm support, but took it out as Last.fm
faded from the spotlight a few years ago.

It's still one of my favorite services (scrobbling is life-changing) though,
but we aren't even sure if it's worth the overhead to keep the Now Playing
support active (requires more resources).

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bluzeee
Looks simply beautiful. Excellent design.

One thing that grabs my eyes always are side bars. For some reason i feel left
side bar for right handed person it not convenient and vice versa.

But, i see all apps designed with left side bars. Wondering why left side only
while many users to my experience are right handed ?

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mross462
And while we're at it:

[https://github.com/salomvary/soundcleod](https://github.com/salomvary/soundcleod)

and

[https://kbhomes.github.io/radiant-player-
mac/](https://kbhomes.github.io/radiant-player-mac/)

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henningo
Very nice (I'd heart the software if I could!)

Hype machine is fantastic for music discovery. The big hits always surface
there months before they hit the radio/mainstream.

Any chance for a Windows version (I'm stuck on a PC at work!)

~~~
alex_marchant
Sorry, don't think this will happen :( Maybe a nice virtual box setup running
OSX with Plug installed! (haha, jkjkjk, hypem.com is great and has so many
features)

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plingamp
Just one (small) design thought, the sidebar has the appearance that it could
be hidden. Or maybe i've just been on mobile for far too long. Looks great,
nonetheless!

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girvo
I've barely touched The Hype Machine before, but this UI is _so_ nice that I
think I'm going to become a great fan! Well done!

~~~
tuanx5
I've been using Plug for about a year, and I have to say it's my favorite
player. The past month I've also started using SoundMate and Radiant, but I
still feel that Plug is the smoothest and least in the way.

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benburton
Would be nice if there were some way to thumbs down/always ignore particular
artists. Chris Brown, for example.

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rkayg
Been using plug for quite a while, and as an hype machine addict, I am
absolutely in love with the app.

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palmeida
Great piece of software. congrats! Feature request: Would love to be able to
apply a filter by genre

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ahmett
Awesome job, lovely UI. Are you planning to add "Scrobble to Last.fm" feature?

~~~
alex_marchant
Please see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7968066](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7968066)
:)

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cezary
Really nice work, I use their website every day and I might just switch over
to this.

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jtmoulia
I love it! Are there any plans for including the hypem time machine feature?

~~~
alex_marchant
We do what we can in our spare time. We usually prioritize features by demand.
So tweet us and get your friends to if you want something built.

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niles
Once you find a blog you like, you can use Peel [1] to rip the MP3s to iTunes.
Unfortunately it does not work with Hypem top lists, only the direct RSS that
it aggregates.

[1] [http://www.getpeel.com/](http://www.getpeel.com/)

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arrakeen
i'm getting a lot of repeats when using shuffle. perhaps a more itunes-like
method would be better

~~~
alex_marchant
Makes sense, it's just a random algorithm which is far from ideal. Just need
the time to implement something heftier (Spotify knows what's up
[http://labs.spotify.com/2014/02/28/how-to-shuffle-
songs/?_ga...](http://labs.spotify.com/2014/02/28/how-to-shuffle-
songs/?_ga=1.262392844.1627219277.1403645861)).

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ianwalter
Amazing, thank you for making this!

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rishtal
Way to go! Hypem is awesome.

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RTesla
It's beautiful.

