
Show HN: Radio - My first Mac app - dglancy
http://www.radioformac.com
======
sneak
You might also want to add the fantastic stations over at Intergalactic FM,
some of the best electronic music on (and off) Earth:

[https://intergalacticfm.com/](https://intergalacticfm.com/)

~~~
dglancy
Added.

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tomschlick
It would be nice to see a list of radio stations you currently support on your
website before purchasing.

~~~
dglancy
That's a good idea. Will try and get that up there.

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kbar13
I'm sure public radio stations would love it if you integrated some sort of
donations thang into Radio so that listeners can directly donate to
{{station}}.

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sebhack
Nice app! Although it suffers from the same problem that iTunes has, when
playing a radio stream: I have a very unstable DSL internet connection, the
connection drops every 2-3h for a few seconds or more. It's like unplugging
the network cable for 5 seconds and re-plugging it in. So when the internet
connection drops, it says "buffering" forever, so I have to manually click
stop and play to resume the stream. Would be very nice, if the app would
automatically try to reconnect (i.e. restart the TCP connection) after short
timeout, or something like that.

As a workaround to the missing media keys support because Apple won't allow
it: You could provide a little AppleScript interface, so that everyone could
configure own global shortcuts with FastScripts. If that makes sense. Don't
know if that's possible to implement.

~~~
dglancy
Applescript know in place @
[http://www.radioformac.com/#mediakeys](http://www.radioformac.com/#mediakeys)

Thanks for the suggestion.

~~~
sebhack
That's great, thanks!

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sneak
When clicking the "add new station" button on the favourites tab, I would
expect the newly added station to appear in my favorites (as well as the
stations tab).

It doesn't - After adding it (on the favourites tab), I have to go to the
stations tab, search for it (which causes UI lag), then mark it a favourite.

Also: lose the spaces between the labels and the ellipsis ("...") on the edit
and delete buttons.

Also: Make the "Ok" button the default (enter) on the add new station pane

~~~
dglancy
Great feedback thanks. Agree with it all and working on the UI lag issue.

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sneak
Lots of UI lag when typing the first character into the "all stations"
filter/search field, and again when deleting the last character remaining.

~~~
davidcollantes
Yes, this is the only "bad" thing I find with the application. Hopefully it
gets fixed.

------
cake
Looks very similar to Radium :
[http://catpigstudios.com/](http://catpigstudios.com/)

~~~
dglancy
It is a bit. Menubar radio players will all seem similar. I was a Radium user
myself. It was the "record" function of this app that prompted me to make it.
I wanted to record radio shows, budget speeches and a specific Dutch trance
music show I listen to and I couldn't find an easy way to do that. There were
ways, but nothing one-click and resident on the menu bar.

~~~
dsl
Can you explain how recording works? Do you parse the song title and cut a new
MP3 whenever it changes?

~~~
dglancy
Right now, we don't do that. Its just a simple MP3 file that lasts for as long
as you are recording a station. The problem with parsing the song title is
that firstly, not all stations support it, and secondly, a lot of stations
will push the station name into the stream at periodic intervals. It would
make cutting up a continuous stream into accurate individual songs quiet
troublesome.

But for some well behaved stations, its doable, if people wanted it enough.

------
sneak
Via Little Snitch, I noticed it contacts your radioformac.com webserver on
port 80 on launch. I didn't sniff the traffic but presumably this is for a
list of stations or something?

Could you please update to use SSL/TLS (https) instead? It's for the server
authentication, not so much the transit security.

~~~
dglancy
Indeed it is to get latest stations. I will update to SSL.

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madd_o
Bought it, works great :)

Might like to see description listed next to stations in the fav list drop
down from menu bar.

(edit: also, sort by description in All Stations list doesn't work:
[http://cl.ly/image/3l3M030n1D2m](http://cl.ly/image/3l3M030n1D2m))

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robbiep
Seems great. Can I suggest you add this list of stations?
[http://www.abc.net.au/radio/listenlive.htm#shoutcastaac](http://www.abc.net.au/radio/listenlive.htm#shoutcastaac)

Australians will be forever grateful

~~~
dglancy
Will defo do that. Radio connects to a plist file on startup so we can push
new stations to it. Thanks for the links.

Getting a decent list of stations was one of the most frustrating aspects of
the project. That and catering for WMA based streams.

------
signed0
My main issue with Radium is that it does not support the play/pause/fast-
forward/rewind keys on my MacBook. Does Radio support these?

~~~
dglancy
It does not at the moment. And not from the want of trying! Unfortunately the
App Store sandbox does not yet allow you to detect the media keys being
pressed. The old way of doing it uses a very low-level function that is not
available for security reasons (its essentially a key logger) within the
sandbox..

Its common problem across all App Store apps, for now. Drives me crazy as
well!

~~~
signed0
That's a shame. Perhaps someone needs to build a small library that exists
outside of the App Store that notifies App Store apps when those keys are
pressed. :P

This reason alone is what keeps me using VLC for radio playlists.

~~~
kapowaz
This seems like a great idea. Build some sort of universal bridge for media
keys that any compatible app can hook into? Or would the OS X sandbox prevent
that, too?

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dglancy
It is a great idea and should be possible so long as Apple is willing to
approve an sandboxed app that accepts incoming connections (listens) on a port
against the local interface.

~~~
quesera
The bridge could be the listener, and the sandboxed apps could open a
connection to it. This is probably preferable design anyway.

The apps should request subscription to a set of keypress events, the bridge
should get approval from the user (maybe only if the app requests keys other
than F keys and media keys?). The bridge should be discoverable by local
bonjour rather than running on a known port.

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timmow
Are you considering adding alarm support to wake the mac and play a radio
station in the morning? I would love a reliable mac program to do this!

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ique
Is it possible for non-apple developers to integrate with AirPlay? Because
that would be a really nice feature to have!

~~~
dglancy
It is and its on our list (actually its on a git branch). Just didn't make it
across the line for v1.

As a stop gap we have this in our FAQ:

Radio currently doesn't directly support Airplay.

However, if you'd really like to stream Radio via Airplay, here is a trick you
can use:

Hold the Alt-key and click on the Volume icon in the menu bar, a menu will
appear showing any available Airplay device. Select your Airplay device and
all your sounds will play over Airplay.

~~~
sneak
In the Appleverse, we call it Option, not Alt.

(I know the key says "alt" too, but it's smaller type for a reason.)

~~~
dglancy
Fixed!

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diversr
Why the Mountain Lion requirement? What tech. are you using that is present in
OS X 10.8 only?

~~~
dglancy
Objective-C literals, that's all.

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radimm
Love the app. One feature request: add scheduled recording (one-off,
repeating, etc.)

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iddqd
Does it support FLAC streams?

~~~
dglancy
Not at the moment, but possible in future. Can you let me know of an example
stream?

~~~
iddqd
Okay, good to head. Unfortunately I don't know of any public ones, no.

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aaronbrethorst
I don't think Rdio is going to like this.
[http://www.rdio.com](http://www.rdio.com)

~~~
dglancy
I was pretty pleased that Apple had no issue with the name!

~~~
zura
US Patent and Trademark Office won't have any issue as well. Consider to
apply.

~~~
richardwhiuk
I struggle to believe you can trademark 'Radio' for a radio app - it's
completely generic.

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treme
fantastic. May I ask, what was your reasoning for calling it such a generic
name?

~~~
dglancy
Sure. Nothing sneaky or anything like that. We were of course tossing around
app names. Anything but "iRadio" :-)

Nothing was sticking and people were asking me how we were getting on with the
"Radio" personal project. I always kinda of imagined the project as making a
menubar radio player that "should have shipped with my Mac". So when we
noticed that "Radio" itself was available in the App Store, it just resonated
with us and stuck.

~~~
dglancy
And getting {radioformac dot com} was just plain luck. Cost us €5.99. Try
getting _any_ dot com domain with radio in the word is just nuts. So again, we
saw that as a sign!

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davidcollantes
Love it, own it. Thank you!

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joaomoreno
Looks awesome.

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ronaldsvilcins
Nice! Thanks!

