When Apple announced that the new iPod Nano will be equipped with an FM radio, many of you would have wondered when Apple will bring FM radio to the iPhone and iPod Touch. Well, here are some good news. 9to5Mac has reported that Apple is developing an in-house FM radio app for the iPhone as well as iPod Touch.
The app is likely to run in the background which happens to be the same practice used by iPod.app. As far as the functionality that this yet to arrive application will provide, we are guessing it will be similar to what the FM radio app provides for iPod Nanos.
Apple is trying to bring iTunes Mobile Store integration into this app and this is where Apple seems to have hit a dead end, which is likely to delay the arrival of the FM radio app. Apple wants to add iTunes store integration in order to assist you in purchasing the song you liked while listening to the radio.
Let’s clear this with an example: Say you are listening to a certain song, you like it and want to get hold of it immediately, with iTunes Store integration you can do that by just performing a couple of taps. All you need to do is push a button that will take you to iTunes Mobile store to show you the related song info, and then perform another tap to purchase the song.
There a couple of things you need to keep in mind in order to benefit from this integration.
- The particular radio station should support tagging
- You should be in the USA.
I can tell you right now that you need to be very close to the radio station for this to work- unless you have a 5 foot long pair of headphones, the signal will be too weak to pick up metadata in the suburbs
I can tell you right now that you need to be very close to the radio station for this to work- unless you have a 5 foot long pair of headphones, the signal will be too weak to pick up metadata in the suburbs