Pandora Premium (Rdio reincarnated) is rolling out slowly. So far I'm loving the iOS app – waiting on the desktop.

Still playing, but yeah. I can see that. I'm just a fan of any tutorial Chris Slowik releases. He's great at simplifying the learning curve for new apps.

Rdio was truly groundbreaking, and it's design language will be influential for a long time. Do we know who to thank for that? Are the designers on Dribbble? They deserve a beer.

Am I the only one who absolutely loves this article? You can tell the author speaks from experience working with real applications, not stand-alone Dribbble shots or one-off marketing splash pages. It's nice to get a reminder every now and then that our designs need to be usable, and maintainable once they're built into applications that are in production for years and worked on by dozens of developers.

It's just bots – all the way down.

Yes. Isomorphic design patterns like Ember FastBoot or rendering React on the server is the next big step in solving this. Seems a perfect balance of traditional server-based documents with interactive single-page applications.

In a standard setup, your computer is providing the digital-to-analog conversion (DAC) along with the analog preamplification to drive the headphones. A Macbook Pro (for instance) offers decent components for both. A dedicated DAC with a dedication headphone amp is the best.

But with a bluetooth setup you're assigning those two roles to the bluetooth headphone setup. If your BT headphones are fed via USB from the computer, then it's sending the digital signal over the air and the headphones themselves are providing the DAC and amplification. If your BT headphones are fed via a 1/8" connection, then the analog signal is getting converted back to digital, sent across the air, then converted back to analog, and then amplified. You can see that each step will degrade the source signal.

Stick to a cable for best sound.

Beats – If a headphone costs over $200 you'd expect professionals to use them, but they don't. I've yet to hear of any professional studio using Beats for reference. You're paying for marketing and flashy plastic that will break down after a year. Your money can go farther with other brands such as AKG, Audio Technica, BeyerDynamic, or Sennheiser.

A friend got a pair from Massdrop. They are very comfortable, but the high-mid boost is too much for me – it's a little unrealistic. But the bass is contained, and the highs are very pleasant. These will probably be around for a while. AKG did good.

The M50x's are very respectable. A close friend uses them daily with high praise. If you can get them for under $100, go for it.