I believe it converts those files to compatible formats when you transfer them off the device. The exception seems to be when you have macOS 10.13 and use Photos, the images and videos stay in HEIF and HEVC.
It absolutely isn't hard to get music on Spotify. DistroKid (distrokid.com) is $20 a year to upload unlimited tracks to all the music services.
But, you're point about being able to upload "anything" to SoundCloud stands. It was a place for remixes, demo tracks, podcasts, etc. You aren't able to upload just anything to the music streaming services. (need album artwork, etc)
And your last paragraph is spot on. I'm surprised we didn't see them release their own mobile OS and phone /s
My wife and I did the exact same thing, except it was SF. We're very happy that we moved back to Toronto and Canada in general. It's our home (friends and family are here) and we didn't want to have kids in SF.
Apple Pay has been a godsend for me. I carry one backup debit card and slimmed my wallet down to almost nothing.
In Canada, we've had contactless terminals everywhere for a few years, so it's very rare to find a place where I can't just tap my Apple Watch or iPhone to pay. There's no need to find a place to explicitly supports Apple Pay, it works the exact same way our credit and debit cards have for years.
Uses HTTP adaptive streaming that's built into Quicktime and iOS natively. It's the same technology that MLB/NFL/NHL use to do live-streaming of games to their apps on iOS.
There is a way to get VLC to open the stream, but I haven't had to do it personally.
I know that Canadian ISPs have the Netflix appliances located in their data centres, so technically yes they do serve content from within Canada sometimes.
They do let you hide purchases so that they won't show up on in the music list on iOS and iTunes. They won't let you delete a purchase, which makes sense.
It's confusing because they're using purchase history as a basis for your entire library, which might not sync up with your mindset for your music list. I've definitely hidden past purchases that I know I'll never need easy access to.
I find the Privacy addresses a pain when it comes to managing traffic on my network. My (mostly Apple) devices will never use their DHCP provided v6 address to connect to a public service and this means that my gateway doesn't know what the hostname is for that connection.
I ended up writing a little script to scan the "ip -6 neigh" and correlate hosts together based on MAC, then write that to a hosts file for DNSMasq to use. Hack, but it works for me.
But in most of the services areas where you can get Bell or Rogers, you can get one of the 3rd party providers like Start or Teksavvy. These providers have an unmetered upstream cap and very generous downstream caps.
People also use SourceConnect as a way to do studio-to-studio sessions. Works very well in the studio where I set it up. Sessions to Portland, Chicago, Germany, etc all go off without a hitch.
http://source-elements.com/source-connect/
You can use an ISDN bridge service to be able to talk to those studios that are still on ISDN and that works well, as well.
So, this sounds like a decent thing to also have available as a service. That way clients can be on SourceConnect pure, ISDN over a bridge, or Skype TX.
Skype is used currently sometimes if the talent is local but the producers are remote. Allows them to "be in the room". But Skype TX sounds like a decent solution for collaborating between studios.