Hey, I really love working with Garageband on the iPad. I think it’s a revolution. It’s so intuitive, unintimidating, and most importantly fun! Of course, it still has a way to go to be a “professional” production device, but I feel that is coming in years to come, and as you can hear this production sounds pretty good! And this was done on an iPad1 along with merely singing into that little pinhole mic. Other than that all the instruments were just “smart” instruments played entirely on the iPad. Hope you enjoy. This song is called “Kuzbass” by Josh Rouse that I covered.
Tag: ipad
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Apple’s New iPad: A Horse With No Name
Man, I haven’t blogged in forever. I think about it too much. One shouldn’t think, one should just blog. Blog’s aren’t formal.Do you like the title? I was trying to think of something funny or cute since while everyone was debating whether this iteration would be called “iPad 3” or “iPad HD” Apple decided not to call it anything!
Apparently this represents symbolically that the iPad has entered into the “Post PC” era. Regular computers such as MacBooks aren’t given special names with each new generation, they simply “just are” and simply have upgrades or “refreshes”
every so often. This symbolizes that the iPad, and more generally, the paradigm it represents: Mobile, Intimacy, has reached a point in the amount of power that it has, to do most of the tasks that we “ordinary” people do in our normal “everyday” world:
Edit photos, word process, browse the net, even some simple video editing.This new iPad certainly is a horse: double the screen resolution, double the processing and graphics. Apparently the screen is so beautiful that it looks better than a photo print. One for a second just imagines a day when reality just sort of leaps out of such a screen.
Every nerds dream. And if John Wheeler’s “It from Bit” physical paradigm turns out to be true, such a wild fantasy may not be as “far out” as one would expect.The beauty of the piece, everything Apple makes is not only more functional, intimate, and ‘warm” than others, but also an “object of beauty” will sell itself. Everyone who is into technology drools when they walk into an Apple store. Which begs the question, is Apple a Pornographer?
Maybe. True art, according to Aquinas, isn’t supposed to move you to desire, nor fear. But rather put you into a state of Aesthetic Arrest. Which you know, Apple does that too. So maybe it is true art and not Pornography.I still can’t believe that the amount of disk space hasn’t changed in two years. No component of computing has more price elasticity in ration to time as disk space. Technologically, disk space increases exponentially faster than even computing power itself, at least double every 12 months, yet this very iPad that came out
today has the same disk space options: 16gb, 32gb, 64gb as the original. That’s insane. Where am I supposed to keep all my downloaded movies, especially if they’re in HD? And all that HD video I’m shooting from the iPad itself.But you’d be hard pressed to find one tech journalist pointing out this glaring omission. Someone on Google+ pointed out to me that maybe iCloud will take up the slack. Perhaps, but I still don’t know what iCloud is, how it works, or even what it’s supposed to do.
Meanwhile, the Google+ app on my iPhone simply uploads all my photos to the cloud without me every having to think about it.
Having said that, for all it’s minuses, the iPad is light years ahead of the competition on software, apps, interface and the X Factor of it making you feel safe and comforting. Apple’s whole eco system may be a prison, but it’s a safe “Country Club” prison.
Android may make you more free, but you feel less safe, as if you are risking having to live your life ‘out on the streets.’The emotional factor, which seems like a dichotomy when applied to ‘computing’ cannot be over estimated. It’s leading Apple, currently as we speak, to be the most valuable company in the World, with about a billion dollars in after tax profits per week!
That’s utterly mind boggling. And with this release, they are only going to keep growing.At the end of the day, even with all the things that annoy me about them, at least Apple, unlike say government contractors, are making their money the old fashioned way: They’re earning it.
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What to do when your iPad’s Home Button Stops Working
A few days ago my iPad’s home button stopped working. Seems like it happened right after I upgraded to iOs 4.3. The only thing I could do to use it was turn it off and back on. Mine’s a first generation that I got at Best Buy the first day it came out on April 3rd, 2010. I searched the web. There was a blog post where a lot of people who were having the same problem talked about solutions and whether it was hardware or software caused. Some found answers. Most didn’t and ended up taking it back and getting it replaced. Since mine is almost a year old and I didn’t buy any of the warranty from Best Buy or Apple, I figured I would have to take it back, they may send it off and that it would cost me something.
Anyway on this blog post I know one guy mentioned that his would work in Portrait mode. I tried portrait mode, still nothing. So I let the thing sit for a day. I’d thought about a hard reset, but how are you going to do a hard reset if the home button doesn’t work?
Anyway, yesterday, even though it was still not working, I found something funny: I noticed that when I held it in landscape mode, pushed the button, held it, then rotated it to portrait mode, then released, it started working, maybe half the time. I thought, “OK, I can live with this for a few days until I take it up there.”
Then later on, I had the iPad sitting flat on my wooden desk next to my desktop. I pushed the button. It worked every time. I thought, “Hey this is cool. OK.” I thought maybe it had something to do with the hard surface. Now my iPad is not in a case, so I don’t know if that may make a difference.
Now, a day after that, it seems to be totally working again like normal.
This could be totally anecdotal and have nothing to do with my exercises. Maybe it was just a glitch in the software that some how “healed” itself. But its worth a try if you find yourself in this same situation.
So try this:
- Hold the iPad in front of you in landscape mode
- Push the button and keep it held while you gently rotate it to Portrait mode, then release.
- See if you get any response: 1 out of 2 times, 1 out of 3, etc.
- If that works, or even if it doesn’t, lay the iPad gently on a hard, smooth surface, so there is even resistance. (If its in a case, I’d recommend taking it out) Push the button, hold it in a second longer than normal, then gently release.
- This may be totally anecdotal but it “feels” like it started responding when, after I pushed, I kept it pushed for a second, and then gently released.
Well maybe this is totally luck and yours still won’t work or maybe there’s something to it, and either the maneuver or the slight resistance somehow put it it back in place (assuming it is hardware related) or somehow fixed the “glitch” if it is software.
Either way, what I’m describing above is in no way harming the iPad. I wasn’t pushing any harder than normal or trying to shake it or anything like that. No need to push harder. Although it did seem, at first, that when I would hold it pushed in for just a second longer than normal and then gently released, it started to respond.
Don’t do anything that could damage your iPad, but try the above and see if it works for you. Give it a day or two. Maybe you’ll have the same “luck” that I did, and it’ll start working again.
If not of course take it back to the Apple Store. But either way, if you are one of the unfortunate ones like me that this happened to let me know how it works out. I’d love to hear your experiences. And learn.
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Painted on the iPad
I haven’t attempted to draw or color anything in 20 years, but the iPad feels so natural and unintimidating that you allow yourself to play. And then when I was reading TUAW, they highly recommended an app called Art Studio that’s like as good as Brushes but only .99! Pretty unbelievable. I jumped in.
So I just finished painting this on the iPad. Mondrian anyone? Hhehehehehehehehhe. But the point isn’t whether this is much more than a grade school coloring. It’s not. The ego is out of the way, just as in the paradigm of the iPad, the technology gets out of the way.
Rather, the important point is, and I don’t know if you can tell this from the photo, but: it felt like coloring or painting in the real world. I had fun doing it. Yes it’s possible to have fun with a regular computer using Photoshop or Illustrator or some such creative tool. But the experience isn’t as intimate, warm, and human like. Even with applications that excite me such as Garageband for producing music, I tend to leave the project more stressed than when I began. The 2 foot chasm between the person and the screen, with keyboard and mouse guarding the passage, is an even larger psychological gap, it seems, leaving a lot of emptiness on the table and more than a little reticence at trying something new.
But with the iPad that experience changes. The intimidation and distance, both physically and emotionally, seem to melt away.
That’s been one of my main take aways from using the iPad: It’s a marriage of the digital and analog worlds. I have never had this kind of “human” or “emotional” experience interacting with and creating on a computer or piece of digital technology.
That’s one of the many reasons that I think this is the most important, interesting, and will be the most popular technological device in history. I think virtually everyone on the planet will have one in a few years. It’s as revolutionary as the internet itself because its a way to engage and interact with the internet, and the digital world in general, in a human way.
And its just the beginning.
The iPad seems to manifest the archetypal spirit of a continuum. In all myths heroes and heroines have a single purpose, the power of a committment. In the spirit of that committment the iPad seems to unobtrusively and intimately be able to be one's delightful companion in seamless experiences of both entertainment, inspiration, productivity, and creativity. And it does this in a way that is an aesthetically pleasing experience, a natural experience symbolized by it's most important interactive gesture: that of human touch. Technology that is inviting and fun to use gets engaged. And the marriage helps both the technology, as a more diverse group of talents come in contact with it, and society as a whole as it interacts more harmoniously, and receives the benefit of both knowledge and emotional support. And finally the individual, who is freed by a system whose power now works with and for him, after so many years in the dark where cold, unenlightened systems were imposed upon him and his Spirit.
