The Null Device

Apple's followup to Garageband will be AtticAuthor, which makes writing literature in the style of the classics easy:

No more struggling for the right word, the perfect turn of phrase, the most expedient and direct yet elegant metaphor. AtticAuthor takes care of all that for you. With over 1,000 ApplePhrases, and an additional 2,000 available in the optional PenPack, AtticAuthor will have you immediately writing short stories, plays and even novels. Never has creative writing been so easy. And AtticAuthor takes care of the details for you. Like this passage from Updike and that one from Dickens? No problem. AtticAuthor smoothly transitions from one style to the other, across locales, time periods and even languages.

(via Things)

¶ apple garageband humour 1

Since Apple released Garageband, amateur musicians of various levels of talent have been taking to it like the proverbial waterfowl to its element. Whether this is a good or bad thing, though, depends on whom you ask:

"The amount of creative energy that GarageBand is creating is staggering," said musician and producer Chris Bell. "Apple has created a monster.... As a pro musician/producer, I love this app. It puts the fun back into creating. I'm amazed."

"GarageBand is snoozeware for the iPod generation who think that music comes in a small white-and-chrome can and only need be served lukewarm for public consumption,"

Meanwhile, sites like MacJams and iCompositions, allowing Garageband users to share their masterpieces with each other and/or the general public, have been popping up, whilst others give away free loops in exchange for marketing info.

I think it's, for the most part, a good thing, like any creativity explosion (think the zine explosion that followed the availability of cheap photocopying, for example). True, most Garageband output will be derivative, uninspiring or simply crap (much as, say, most MP3.com tracks were), but there will be inspired works coming out of it. And for every piece of above-average pop/dance/booty-bass to emerge from the Garageband explosion, there'll probably be one piece of irredemably weird outsider art, or something that takes the pre-packaged cliché elements of popular genres and repurposes them in unusual ways.

¶ apple computer music creativity elitism garageband music 3

Local live-music-scenester site mono.net is shutting down its forums permanently, after an infestation of trolls (or "coolsie chats" as they call them, for some odd reason).

Also on Rocknerd: a good review of Apple's Garageband music-making tool for OSX. It comes off looking quite decent; apparently it can use arbitrary AudioUnits (and presumably VST plugins with the AudioUnit wrapper). However, it appears very CPU-intensive, and requires a DVD drive to install. (I wonder if it'd install off an IDE DVD-ROM in a FireWire enclosure.)

¶ apple coolsie garageband hipsters melbourne mono.net 4

Apple release Garageband, a cheap, beginner-oriented music/audio sequencer, to become part of its iLife package. The page is somewhat light on specs, though if it uses AudioUnits for effects and instruments (as opposed to some locked-in proprietary format designed t subtract value), it may be usable as an OSX substitute for Cubase VST (which is mostly a platform for plugging softsynths into); it'd certainly be an order of magnitude or two cheaper than Cubase SX.

¶ apple computer music garageband osx 0