Dear Apple...

You and I have been together many years, I was there in the 1980's with the Apple II/e. I became a serious user with around 1990/91 with a Mac IIcx.  I've stood by through the rough years of Gil Amelio when it was just pro users and I happily went from my Quadra 650 to my beloved but difficult to open 8500.

Steve Jobs came back at some point and drove the company into being a serious market competitor with the iMac and iPod. He ultimately hit pay dirt with the iPhone but around that time the boutique pro company had changed into the mainstream, the big corporation, the man. Apple was no longer the underdog, the hippie run computer run company that had forged its way with an attitude that said, yeah we are more expensive but we are worth it.

The idea that Jobs maintained that he was right and the user was wrong, that he knew what was best for us regardless of whether that was about dumbing down pro software or forcing how we went about using our computers. This on going insult was made all the more pointed as models of computers became harder for users to fix or upgrade and not critical applications became non removable from mobile devices.

The most recent slap happened when Apple decided that forced upgrades on mobile devices was not only going to be the norm but Apple would remain non responsive to the vast amount of pleas when people suddenly were stuck with a new OS (7) that dropped battery life so significantly some users just gave up.

I recently was forced to upgrade my iPad, a device I absolutely adored from 6.xx to 7 because Skype insisted on it and there was no way out, it would no longer launch. I use Skype for work, so this was a proverbial gun help to my head. This is an offensive business practice and one that has made me consider leaving Apple a lot over recent years. 

I upgraded to iOS 7 thinking I'd get used to the changes as one does, after all I have been through many computers and I know that ultimately most things one adjusts to or removes them from ones work vision. iOS 7 is different, yes it's ugly, yes it changes how one does many things in most cases without much reason or logic BUT it also eats the fucking battery power.

How bad can that be? Well from my own experience I used to change the iPad a couple of times a week and now it's every day. Reports all over the internet are exactly the same, not in time but in general battery drain. There are tons of articles to make the problem a bit less gigantic but none that make it small enough to not notice it.

Because Apple has made it impossible to downgrade devices, I am stuck without hacking my device (which I don't want to do and shouldn't have to)..  Apple has chosen the big brother approach, the lowest common denominator towards its users and now they have taken away a product that I found extremely useful and enjoyable.

I have some connections in and around the company but I would rather not use that route, I would rather find some realistic and permanent solution to the current position that Apple is right and many long time supporters are wrong. I want to be able to run an older OS instead of being bullied into using a new OS which seem to serve to only make machines unusable thus forcing people to buy more product.

Personally I don't know that I would buy another Apple product new until their attitude towards customers changes, which I imagine won't be happening any time soon. So Apple, consider whether treating your users like prisoners or idiots is a good long term plan. I don't care to ask "what would Steve do" -he was often wrong when it came to the human factor, I don't know that he "got" people.      

Fix my iPad.

his own drummer

For many years I have used drum machines and samples to embellish recordings during the overdubbing process. Often my preference is to record the basic tracks live and then go in and play around once that foundation is there.

As drum machines began to use samples they became more viable for certain types of Rock music. When the Roland V-drums hit the market we now had a level of editing that turned these electronic drums into viable musical instruments.

It had been a while since something new has come along that actually caught my ear in the E-drum dept. when I heard about XLN Audio's Addictive Drums. I was told by a touring musician that they had held up really well over weeks of shows and that they sounded great. Well that was enough for me to want to at least look them up.

When I hit the website I was sort of surprised to see a product that was packaged in a mainstream way, offering styles (including "Punk") and at a relatively low street cost of about $200. I have to say that I was totally skeptical having been so spoiled by the quality of boutique gear and stuff that at face value was decidedly noncommercial in that hipster sort of commercial way.

I jotted off a question or two which was quickly responded to by Tore Jarlo at the company.

Soon I had downloaded their demo, which is usable and really is just limited by the fact that it only gives you a few drums to play. One can edit the sounds and get a real sense of the software in terms of one's ability to tweak and get the best out of the software.

Having not read any instructions or made any special provisions as to what I was going to do I loaded the demo up in VSTLord and began to play around with the drums by playing them with The Manta.

I am safe in saying that I am fully qualified as a musician and musicologist to make an unequivocal statement that I really am not a good drummer. THAT being said, I do know what drums sound like and I do know when a controller like The Manta has hit a good match in terms of being able to use it's expressiveness to a high degree and both the hardware and software blended so well that I actually felt a pang of artistic joy.

It's rare that a test comes out like an actual musical event. When one works with technology one tends to distance one's self at times like these.

My desire in the studio is always to be able to add drums and percussion during the overdubs that blend easily with the original tracks but I want the flexibility to go gonzo and I want the real drummers to feel comfortable using the tools. Today was one of those epiphany days.

next please

After installing Pro Tools LE 8.O into my new Mac Pro I discovered that 2 Gigs of RAM was not enough to keep my mouse from spazzing out. The joy was only exacerbated by the lovely inspection of my new MBox2 Pro which feels like it was made by not just cheap but retarded Chinese slave labor.

I give up.

4 more gigs coming whenever the fuck the shipper decides to get around to it. Meanwhile I'll enjoy the speediness of the improved Ethernet speed and download some zombie porn.

it's not pro

1. If it's made entirely out of plastic
2. If it can't be serviced
3. If it's designed to take up very little space in your dorm room

This is is the first installment of what I imagine will be an ongoing bitch fest over turning a new computer into a usable recording device.

Enjoy my pain.

Max 5

Somehow as I was here fucking around trying to get an old G4 iMac to be usable as something Cycling 74 released Max 5.

I had vowed that I would buy a new Mac when this came out. Of course my research had been so frustrating since Apple refuses to have a mid range desktop machine.

Anyway, Cycling's release is a big deal and it marks a similar change as MSP's original release.

Good going guys! Don't worry about all of the mess in my house over computer corpses.

The Egg is dead long live the Egg

The Egg has been the nickname for my eMac, which I used for light work and interweb stuff.

I was tired of the space it took up and the monitor jumping and I decided to pull it's hard drive and plant it in my Mirror Door G4. I have to say the implant worked great, I now have two bootable internal drives (which probably isn't the best idea) and everything is in one nice safe place.

It's a reminder of how easy the Macs are to use, fuck around with and survive.

I wonder when I'll be posting that this whole thing was a horrible idea.

studios?

I will pretty much use any excuse to record with my band. Since we don't leave anywhere near each other it is only an occasion that can bring us together. My upcoming 40th birthday is just such a thing.

Once I got a sense that my somewhat unwilling comrades were willing to indulge my artistic fantasies once again, I began to look into studios.

With the proliferation of cheap studio gear filling people's homes and the real studios needing work I was pretty convinced the minimal requirements that I have to cut the basic tracks would be easy to meet and I would have a number of studios to choose from.
-Hell no!

Amazingly concepts like live drums, isolation and decent mixer are just old fashioned. I was picturing bringing in a portable set up, using their space, drums and montoring -nope.

O.K. Now bare with me for a moment.

All I want to do is record three people. One playing bass, one playing guitar, one playing drums (small kit -two mics). So if my math is correct that would be four tracks plus a fifth as a guide vocal.

I would like to record straight to PT (Mac) with a safety two track mix going to DAT or something and maybe have everything bussed to 8 Track half inch (as if that was even an option)

Somebody send me a sign.

Death to the 8500

After over 10 years I finally stopped trying to justify keeping my 90's PowerMac 8500 which I bought when Cycling 74 released MSP. It was the first application I needed a PowerMac for. David Zicarrelli actually went to the trouble of helping me choose a computer from the newish used models. -That should tell you how small and how supportive the Max world was at that time.

Despite being one of the worst designs Apple had ever come up with in terms of the ease or lack there of with which one could open up the computer and update parts, it was a sturdy and great computer.

Tonight I wrestled out the hard drives, the Sonnet card which I had used to run the machine as a G3, the USB card and of course the Audiomedia III (which I never felt sounded as good as the II). After that stuff was sort of dusted off and bagged I brought the carcass down to the basement.

I have to kind of wonder whether Mac users tend to have not developed past the anal phase. I don't know whether anyone has looked at computer user profiles to see which one is more likely to use a computer long past it's prime but I bet it's the same one who save gross unmentionables in jars.

BTW I have updated a few times over the years, I just kept finding extra uses for the 8500.

Next I plan on PIMPING MY EMAC.

DVD-R part 3: UPDATED

In my last post on this subject I had said that I had tried to contact the company that manufactured the disks. Since that time, I have not received a response. Here is my note to them:
_________________________________

I've been a TDK user my whole life. I have never experienced any issue with your cassettes, DAT, CD-Rs in many personal and professional applications.

A few months ago I bought one or two spindles of 1-16x 4.7GB disks.

Over a period of time I burned, verified and tested about about 150 disks of both data, audio and video successfully I placed them back on a spindle.

When I went to retrieve a disk I discovered it wouldn't read. I became concerned and started testing all the disks. about 100 or so disks were no longer readable. They were tested on 5 computers with different OS' and the video disks were tested on two DVD players.

I have researched this topic for two weeks now and have not found any information on disks being created, tested as working, stored and tested as not working within a three month period.

As a professional who has used optical media for some time, I am at a loss as to 1. what could have possibly happened 2. what to do to possibly retrieve the data.

I would greatly appreciate it if you could forward this around the company and see if you can help find a solution.

All disks were burned on two Macintosh's running up to date versions of Roxio Toast. The numbers on the disks read CMDR47G-CTMW01-104 3115

Thank you for your attention.
_________________________________

Alan suggested I post in the forums at doom9.net which I have done. Although I have not found a solution, I have at least read a fair amount of interesting information and the people on the forum have been supportive.

I found a Japanese application called DVD Media Inspector which allowed me to locate who actually manufactured the batch of disks. I was able to do decoding by comparing the data with information on this site.

Meanwhile the handful of disks that aren't totally dead are dying fast. They take minutes to read and many give errors if I try to copy them and I am still searching the house for all disk from that batch. I am at a standstill as to whether I will be able to trust DVD back up again.

Minimalist

Admittedly there is more to my home studio then what meets the eye but still this is a very simple feeling work set up and I hope that it will do for my what the all white did for John and Yoko.

The tags lets you know what's not visible.