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.

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.

The Egg Will Die

The clock has begun to tick. Soon I shall crack open The Egg.
I will harvest it's innards and toss away it's empty shell.

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 Part 4 and counting

Today Alan convinced me that I had to face my fears and buy a spool of disk. I headed over the the local electronics discount place then the office supply place when the first had almost no selection.

From what I had read Sony disks were considered safe, good and generally available so I bought a 50 pack of their AccuCORE DVD-R's and headed to the testing ground.

I put together a folder that weighed in at 4.0 Gigs and dropped it in Toast. I choice burning speed as "best", began the process and waited. At the 1 second left mark, a write error appeared and Toast crashed.

Hmmm... Maybe it's something I did?

I restarted the computer and began the next burn, this time at "2x", I waited and watched and Guess what happened...

As pissed off as I was I figured the drive it's self was most likely fucked and I decided I should consider cutting my losses, pull the hard drive out and wack the fucking computer with my chain mace, which my wife apparently hid.

I networked the soon to be destroyed eMac with my Mirror Door and transferred the test folder.

Next I happily popped in a fresh disk and hit all systems are go. I leaned back in my chair and felt pretty satisfied. I imagined what I could do with the eMac's carcass to ensure it's total suffering. As the burn came to an end the same error notice appeared, crashed Toast and made me see blood red.

I now began to wonder whether these drives didn't like the dyes being used on the DVDs. I put in a CD-R and burned it on the eMac, I did another I verified that they matched the original files... 100% fine.

FUCK!!!!!

I'm now going to research compatibility issues with DVD-R brands while I debate buying another hard drive and returning this batch of disks.

Microsoft's newest toy

Having money doesn't always dictate one has taste.
This is a instance where Microsoft made a good buy on the technology market and may get to look slick for more then a minute.

As an Apple user, I am impressed.

Prediction

Here's my prediction...

After finally installing Ableton Live 6 I suspect I am going to be up to my ass in a fury over Core Audio and it's MIDI implementation.

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.

DVD-R part 2

I am now thinking that this is a bad batch of DVD-R's which has me really worried about any disks that still work. I guess I may have a ticking bomb on my hands.

I sent an E-mail to the manufacturer because it's total bullshit to have 100 or more disks go bad.

I still have no idea how the disk went bad and because of this whole ugly situation I am wondering what the point of DVD burning is if one can't count on it holding.

I need a OS X app that can inspect these disks. So far all I can do is watch my computer spit them out.

Samplers

I never could view Ableton Live which I love as a software sampler as some folks do. The same could be said for the Electro Harmonix 16 second Delay (NOT THE REISSUE) looping and sampler are not the same thing.

I miss hardware samplers. In fact I can safely say that I basically stopped using samplers when I stopped using my Akai S950 Although I do use the Doepfer A-112 which is both a wavetable Oscillator and Sampler, it's still not the same as stretching twisting and tweaking something until it makes you laugh like crazy.

Another thing that's lacking is that slightly offbeat triggering of sounds in late 80's Hiphop. That still has it's charm. I actually plan to settle this missing mojo via Max/MSP and build a simple sample triggering patch that just has the basic functions like reverse and looping but triggered by the ASCII keyboard on my ibook

Should take no time at all. Max/MSP is so great for getting stuff like this done and in all of the years that i have used Max, I can safely say I have yet to get to a point of being an expert but I still manage to get my ideas done without errors or crashing. Great program.