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Posts tagged with "iPad"

Review: Magellan Virtual Analog iPad Synthesizer

In my post about the current state of music-making and discovery on the iPad, I concluded with a roundup of the best, most sophisticated software to professionally create music on the iPad. As I did with shuffler.fm and discovery, I would today like to add a new app to the list of the best software synths available for the iPad. The app that I found worthy of being added is the newest product by music software company Yonac Inc, called Magellan.

Yonac made a name for itself by producing an extensive amount of music-related apps since early 2010. One of their most elaborate and popular efforts has been the Shredder guitar synth to create analog and digital synth leads or pads by playing guitar into the iPad through an interface like the IK Multimedia iRig or the Apogee JAM. The company was also right there when the iPad got unveiled. They developed and promoted one of the very first synth software for the iPad, the Yonac miniSynth.

Magellan is their new masterpiece. It’s a fully fleshed-out virtual analog synth with a lot of power. Let me sum up its basic feature set: two synthesizer engines running at the same time, each of them equipped with three oscillators for basic sound generation, frequency modulation, a step sequencer, and two filters plus eight effects. The app has got an easy to understand interface and produces an immense variety of sounds in very high audio quality. This review not only judges the quality and usability of Magellan, I will also give so detailed instructions and tricks so that you immediately can start making sophisticated music tracks with the app right after you’ve downloaded it. So, if you are curious, stay a while and let me explain you how Magellan works and why it may become a strong competitor to other high-end iPad synths like the KORG iMS-20 or the Sunrizer.

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Jury Finds Mostly Against Samsung, Apple Entitled To Damages Of $1.049 Billion

The jury sitting on the Apple and Samsung trial in California has largely found Samsung guilty of infringing on Apple’s intellectual property. The nine jurors unanimously came to agreement, largely finding in Apple’s favour and thus awarding Apple $1.049 billion in damages.

Apple was succesful on a number of claims it put to the jury, but not necessarily against all the phones and tablets that Apple claimed to infringe. One such claim that Apple was particularly succesful in claiming ingringement was the notorious ‘bounce-back’ patent in which the jury found every one of the accused devices infringed on - similarly with Apple’s scrolling and two finger gestures, the jury agreed that nearly all the devices did infringe the patent.

But Apple certainly wasn’t succesful on every front, and one notable area in which the jury did not agree with Apple was in regards to the claim that Samsung’s patents were invalid. In fact the jury didn’t find a single patent, on either side, was invalid.

When the verdict was read, there was minor mistake in the damages calculation that lead the jury to go back and reconsider the decision. It had arisen when Samsung pointed out that the jury had awarded damages for some devices that the jury had said didn’t infringe.

[via AllThingsD, The Verge]

Next: Injunction Hearings

Now that the jury’s verdict has been handed down, the next step will be a preliminary hearing on injunctions. Apple will have to file its requests by August 27th (this coming Monday), at which point Samsung will have two weeks to respond. The actual hearing will be held on September 20th.

[via The Verge]

Samsung Responds To Verdict

Today’s verdict should not be viewed as a win for Apple, but as a loss for the American consumer. It will lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices. It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies. Consumers have the right to choices, and they know what they are buying when they purchase Samsung products. This is not the final word in this case or in battles being waged in courts and tribunals around the world, some of which have already rejected many of Apple’s claims. Samsung will continue to innovate and offer choices for the consumer.

[via The Verge]

Apple Responds To Verdict

We are grateful to the jury for their service and for investing the time to listen to our story and we were thrilled to be able to finally tell it. The mountain of evidence presented during the trial showed that Samsung’s copying went far deeper than even we knew. The lawsuits between Apple and Samsung were about much more than patents or money. They were about values. At Apple, we value originality and innovation and pour our lives into making the best products on earth. We make these products to delight our customers, not for our competitors to flagrantly copy. We applaud the court for finding Samsung’s behavior willful and for sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn’t right.

[via AllThingsD]

Tim Cook Emails Apple Employees

Today was an important day for Apple and for innovators everywhere.
Many of you have been closely following the trial against Samsung in San Jose for the past few weeks. We chose legal action very reluctantly and only after repeatedly asking Samsung to stop copying our work. For us this lawsuit has always been about something much more important than patents or money. It’s about values. We value originality and innovation and pour our lives into making the best products on earth. And we do this to delight our customers, not for competitors to flagrantly copy.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the jury who invested their time in listening to our story. We were thrilled to finally have the opportunity to tell it. The mountain of evidence presented during the trial showed that Samsung’s copying went far deeper than we knew.
The jury has now spoken. We applaud them for finding Samsung’s behavior willful and for sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn’t right.
I am very proud of the work that each of you do.
Today, values have won and I hope the whole world listens.
Tim

[via 9to5 Mac]

Microsoft Responds To Verdict?

 


[via The Verge]

Flip’s Escape Offers Tons Of Pixel Fun For iOS

Last week, Shaun Inman (creator of the popular statistics and RSS server software Mint and Fever)’s newest game, Flip’s Escape, got approved by Apple. It ties in with the loose storyline of The Last Rocket after escaping from the collapsing factory. Flip, the rocket you play the game as, needs to flee from the shockwave which resulted from a large explosion. At the same time Flip has to avoid colliding with asteroids during his epic escape. Read more

Review: Things 2 With Cloud Sync

Things by Cultured Code, a developer company based in Stuttgart, Germany, has been around since the day the App Store and iOS 2.0 were unveiled. The app is famous for its minimalist, iconic interface and features which are a perfect mix of simplicity and serious business from the very first version on. It’s the perfect example for the ethos of “If 1.0 sucks, all other versions will suck as well”, it was done right the day it came out.

Yet, the first Things just didn’t work for me — I don’t know why, but it didn’t stick. I’ve never tried out other solutions, neither complex workhorse that is OmniFocus, nor have I tried a basic to-do app like Remember The Milk. The last three years, I was a Simplenote guy. I’m really into minimalism; in fact, that’s the reason why I initially desperately wanted to try out Things. But Simplenote worked better than Things for me. You could paste anything into it and the new content would be immediately available across all your devices, and on the web. My notes were always with me. And after I found Notational Velocity for Mac, a Simplenote desktop client, I completely stopped searching for other solutions.

But now, Things have changed. After over a year of beta testing, Things 2 with Cloud sync has finally arrived, and besides its big syncing feature, it’s got a bunch of other cool refinements and new possibilities along the way. Read more

Apple Posts New iPad Advert: “All On iPad”

Apple has today released a new advert for the 3rd generation iPad called “All On iPad”. It runs though a bunch of tasks that you can do, ‘all on iPad’ - highlighting apps such as iBooks, FaceTime, Keynote, Square, Real Racing 2 and iPhoto.

Read it. Tweet it. Be surprised, be productive. Make a sale, make some lunch. Make a movie night. Play a game or an old favourite.
Do it all more beautifully with the retina display on iPad.

Apple previously released “This Good” and “Do It All” adverts for the 3rd generation iPad.

Brief History of the iPad→

Brief History of the iPad

iPad

iPad

Over at 52 Tiger, Dave Caolo has started an interesting new series on the history of the iPad. With a retrospective on devices and patent filings that preceded the iPad’s announcement in 2010 and a look at old rumors and speculation, Dave’s “Brief History of the iPad” provides an excellent look at Apple’s fastest growing product.

In part I of the series, Dave’s research focuses on the tablet-like products that were patented or released in the past century. I found this bit particularly interesting:

The first commercial tablet product from Apple appeared in 1979. The Apple Graphics Tablet was meant to compliment the Apple II and use the “Utopia Graphics System” developed by musician Todd Rundgren. 2 That’s right, Todd Rundgren. The FCC soon found that it caused radio frequency interference, unfortunately, and forced Apple to discontinue production.

In part II, published today, Dave collects the most notable rumors that were floating around ahead of the iPad’s introduction in January 2010.

Frog and Apple worked on the Apple IIc, among others, including this prototype design for a tablet PC. This little lovely, called the “Bashful,” features a full-sized keyboard and a stylus. It went through several design iterations, three of which you can see at WIRED. As Engadget points out, this suggests that Apple had been playing with the idea of a tablet device for 26 years.

Make sure to check out 52 Tiger’s “Brief History of the iPad” here.

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Apple: New iPad Arrives in China on Friday, July 20

Apple has just issued a brief press release to announce that the new iPad will finally launch in China on Friday, July 20th. The recommended retail prices of the new iPad in China will match the current US prices at $499, $599 and $699 for the WiFi version (16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB respectively) and $629, $729 and $829 for the WiFi + Cellular models (16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB respectively). Meanwhile, from today the iPad 2 is available for $399.

Customers will be able to purchase the new iPad in China from the Apple Online Store, select Apple Authorized Resellers and by reservation from Apple retail stores. The reservation process will run daily between 9am and 12pm and begin on Thursday, July 19 and allows a customer to reserve an iPad for pick up the following day.

Apple® today announced the new iPad®, the third generation of its category defining mobile device, will arrive in China on Friday, July 20. The new iPad features a stunning new Retina™ display, Apple’s new A5X chip with quad-core graphics and a 5 megapixel iSight® camera with advanced optics for capturing amazing photos and 1080p HD video. The new iPad still delivers the same all-day 10 hour battery life* while remaining amazingly thin and light.

The Current State Of Music-Making and Discovery On The iPad

I have a confession to make: I’m a nerd. Yes, and I’m proud of it, because I think being a nerd means two things: I’m constantly curious about details, and I don’t hesitate to try out new stuff. To satisfy my curiosity, I’ve always dived into Apple’s ecosystem and the latest hardware related to it. Fortunately, my passion for Apple correlates with my love for discovering new music. I’ve been playing guitar since I was eight years old, and I love electronic music from the bottom of my heart as well. I’ve always found myself interested in both the traditional (perhaps organic) hardware side of music, and the more modern, digital software production process.

When the iPhone came out, many blogging colleagues and people around me predicted that its new software system, combined with the mobility of the device itself, would change the way people produce music and think about audible art as a whole. Three years later Apple unveiled the iPad. iPhone music software was indeed present at the time, but people soon recognized that the device’s screen was too small to create usable professional software for it — playing on-screen keyboards was nearly impossible and attempts to build high-end software synths like ReBirth or drum machines ended up in cluttered, untidy screens.

This problem seemed to get solved with the large screen of the iPad. Professional software retailers like KORG immediately started coding software versions of their most successful hardware. For instance, the iElectribe was one of the first apps available after the device’s launch. Over the years, I constantly tried out music apps for the iPad, tested hardware accessories (made possible with the release of iPhone OS 3), and never stopped investigating advantages, problems, and future possibilities of all those apps. Now, five years after the launch of iOS and the iPhone, I think it’s time to look back at how Apple’s mobile devices, with the focus clearly on the iPad, have changed the world of music and how they’ll continue to affect the future.

To do this, I recently went through my app archive and analyzed which kind of music apps remained installed on my devices, and which ones I liked when I tested them, but didn’t gain a place in my personal workflow. I discovered that I had to clearly divide music apps in several areas when discussing them. I distinguished between eight types of available music apps: promotion, discovery, entry level playing apps, handy/learning tools, sketching apps, recording, and professional software.

Throughout this post, I will cover each of those areas separately and point out their current state by discussing the most elaborate app(s) in their respective areas. I will point out the advantages and problems iOS brings to them, and predict — as far ahead as possible — what the future might hold.

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