Angry Robot

GarageBand

I think it will surely rock. It would appeal to a ton of people I know. I dinked around with Cubase for a while until the sheer pain-in-the-assiveness of mixing down a comp with software instruments completely discouraged me; looks like Apple got that one figured out right quick. That app is well worth the $50 iLife price alone when you consider prices on pro apps of the same ilk. Also, the inclusion of woodgrain in the interface means Apple has finally caught up to the masterful desktop picture I designed four years ago!

8 comments on "GarageBand"

  1. Jamison says:

    hehe, I was actually thinking about this the night before when I was the rumor. I was thinking they might have done a “rusted metal” though. We’re up to four kinds of windows now? (aqua, brushed metal, pro app solid grey, and wood panelled) what do you think will be next? Birch perhaps?

  2. king says:

    Sanko,

    Is this shit only available on the website, or can I check it out somewheres? And does my G3 powerbook have an analog in port?

  3. D says:

    Kinger, it’s to be released on the 16th, as part of iLife, for $50 US (we’ll see how they peg the exchange rate). I don’t know if you have analog in, but if you don’t you can get a USB adapter.

    I predict “shag carpet” will be the next look for Apple. That or “human skin”.

  4. D says:

    Incidentally, as for the iPod mini: that seems to me to be a trick to get those shopping for cheapo flash players to move up to a $300 iPod regular. Two logical statements: ‘I’m spending $200 for 256MB, I might as well pay $50 more and get 4 gigs’; and ‘I’m spending $250 for 4 gigs, might as well pay $50 more and get 15.” Looks like they were more concerned with not eating into regular iPod sales than they were with luring flash buyers away. I think before long they’ll drop the price to $200.

  5. king says:

    I have to say, I’m excited to try out garage band, but I do have a problem with their marketing slogan: “making music has never been so natural”. Like I suppose that when our ancestors hollowed out the trunk of a tree with their bare hands and then pulled an animal’s skin across one end of the hole to create a drum — that must have been less “natural” than this series of photons and electrons arranged in a particular order/interface and processed by an electronic electrically powered silicon-based plastic box.

    I had to ask a co-worker about this because I couldn’t figure out what software was at its essence. He agreed that it wasn’t something tangible. He also agreed that a drum was more organic but said it wasn’t necessarily more natural — natural in the sense of it being something that is “second nature” which he believed Apple meant by the statement.

    I said — how the fuck can you say that beating a drum is less “second nature” than using a mouse and keyboard to edit and arrange music. Give a drum and a G4 laptop with Garage Band to a baby and ask them which is more natural…

    Then he went on about the whole man-machine interface which was bound to become more intertwined and shit.

    I don’t know. I mean, a baby’s not gonna know how to play a guitar either, and granted, it all depends on your interpretation of the word natural. You could stretch the definition to mean having to do with anything in nature, and of course we are still part of nature and all the materials that make up computers and whatnot are originally found in nature. It’s not like we stepped outside of life and nature to create machines. All the principles that govern everything we do, and all the materials we use are inherently “natural”.

    But I still think that slogan is bullshit. Sure, we know what they mean I suppose: Compared to other music editing software, this one feels more intuitive, more natural. But to then take the leap and say: Making Music has never been so natural.. it’s preposterous.

  6. D says:

    Slogans are bullshit, as is the term “natural” in 99% of its usages. Case closed. A drum is a piece of technology.

  7. king says:

    Thanks for educating me on the subject. Did I inadvertently insult computers? No one said drums aren’t a piece of technology. And why are slogans bullshit? The slogan of the Boy Scouts is “Do a Good Turn Daily”, that’s not bullshit.

  8. D says:

    Just trying to save you mental grief, detail-boy!

    Slogans reduce something or other to a handful of words, so they are never accurate. They rarely mean anything in any useful sense or describe the thing they refer to. You know that!

    “Natural”, I find, is a word that crumbles the more you think about what it means, just like “real”, “classic”, “pure”, and “special”. Part of the problem is the near-total appropriation of such terms by advertising – I’m not sure exactly why this wrecks words, but it pretty much does, don’t you think?

    In other words, I don’t think Apple hired a quality-assurance philosopher to go over their slogans’ ontological tightness. I think that slogan sucks too, but don’t they all? I’m lovin’ it.

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