There’s been an awful lot of hand wringing from some extraordinary minds about the “direction” of software because of the iPad. I’ve also been thinking a lot about the iPad, but in the other direction than most of the hand wringers.

1. They want all the highest technology, design elegance, thoughtful attention to detail, tried and true connectivity and sync ability of Apple designed hardware, but keep your filthy hands off their code! Hey, remember when Apple didn’t let you develop for the iPhone OS at all? Go try developing for the Playstation and see how cheap and easy that is for you. Developing for the iPhone OS is really inexpensive relative to other “nearly closed” platforms.

2. They want access to the largest possible audience, promotion, effortless infrastructure, simple credit card transactions, and user reviews. But not any kind of code review to make sure they’re not hiding functionality or exposing their users to risk. I believe Apple would call this “protecting the Brand” It’s probably good to remember that as a developer, you’re an invited guest piggy-backing onto their hard work. If you want to be associated with the Apple brand, you have to enhance the user’s experience, period.

3. They say absolutely nothing about what keeping the villains out costs. Or what the benefit is. Because apple’s done a good job of locking down the iphone to widespread hacking by black hats, they seem to view banishment of stupid apps as some kind of crime against humanity. Remember this fake banking android app? Yikes. Adhering to contractual obligations may not be something they’ll really take into consideration while complaining about developing for the iPhone OS, but Apple must take steps to ensure that some stupidhead (or malicious) 3rd party doesn’t screw everything up for everyone. Secondarily, keeping stupid apps out helps increase the discoverability of your app. Reducing the noise from the signal is *good*.

4. They complain about the app store being the only way to install software. Having an app store significantly reduces developer support time for installation and configuration to the end user. If you’ve never had to do that, you’re lucky. Having a zero-configuration installation process frees you up to spend your time building your next great app instead of having to help your mom get your app installed on her iPod Touch. No matter how simple a manual installation process would be, time spent helping your users install is time away from you making your next revenue stream.

5. They complain about all of these things like the rest of the world is going to instantly adopt this methodology of software development and deployment. That’s simply not the truth. Developing for the iPhone OS is *optional*, folks. Some people seem to give off the impression that Apple is forcing them to develop for the platform. It sounds silly to even have to point it out. We will never live in a world where you will be denied access to development tools for a tinkering platform. Honestly, it’s preposterous.

The end result is that Apple doesn’t have to justify the costs to join the developer program, or the procedures. You either grow up and realize that the marketplace revolves around rules — not trust, or you can go play in your own sand box. If you hate the rules, just wait a few years while the rest of the industry slowly does their inevitable imitation act, and then you can deploy your cool idea onto a platform for like minded people. I’m choosing the biggest market and the rules that come with it. It’s just not that hard to deal with.

So this “war against tinkerers” rings completely hollow for me. The iPhone OS is for when you’re *not* at your desktop or laptop. Not *instead* of your desktop or laptop. If you can use the iPad instead of a desktop/laptop, you probably don’t care about this debate anyway. You’re not a tinkerer. You’re a consumer. If you’re a self-identified-tinkerer, you’re going to use producer tools, not consumer access devices.

Hey, so I’ve been super busy with lots of cool stuff. I’m working on the Beatseqr project, and I’m also putting that to work with my band Haptic Synapses. And along with those projects, I’ve been building some interesting tools with Max/MSP. Here’s one that I’m calling “sCCweet!” and in this particular instance, I’ve tuned it to work on Reason’s Malström synth. (You can either say that as “skweet” or “schweet” depending on which kind of person you are.)

click through to see the quicktime movie with audio

So… why? Well, a lot of modern soft synths have a randomizer function, but Propellerhead doesn’t follow market trends. They try to influence them.. sometimes to a good affect, and sometimes to the effect of going in the wrong direction of the rest of us. Reason has some really awesome sounding synths, it’s just kind of… funky… about a lot of stuff. So you can either choose to accept the Reason reality as a foregone conclusion, or make your own reality. I prefer to make my own. Anyone interested in getting a copy of the max patch that does this? It’s not limited to working with Reason, it can work with anything that uses midi CC messages. Leave a comment!

Well our lineup was a little different this time. Derek was sick so he couldn’t make it, but we did have two other people join Charles and myself. Holt Sorenson and Nick Swerdlow added some really nice elements to our jam, so check it out:

Derek and I have been hard at work making some really great improvements to the beatseqr firmware and steppa sequencer. Here are a few of the things we’ve been doing lately:

• I added a really nice feature that we’re calling “voice trigger indicator” … essentially what it does is flash the voice select LEDs as your sequence is running to indicate to you when each of the 8 channels is triggering. It’s easier to show than to tell, so I’ll get to work on a video for that asap.
• Steppa now has a “current beat” set of indicator LEDs on the front interface. This was added so you can get an idea of where you are timing-wise if you’re doing stuff on your computer (instead of looking at the hardware, which will give you a *really* good idea of that all the time )
• There’s been a bunch of minor features added to Steppa that mostly facilitate being able to pick up sequence data from within Max5. If you’re a max user, you can do all kinds of crazy stuff with the sequence as it’s running.

More good news while we’re talking about good news:

• I have applied to exhibit at the Bay Area Maker Faire. We’re considering applying for Detroit and New York too, so if you want us to apply for those, leave a comment!
• The arduino mega firmware is now open source. There are a bunch of things you would need to do in order to get started and I’ll highlight those in another post soon. I’ll update the license to indicate my intentions, but in a nutshell you’re free to download, analyze, improve, or modify the source, as long as you don’t resell it and you keep the original attribution intact with the code. Please do improve the software. I’m a school-trained artist first and a self-taught engineer second. http://github.com/stevecooley/beatseqr-software
• Derek is going to our local ninja academy! Very exciting.

Once again we present another healthy slice of dancefloor goodness from Jemset in the form of the Circulation EP. He’s been patiently waiting to drop another release here on DoBox, and we’re glad to say that now is the time. Four tracks of heady thump make up this great release, and best heard played through a large set of loudspeakers…loudly. So get those bits and pump it up!

Artwork by Steve Cooley

L23
Vibrations & System
R.U.S.H.
Magic’s Wand

Complete release in a .zip

‘NHT’ (Normal Heights Techno) is the latest episode of sonic ruckus brought to you this time by Keckclip. The San Diego-based producer is no newcomer to the game, and it shows in his music. All 4 tracks of this release are overflowing with chunky beats and dense textural elements that take your mind and body to another world. So put on your dancing shoes and zip up your spacesuit because it’s time to go!

Artwork by Steve Cooley

NHT001
NHT002
NHT003
NHT004

Complete release in a .zip

Hey, just testing out a wordpress plugin I’m writing to embed etsy items into wordpress posts… it’s working pretty well, and there’s room for improvement, but here we go: