Just a quick mention of the latest version of Tabletop. It’s awesome. That’s all.
The Retronyms are amazing, their work just gets better and better.
Tag: iOS
Apple’s mobile OS. I find that I use iOS (on the iPad and iPhone) for a lot of things these days, mainly because it’s just so useful.
ZXSynth?
From Pixelh8, a ZXSynth. An excellent way to celebrate 30 years of ZX.
techBASIC 2.0
I only just found out about this universal app. It looks really amazing as a BASIC programming environment, but most interesting of all is how it integrates with HiJack, which has grabbed my attention.
The app isn’t cheap though at £10.49, and the HiJack is $79 too, so I’m not diving in straight away, at least not for the HiJack. The app looks good though.
App revisit: Sir Sampleton
Sir Sampleton is a great little sampling app that’s got a nice interface and just does the job really well.
Yep, I decided to fun the Pebble
I mentioned this the other day. A great idea and a massive response via kickstarter. I’ve joined in too now, so I look forward to September and getting a Pebble in the post.
App revisit: Euno Synth
This was a great idea for a synth app, and had a very clean interface, but it was really hard to get to grips with it. By the time you’d set the synth controls and moved to the keys page you couldn’t tell what the sound would be like. It didn’t make sense from there really.
It was a shame really. It hasn’t seen an update for a long time now either.
App revisit: Beat it!
I remember this game when it first arrived, it was a great idea, and it still is, but I always found it just a bit too hard, which made it a bit off putting really. Which was a shame as visually it was amazing to play.
Pebble looking amazing
Amazing to see that Pebble has been funded to over $3m from an initial request of just $100,000. I have to admit that it is an amazing idea and if it is as expected then it will be a major step forward for smart watches.
What’s especially interesting is the possibility of an SDK that could be used to make the Pebble do more, and possible control music software on an iPhone.
I guess it’s just a question of time to find out what people end up making with it.
So, is Spotify the OS of music?
This was something that their head of platform claimed that they were aiming for at the Music Ally App Side conference last month. An interesting claim. I have a slightly different take on it though. For me the OS of music isn’t just about listening, in fact it might not be about listening at all, or at least listening might only be a small part of the puzzle.
For me the idea of an OS for music has always been very enticing. Something that I don’t think I’ve ever seen done properly, but I’ve always wished for. The closest thing to it was the elusive Capers OS which was meant to be a replacement for the Palm OS and act as an OS for music making.
Back when that was being talked about it wasn’t really something that could be used for pure synthesis, so Capers OS was more about controlling other devices. That made sense then, but not now. I think now we have the capability in mobile devices for an actual mobile OS which is built for music making.
Will something like this ever come about? Who knows, I’d love to see it, but I can see it being difficult to get off the ground and fund properly. One day perhaps.
So, is Spotify going to be the OS of music? Not for me I don’t think, but I do think that they are doing a great deal for changing listening and discovery, and that’s a step in the right direction, albeit not my direction.
App revisit: Noise Machine
I remember when this app first arrived. I was really blown away by it. I still think it’s a lot of fun to mess around with and a nice example of an experimental app for the iOS. I hope that people keep on doing things like this instead of more complex apps that are commercial but less experimental.
Time will tell.
I am Ashley Elsdon 