The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

On the heels of our earlier post about new features in iTunes 8 comes this post from video producer and designer Allan White, speculating that the new visualizer in iTunes might be Processing artist Robert Hodgin's amazing Magnetosphere, which was available up until a few months ago from The Barbarian Group (aka Robert's design company) as an iTunes plugin.

As Allan points out, there are two very strong pieces of evidence for this: 1) Allan emailed Robert, who told him Magnetosphere had been sold to a "third party", and 2) a twitter from Digg founder (and amateur Apple rumor mill) Kevin Rose on Sept. 2nd describing the new visualizer as "planet like objects wrapping around each other w/stars/light streams". As you can see in the image above, this sounds like a pretty apt description of Magnetosphere, which visualizes sound as particle explosions like supernovas. The Barbarian Group website's page for Magnetosphere says that "We've had a ton of interest in it, and we've got some exciting plans, but it's gonna take us a couple months to make it all happen."

Of course, nothing is confirmed, but it all points in the right direction. Personally, I'd love to see Magnetosphere on every iTunes user's screen, and not just because Robert is an amazing artist and also always gracious and helpful when I email him because my Processing particle system animations don't look as cool as his. The world just needs stuff this cool-looking everywhere.

(Thanks to Poopie for noticing that I'd accidentally added an "s" to "Hodgin"!)

[via Create Digital Music]

The lovely and talented Peter Kirn over at Create Digital Music has posted a round up of music apps for the iPod / iTouch platform. The list includes tools for using your iPhone as a MIDI/OSC controller, making random weird digital art, visualizing your music and, er, listening to Snow Patrol's next album, amongst other apps. Peter's a thoughtful critic and his evaluations are pretty detailed and thorough.

If you're an aspiring iPhone musician / DJ/ sound designer, this is definitely a good place to start finding useful apps.

Peter Kirn over at Create Digital Music has weighed in on early iPhone music apps. His verdict? You'd still do better to get a PSP or a Nintendo DS for handheld music apps. While the App Store has metronomes, guitar tuners and the like, there's nothing really exciting there yet.

It's a shame, too, because the iPhone / iPod Touch seems made for doing cool future-y music stuff. I'd personally love to see an app that simply lets you put interface objects like sliders or buttons or X-Y pads on the iPhone screen and link each one to a MIDI control sent over Bluetooth to a host machine running a synthesizer. You could turn the iPhone into a far cheaper (though far smaller) version of the JazzMutant Lemur, using your shiny new phone like a Kaoss Pad or an Akai MPC drum/sample pad. Or you could use the motion sensors to scratch samples, ala Serato or FruityLoops. I even suspect that Apple may soon drop an app that lets you use the iPhone as a virtual mixing board / transport control for GarageBand and Logic like the now-defunct and frankly unlamented iControl. The ability to control Logic remotely from inside my vocal booth (aka my closet) would be enough on its own to make me give up my tasty Nokia futurephone and drop a couple of Benjamins on the iPhone.

I agree with Peter that it's early days yet; it's just a matter of time before you see groups of kids hanging out on the corner with their iPhones making beats in real-time, a high tech version of the guys who hang around in Manhattan making music with plastic buckets.

Heck of an expensive plastic bucket, though.

Here we are with the long-awaited third part of my series on how to make music with your Mac. In the first installment, we looked at audio hardware; in the second installment, we discussed digital audio workstations. Today we're going to look at useful DSP (or digital signal processing) plugins and software synthesizers to help aid in your music making.

Again, a disclaimer: these are only a small handful of the options open to you. There are thousands of Mac-friendly synths and plugins out there, and you can spend as much time playing with demos and tweaking presets as you can making music. Having said that, these are a few tools I've personally found useful in my quest to become a halfway-decent digital producer.

More after the jump.

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Gizmodo's Jesus Diaz has a wonderful solution to the problem of videoconferencing on your 3G iPhone: compact, convenient and battery-free!


Okay, we get it: a camera on the front of the iPhone is probably a pretty useful idea. Although there's something oddly compelling about turning a videoconferencing session on the iPhone into a Morris Day and the Time concert....

Developer Intua has just announced BeatMaker, a sampler / sequencer for your iPhone / iPod Touch that allows you to record and make beats on the go. It appears to function similarly to hardware like the famed Akai MPC sampler, allowing you to create loops and beats and play them back in real time. BeatMaker also includes a three-channel EQ, synchronized delay and a bitcrusher, for those of you who like to rock the 8-bit sound.

No word on availability and pricing yet -- Intua is, like almost everyone in the Apple world, waiting for more info on the iPhone App Store. Developer Mathieu Garcia also says that, though MIDI won't be in the initial release of BeatMaker, it's planned for inclusion in upcoming versions, along with Open Sound Control, the successor to MIDI that's becoming standard in more and more music-making apps these days.

CityCenter is a massive new multi-use building project designed by architectural rock star Daniel Libeskind. It is currently under construction in Las Vegas, and -- according to AppleInsider -- the jewel in this glittering crown will be a supermassive Apple Store, located directly in the front of the complex right along Las Vegas Boulevard.

Quoting "people familiar with the project", AppleInsider claims that the store will boast over 20,000 feet of floor space on two levels. The article is accompanied by architectural renderings, though none of them feature any giant white apples or other clues as to the exact placement of the store.

The CityCenter project has been controversial in Las Vegas; six workers have died on the project since it began, and construction workers walked off the project last Monday after union safety negotiations with the general contractor failed, though they returned the next night. The project is due to be completed in the fall of 2009, at which point the new Apple megastore will join the two existing Apple Store locations on the Strip. (AppleInsider incorrectly states that there are three locations, but the third Apple Store in Nevada is actually in Reno, on the other side of the state.)

Speaking as a resident of Sin City, I'm not sure if CityCenter is going to be a beautiful hypermodern arcology to rival Tokyo's Roppongi Hills, or just another big ugly thing for drunken idiot turistas from the Midwest to throw up on. But if they're really putting a ginormous Apple Store front and center, I'll be out front on opening day with the rest of the rubes.

Kinesis (from the Greek kinetikos, or "damn you, carpal tunnel syndrome!") have released a Mac addition to their Freestyle line of ergonomic keyboards, which allow users to split the keyboard in half for optimal positioning. This is accomplished via Kinesis' Pivot Tether™ technology, which appears to be, uh, a cable that connects the two halves of the Freestyle.

Kidding aside, this actually looks like a nice solution for those of us whose wrists are ravaged by unfriendly keyboards. I particularly love the big Esc/Force Quit button up on the top left -- clearly the design team at Kinesis has the same build of Firefox I do.

$99 for the Freestyle and $40 each for the Incline and VIP snap-on accessories, which provide a 10 degree slope and wrist supports, respectively.

[via Gizmodo]

Last time, I looked at hardware audio interfaces for getting sound into your Mac. But now that you've got it coming in, what do you do with it?

You need a DAW, or digital audio workstation. DAWs are to audio what Photoshop is to image processing: they allow you to layer, mix and manipulate your sound into something resembling music. Most DAWs also allow you to incorporate MIDI sequencing to drive your hardware or software synths.

DAWs vary in terms of feature set and usability. At the high end, recording audio is a highly technical process, and many DAWs look like the control panels for nuclear submarines. But don't be discouraged if it all doesn't make sense at first -- as you learn the underlying concepts behind recording digital audio, all those little buttons and windows will become second nature.

There are a lot of different DAWs out there, but we'll take a look at a few of the Mac offerings here. These are the main contenders in the field, along with a couple of interesting also-rans.

Read more →

This is the cutest damned thing I've seen in a while. The iClooly, from Japanese manufacturer RockRidgeSound, is a stand for your iPod Touch that makes it look like a lil' baby iMac -- and, as a side effect, serves as an actual useful way to watch movies on your iPod Touch without having to get your greasy mitts all over it.

The iClooly even pivots 90º for landscape/portrait swapping goodness and has a dock connection inside. It'll be ¥4,980 (roughly $47) when it hits the streets June 7th.

[via Engadget]