Slashdot Mirror
GarageBand Roundup
Wired covers the GarageBand revolution. Matt Van Horm writes "MacBand.com is an online directory of songs and loops created by users of Apple's GarageBand software who submit their work. Songs are organized by category and loops are organized by genre, instrument and mood, and are rated with a system similar to the one in iTunes." franklinrh writes in about the free loops available from Access, and others note free loops from Bitshift Audio and Drums on Demand. And if you want to import MIDI files into GarageBand, check out Dent du MIDI. What other software -- and equipment -- are you using with GarageBand? I've got my setup pumping out tunes.
NEWS BULLETIN - Cupertino, CA
Rumors came to an end today. In a press conference, Steve Jobs announced the new Apple user input/output device. The device, called COCK(R), is a radical shift in human interaction devices. COCK(R)'s enhanced as it also contains feedback support.
Basically COCK(R) looks like a shaft with two balls at the end. A user places the shaft into their mouth and keeps the balls pointed towards the monitor. There are sensors on the balls that track the motion of the COCK(R) in relation to the monitor. The user must look at the area on the screen to move the mouse. Thrusting of the shaft results in click actions. Additional functions may be provided by mapping licking and coddling the balls.
Since the device is used by one's mouth, bio-metric security can easily be used on OS X. COCK(R) has a built sampling device which can match saliva to specific users on the computer. As such, the user will have access based on their spit.
Feedback exists in several forms. First the shaft may increase in size to better fit the user's mouth. This usually takes a couple of minutes. There is also the ability to give the user a slight shock given error conditions on the computer. Additionally, in severe error states, a milky substance will be emitted from the COCK(R) to signify an error condition to the user.
Questions at the press release signified mixed opinions on COCK(R). There seems to be resistance to using such a device in the non-Macintosh community. Steve Jobs acknowledged this problem. As such, the current mice will still be available when purchasing Macintoshes. Currently Apple is marketing towards current users of their platform. "Product testing showed us that long-term Mac users were most willing to use COCK," Jobs stated.
Despite resistance, Apple does not feel it will hurt their sales, only increase them. Jobs said "We at Apple hope that COCK will be as important as our switch to G3 based computers. As such, our marketing staff are fully committed to convincing every one that COCK is the best."
Now that Steve Jobs released COCK(R) onto the world, he hopes sales will increase steadily. One mac fan stated "COCK is the best IO device in the world. Even the milky error substance tastes great!" Apple's stock has not significantly dropped or risen. However, Apple's online store estimates that sales of COCK(R) will rise in the next two weeks.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I have recently upgraded from a Mac 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM to a new G5 dual 2GHz with AGP 8X and PCI-X to help me at my freelance gig where I copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. On the G5 I spent about 20 minutes trying to install GarageBand. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, my iTunes will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Safari is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8MB of ram running Windows 95 is faster than this G5 dual 2GHz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
Surely all this hype cannot be merely because Mac users finally have a low cost music creation program comparable to what PC users have had for a long time (CMC is about $30).