Some people like keys that "click" while others do not. I for one HATE ergo keyboards. I know they're supposed to be better, but then again is the Sys 6 US layout and Esperanto is supposed to be easier than English. I'll stick to what I know and like. It's all about "choice", isn't it Mr. Gates?
The obvious external HD is the iPod. If you really need an external drive, there are a multitude of Firewire drives available on the market, of which I'm sure some are of the 7200 rpm. If you're adventurous, you can always swap out the drive that comes in the box.
If the $60 price tag doesn't scare you off, Apple makes a Bluetooth version of their keyboard. They say it has a year of battery life. If that's true I say bravo.
The overpriced Apple keyboard is a whopping $29! I know that may seem ourageous to those that buy $9.99 Best Buy specials, but I prefer a keyboard that doesn't feel like crap.
The Cube's downfall certainly wasn't price, considering up until they mini mac they were selling on eBay for close to $1K. The problem was unfortunately on the design side. There was a heat issue when certain components were installed. The Cube had no fan so all the heat was drawn out through the top. Apple had to cancel a lot of the back ordered Cubes back in the day. I loved the little Cube, but the Mini's even smaller and more powerful. Might need one to tide me over.
costs go down while you're driving all your competition out of business. Now where's the competition? Novell and Corel are virtually non-players in the market. There's your open source programs out there and Apple just came out with Pages, but MS has such a stranglehold that most people won't even look at an alternative despite and superiority, if there is any. Prices will be dictated from Redmond until the masses decide that there has to be something better than a bloated piece of software.
Interesting that you brought up MAX. Stephen Kay, creator of KARMA and a slew of programming for Korg for 15+ years, wrote KARMA using MAX on his Mac. The main cost will be the highly refined control suface that I'm sure Korg will attach to it. A 76-key and 88-key version is slated with more buttons and sliders etc than a JD-800. I would probably pay $800 for OASYS in software form, if it ran on a Mac. It won't happen, but I'm happy to see the keyboard I dreamed about for years coming to fruition.
Unfortunately they're not a commadity. It's still based upo how it sounds, how it feels, it's ease of use and it's options. There are some software synths that can do certain things well, but nothing has been able to replace nor sound as good as some of those older synths, until now perhaps. There's a lost art of sound manipulation and creativity that has gone to the strict playing of presets. This may be the jolt the industry needs.
A little history for you... About 10 years ago, around the time of the O1/W, there was a super secret project in the works at Korg called the SuperSynth. This board was to include all sorts of real time controls, a qwerty keyboard, large touch screen display, vector AI2 and sample based synthesis, basically everything imaginable. At NAMM one year, they held a private showing of said keyboard under the name OASYS. The target was going to be the Waldorf Wave guys, the big wigs of the industry priced around $10K. So to us, it was supposed to come out at the next winter NAMM. The next show comes around and lo and behold OASYS is in the Korg booth, but it's NOT what we think it is. It's the product to which you were referring. After inquiring, I learned that the project was mostly scrapped and that's when Korg started going in a more consumer friendly direction. Apparently the marketing guys upstairs stole the project's name for said failed project. Somehow, this project got revived and I'm all of a sudden feeling nostalgic. Now where's that lottery ticket?
There's one big caveat, Alesis has a history of putting out horrible sounding keyboards, Korg does not. You must put into consideration the control, synthesis power and versatility that this board will offer. The keyboard itself will feel good, sound good and have features for the professional. I have a ton more faith in Korg than I do Alesis. The Q-series and the Quardrasynth was not anything to jump up and down about. The hey day of keyboards may be over, but this sounds like a ten year old dream finally realized.
You must reemeber that the idiot that started that company that made the Pentium based keyboard had NEVER made a keyboard before. For an unestablished company to command $4500 is little risky, however; Korg can get away with it. This board is a culmination of their entire existance all rolled up into pne board. Truly, if I could afford to get one I would since it would replace my O1/W and my Wavestation. Kurzweil can get $5K for their stuff and it's not nearly as robust as the OASYS seems to be!
This keyboard is the culmination of YEARS of synthesis. In fact 10 years in the making. I was so upset when I heard that the OASYS was cancelled years ago and then was converted into an audio recording device. If it were economically feasible I'd sell off at least two of my boards to get the OASYS, namely my O1/W and my Wavestation. I know there won't be a chance in hell that it'll be affordable, but I'm super happy it has been completed. Essentially this is the same combo you're using, just a bit larger witha touch screen. I appreciate Logic with a controller, but I really think some keyboards can't be emulated well.
To be fair I know several professionals that successfully use a Powerbook on stage with their keys namely David Sancious and Kipper from Sting, Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock. In fact, Herbie uses the Powerbook exclusively for sounds, sequences and overall control.
BTW Roadies rarely play with anything backline related, that's why god invetned techs. From my experience, PB's hold up rather well. Go to a large show, 90% of the road crew is using one.
As far as cash, back when the OASYS was conceived, the rough street price was figured to $10K. Spendy, but may be viable for some guys.
I will agree will the Oxygen8 on stage. Not too cool, but satisfactory for lead parts.
Obviously you're not used to real road shows where "roadies" are used. Roadies NEVER play with the instruments themselves, that's what backline guys are for and they're usually better at taking care of teh gear than the actual musicians. Roadies aren't what they used to be. More or less they supervise and direct the local union grunts as to stage construction etc.
I fear that the OASYS will require boot time, so the idea of turning it on and off, working flawlessly the whole night seems to be a pipe dream. I'm imagining the true beauty of the board will be in the various control and actual synthesis that will be achieved through the power of it's core.
This board is a dream 10 years in the making, glad to see it coming to fruition.
You must remember, the eMac was developed for the education market. Consumers were supposed to buy the iMac. The eMac's $799 price tag made it more attractive to the entry level budgeted consumer. Just for posterity's sake, the eMac can have an external monitor added to it, in case you felt like putting the computer remotely (although kind of stupid).
I would imagine that the vast majority of your non-geek friends own an LCD mostly because it's harder to find a CRT these days. The size is nice on the LCD's, I'll grant you that. Other than size, is there any other reason why people prefer LCD's to CRT's? Typically you get a better response, colour and performance from a CRT. Ever taken a look at the TV market?
I've never suggested that the eMac was the entry level Mac. In fact, I said there is a need for the $500 headless iMac that is purpoted. Most people I know want a G5 PowerBook.
First of all, after scouring this week's ads all the "cheap" computers for sale do NOT include a monitor. An average price of an LCD monitor seems to be $350-400 US. Add the fact that the CRT included with th eMac specs out at.25 mm dot pitch while all the others start at.264 and go up from there. There's also the fact that other than the keyboard and a mouse (both of which can be wireless), there aren't any cables to hook up. It's clean and all in one box. Your GIANT 17" display looks a million times better than a hideous rectanglar cube next to an LCD.
Yes, Apple needs the new headless iMac to secure more of the marketplace, but you're likely not the target audience. Mom and Dad that like to surf the net, send email, write a Word document and maybe the odd Excel spreadsheet for work is the target audience. Needless to say that it comes with the whole iLife suite for those that are creative.
Quit detracting from something cool, even if you'd never buy one. There's an audience for almost anything. Just because it doesn't appeal to you, doesn't make it less of a viable product.
I'm kind of glad that I haven't purchased a TiVo box yet. Does anyone know the future of the service with current boxes and/or providers? I don't want to have to succmb to the wills of Redmond in order to use TiVo. Besides I really don't want my computer to be the center of my TV. I like the separation of church and state.
But nothing new. This paints have been around for quite awhile, just maybe not for case modding. To clarify, it's NOT UV activated but "black light" activated, which is nothing more than a high frequency violet shade. This is simply visible light and shouldn't affect your components any more than the goofy cold neon tubes that people are putting in their cases. I wonder what the long term effect of painting a video card would be. But this paint has been used for stage and film work. One thing I find really interesting is the lack of pricing mentioned, it's REALLY expensive. Something to the tune of $40/ tiny jar.
While yes, RFID tags have some useful benign uses, the potential use for evil and/or invasive monitoring cannot be ignored in the name of convenience. Barcoding obviously isn't convenient enough for manufacturers now, they need to wave a wand at the product to get it's information. To blindly trust our governmental agencies, police and even worse, corporations is not only stupid but extremely naive. With our intelligence agencies in turmoil, the Office of Homeland Security desperately seeking out potential threats (none of which by the way are from American citizens) the odds of these relatively cheap RFID's being incorporated to further develop a dossier on each and every one of us is ever increasing. Thought crimes are next. Oceania is looking nice about now.
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BTW Roadies rarely play with anything backline related, that's why god invetned techs. From my experience, PB's hold up rather well. Go to a large show, 90% of the road crew is using one.
As far as cash, back when the OASYS was conceived, the rough street price was figured to $10K. Spendy, but may be viable for some guys.
I will agree will the Oxygen8 on stage. Not too cool, but satisfactory for lead parts.
Peace
I fear that the OASYS will require boot time, so the idea of turning it on and off, working flawlessly the whole night seems to be a pipe dream. I'm imagining the true beauty of the board will be in the various control and actual synthesis that will be achieved through the power of it's core.
This board is a dream 10 years in the making, glad to see it coming to fruition.
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I would imagine that the vast majority of your non-geek friends own an LCD mostly because it's harder to find a CRT these days. The size is nice on the LCD's, I'll grant you that. Other than size, is there any other reason why people prefer LCD's to CRT's? Typically you get a better response, colour and performance from a CRT. Ever taken a look at the TV market?
I've never suggested that the eMac was the entry level Mac. In fact, I said there is a need for the $500 headless iMac that is purpoted. Most people I know want a G5 PowerBook.
Peace
Yes, Apple needs the new headless iMac to secure more of the marketplace, but you're likely not the target audience. Mom and Dad that like to surf the net, send email, write a Word document and maybe the odd Excel spreadsheet for work is the target audience. Needless to say that it comes with the whole iLife suite for those that are creative.
Quit detracting from something cool, even if you'd never buy one. There's an audience for almost anything. Just because it doesn't appeal to you, doesn't make it less of a viable product.
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Audio support - AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 (32 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Apple Lossless, WAV, AIFF, Audible
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Isn't that the only thing people here care about? Peace GO iPod!!!
My gym proihibits the use of camera-cellphones in the locker room. I can see their point. Peace