Apple: “Garage Band, for your Shittiest Demos”

 

From Apple.com’s “Top Stories” feed Sept. 5, 2008.

Oasis finds creative haven in GarageBand

In his exclusive interview with MusicRadar, Noel Gallagher reveals that “following the ‘four and a half year’ struggle to record Don’t Believe the Truth,” Gallagher and his Oasis bandmates “ditched his elaborate home studio” and took up GarageBand. Using GarageBand, Gallagher says, “we actually do our demos now in Gem’s bedroom” or on the band’s tour bus.

But it’s not that the band threw out their studio equipment in favor of the simplicity and quality of Garage Band.

If you actually go into and listen to the audio, Joe Bosso of music Radar interviews Gallagher about the bands demo process.  Gallagher laments about the demos recorded with his home studio equipment.  They were apparently too good and interfered with the process of moving from demo to record.  

“Now we do real scratchy low-fi shitty demos, knowing that there’s no way we can do worse than that in the studio.” (about 5 minutes into the audio)

There you have it folks: “Garage Band, There’s no other way we could make it shittier for the studio.”

Using Garage Band was an effort to tone done the quality of the demos.

I don’t know much about studio recording.  I would think that one could put together a fairly decent demo with Garageband.  But I don’t think this is the kind of image Apple wanted to portray about their consumer audio product. 

Also I hear nothing about a tour bus the Apple blurb mentions.  I find it hard to believe this little blurb was worth the tarnish it might lend the product or the company.

Create experiences that combine the magic of…blah…blah…blah

“A computer on every desk.”

Wow, that’s quite a vision that Paul Allen and Bill Gates put forward over 30 years ago.  Today you can clearly see the results of that vision.  Computers pervade our lives to a point that was almost unimaginable to many when Microsoft was founded.

Fast forward to 2008:

“Create experiences that combine the magic of software with the power of Internet services across a world of devices.”

Huh?

What does that even mean?  What are they getting at?  This sounds more like a game of catchup than a vision statement. This much more convoluted and impossible to visualize statement is the current vision statement for Microsoft according to Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner.

I think it explains, or perhaps mirrors a lot of the companies current missteps.

Something like “sharing data instantly anywhere” get’s a little closer to the point, but still results in a game of catchup.  These types of things are already starting to be realized with things like the iPhone.

Computing appears to be heading toward filtering, and identifying the things we are looking for.  Like Google, but there’s a lot more to be done there.  Alternatively computing also seems headed in a direction that automates more of our lives in ways that really make a difference, like bill paying, or media consumption (Tivo?).

A vision statement that addresses one or both of those aspects of computing would seem to offer more for the company to work with and offer a more successful direction.

Other ideas?

Via [Microsoft Pri0]

Set Podcast Preferences on a per Podcast basis (iTunes 8)

Among the new features offered in the latest iTunes update, Tuaw points out that Apple has now implemented more granular podcast settings.

Now settings can be defined by each show.

For some shows no doubt you’ll want to retain every episode, while for others you may only want to keep the most recent and delete it after you’ve listened.  Now with iTunes 8 you can set individual podcasts with unique criteria.

Now if only I could easily convert a podcast to an Audiobook, Music, or TV show.

Via [Tuaw]