tubatimberinger wrote:Since the Pc platform has had tablets for about 10 years now, I cannot see it as a new computing device. Also, and I have not tried it yet, but I am certain one could run N3 on such a device, maybe some of the touch features would not transfer seamlessly, but tablets are NOT new. Also, I hope by "high level perspective" you do not imply my perspective to be an inferior or uninformed one. I too know what a manual typewriter is and actually learned music with pen and paper. My background is that of a professionally trained composer, NOT a computer science person however, I have been using Computer Software and MIDI etc. since Windows for Workgroups 3.1 and OS 8 (I am fluent in both platforms).
As noted in an earlier post, I use the term "high-level perspective" in the same way as "big picture" or "Gestalt",
not as an indication of superiority, inferiority, or anything like that . . .
In other words, looking through a microscope provides a low-level perspective, but standing on top of a mountain and looking at everything in sight is a high-level perspective . . .
Regarding tablet computing in the Windows universe, Microsoft released Windows for Pen Computing in the early 1990s, at which time I decided to get a Compaq Concerto, which was a bit of FUN for a while, and this is fine, but it is
not what the iPad does . . .
Windows for Pen Computing (wikipedia)Microsoft's strategy always has been to fit Windows
onto a form factor, which is entirely different from designing a form factor and then designing an operating system specifically for the form factor, which is the way Apple does things . . .
In fact, at some point it becomes a bit confusing to use the term "tablet", since while the iPad is what I consider to be a type of "tablet", it takes too long to explain the way I define "tablet", other than to say that it is the combination of digital paper, sound, and pen with additional intelligence and awareness . . .
Anything is possible, and sometime in the future when Microsoft gains the legal right to build a complete system other than the Xbox, things might change, which is the reason I consider the Xbox to be what sometime in the future might evolve into a complete system, at which time Microsoft will be able to design the hardware and software with complete control . . .
The reality is that Apple always has enjoyed the legal right to build complete systems, which is quite unique, and additional realities are (a) that Microsoft does
not have this legal right and (b) the various hardware vendors who build Windows machines do
not have their own operating systems (although IBM attempted it for a while with OS/2 in the early 1990s), so while one can suggest, for example, that DELL has the legal right, it lacks the ability to do the requisite operating system and intimate integration . . .
On the other hand, Amazon.com curiously has the potential to do complete systems, which they currently are doing with the Kindle, but at present their focus primarily is on eBooks, multimedia, and shopping . . .
tubatimberinger wrote:Then, that you frame your biased opinions as realities or matters of fact...
(1) The iPad is not a toy . . .
Maybe my statement was a bit harsh and from a computer science standpoint I see the sexiness of it [the ipad] and I fully understand the future implications of touch screen computing. However, from the stand point of a composer who writes for the instruments the Notion was/is primarily intended for (notice the stock library is an ORCHESTRAL one, not a suite of electric and acoustic guitars basses etc.), to have to work with 15-30 staves on a screen not even the size of a sheet of paper is simply NOT professionally feasible. This sentiment is shared by every composer I know. They all think the ipad is nifty but they all agree "I could never do my real stuff on one" (with the exception of using it as a controller for electronic music which by and large has no score or notational needs). Actually, I cannot think of many real world professional level applications that the ipad in its present form are really adequate for with the exception of MS office, internet browsing and the like. It either lacks the processing power or the actual hardware to complete most tasks. So sorry, for now, it is a toy albeit a very fancy one that if I could afford, I would certainly own myself.
I was going to skip this one, but there is an important bit of information that is worth mentioning . . .
One of the difficulties that occurs when people ponder tablet computing involves the display, and it took me a while and a lot of pondering to make sense of the concepts in a practical way . . .
In the 1990s, I did some work for a company that makes various types of machines that have keys, buttons, and other physical user interface objects, and one of the more fascinating things I discovered is that there is a branch of Psychology that is focused specifically on user interface designing and cognitive engineering, which in this instance mapped among other things to doing studies of the way people use various types of machines that have keys, buttons, and so forth, where one of the techniques involved having test subjects follow a script that had instructions on how to perform various tasks involving the keys, buttons, and so forth . . .
The test subjects were videotaped using high-speed cameras in various locations, and the video then was analyzed in great detail toward the goal of determining the optimal position of each key, button, and so forth, as well as to identify user hesitations, confusion, ease of use, recognition, eye movements, hand and finger motions, and so forth and so on, which in some respects initially appeared to be an excellent way to waste time and money, until I pondered it for a while and realized that, for example, if the machine was a pay telephone and there might be billions of calls made from pay telephones, then it probably makes a bit of sense to ensure that the buttons and everything else are optimally placed, identified, and so forth and so on . . .
So, if you do this with an imaginary tablet computing device and have the abilities (a) to make the tablet do anything you desire, (b) to have the form factor for the tablet be any shape and size, and so forth and so on, then the futuristic aspect involves determining everything about the tablet, which basically is a "what if" thought exercise . . .
If you think it might make sense for a tablet to double as a hot plate, then you simply imagine that you can fry an egg on the tablet, and so forth and so on, since by virtue of being an imaginary device sometime in the future, there are no initial limitations . . .
At some point when the imaginary tablet has a visual display, it is useful to ponder everything that applies to a visual display, and sooner or later this maps to determining whether there are any rules of visual perception that provide a few clues, and one of the more fascinating aspects of displays and visual perception is the fact that nearly nobody with reasonably good vision can see the entire display area of a 20" screen in focus at one time . . .
Yet another reality is that for all practical purposes the usable focus area is remarkably small, which maps to an area smaller than standard business card, which is one of the reasons that the editing window in FORUM editors is not so large (although another reason is so that it will be compatible with lower resolution screens, which historically maps to the approximate size of an IBM computer card or 80 characters) . . .
It takes a while for this to make sense, because it is not something that most people notice intuitively or care about one way or the other, but when you think about it for a while, it is quite enlightening for purposes of understanding the best way to design an imaginary tablet . . .
How much stuff does one actually need to see to do a task productively, quickly, and accurately?
In other words, there is difference in (a) learning how to do a task with 11" by 17" sheets of paper and (b) only being able to do a task with 11" by 17" sheets of paper . . .
My primary writing device is a keyboard, and my primary pointing device is a mouse, and I have used these devices for so long that using anything else is awkward at best, but this does not map to other devices being less optimal or anything else . . .
It is a matter of convenience and personal preference rather than actual necessity in an absolute sense . . .
So, I devote a good bit of attention to pondering the best ways to do various tasks with a tablet, and there are some interesting rules and principles, for sure . . .
For sure! In other words, an excellent question to ponder is "Why is the iPad the size it is?" . . .
There is no federal law that says an iPad only can be the size it is, so why did Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive decide on this particular size for the iPad?
Why not make it 1/4" wider or 1/2" taller?
On a related note, regarding working with sheet music and having a larger display, do you think that Mozart needed to look at sheet music to know every intimate detail of the music he composed?
If you only can focus on a small section of display, then I think the key is to devise a way to navigate quickly to whatever you need to see in focus rather than to have a big screen with everything on it . . .
The difference is that with a big screen, you have to move your eyes to change the area of focus, but with a smaller screen, you can look in the same location but move what you need to see to that location, and overall I think that fewer large eye motions maps to better overall clarity, since rapidly looking from far-left to top-center to far-right to far-left and so forth and so on where every eye motion is large very quickly makes most people dizzy and a bit disoriented, if not nauseous . . .
It depends on the person, but I tried a lot of different size displays, and displays larger than 20" (diagonal) make me dizzy and are quite annoying, since I have to devote entirely too much attention to moving my eyes and head to see stuff, which is one of the reasons that the iPad is sized the way it is, although there obviously are other important reasons . . .
Another interesting thing about the iPad2 is that it has a significantly higher resolution than a typical desktop computer display, so while the dimensions of the iPad2 display area are smaller, there are more pixels, colors, contrast, and brightness, which maps to being able to perceive more information in the focused part of the field of vision, so while it might appear that a smaller screen maps to not being to see so much as a larger screen, this is not the way it works, even though it can appear to be a bit counterintuitive at first . . .
tubatimberinger wrote:Your assertion that N3 is perfectly fine and stable and therefore able to take a back seat to ipad development is one I take particular exception to.
The assertion I made is that for what I need to do, Notion 3 is perfectly fine and stable, as well as being accurate, reliable, and simply amazing . . .
However, this does not imply that I suggested that Notion 3 should take a back seat to iPad application development, since I never made that suggestion . . .
In fact, I made nearly the exact opposite of that inference, where my assertion is that Notion Music focusing at present on iPad application development maps directly to doing work on the technologies used in Notion 3, which since there is considerable similarity in much of iOS and Mac OS X in turn maps to doing work on NOTION . . .
This is easier to understand if you do a bit of reading and studying with respect to gaining a high-level overview of iOS and Mac OS X application programming, where focusing on frameworks is very productive for this purpose . . .
iOS Developer Center (Apple Developer Connection)You could devote several months to reading and studying the various application development documentation, but the summary is that there is a lot of commonality, which maps to a good bit of what one does for an iOS application being directly applicable for a Mac OS X application, and this is the key to understanding my perspective on Notion Music doing iPad application development . . .
Using a vastly oversimplified analogy, metaphor, or simile, it is like someone canning tomatoes for a while, but other folks complaining that canning tomatoes has nothing to do with making spaghetti sauce, except that canned tomatoes are a key ingredient of spaghetti sauce, so in the grand scheme of everything canning tomatoes applies directly to making spaghetti sauce, and in fact makes a lot of sense, because it ensures that the cook has a ready source of higher quality tomatoes for making spaghetti sauce, which maps to making better spaghetti sauce . . .
tubatimberinger wrote:I am guessing you have not been using Notion since 1x and maybe this is shapes your perspective a bit. It is not designed for pop music. It was designed for composers of orchestral music.
I started doing computer-based composing with Notion SLE for Miroslav Philharmonik and then quickly upgraded to Notion 3 so that I could use all the IK Multimedia virtual instruments, so my foray into the universe of computer-based composing essentially started with Notion 3, and this certainly has a profound influence on my perspective . . .
And my perspective is that Notion 3 is a composing and audio generating tool that creates outstanding high-quality audio using virtual instruments that are programmed using music notation, which is genre agnostic . . .
Music notation is a language, and as such it can be used to express whatever you need and want it to express . . .
Notion 3 currently is packaged with a set of primarily orchestral instruments and sound sample libraries, but this is
not a limiting factor, since Notion 3 uses VSTi virtual instruments, and so long as a virtual instrument supports VSTi technology, Notion 3 can use it . . .
At present, I am focused primarily on having a lot of FUN with
DISCO and
Pop, as well as doing experiments to determine the rules for "sparkling" the notes of an instrument, but music notation can be used for any genre that is based on 12 semitones per octave . . .
But if you create your own custom sample libraries there is a way to do music in scales or musical systems that have smaller increments, where for example you can divide an octave into 24 increments and then record notes tuned accordingly but map the sampled notes arbitrarily to specific keys on a virtual keyboard so that instead of C4 to C6 being two octaves it is one octave and the keys from C4 to C6 map to quartertones rather than semitones, such that the whole step from standard C4 to D4 is mapped to the keyboard keys {C4, C#4, D4, D#4, E}, which is a bit strange, but drumkits are mapped in a similar way, which makes it something that can be done in a reasonably straightforward way . . .
Lots of FUN! :)