Comprised of five API modules — including the famed 212L Preamp, 225L Compressor, 235L Gate/Expander, 550L EQ, and 215L Filters — the API Vision is UA’s most colorful channel strip plug-in to date, allowing you to inject your tracks with all of the warmth and personality of API’s flagship analog console.

UA’s plug-ins are the best. Period.

In this issue, Tom Ellis looks at some tools for creating music on iOS; John Moltz looks at being a freelance writer and the need to have health insurance; Charles Perry investigates app localization; Chris Steimel is tired of hearing the same old songs on traditional radio; and David Chartier takes off on a train to get some writing done.

Top Gear:

If the i3’s range fits your life, here’s what you get. A car, a gadget, a suite of furniture, a greener option, a talking point. And a slower heart-rate.

Just when you start to wonder what IK Multimedia is going to come up with next, they deliver a pedalboard to control your Mac and iOS music apps wirelessly.

What a great idea. When you’re traveling, you can communicate with people using symbols.

Uh-oh.

Consider Tommy Palm and Jeff Smith. Palm, who oversees development at smartphone-game maker King.com, and Smith, who runs music-application maker Smule Inc., have long avoided building apps for devices using Microsoft’s Windows Phone software. Closer ties with Nokia haven’t swayed them. Both say even after the acquisition closes, Microsoft still won’t have enough users to make it worth the time and money.

You could see this coming a mile away, but still, uh-oh.

If you travel internationally, this is a game changer. Global roaming charges are outrageous. My hope is that this pushes other carriers to match T-Mobile.

This quiz tests your ability to differentiate Ikea furniture names from the names of death metal bands. Hilarious. I didn’t do very well.

If you are a Nirvana fan, these are a fantastic find.

Here we have three separate Nirvana interviews conducted by Sherry; all together, they add up to nearly an hour. The interviews catch Nirvana at three very different stages of their career. In November of 1990 Nirvana was riding the modest success of Bleach; in the summer of 1991 they were ready to release Nevermind and they knew they had something special on their hands; by 1992 they had already become superstars and were dealing with that. By the time the last interview rolled around, Nirvana had been named Metal Hammer’s “Best New Band,” which was just really amusing. Among other things, they discuss their willingness to pursue an idea that had been floated in 1991 of touring with Guns N’ Roses.

This is pretty cool. Ford is not the first to bring this parking tech to production, but they are definitely the first of the big car makers to do so.

FAPA uses ultrasonic sensors to scan for an open parking space at speeds as high as 19 mph (30 kph). When the car finds a suitable spot it alerts the driver, who can stay in the car or get out and use a remote to finish the parking job. The car then backs itself in to the parking space.

Amazing. The car scans for available parking spaces in real time, as you drive. The car alerts you that it found a space, you get out, and the car parks itself. The future!

Gartner and IDC released their quarterly PC shipment numbers. No tablet data, no phone data, just personal computers. Lots to chew on. Some highlights from Gartner’s US numbers:

To me, there are two big takeaways from this. First, tablets are cannibalizing PC sales. No big news there. Second, I see any decline in Apple sales as a sign of the aging of Apple’s Mac line. The iMac and MacBook Air refreshes are recent and the Mac Pro and Macbook Pro lines are due, hopefully soon. My instinct here is that we’ll see a nice bounce in the numbers, starting with Q4.

I love lists, and this is definitely a fun one. I suspect that you will find fault with this list, have a few inventions that you think should be on it, see some that perhaps should not be. That’s just the way with lists though, no?

My biggest complaint is that the first Apple product listed is the iPod in 2001. What? No Macintosh? No Apple II? Both of these were game changers.

That said, I still enjoyed your article, Ellie Zolfagharifard.

Canadian carriers suck. Bad.

Love the cover photo of the latest issue.

Go buy some guitar picks and support the cause.

Ben Bajarin wrote a great piece on the iPhone and its market share in the U.S. There are so many takeaways, you should just read the whole thing.

I love seeing smart people doing smart things.

The Galaxy Round exists because the Galaxy Round exists. Samsung built and launched it so that it would be the first company in the world to build and launch a smartphone with a curved display. That’s it. The curved shape of the phone adds nothing of value to the user experience and once again, Samsung didn’t even attempt to add any useful new functionality to the device. It’s a gimmick.

That pretty much says it all.

An excerpt from Nick Bilton’s upcoming book on Twitter was posted in The New York Times today. Fascinating read.

Today seems to be live-in-the-past day. Heh.

For you young-‘uns, MacPaint was a bit-mapped drawing program that shipped with the original Macintosh. A lovely bit of code.

iPhone 5s and 5c will be available on Friday, October 25 in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, French West Indies, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Reunion Island, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and Thailand. iPhone 5s and 5c will also be available on Friday, November 1 in Albania, Armenia, Bahrain, Colombia, El Salvador, Guam, Guatemala, India, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and UAE. Both iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c are currently available in the US, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore and the UK.

When I was a kid, this was common science fiction fodder. To see this on the horizon is amazing.

In a speech to Virgin Galactic customers on September 27, the company’s founder, Sir Richard Branson, outlined these plans and more for the future of his commercial space fleet. “Using small, purpose-built, two-man spaceships based at space hotels our guests will be able to take breathtaking day trips programmed to fly a couple of hundred feet above of the moon’s surface,” Branson said. “They will be able to take in with their own eyes awe-inspiring views of mountains, craters and vast dry seas below.”

Sign me up!

Researchers at MIT wanted to create a robot that could reassemble itself into a variety of shapes. This is the proof of concept, a set of blocks, each of which contains a spinning motor with a break, along with all required electronics. The purpose of the motor is to generate inertia to allow the block to jump from one position to another.

Fascinating.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster just released data from their latest semiannual teen survey. Interesting read. Three things jumped out at me. In the three survey periods (Fall ’12, Spring ’13, Fall ’13):

1. iPhone ownership climbed steadily (40%, 48%, 55%). Shocking numbers for a device Samsung portrays as uncool.
2. Expected next phone purchase: iPhone as next phone increased (62%, 62%, 65%). Android also increased, but with a much smaller share (22%, 23%, 24%).
3. On the tablet side, Android marketshare is growing (plan to buy an Android table: 16%, 24%, 28%), while iPad plus iPad Mini drops (75%, 68%, 64%). Why add iPad and iPad Mini? Seems right, since Android does not break out their numbers by form factor.

My gut reaction to the tablet numbers is that the tablet share change is due to the ongoing maturation of the tablet market. The iPad mini was not around for the first survey and Android tablet use is still finding its level, at the cost of the existing iPad. Looking forward to the next survey.

From the most excellent Scott Knaster:

Last week I posted about MAC: The Macintosh Calendar 1985 and included a couple of images from the calendar. Lots of folks asked to see more, so today I photographed the entire calendar and posted it. I apologize in advance to anyone depicted in this calendar who would rather not see these images again. It’s all done in the name of history.

Click on the calendar picture to jump to the gallery. You can zoom in once with the magnifying glass, then again with the + sign in the mini picture in the upper left corner.

Such great memories.

MacUpdate’s bundle deal ends tomorrow night.

This is a great article by Christina Warren that looks at what’s happening with paid apps vs in-app purchases.

This is a great shared lists app. My wife and I tried it last night and it worked great. I’m a fan.

Chevron left the Pogues in the 90s but came back in the early oughts. He was an unofficial spokesman of sorts for the band and also oversaw the remastering of the Pogues’ back catalog on CD. Chevron, whose songwriting credits include the fan favorite “Thousands are Sailing,” had been battling esophageal cancer since 2007; it was thought to be in remission last year when doctors discovered an inoperable tumor.