Jim and Dan discuss the new Apple TV ads, the Microsoft Kin and Surface, the Bruins toaster, Black Friday, the Lufthansa iPad Heist, holiday bundles, AC/DC in iTunes, paying for music, and the Jackson 7-string.
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You know it as an iOS guitar amp modeling app, but now AmpKit is available on the Mac. I’ve been playing around with this for a little while and it’s really nice. I’ll have a full review soon, but I’m sure you’ll like it.
Studio Devil Virtual Tube Preamp faithfully emulates the analog circuitry of a discrete, class-A biased, vacuum tube preamplifier. All of the associated analog circuitry, including the vacuum tube itself and the effects of biasing resistors and capacitors, are simulated in amazing detail. Just about any audio source or track can benefit from the natural soft limiting and dynamic warmth that this virtual tube preamplifier provides.
Studio Devil is a great company.
Some great looking stuff.
Something to keep in mind if you’re shopping for an iPad Smart Cover or Smart Case heading in to the holidays: not all of them are created equal, especially on Amazon.com. For many of us, Amazon is a natural place to order an iPad cover or case as a gift this holiday. But as dozens of complaints on the site show, many of the “Apple Smart Covers” or “Apple Smart Cases” for sale on Amazon are not actually sold by Apple and are not the genuine article.
Be careful and be sure what you are buying is the real thing.
My iPhone 5 is all I use for a camera because of the great quality photos I get. These examples are even better than what I would expect though.
These internal Microsoft videos, provided to Wired by a person who worked on the project, show focus groups testing the ill-fated Kin. According to our source, these are pre-production models that changed very little from the shipping product, although “performance improved some prior to shipping.” Watch them, and you can readily see why the project tanked: Kin phones just weren’t usable. Or, as our source described them, they were a “pile of shit.”
Why should we believe that the latest round of Microsoft products are any better?
When it comes to devices, kids’ holiday wish lists are simple this year. The most-wanted gifts are predominantly from one company—Apple. According to a recent Nielsen study, Apple’s popularity leading up to the holiday season continues a trend seen over the last couple of years, with American kids aged 6-12 generally more interested in the latest iOS offerings than other consumer electronics and gaming devices.
It’s going to be a good quarter for Apple.
I started off this review a while ago by focusing on AmpliTube Slash and iRig Stomp. However, I quickly realized that IK Multimedia’s products are more than their separate parts to me.
When I listened to people talking about AmpliTube Slash, the conversation inevitably came around to the one big question — “can you sound like Slash?” I’ll answer that for you right now — no, you’ll never sound like Slash. Not even if you walked up on stage and used his gear.
Playing guitar is more than the gear you use, it’s about the person that plays the guitar through that gear.
The more relevant question is along the lines of “how did the gear sound?”
This is a question I can answer and this is the reason I love IK Multimedia’s products. IK’s gear sounds great and it’s modeled using real amps, like the ones that Slash owns. That’s important to get the tone that your looking for from your software amp modeler.
In addition to AmpliTube 3, I also own AmpliTube Fender, Metal, Jimi Hendrix, Ampeg SVX and Slash.
What I like more than each of these individual products is that IK gave me the ability to use them all at once. They are completely interchangeable, which means I can use any component with any other component.
For instance, I can use a Metal amp and a Jimi Hendrix Marshall in the same preset. I can add an effect from the Fender line right beside an effect from the Slash product.
That folks is the beauty of AmpliTube. Being able to mix and match amps and effects from so many products gives you the ability to create your own sound. AmpliTube has a lot of effects and amps, so the number of combinations you can come up with are almost limitless, not to mention the variety of sounds that you can create.
IK also opened the AmpliTube Custom Shop, which is basically an amp and effect store on your computer. I’ve purchased quite a few amps on here, but my favorite so far is the German Gain. It’s based on the Engl Powerball and it will kick your ass.
The Custom Shop allows you to try all of the gear before you buy it too1, so you know what your getting before you pay anything. It’s just a winning formula for guitar players and IK.
I mentioned iRig Stomp earlier and I use it, along with AmpliTube, on my iPad. This is the first iPad guitar accessory that I honestly feel was made to help me as a player.
With its versatile outputs, I can plug my iPad into an amp or external monitors and get a much better tone than using the iPad alone.
IK’s gear is meant to give you options for your tone whether you’re on your desktop, recording a new song, or away from home with your iPad.
As a guitarist, I want that kind of versatility.
I’m currently trying out the Orange Dual Terror amp, but I’m going to need to add some more credits to my account before I buy it. Beware, the Custom Shop is addictive. ↩
Matthew Panzarino interviews Black Pixel CEO Daniel Pasco and Director Michael Jurewitz about some of the changes the company has gone through. I have a tremendous amount of respect for these two guys and everyone that works at Black Pixel.
I have eight amps in my collection, but I have to get one of these.
Nokia said they would offer their mapping solution for iOS users and here it is.
They don’t say if there will be special prices for any products, but they are planning something.
In hindsight, I now see why Microsoft did not want me to review the Surface. That was probably the right call from a PR perspective. It’s simply not a good product.
After using it for over a week now, it’s hard to come up with a lot of nice things to say about the Surface. Don’t get me wrong, there are some solid things here. But by and large, it’s a strange, buggy, and clunky product that I simply can’t imagine many people buying after the initial hype wears off.
That’s near the beginning of the review. It gets worse.
Hmmm, something big seems to have happened around 2007. Wonder what that could have been?
Kaleidoscope is one of the world’s best tools for spotting differences in images and text, and now it supports merging of files and folders, too. Kaleidoscope integrates directly with Git, Subversion, Mercurial, and Bazaar to fit perfectly in your workflow.
Go get it.
If you’ve been following my Twitter stream, you know that I’m reviewing a new 7-string Jackson guitar. Many of you have asked for sound samples using a variety of products, so I put together a number of them for you.
The music is the same in each sample so you can hear the differences.
This one is using my 5150 head through a Marshall 4×12 1960a, a Shure SM57 into my Universal Audio Apollo and then into Pro Tools.
This one is using Line 6’s Pod Farm with the guitar going directly into my Universal Audio Apollo and then into Pro Tools.
This one is using IK Multimedia’s AmpliTube 3 with the guitar going directly into my Universal Audio Apollo and then into Pro Tools.
This one is using Native Instrument’s Guitar Rig 5 with the guitar going directly into my Universal Audio Apollo and then into Pro Tools.
The more products Apple releases, the more widespread Retina displays become. So far we have Retina capable iPhones, iPods, iPads and MacBooks of various sizes, which together make up a pretty substantial audience. Let’s take a look at how you can create special retina graphics for your website so your design looks crisp, sharp and clear on those powerful screens.
This is something we’re working on too.
Timeline 3D for iOS. The most simple way to make beautiful multimedia timelines.
Here’s a new Mac app bundle that went on sale today — $549 worth of software for $49.99. If you use this link, I’ll get a little kickback from the people, which will help The Loop. Thanks people.
iOS developer Justin Williams is not happy with iCloud and the services Apple offers that rely on it. While I’ve heard other people pick iCloud apart, I haven’t had any problems. iTunes Match is fantastic, downloading apps works great and syncing is very fast.
Harry Marks outlines a problem that we see far too often in Web publishing these days. It drives me crazy as a reader.
Six of 10 Americans believe news reporting is biased, according to Gallup. Still, we trust the media more than any other source of information. Skewed News Tutor helps news consumers learn to pinpoint exactly why a report might feel one-sided, or skewed.
Great idea.
He discovered that a significant portion of the 32 GB storage space was being used by the operating system and pre-installed apps such as Word and Excel. Only 16 GB was available for him to use.
Seriously, 16GB for the operating system and apps is a bit much.
A petition on The White House Web site. It has 64 signatures.
One of the last major iTunes holdouts is now available for download. AC/DC is finally on the iTunes Store.
According to the iTunes Store, the band’s complete catalog is available
Formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young, AC/DC has sold more than 200 million albums worldwide and are still going strong.
AC/DC went through a number of line-up changes in their long history, but the band is known for two eras — The Bon Scott and Brian Johnson eras. Both were great for me, but some fans side heavily in one camp or the other.
Under Bon Scott, AC/DC released hits like “Highway to Hell” and “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” which are both still staples in the band’s live performances. When Brian Johnson joined the band in 1980, following Scott’s death1, AC/DC released what would become one of the best rock albums ever — Back in Black.
With songs like “Back in Black” and “You Shook Me All Night Long,” AC/DC began years of great album releases up to and including their latest album, “Black Ice.”
Bon Scott is said to have died from choking on his own vomit after a night of drinking. ↩
Philip Elmer-DeWitt:
The FBI was reportedly led to Richardson after co-workers told Port Authority detectives that he had made suspicious inquiries about when the iPads were due to arrive and where a forklift might be found.
What a genius.
Jean-Louis Gassée:
So whether it was divine inspiration or simply a bowing to necessity, Apple shunned the temptation to make a PC-only-smaller, and created a whole new genre of personal computers. Microsoft couldn’t resist and gave us Windows Mobile with a Start button.
Gassée compares Apple’s efforts to create the iPad with Microsoft’s creation of Surface, and finds Surface wanting. He has some criticisms of iOS too, but he sees them as opportunities for Apple to improve the iPad’s usability for business.
Snopes:
Claim – Hostess Twinkies have an indefinite shelf life.Fact – Twinkies have a shelf life of twenty-five days, not seven years, and certainly not fifty years. Even so, twenty-five days is an unusually long time for a baked product to stay fresh. The secret to Twinkies’ longevity is their lack of dairy ingredients: because dairy products are not part of the formula, Twinkies spoil much more slowly than other bakery items.
After the news of the shuttering of the company, this urban legend quickly made its way around Twitter. Like most urban legends, it turns out to have no basis in facts.