Radley Marx

iPad/iPhone/iPod (iPOS) as Open Platform… Why Bother?

A friend asked me on Twitter this morning:

Why is flash such a contentious issue for Apple? licensing? processing overhead? them wanting to own everything?

Really it all boils down to this: the iPOS is Apple’s end-to-end platform from the processor to the hardware to the operating system, media and communication software, all the way up to the point of sale for music, video, books, and applications to the end users. All of it 100% Apple.

So why bother?

Why bother with partners, contracts, meetings, negotiations, testing, failures, support, and other BS? Why deal with any of that if you don’t have to. Instead, each part of the iPOS is deliberately optimized to work with the others without fail or debate. Apple pwns the chip, the device, the OS… Totally vertical.

Despite isolation, the iPOS platform has been wildly successful. Despite every nasty trick Apple pulls, from the 50% early-adopter tax on the first iPhone to forging Flash content in their promotional material and outright lying about “the entire internet on your device”, they’re kicking ass and we’re eating it up.

We’re buying their toys… along with overpriced specialized connectors and adapters (a tethered wireless-device???)

We’re creating and installing their apps… per approval and 30% cut.

We spread their rumors; We make-up their news.

We create and follow live-blogs and live pirate cell-phone video streams whenever Jobs speaks.

So seriously, from their perspective:

Why no Flash? Why no open platform? Really??? It already works, that’s why.

Why bother?

New Old School DJ Mix: “Hamsters Hoovers and Toy Pianos”

Happy to announce I just finished up a new 90+ minute old school mix full of the great sounds of early techno and UK hardcore (’91 – ‘94):

Download (220MB, 320k)

or

Mixcloud (web player)

For those that need an explanation, the title comes from nick-names from the genre: hamsters for the sped up vocal samples, hoovers for the Juno stabs and builds, and toy pianos for that slightly out of tune, tinny kiddy piano sound.

All of the tracks used in this mix came and went long before the intertubes yet somehow they managed to cross the digital divide and exist as decent quality mp3s. A few were surprisingly easy to purchase as downloads (Good 2Bad & Hugly) while others are still expensive to find in digital form (Unity – North/South Remixes).

I also found large fan collections of old school tracks which contained a lot of bad knockoffs and really dated industrial beasts. But among those were gems, some of which I loved but could never name (Gordon Edge – Feef Logic aka Un-fucking-believable) and others I had never heard but were clearly classics (Sly T & Ollie J – Help Me).

Other nice bits:

• three Prodigy tracks
• Way in my Brain remix (didn’t think it could be as good as the original)
• two back-to-back Kickin’ Records tracks including the over-the-top drug choon: Xenophobia  - Rushing The House
• a beautiful CJ Bolland remix of NRG  - I Need Your Lovin’ to finish it all off.

Full track listing is included in the mp3’s lyrics.

As for the mix: I used my Vestax VCI-100 instead of decks and trusted the sync controls to manage most of the beat-matching. This approach made it much easier to produce a tighter, more well constructed mix utilizing cue points and loops, as well as easily going back and adding new tracks/mixes and even re-recording particular mixes that spiked or didn’t work. In the mix-down, along with removing pops and normalizing I liberally cut phrases of certain tracks that took too long, slowed down the mix, or were very painful parts of otherwise great songs (i.e. the shrieking banshee in The Prodigy’s Your Love).

Just for fun: here’s a pic of my Vestax VCL-100 (for which I’m anxiously awaiting a new midi-map plastic overlay):