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 Forum index » Instruments and Equipment » OSX as a music workstation
Amusing Apple Vista-bashing vid
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Antimon



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PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 12:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

mosc wrote:
Why do people get emotional about this topic? Why do we get upset if someone doesn't like our computer? Really, I'm interested in this as a window into understanding human psychology. I think this gets people more agitated than discussing religion.



I have a probably somewhat unfair resentment against Microsoft for not completely logical reasons. 1: over the years I feel I have seen Microsoft adopt technologies ~5 years after others, making their own version of this technology (that I feel is inferior to the original) and by sheer size and aggressiveness making their version the world standard. The main examples are the windows/icons desktop gui (Windows) and the web browser. I like to include C# (a Java bastard) also, but I've never tried coding C#. 2: desktop PCs are such a pain to work with, and since the Microsoft PC is what I've been forced to use at work, that's where I take out my anger.

I'm using my Mac at home more and more, and I'm starting to take out my anger on that, too. I remember at university that I wasn't completely friendly to the SunOS that we were using there, either.

I used to live for my Commodores, especially the Amiga. If I know correctly, the Amiga was created by a pair of doctors, bought out by Commodore. Commodore was so bad at marketing that despite making great machines and having lots of users they went bust in the 90s. Placing these cute and zany-like people next to the cold, capitalist Bill Gates (who has hardly written a single line of code in any MS product) makes it very easily into a fight between good and evil.

Also, having worked with different kinds of computers all my life, and now meeting all my friends who all (unless they're crazy) run Windows, and who tell me about this great new thing in Windows that they don't know have existed for hundreds of years, causes a lot of stupid resentment in my silly brain.

I probably should try meditation or something.

/Stefan

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PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 12:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

dewdrop_world wrote:

I don't think I'm really emotional about it...


Well, I am. Some of the smartest people on the planet are supposed to be involved in this and they have yet to come up with a signifficant improvement to the OS I ran on my first real computer. It's utterly depressing.

Quote:

I do think Windows is a badly engineered cowpie, but overall it hides its slipshod architecture from the end-user, at least in day-to-day work (excepting Internet security and application deinstallation).


It is! The computer I'm currently typing on isn't mine and just this morning I had to go into the prompt to change the extention of a file as the graphical shell wouldn't let me do that (I know how to do it properly but that would force me to change all of the settings here).

Quote:
My gut feeling is that OSX is somewhat better engineered, but I can't prove it.


I agree, I think it's MUCH better engineered.

Quote:
My other gut feeling is that Linux is not so much better engineered than OSX to justify (what I perceive to be, perhaps erroneously) a certain smugness from some Linux users.


I think the main cause of smug-ness might not come from any real and objective quality but from a happyness with knowing they are the true owners of their computers. the purpose of Linux is to enable one to use a computer, the purpose of OSX is to sell Mac's. Maybe it's a phylosophical smug-ness, more then a practical one.

Quote:
I have an issue in general with endless kvetching about how awful something is if that person is not going to bother to propose a better alternative. Seems a waste of time to me.


Gnome as the default OSX windows manager would IMHO be better then Aqua. So would Fluxbox.

Does this satisfy you?

Quote:

... all of which combines to leave me bemused more than anything else by the goings on in this thread. While there have been a few interesting comments about window managers, it doesn't take long for somebody to say something thoroughly silly and debase the thread again.


I would like to point out that the topic is in reference to Apple's video that states that OSX and Vista look the same and that Apple seems in no hurry to come up with improvements either and that if this isn't "thoroughly silly and debase[d]" then I don't know what is.

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PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 12:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Kassen wrote:
that Apple seems in no hurry to come up with improvements either


http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard

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PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 3:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

elektro80 wrote:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard


Ok, looked at those. The two points relavant to this discussion seem a feature to have multiple desktops (I had no idea this wasn't there already) and -get this- a way to view your files like they are in Itunes. I don't want to view *anything* like it's in Itunes, not music and definately not files. I want files in directories that have sub-directories, like this;

home/ghost/music/bands/nick_cave/birthdayparty_live/release_the_bats.ogg

no need for searching at all. To me. Files aren't "rock stars", files should be where they belong and should be quiet untill needed.

Other "new" features; a preview of files(shrug), a way to continually back up your whole system (groan), a email program (huge innovation there, I'm sure), a chat program (groan), a callender (does anybody even want that crap?), something to add effects to photos and share them (welcome to 1997), something to propagate I-bonsaibuddy over all your macs, something to watch TV (I don't), a DVD player (they are joking here, right?), parentall controll (this would be great, I'd realy like to have controll over all those breeders with their schreaming childeren, I don't think it'll work like that though), accesibility (this is something they added now?), Bootcamp (being able to multiboot has now become a new feature???!!!) and finally a way to automate things without scripts (this actually looks cool but I wonder how you indicate conditionals in that way).

And if that wasn't enough as a list of new OS features, on the top of the page, in the largest letters is the news;

OSX NOW HAS A DESKTOP.

Yes sirry, and you can put your favourite picture on it. I can hardly contain myself.

Stein, I'm sorry, I like you, I like OSX (as a OS) but as a list of new features for a new OS that's laughable (or cryable, if that's a word). That's like a list of a few things everybody has had for over a decade mixed with a few programs that might otherwise have become relatively successfull if bloated and chrome-covered shareware. None of this strikes me as "innovative", it's just the same thing all over except that it now all looks like all Apple stuff looks to make sure everybody knows you aren't dealing with a *Personal* Computer.

Sorry, but that's every bit as sad as Vista.

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PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 3:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Kassen wrote:
I want files in directories that have sub-directories, like this;

home/ghost/music/bands/nick_cave/birthdayparty_live/release_the_bats.ogg.


Uhh... that is excatly what iTunes does and it does a fairly cute batch processing too.. so you can sort stuff and rename and tag, and this is reflected in where the files go within the directory structure. I´d say the main purpose of iTunes ( for geeks ) is that it creates a wonderful directory structure.

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PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 3:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

elektro80 wrote:
Kassen wrote:
I want files in directories that have sub-directories, like this;

home/ghost/music/bands/nick_cave/birthdayparty_live/release_the_bats.ogg.


Uhh... that is excatly what iTunes does and it does a fairly cute batch processing too.. so you can sort stuff and rename and tag, and this is reflected in where the files go within the directory structure. I´d say the main purpose of iTunes ( for geeks ) is that it creates a wonderful directory structure.


Actually, all the iLife apps use and share meta structures in order to access very strict and very understandable file structures.

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PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 3:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I have tested some of the betas so I know Leopard will be quite good. As for a desktop, OS X has always had one and same goes for the traditional mac classic OS. It seems that the marketing department has written this for wintel refugees and not OS X heads.

As for the the backup engine.. it works quite well but clearly it is only truly useful for novice users. Geeks would have had networking backup running on their home lans since the late 80s anyways. I know I have.

The imrpovements in the Mail application are smart but these won´t make any sense to you since you haven´t used or aren´t using computers in a corporate context kinda way. I know this will be great for the networks I administer.

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PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 3:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

From my point of view, Apple has added a lot of productivity enhancing features in 10.5 and these wiull have huge impact. That said, there is a lot of great stuff under the hood too and that is what I like the most.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 6:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

An OS is not a bunch of cute applications or even great applications, it's a platform for running programs and a system to let programs interface with each other and the computing machinery. A window manager is just one program.

An os with one window manager is not well engineered. Applications that run under only one window manager are not well engineered. A window manager that runs only on only one OS is well, not well engineered.

From what I can see, OSX botched a good BSD system royally, and Windows is more like a multi level patch job.

I don't like any of them very much... cept Unix... but I know the guys that wrote it. Twisted Evil

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PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 8:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

It's perfectly sensible to take potshots at Apple's marketing, which I fully recognize is pretty silly generally. But at least take the shots for the right reason. Most of the features that you're saying are new to OSX have in fact been around for several iterations. (Mail dates back to 10.0 or 10.1.) What they're pushing in Leopard are enhancements which I have to admit I haven't seen anywhere else. If the marketing schtick doesn't make that clear enough then it's fine to mock it for that reason, but it was perfectly clear to me where the new features fit into the system as a whole.

(I'm not jumping out of my seat to get the new features either -- I probably would never use them, and I probably won't even upgrade until it's time for a new computer -- that is, unless someone can show me that SuperCollider runs significantly better in 10.5 than in 10.4.)

I totally respect that everyone has different preferences concerning how they want to work with the OS, and if OSX's design runs thoroughly contrary to your preferences, fine. But, I kind of stop taking the argument seriously when there are complaints about not knowing which app is active when you have:

Posted Image, might have been reduced in size. Click Image to view fullscreen.

... umm, I really don't know how they could have made it more obvious which program is active! To me, that's a pretty low threshold for confusion Smile

But anyway, mosc makes the best point of all -- what's wrong with choice? (It would be nice if I could try out Gnome or Fluxbox, but I couldn't do it outside of [maybe] X11.)

Watching Apple play cat and mouse with the engineers who have already hacked the iPhone is going to be another of those funny-sad spectacles. It's another symptom of what's been said here -- customers say "we want it open," and I'm curious to see how much time and energy Apple will spend to close the loopholes that are currently there.

James

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 12:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

dewdrop_world wrote:


There's an awful lot of bitching on this thread about how crap all the current window managers are. I'm bored of it.

If you are all so dissatisfied with current state of things, how about mocking up some screenshots of how you want it to look/behave? Show us your bright idea.


Well here are some ideas from nearly 20 years ago involveing usefull usage of 3d graphics (rather then the Apple/Microsoft idea of lets make one small pretty bit that isn't functional):

1. Hyperbolic file system browsers.

2. Document Lens viewing

3. Distortion oriented viewing


Microsoft actually has a 3D Desktop R&D department who have done some good work, why we do not see this sort of thing in say Vista is I would think that its taken bloody ages to get people used to the simple systems we have, big changes may affect sales.

Cheers

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 1:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

BobTheDog wrote:

Microsoft actually has a 3D Desktop R&D department who have done some good work, why we do not see this sort of thing in say Vista is I would think that its taken bloody ages to get people used to the simple systems we have, big changes may affect sales.


That's a very good point, and nearly exactly the same hapenned to Apple when they introduced OSX. Originally Apple were going to scrap the Finder. But too many people complained- so OSX just ended up looking like a supercharged OS9.

I don't think much of Leopard either- well not on the surface anyway. It all looks too much like Apple having a pop at Vista. And as for the new iMac... Shocked Crying or Very sad The Aluminium iMac looks like a DELL PC!! Yuck! And that glossy screen...... Crying or Very sad .... and that even more hideous flat keyboard Crying or Very sad Crying or Very sad Crying or Very sad

Yep the all new iMac hasn't floated my boat either Confused

Full marks though for the Mac Mini upgrade Very Happy

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 3:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

elektro80 wrote:
Kassen wrote:
I want files in directories that have sub-directories, like this;

home/ghost/music/bands/nick_cave/birthdayparty_live/release_the_bats.ogg.


Uhh... that is excatly what iTunes does and it does a fairly cute batch processing too.. so you can sort stuff and rename and tag, and this is reflected in where the files go within the directory structure. I´d say the main purpose of iTunes ( for geeks ) is that it creates a wonderful directory structure.


Hmmmm, I was under the impression that Itunes used a big database instead of a directory structure.

Regardless, we are talking interface here, or at least Apple presumably is at that point in the list and as a interface to look for and manipulate files the Itunes one isn't apealing to me at all.

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 4:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Kassen wrote:
Hmmmm, I was under the impression that Itunes used a big database instead of a directory structure.

Regardless, we are talking interface here, or at least Apple presumably is at that point in the list and as a interface to look for and manipulate files the Itunes one isn't apealing to me at all.


Both of course... a db as well as a file structure ( when you ask iTunes to consolidate files - which is default - which is very smart ). The file structure and the files will contain all the important meta data - which means it is easy to rebuild the db if the you for some reason wanna move the stuff somewhere else or the db dies or whatever.

Posted Image, might have been reduced in size. Click Image to view fullscreen.

This is the first level of the ctrl click or right click menu ..select a track and click.. direct access to a lot of file manipulation tools.

I know the iLife apps seem pretty easy and stupid, but there is a whole lot more going on here. iPhoto, which is a pretty nice tool for everyday digicam management, uses a similar data structure but it takes a lot more effort to understand it.. it´s completely logical though.

It is quite correct that an OS is not the top level tools, but in this case a lot of the tools access OS level toolboxes and features in a pretty cool way.

As for destroying BSD, that is hardly true. Instead we suddenly have a brilliant Unix based OS which is by now the largest "uniform" Unix platform out there. This kinda happened "overnight" and that is a major achievement.

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 4:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

dewdrop_world wrote:

I totally respect that everyone has different preferences concerning how they want to work with the OS, and if OSX's design runs thoroughly contrary to your preferences, fine. But, I kind of stop taking the argument seriously when there are complaints about not knowing which app is active when you have:

Posted Image, might have been reduced in size. Click Image to view fullscreen.

... umm, I really don't know how they could have made it more obvious which program is active! To me, that's a pretty low threshold for confusion Smile


Yes, I realise that's odd to you but when SC isn't visible at all and there is a window containing files in the centre of the schreen where I can highlight files then my little brain will asume that huge window which is the thing I most recently manipulated (or tried to) is a more important factor then the small "sc" tag. Especially since I have no idea short of manually killing the whole program using Bash when something is no longer active on OSX. In OSX I can't tell the difference between closing a ap, minimising it and making it lose focus (if that last one is even a option), there are clour-coded icons, there are animations but what animation is linked to what behaviour is completely unclear to me. At times I feel like OSX is trying to comunicate to me like bees comunicate to eachother, conveying a lot of information by their dance and the length of various elements in the dance.

Also, you have to realise that it does indeed say SC at the top but at the bottom of the schreen there will be a lot of icons, some to start programs, some to indicate which ones are running (I think?) and those are larger, brighter and tend to move at inpredictable times. I don't know about you but for my brain something that's large, bright and moving will draw attention.

Low confusion treshold? Maybe, yes. I also have trouble reading a complicated article online if next to it is a blinking, moving flash advertisement so I block all of those. This sort of "disability" is quite common amongst those who decended from hunter-gatherer societies though.

Quote:

But anyway, mosc makes the best point of all -- what's wrong with choice? (It would be nice if I could try out Gnome or Fluxbox, but I couldn't do it outside of [maybe] X11.)


Yes, I'm in complete agreement with Mosc here.

Abstraction layers is where it's at. If you&me would be working together on some project we could probably share the same kernel, filesystem, file format and network protocol but we'd like a different graphics manager and programing language.

In general I think OSX does this stuff very well with excelent hooks to everything but graphics and interface are suddenly a exception. In my opinion that's a missed chance and a rather big one at that.

I have to say; I realy like Xcode as a concept and those extra little aps are there in any modern OS, at least with OSX you can de-install them which is quite hard to do in Windows and needs to be done by a expert which will still take time. OSX isn't bad at all, and IMHO one of the nicest commercial mainstream OS's ever but movies like we are talking about here get to me.

Quote:

Watching Apple play cat and mouse with the engineers who have already hacked the iPhone is going to be another of those funny-sad spectacles. It's another symptom of what's been said here -- customers say "we want it open," and I'm curious to see how much time and energy Apple will spend to close the loopholes that are currently there.


I don't understand why Apple cares about that at all.... Suppose somebody manages to install Linux on it, suppose people get to play emulated retro-games on it or a tracker is written for it... All of those people will still be paying Apple for a I-phone to hack; free developers, free marketing... I'd call it easy money if I were Steve!

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 6:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I fully agree with the Brinxmat on these issues.

Kassen, as for the OS X GUI, this is simply about learning it the way you would want to learn the Roland MC4, a DX7 or a churh organ. When you get it, and then understand how the GUI relates to what´s down there in the engine room, as well work out viable workflows, then OS X will make sense.

It is very easy to overlook the fact that you always ( at least nearly always depending on context and if the developer used Apple´s guidelines ) access to file level stuff directly from a document window.
Posted Image, might have been reduced in size. Click Image to view fullscreen. And there is more to this concerning workflow benefits than what is intuitively obvious.

And then there is the concept of the poweruser. Clearly you are a poweruser and you will appreciate all the silly small and almost hidden GUI stuff that makes everyday computing a joy. However, it seems that you aren´t really accessing zillions of files, batch processing thousands of files and working on stuff in a way that really calls for a lot the cool OS X GUI stuff. That´s no big deal, but if you had been there, then a lot of OS X would have made more sense to you.

As for alternative window managers and stuff, there are Finder replacements out there, and you have X-11 and stuff like that. However, if you learn the OS X GUI and customize the user experience, add some other tools and stuff, then the Apple provided windowing system will make perfect sense and you would rather focus on the applications instead. Vista still seems quite pedestrian and XP is rather like having your mother in law drive the car from the back seat. This is quite OK and these OSes are indeed pretty decent, but from a user experience and administrative point of view they aren´t that convincing. My real problem with the Redmond OS cereal is the network administration bit. I will not go into detail here, but a true GUI desktop *nix would clearly be the perfect computing enviroment and we have that in OS X. It must be said that from a corporate kind of view, the hardware costs do not equal the true cost of running computers. Software, maintenance, administration, user training and support should be considered. Anyways, this angle is probably off topic here.

Bottom line: OS X is being marketed and sold as simple user friendly system, which is quite true, but the true power lies in the poweruser features that are far from obvious. You gotta learn it well and the GUI is an important part of this. Of course there are some things here and there that I at times would have liked differently, but that doesn´t matter much because consistency is far more important. That being said, the clever guys at Apple have managed to provide a lot of APIs that developers can use for putting in all that stuff Apple "forgot".

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 6:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Kassen wrote:
Quote:

Watching Apple play cat and mouse with the engineers who have already hacked the iPhone is going to be another of those funny-sad spectacles. It's another symptom of what's been said here -- customers say "we want it open," and I'm curious to see how much time and energy Apple will spend to close the loopholes that are currently there.


I don't understand why Apple cares about that at all.... Suppose somebody manages to install Linux on it, suppose people get to play emulated retro-games on it or a tracker is written for it... All of those people will still be paying Apple for a I-phone to hack; free developers, free marketing... I'd call it easy money if I were Steve!


Right, I can understand it well. Keep in mind that the iPhone is supposed to be a utility, a phone, and the multimedia PDA like features are still supposed to be "utilities". Computer based phones are a security problem, and I can understand well why Jobs is still working on how to handle that fact. He is doing the right thing the way I see this. I´m sure we soon will see a Filemaker client for the iPhone as well as extended groupware features. But why do you need to hack your phone? I still would rather prefer a phone that works instead of this Sony Ericcson drivel I´m using now.

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 8:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I want to correct some misconceptions.

On windows machines, iTunes will move your files around, not just keep virtual copies in a DB. Watch out. Don't let it build a so-called library. But why talk about iTunes, it's not part of the OS. It is a commercial parasitic application in the tradition of Microsoft. But if you want to see a good example of something like this, I suggest Google's Pisca is better engineered. It builds a DB and doesn't touch the file system in any way - no meta data or any of the stuff.

OSX did screw up BSD. This is why all the business that I know that were running OSX servers have dumped them. The reason, you need to use a GUI application to manage the server, and many of the text based config files either don't work or they don't work like the BSD versions. Our experience is that you can't even run apache without using the Apple apache GUI managers. So, if you need to run various versions of UNIX in a shop, OSX stands out as a completely different animal. People are even dropping the Apple file servers, which, BTW, are a good value.

True, you can run X11 on a Mac, but none of the applications work under X11, except Unix ports.

Much of the above can be said for Windows.

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 8:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

One more thing, a file system IS a database. The inode table is a very good index.
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 8:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

elektro80 wrote:
I still would rather prefer a phone that works instead of this Sony Ericcson drivel I´m using now.


I would love an iPhone. Now that is a piece of beautiful engineering, IMHO.

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 8:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

mosc wrote:
I don't like any of them very much... cept Unix... but I know the guys that wrote it. Twisted Evil

Those were indeed the days or miracle and wonder, or at least the promise of such. The early days were like frontier machine+OS settlements, which mostly developed into strip malls rather than communities. The Web has fared somewhat better, else we wouldn't be here.

Which segues into my next question: Why don't we see machine/RTOS (real-time operating system) configurations tricked out for substantial embedded application domains such as music? This question is in line with the concept of community-oriented machine/OS configurations. Wireless telephony basestations use cards with microprocessors running an RTOS and a bank of DSPs to do the heavy signal lifting. Seems like there could be a market for a musical application-oriented box running an RTOS that:

a) is completely open for tool and application development,
b) doesn't have all the unwanted, commodity, strip-mall crap processes running and eating machine resources
c) has predictable latency, etc. performance, the hallmarks of an RTOS
d) is readily upgradable to newer CPU & DSP revs. as they come out
e) TCP/IP hooks, etc
f) application (e.g., music) oriented libraries, tools, apps & culture

This question has been forming as my XP Alienware is still in repair (apparently they don't keep video cards in stock), Apple still hasn't shipped my MacBook Pro, I am reading the Kyma manual, and comparing ChucK/SC/MSP manuals to try to figure out the most painless and portable way to get my finger picking experiments on productive ground. (For example, using [sub|super]multiples of finger pattern speed as an LFO! Try getting that out of a Lemur.)

This would sit somewhere between a 1) dedicated system like Kyma/Capybara, which (while open at certain API levels) for patch sharing requires patch recipients to have a Kyma system (this statement is true of any 'modular digital hardware' system I guess -- each is really an embedded controller + DSPs configured as a non-portable framework), and 2) strictly software solution running on one of these strip mall OS/machines. The add-on DSP cards for the strip mall OSes are a step in this direction, I suppose. But what I really have in mind is a dedicated RTOS+DSPs that is an attractive target for ports of good software synths as well as programming environments such as MAX/MSP, SC, ChucK, or name your favorite. Is this a market opportunity? I may be looking for a project soon.

This kind of machine would not apply to some dedicated app spaces, e.g., photo manipulation, unless there are serious real-time DSP requirements. But it seems that there ought to be a range of different real-time application domains that could benefit with an RTOS+DSP machine tricked out with libraries, applications, and a support culture for those domains.

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 8:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

elektro80 wrote:
But why do you need to hack your phone?

This one is an easy answer, since I am currently working on a service that would like to communicate with mobile phones (communication initiated & limited by the phone user): 3rd party software. Security is definitely a potential problem, albeit one that can be solved. But obviously the phone service providers have vested interests in maintaining monolopy holds on their service networks and customers.

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 9:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Acoustic Interloper wrote:
Why don't we see machine/RTOS (real-time operating system) configurations tricked out for substantial embedded application domains such as music?

I think the Kyma/Capybara system comes very close to that. It doesn't have networking or file systems or video displays, but it uses a Mac/PC for that. It's a very logical compromise, and very practical. Cost is always put as a big issue with Kyma, but you can look at it as very cheap when compared to the money and time people put into their hardware musical instruments.

It's really open too, Dale. After you have read to your hearts content, call Carla on the phone and talk to her. Also, if you want to borrow my Kymx X book, come on over, and don't forget your banjo.

BTW, a SC or ChucK interface to Kyma would be quite possible, but it would take a lot of time and energy.

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 9:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Acoustic Interloper wrote:
elektro80 wrote:
But why do you need to hack your phone?

This one is an easy answer, since I am currently working on a service that would like to communicate with mobile phones (communication initiated & limited by the phone user): 3rd party software. Security is definitely a potential problem, albeit one that can be solved. But obviously the phone service providers have vested interests in maintaining monolopy holds on their service networks and customers.


That isn´t hacking. That is 3rd party software. Go ahead!
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 9:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

mosc wrote:
One more thing, a file system IS a database. The inode table is a very good index.


Yup, but Kassen referred to a text file thingie db wise.

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