IOS Synths – My best of 2014
January 1, 2015 · Posted in Uncategorized · Comments Off on IOS Synths – My best of 2014
The 10 Best iOS Synths Of 2014 (Synth Academy)
- apeSoft iVCS3
- LaPlace Resonator Synth
- Primal Audio FM4
- zMors Modular
- Retronyms Phase84
- VirSyn Tera Synth
- Arturia iProphet
- Photophore Synth
- Wooji Juice Mitosynth
- VirSyn microTERA
Apple WWDC from a music perspective
June 3, 2014 · Posted in Uncategorized · Comments Off on Apple WWDC from a music perspective
Apple today introduced iOS 8, at its World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), being held June 2-6 in San Francisco, CA.
Key Features:
- Faster and more intuitive user experience;
- iCloud Photo Library lets you use your photos and videos more easily across your devices;
- New Messages features to easily share voice, video or photos with just a swipe;
- New Health app that gives you a clear overview of your health and fitness data all
- Predictive typing for Apple’s QuickType keyboard;
- Extended Spotlight capabilities that integrates results from the Web, including articles from Wikipedia, findings from the news and results from places nearby;
- Family Sharing, which lets you share music, purchases, photos and calendars within the same household; and
- iCloud Drive, so you can store files and access them from anywhere.
From a music perspective:
- Continuity – iOS 8 devices can sense the proximity of other devices. This lets you do things like quickly set up a hotspot for your iPad using an iPhone or answer a phone call on your iPad or Mac.
- Messages has been updated to streamline sending audio, video and photos.
- iCloud Drive is designed to make it easy to share documents across devices and applications. Apple also introduced iCloud storage tiers up to 1 TB.
- Extensions – iOS 8 Extensibility lets developers create apps that run as Extensions within other applications and add features to other apps. For example, if you don’t like the default iOS keyboard, you could install an alternate keyboard and make it your default.
- Homekit – this is a new API that’s designed to let your iOS devices control household hardware devices. While intended for home automation, it might also have interesting applications for musicians. For example, when you come into your studio, you could tell Siri to set up the studio for vocals, and it could wirelessly dim the lights, turn off devices that are noisy and turn on your mixer.
- Swift – Apple introduced a new programming language for developers that’s designed to streamline the creation of fast, secure apps. While this won’t directly affect most musicians, it’s designed to make it dramatically faster and easier to develop apps, so it could lead to more app development on iOS.
iOS 8 is available to developers as a beta now and will be available to users as a free upgrade in the fall.
The latest version of OS X, Yosemite, at the World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), being held June 2-6 in San Francisco, CA.
Key new features include:
- The UI has been streamlined, making it more iOS-like, but not a shocking change;
- iCloud Drive is located within the Finder and lets you store any type of file and share it across devices;
- Handoff lets you start an activity on one device and pass it to the other; and
- Instant Hotspot makes using your iPhone’s hotspot as easy as connecting to a Wi-Fi network.
From a music perspective:
- Mail Drop allows you to easily send large videos, images or files up to 5 GB from the Mail app to any email address. This could be very handy for collaborating with other musicians and sending media files to vendors or clients.
- Messages – Now you can add titles to ongoing message threads so they are easy to find, add new contacts to ongoing conversations, or leave those conversations you no longer want to follow. With ‘Soundbites’ you can create, send and listen to audio clips right in Messages.
- iCloud Drive – sort of a built-in Dropbox, it’s designed for easy sharing between OS X, iOS & Windows. It works like any other folder on a Mac, so you can drag documents into it, organize them with folders and Tags and search for them using Spotlight.
- Airdrop now lets you easily share files wirelessly between iOS and OS X.
- Continuity – ‘Proximity awareness’ lets your devices sense each other. When your iPhone or iPad is near your Mac, Handoff lets you start an activity on one device and pass it to the other. Instant Hotspot makes using your iPhone’s hotspot as easy as connecting to a Wi-Fi network. Now the SMS and MMS messages that previously only appeared on your iPhone appear in Messages on all your devices. You can even send SMS or MMS messages directly from your Mac and make or receive iPhone calls, using your Mac as a speakerphone.
As with Mavericks, Yosemite will be a free release, coming in the Fall
DATAMASKIN
