It occurs to me that I tend to write long articles, and people don’t always read them closely. And sometimes I do indeed obscure my own ideas, so I’ll make this as clear as possible.
James Lewin on Synthtopia responds to criticism of the iPhone, and differentiates his angle from my own. It’s well worth reading, and clarifies his thoughts, but there still seems to be some confusion about where I stand.
I can spell it out. I’m really not a fanboy of … uh, whatever I’m supposed to be a fanboy of. (Did someone say Windows? Oh, yeah. I can never get enough of Windows. You totally got me.) I’m not interested in taking sides. I choose technologies, and then I yell at them until they do my bidding or I get tired. Some of this yelling can’t be reproduced on CDM. It’d be a bit boring, and it wouldn’t be terribly family friendly.
On some issues – openness, standards, interoperability, free software, and expressive audio capabilities and performance – I make no excuses. I’m not neutral. I believe in these things. As for platforms, the iPhone right now is the superior mobile device, in terms of audio performance. Linux-based platforms, including Android, are better in terms of openness. I want both, but I can’t have both, at the moment. Happily, mobile phones are also not the entire universe. Hardware, conventional computers, game systems, custom electronics, and yes, acoustic instruments and voices and paper … we have lots of means of creating digital music. As writers, we simply put out ideas in the marketplace of ideas. But in the midst of partisanship and me writing so darned many words, maybe some folks lost the plot.
So, to be clear, let me reduce the number of words, and respond in haiku:
iPhone is made well /
Touch and audio work, yes /
Smule making money.
Apple are genius /
Also infuriating /
Lawyers make me sad
Android is open /
Audio drivers are poor /
Latency, jitter
Yay, ‘droid SDK /
Handset makers, please improve. /
Make better drivers
Phones are not PCs /
Verizon cancellation /
Credit card saddens
A synth makes a noise /
Oscillators, delicious /
We still love hardware
Readers become mad /
Shout, “no more iPhone stories!” /
Don’t feed the troll, please
So many platforms /
Create Digital Music /
Please some perspective
(Insert snaps here.)