Author Archives: Steve Mays
Garageband on the iPad
I fiddled around with Garageband when I got my first MacBook but couldn’t really figure out much to do with it. Figured it was just for musicians. Today I tried out the new iPad app and discovered a completely different experience.
First, there’s something about using your fingers that just seemed so much more intuitive than a cursor. And they’ve made the iPad app for people like me who can’t read a note of music or carry a tune.
I’ve only started playing with Garageband so won’t attempt a review, they must be all over YouTube and the Apple website. But here’s my first effort.
The post-anchor era of network news
“So perhaps when CBS News signed Couric it understood that we had reached the end of the anchor-era better than I give it credit for. Indeed, when ABC News gave Diane Sawyer the keys to its World News telecast in 2009, they were overtly endorsing the CBS News strategy of hiring a middle-aged bottle blond from morning TV to chaperone all the unschooled geezers turning on their sets at night. Putting Couric and Sawyer in the anchor chairs was admitting that the programs had no future, only a past that could continue to be harvested for profits (yes, the evening shows are still profitable, thanks to pharmaceutical ads) until their audiences finally die off.”
–Jack Shafer, Slate
“Internet thing” catching on
Five years ago I used this elaborate timeline to illustrate where I saw myself in relation to others in terms of technology awareness. A little out front (at the time) of most of our company… waaay behind the Smart Kids.
For much of the past 15 years I’ve been annoying people (mostly at work) with the latest gadget or –more recently– app. There were early adopters like me; others who would get on board once they clearly saw some proven value to their current job; and still others who jammed their fingers in their ears, chanting “la la la la la la I can’t HEAR you!”
This group always referred to “the Internet thing,” and to this day think Twitter is about what you had for lunch.
But something has changed. People are starting stop by my office or my table at the Coffee Zone and ask for a crash course in all this stuff I’ve been yapping about. It’s as though they woke up one morning and realized, “Shit! I’m way behind!”
Let me hasten to add, there is NOTHING I know that any reasonably intelligent person can’t pick up. But just as you can learn to speek Italian from a series of CD’s, you won’t really understand the language until you live in Genoa for a few years. It’s a cultural thing.
If I had to guess at what has brought this on –if, indeed, something has changed– I’d say it’s the iPhone and the iPad. The web has moved from your desktop (which you leave behind every night at 5 o’clock) to your pocket.
These latter day Luddites are hearing more and more expressions (from customers!) the meaning of which they have only the vaguest idea.
I’m doing my best to purge any “I told you so” from my thinking, but the simple truth is, a lot of these folks won’t catch up. They’re trapped on the wrong side of the digital divide. By the time they scramble up and over… everyone will have moved on.
Ehi, aspetta per me voi ragazzi!
Growing up with the iPhone
The iPhone belongs to the little girl’s mother but one assumes she’ll have her own (or her mom won’t). They’re watching YouTube videos (I believe I hear the lilting strains of “Friday”).
The iPhone will be a transparent part of their lives (rather than the magical device it is for us). As adults, they’ll laugh at the quaint old iPhones of their youth (think rotary dials and party lines). How they will communicate in that oh-so-close future, I cannot imagine.