Update: the LA Times has an article on how the stock performed:

Apple stock soars to all-time high

Amid speculation about a forthcoming tablet computer, the company’s shares have risen 145% this year.

Apple tablet characteristics

• It’s going to be a general-purpose multi-tasking computer
• I think the Apple tablet also support gesture-recognition through the webcam from a distance. You’ll be able to flip pages through just a gesture at a distance, without touching the tablet. There will be other gestures supported
• There could be some switchable voice recognition and command functions on it too.

Industries which will be shaken up or disrupted by Apple’s tablet

1. The Music-making industry

For the argumentation, see my post in 2007 on how Apple will revolutionize music-making which I wrote before the release of the iPhone.

The whole experience of how you make music within a sequencer with virtual instruments is about to be revolutionized by Apple with a forthcoming combination of multi-touch hardware and software based on Logic and running on at least Leopard. The very act of recording, manipulating and producing music on a computer will become an organic performance in itself.

And here is what some people have been doing in the meantime, demonstrated by Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater:

One thing Apple needs to do here is make the software detect how much pressure or indirectly, pseudo-pressure.

2. The traditional publishing industry

Single purpose devices like the Nook, the Kindle will disappear, and people will rather use a fuller computing device like the Apple tablet to read the press, mostly on the web or in other digital formats like Flash and PDF.

Apple has pitched the publishing industry to move their content online and through their distribution channel so they can be accessed and read on the tablet.

The split is advantageous to publishers as compared to the amazon Kindle terms, with Apple taking 30% whereas Amazon takes 30% if it is exclusive, and 50% if not.

3. The Cable/Television industry

TechCrunch has a good article on it.

Apple’s strengths here will be:

• the very high-resolution screen and general great screen quality
• the excellent movie distribution channel and store through the Apple Store/iTunes combination, but that would necessitate wireless access for it to work anywhere

4. The Mobile computing industry

It remains to be seen how good a tablet is for computing on the go, as posture and ergonomics will be different form having a laptop with a keyboard and a separate screen. But the tablet will still be a fantastic portable computing device.

I am still wondering whether the device will be iPhone O.S. based or built with Snow Leopard. The latter appears primed for use on a tablet, with an adjustable on-screen keyboard. As the more powerful O.S., Apple would do well to use Snow Leopard in the tablet.

If the tablet uses the iPhone O.S., Apple would win points for making it multi-task out-of-the-box. In addition, Apple would leverage the existing Apple App Store infrastructure.

What Apple has and has done well

• The Apple Store
• iTunes
• The distribution through the Apple Store, the App Store and iTunes
• The Design of it all, making the user experience beautiful
• Genius recommendations for music – this can easily be transposed for Movies and Books
• Acquisition of Lala, so that content can be streamed easily from the cloud

What Apple has going against it

• Does not play well with more readily available formats and codecs, including open-source ones
• DRM, with machine authorizations

Machines get obsolete or die and have to be replaced, so why should you be limited to 5 machines where the content you paid for is stored and not be able to easily get all the content you purchased in a new machine? What if my old machines all died?

• Does not allow sending gifts from one country to another user

The next decade will pitch Apple against Google on some fronts.

If you have seen Jeff Han’s Multi-Touch display and thought about the musical applications as I did in a previous post about Perceptive Pixel’s technology, then you will surely understand how Apple will effect nothing less than a revolution in music-production soon.

Apple will be introducing multi-touch in the iPhone in June 2007. The iPhone uses multi-touch for zooming in for instance.

Besides, some blogs are abuzz about how Apple plans not to release a Logic 8, but rather a Pro-Tools killer.

Of course Perceptive Pixel also have a current technology to do this, but have a look at Jeff Han’s interview by Loic Lemeur in the current TED conference. The subtext here is that this technology is extremely expensive right now. Besides, I don’t think Perceptive Pixel have internal technology such as Apple’s Logic, which Apple obtained when they bought Emagic.

Multi-touch makes working with applications and data more “organic” and therefore more intuitive. With a multi-touch screen, you can have:

1. Two or more simultaneous commands
2. Tapping and multi-tapping commands
3. Gesture-recognition and motion recognition
4. Multi-point gesture recognition
5. Pseudo-pressure (by interpreting how large a fingerprint is)

Working with Audio and MIDI with a large Multi-Touch monitor

Have you seen some of the larger iMac screens? They are quite fabulous to work with, aren’t they? Imagine these with multi-touch now, and imagine working with audio and midi in a sequencer with multi-touch:

• I could zoom in and out with a pinching action of thumb and forefinger, narrowing down on a problematic area within a sample’s waveform. Then I could rapidly correct it by selecting the proper function form a menu which pops up through a simple gesture, and touching the waveform.
• I could zoom out and then grab a handful of waveforms in my right hand, and, while dragging the whole workspace with my left hand, place the set of waveforms elsewhere in the sequencer.
• I could slice the waveforms with my hand and resize two waveforms at the same time.
• I could select one waveform with my left hand and by tapping on the right of it with my right hand, repeat it as many times as necessary.

All these actions and more could be imagined for MIDI events as well. I could change a note’s pitch and length by dragging motions. I could also manipulate all MIDI clips in a similar way as with Audio samples.

The revolution in Virtual Instrument Performance and Synthesis

Virtual Instruments is a realm where there will also be a host of new revolutionary features.

First, just imagine that you will also be able to play the virtual instrument on the screen itself. Envision for a moment just routing virtual wires in a huge software modular synth.

Once my performance is recorded, I could then manipulate the Virtual Instrument’s knobs and sliders and other multi-touch interface mapped to various real-time MIDI controllers while I record my performance.

The use of multi-touch here will enable so many combination of simultaneous MIDI control that it will seem nothing short of flabbergasting. The possibilities could several simultaneous use of a type of X-Y-Z controller in a square area with pseudo-pressure for the Z axis, with X, Y and Z mapped to a single or multiple MIDI controllers each.

Of course, I would be able to mix my songs with virtual sliders on the monitor too.

Conclusion

The whole experience of how you make music within a sequencer with virtual instruments is about to be revolutionized by Apple with a forthcoming combination of multi-touch hardware and software based on Logic and running on at least Leopard.

The very act of recording, manipulating and producing music on a computer will become an organic performance in itself.

I don’t know when it’s coming, but I do know it’s soon, probably this year, and it’s going to be Apple and Leopard+.

I am certain I want one already.

It’s everywhere. Anytime you read a news piece about music manufacturers, somebody is buying somebody else. The latest example is Digidesign buying the German Wizoo. The announcement came on the 22nd of August.

Wizoo is known for its books, and recent virtual instrument and effects products: Latigo, Darbuka and the W2 Reverb.

The company features famous film composer Hans Zimmer as one of its shareholders. Wizoo has collaborated extensively with Steinberg:

In 1999 Wizoo began a successful alliance with Steinberg Media Technologies, starting with the LM-4 software drum machine and producing pioneering and best-selling software instruments such as The Grand, Virtual Guitarist, Xphraze, Hypersonic and Virtual Bassist.

Digidesign, on the other hand, is the maker of the acclaimed professional DSP-based platform for music production, Pro Tools, which is used in studios around the world.

Prior to buying Wizoo, Digidesign’s parent company, Avid, also bought out hardware manufacturer M-Audio. This explains the radical entry of Digidesign into the small and mid-market segment with Pro Tools M-Powered.

Watch out for the latest release of Pro Tools 7, this October 7, together with a new M-Powered version.

It is to be noted that Kawai has announced a partnership with Wizoo.


Cakewalk, the American manufacturer of the Windows-only Sonar sequencer as well as the all-in-one software studio Project 5 v2, has itself reecently acquired virtual soft-synth maker RGC Audio. The latter is known for its excellent free and commercial VST instruments, namely Triangle II, sfz, and Z3Ta+.

This acquisition enables Cakewalk to integrate RGC Audio’s know-how about excellent-sounding soft synths into Project 5 v2. The new Dimension synth as well as PSYN II are the results.

A year ago, Roland and Cakewalk announced that they would collaborate. This explains the integration of an Edirol GM synth and more recently the Roland GrooveSynth module into Cakewalk’s products.

US-based firm Cakewalk releases version 2 of their software studio Project 5. What I like about it is that it is open to VST instruments and effects, and can record audio. Project 5’s rival Reason 3 from Propellerheads Software cannot do any of this out-of-the-box.

SOS and FM publish reviews of Project 5 in their July issues.