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The Incorrigible Iconoclast
About a year ago, when the iPad had been announced but was not yet on sale, I offered up a post entitled “It’s The Chair, Stupid,” which attempted to illustrate that what makes the new gizmo so exciting is not its hardware or software, but how the combination of those elements produced a device that would be used in a new way.
The new "default position" for using a "computer"
Where the television is the “lean back” screen, and the computer (laptop or desktop) is the “lean forward” screen, the iPad introduces a third posture to the equation. It’s neither lean forward or lean back, it’s “are you sitting comfortably” — it’s the insertion of the entire digital universe into your favorite chair. Where you used to sit with book, a magazine, or a newspaper, you now sit with – literally – the entire world at the tip of your fingers.
So it’s a bit validating to see no less a digital-arts-and sciences authority than John Gruber of Daring Fireball pick up that “It’s The Chair…” meme, as he did in this post last week:
Take that chair. The on-stage demos of the iPad aren’t conducted at a table or a lectern. They’re conducted sitting in an armchair. That conveys something about the feel of the iPad before its screen is even turned on. Comfortable, emotional, simple, elegant. How it feels is the entirety of the iPad’s appeal.
Writing mostly about the introduction of the iPad 2, Gruber’s post goes into some considerable detail about how the iPad changes numerous games. “The chair” is the symbolic encapsulation of all those games and all those changes.
Apple has whipped up a video that takes the meme even further. It shows people using the iPad in countless ways. But a lot of them involve chairs, and often very cushy chairs at that:
It’s such a romantic notion, you know, this idea of data stored in “the cloud.” And such a colossal misnomer.
The terminology conjures up imagery of electrons gaily bouncing around in free space, creating fluffy pillows of digital vapor in the sky, sending data from the benign heavens into the gizmos on our desks, in our lap and in our pockets like a gentle spring rain.
But guess what? This is what “the cloud” really looks like:
Apple's Data Center in Maiden, NC
What you’re looking at here is an aerial photo of the massive “data center” in North Carolina that Apple, Inc. is getting ready to open sometime in the next few weeks. As you can see, it is anything but a digital Nirvana. It’s a fucking factory. Continue reading
Several of weeks ago, McShane Glover, a former colleague who works as a booking agent in the mid-Atlantic area, invited me to have lunch with one of her clients, Vicki Genfan. I kinda remember Vicki from my exploits back in the previous millennium. She played guitar for another former client, Dee Carstensen, and I rememeber Vicki as one of those fret-and-string-masters who makes me wonder why I bother to keep guitars around my own abode.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Vicki has graciously agreed to let me offer up a track from her double CD Up Close and Personal. Click the play button below to listen to “Atomic Reshuffle” via this player widget from Soundcloud:
(iGizmo users, sorry… the widget is Flash. <*sigh*>)
As impressed as I am with Vicki’s virtuosity on guitar, I might have been even more impressed with her mode of transportation (OK, I’m exaggerating, there really is very little that is more impressive than Vicki Genfan playing guitar, least of all a mere means of transportation…).
Turns out Vicki is not the only genius/goddess in the family: her traveling partner is Tay Hoyle, a systems designer and engineer of equal vision and virtuosity, an artist in her own right in a different of medium. For example, Tay was responsible for much of the interior design and engineering and actual wiring for the John Lennon Education Bus.
When I pulled into the parking lot of the strip Mall where I met Vicki and Tay for lunch, I pulled in right behind a yellow Dodge van, which turned out to be Tay and Vicki’s rolling home, studio, and stage, all rolled into one remarkably compact vehicle:
Tay and Vicki and the Yellow Minstrel Wagon
This one most impressive vehicle, and dare I say, the modern minstrel’s ultimate means of conveyance. Continue reading
Oh yeah, those guys.
About the best thing that can be said of the news that The Beatles are finally available on iTunes is that it kills a great joke. I now have to stop saying that The Beatles are “a band so obscure that you cannot even find their music on iTunes.”
The irony — well, the first irony, really, of several — is that I have had The Beatles on my iPods (and thus in iTunes on my computers) for… oh, I dunno, how long has the iPod/iTunes complex been around? Ten years now?
I’m not shy about confessing how those tunes got there: back in 2001, in the last days of the original Napster, I snagged MP3 copies of the entire Beatles catalog and reassembed it, album by album and song by song, on a hard drive. At the time I suspect I rationalized my acquisition with the knowledge that I already owned the entire collection in its original format: on vinyl LPs that I had purchased when they were first released — like 40+ years ago. I guess I figured that having the collection in a now-obsolete format was just the penalty I had to endure for having been an early adopter, and that there was no harm in “format shifting” by means of new technology.
The other irony is that just a week ago, I actually PURCHASED — and for many actual dollars — the same catalog that I already owned both analog and digital. I finally broke down and purchased “The Beatles Remastered” 16-disc box set, which has been available for over a year now. Continue reading
Another video for your viewing pleasure:
Jon actually sent me this video himself a couple of days ago, and I found it clever and entertaining in a “novelty song” sorta way. But after reading this account in Music Row magazine, I think I’m even more intrigued with the the time, effort — and, no doubt, expense — that went into this particular effort. Seems there were quite a few hands on this particular project:
The music video, created by filmmaker Louise Woehrie of Whirlygig Productions is inspired by Vezner’s wry humor and deadpan persona. Using a traveling minstrel theme, Woehrie joined forces with co-director/editor Chip Johnson and graphic designer Casey Burres to bring the tale to life as Vezner dons his troubador hat to comment and commiserate with fellow app addicts about life on the cutting tech trail.
I wonder what the budget was, and how it fits into a larger marketing plan. I mean, where’s the “email for a download” function that would build Jon’s fan base (it’s not on his website) ?
I mean, it’s very clever, but it also seems to to exist in something of a vacuum, marketing wise. What’s the plan, Jon? How is this building your audience? I’m sure there’s a method to your madness, clue me in?
Oh, and if you’re viewing the video on your computer, blow it up to full screen – the HD quality holds up VERY nicely.
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