Apple moves to patent Garage Band -- all of it

[_Mark]

Who actually complains about it being "too realistic?"

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by _Mark

Who actually complains about it being "too realistic?"

I think that was their point. Other DAWs mimic (to quite varying degrees) real world hardware in ways that are supposedly comforting (or nostalgic or 'romantic') to old school engineers.

[Now, I'm one of those old school guys but I've also been using a DAW since 1996 and had an integrated MIDI/audio recorder setup before that. I never really 'got' the putative romance and drama of virtual onscreen mixing boards, painstakingly animated VUs (wasting precious CPU cycles on their dancing needles), etc.]


I do think there's merit in the idea that beginners might benefit from an 'all-new' production paradigm. But that 'all-new' paradigm was largely lifted wholecloth from Sonic Foundry's ACID. (SF is now owned by Sony but largely self-run, AIUI.)

That said, the first version, while looking almost exactly like a port of ACID -- to the extent that there was a long-standing rumor among Mac folks that the dev team from ACID designed GB -- not true according to Apple's own documentation, which indicates the 'design' effort was by an Apple team led by Dr. Gerhard Lengeling, who had been with Emagic, who Apple acquired in order to get Logic -- did add the notion of virtual MIDI instruments to the basic ACID toolset. But little else.

And, while further exploration of Apple's filing may provide new details, the broad outline offered by Wired suggests Apple is once again promoting a patent that would seem to be precluded by prior art -- in this case, a product that's existed in one form or another since the 1980s, PG's Band-in-a-Box.


In somewhat related news, Apple was just awarded a patent for a heads-up-display mounted in eyeglasses. Prior art, shmire art, eh? Weren't the first HUD eyeglass/goggle prototypes around in the 80s? How the patent will affect Google Glass -- which was also recently awarded a patent (overlapping technologies?) -- is anyone's guess. http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/...t-hud-display/

[Muser]

Originally Posted by _Mark

Who actually complains about it being "too realistic?"

I think they must mean more of the unique approaches to instrument interface design. like some of these.

[initialsBB]

I didn't read the whole thing, but it seems like the patent filing is pretty specific to their interface for choosing chords and then allowing the strummable touchscreen guitar to play them. Not that it doesn't still contain prior art, but it's hardly a patent for "all of it."

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2012/0160079.html

[_Mark]

Blue,
Most beginners are going to use mainly presets, anyway. Also, I believe it's okay to have the simplistic ones. I just think that GarageBand should at least have a more in depth/realistic synth. Like an ES2 or emulator of a famous synth (i.e. Minimoog)

Muser,
True dat.