Image credit: giovanni gallucci | social media expert - Creative Commons Licensed
I read arguments that Macworld Expo is destined to go the way of the dodo. The claim is that without Apple and big-name exhibitors, and without Steve’s famous keynote that the institution is irrelevant in our non-stop twittering economy where no one has time or the funds to stop the noise for some face-to-face between product developers and actual human customers.
I "heart" PatternMusic
Creating a sophisticated iPhone app involves a lot of sweat and toil. For some reason we developers tend to convince ourselves that because the program is running on a tiny 3.5 inch screen that somehow the problems of creating the software will be tiny too. It’s just not true. Developing an iPhone app of some depth is just like any other complex software project with seemingly uncountable hurdles to overcome. The issues of quality and performance are just as prevalent in iPhone apps as they are on the desktop or web. There are no shortcuts.
I think we maybe got some impression early-on in the history of iPhone development (all 18 or so months of it) that iPhone apps were trivial due to the preponderance of joke apps like “Pull my Finger” and “More Cowbell” that were allegedly whipped out in an afternoon.
I was committed to creating a deep and quality program with PatternMusic. I was trying to tackle the difficult problem of how make music creation accessible and appropriate for a device that seemed to be getting most its attention as a platform for consuming and task engagement typically measured in seconds.
Image credit: Greg Westfall under CC by 2.0 license
When I worked at Apple and Claris we had sophisticated usability labs with multiple cameras and one-way mirrors to record every subtle aspect of a user’s interactions. We built and tested prototypes to validated our software interface designs.
As a solo independent app developer I knew the value of these techniques, but I also knew that with my limited resources I couldn’t practice them the same way. What I needed to do was recreate as much of the iterative testing and development model as possible but make it practical for developing my app PatternMusic.
A sketch of the pattern editor from the specification. Pop-out tabs are pretty well developed, but the timeline is at the top.
A product specification was needed to manage a project with the scope of PatternMusic. Usually a specification’s primary purpose is to communicate between team members. That wasn’t a problem I had. But I also knew from experience that such a document was going to be extremely valuable six months down the line when the objectives of the product’s design would no longer be fresh in my mind.
It seems Apple is lowering the boom on iPhone apps that directly access the iPhone’s digital photo media folder.
Every-Damn-DayIt’s at the core of things we wish to master. (Or things that master us.)
I’ve taken to using PatternMusic (a tool of my own devising) every evening to create a new song. I’ve found that a regime of regular practice in PatternMusic has lead to developing my skills and ear for creating tunes. It’s like having a personal trainer in music composition. Well, maybe not quite. It’s more like having a training machine. You have to supply your own personal training. (What I did was simply set up an alarm reminder on my iPhone.)
(Of course, there’s little scientific evidence of the efficacy of such behavior. The success of the Nintendo games such as Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Age and the Big Brain Academy has underwritten a lot of well publicized neurology studies where they look at the various brain centers involved with various puzzle and game activities. But I can’t cite any studies that have looked at the effects of music composition practice on brain mass.)
Here’s how you can set up your own regime with PatternMusic:
Mobile music maven site Palm Sounds weighs in with an early look at PatternMusic, and they like what they see.
