finally, i have finished flim-flamming around and made a big decision. it involves technology purchases, and that is always an exciting sort of decision to make. recently i've been fretting about mobile phones. i want the iphone because it's gorgeous and does everything i want it to (and all my friends have them now too and spend their time comparing apps and i feel left out), but it's useless for the art project i'm working on because it doesn't support flash. so i have to buy another phone sometime for the art project and was looking at android, but that's still too immature and as the project won't really get off the ground for a few months, if i'm realistic (because my collaborator and i need to talk about what we're going to do again now because our last plan was crushed by her phd supervisor, so we need to plan and think before we even start to code and test), it's probably more sensible to look at phones for testing closer to the time we'll be doing the actual testing, to give android a chance to show what it can do. i had been going to buy a netbook for when i go back to work, in the hopes that then i could actually continue to compose through the period of servitude, but i'm concerned about weight, now that i've discovered that my neck is showing signs of greater-than-usual-for-my-age wear and tear and that one of the discs is bulging out of place a bit and getting close to a nerve. so last night i sat down and made up a big table in evernote discussing the pros and cons of all the various devices under consideration, which was a very interesting exercise and i am delighted to announce that the winner is...
ipod touch!
it has all the functionality of the iphone except the actual phone and the camera, for about the same initial outlay (but of course without the phone plan) and not having a plan attached leaves me free, if need be, to get a phone on a plan when the time comes to pick out a testing phone. it's significantly lighter than a netbook and more subtle for new contracts where one might not necessarily want to sit down in sight of one's co-workers at lunchtime with a computer when they could get concerned that you're trying to do two contracts at once or something. it has wifi access. and a truckload of apps - my productivity tools all have iphone/pod apps, plus i discovered some fabulous looking apps for music last night - a keyboard one which allows access to a full piano keyboard which you play with your fingers - should be useful for confirming intervals, working on melodic fragments and multi-touch allows you to play chords too, which would be very helpful. there's also an amazing-looking ear training app which would be incredibly helpful for me. and of course you can get metronome and tuner apps too, as well as a rudimentary notation tool (although it doesn't play back yet, which i think makes it a little limited for now). if i put on my prophet hat, i do feel that if the major notation packages, finale and sibelius, end up making versions for a mobile platform, it'll most likely be the iphone/pod, plus of course there's always the chance that apple will release a version of logic, and there's no way that would be available on anything else.
so i have made my decision. now i just have to try to hold myself back until i have a job. or at least the prospect of a job. or at least am looking for a job. um.
Comments