Apple iPod Phone: The Design Apple Should Aim For

I was just thinking: why mess with a good design?

Apple's iPod phone should just be like current 5G iPods, with a cell phone chip added. No need to add a microphone to speak into, just add a mic to the earbuds. You'll need a small speaker so it can ring, and perhaps something that can vibrate it.

You need a numeric keypad? How about using the clickwheel like those old rotary phones? An alternative would be to print numbers all around the clickwheel, so each number can be accessed directly.

It should be easy to add in all the extra functionality that phones now have to the already-existing iPod interface, since that's already proven as a good, easy-to-use interface.

No mockups for you. I'm not a 3D modeler, a CAD jockey nor a graphic artist. My stick figures are rarely proportional (or even symmetrical!) If you want to know what that iPod phone could look like, just take the current video iPod, add in a set of earbuds with integrated mic along the cord, and there you go.

I just think it's time for phones you don't have to hold up to your mouth and ears. Keep the hardware in a pocket or on your belt, and bring the input/output closer to your own input/output (mouth, ears, and so forth.)

As technology moves forward, I'd like to see the laptop, tabletPC/Origami, PDA, cell phones and personal media players to fuse together. Ideally, you'd have one hunk of technology in your pocket, on your belt, or around your neck, which has a small display, a few buttons and one analog control (for example, a clickwheel) and that unit would contain a powerful CPU, a hard-drive or some solid-state flash memory, and a few specialized chips. You could then get a special tablet display to view and interact with more complex data (either wired or connected via hi-speed Bluetooth), a set of headphones with integrated mic (wired or Bluetooth) and perhaps even an ultra-portable keyboard attachment, like that virtual keyboard thing that projects keyboard keys onto a flat surface using a laser, and then tracks which keys you "press".

A videophone attachment then becomes an obvious addition: just stick a camera into the socket where the transfer cable usually plugs, and you can take picture, capture video, and use it as a videophone. That could be the final breakthrough that makes videophones mainstream.

Apple could to all this. They're the only ones who could, right now, because all the other companies are either too small (not enough traction to bring such a huge advancement to the mainstream), too specialized (unless you're involved in the building of personal computers, personal media players, as well as cell phones, you're too specialized to care about making a dent in the other markets) or too large and prisoner of your own inertia (Microsoft, IBM, Motorola, HP, and so forth are so set in their ways that they really don't innovate much anymore, they just buy innovations outright, and their business models discourage the creation of all-in-one devices, with the rationale of: "why sell 1 device when you can sell 5 separate devices!")

Apple is in a unique position, because they're involved in all those facets of the tech industry, but they have a corporate culture and a business model that pushes for innovation and good design, a culture that centers on guessing what people want before they themselves figure it out, and then providing that which they want. They don't create demand, they anticipate demand.

Actually, now that I think of it, it might even be possible to just create a simple attachment that snaps onto current 5G iPods that would turn them into the iPod phone I described above. So people could buy just an iPod, and then later convert it into a phone, while retaining their current functionality.

Apple is the only big player who really Thinks Different. I hope they somehow think like me.

What's Wrong With Music These Days?

I know I'm going to sound like an old geezer complaining about the music "those damn kids" are listening to. At this point, I don't care, this needs to said.

For starters, can we all agree that there are three basic components that make up music:

1. Rhythm
2. Melody
3. Harmony

The first one is the most primal. The original rhythm was the heartbeat.

Melody came after, with the first human who learned to sing.

Harmony happened when two humans tried singing together, and eventually figured out that some noise combinations sounded better than others.

Now, almost all the best music there is has a good balance between these two elements. Some music goes farther in one direction or another, but very often, when one of the three is missing, the music ends up feeling empty, aimless or pointless.

Now, the proper balance of the three is a very subjective thing, with some people preferring more emphasis on rhythm, some people preferring a hummable melody, and some people who are made to feel all fuzzy inside from well-crafted harmony.

Until a few years ago, the balance between the three was usually kept, because getting all three right required just about the same amount of effort.

The problem started when sequencer software and rhythm loops started becoming so pervasive in popular music. All of a sudden, crafting an interesting, original rhythm became immensely easier. Most sequencing software made it trivial to grab a cool-sounding rhythm bit and just copy it ad nauseam (with a few variations thrown in here and there to keep things interesting...)

The problem starts when you realize that the same software has done nothing to make crafting compelling melodies and harmonies any easier. The net result is that many musicians and producers spend more time trying to come up with intriguing new rhythms (because playing around with the software to come up with new rhythms is fun!) and less time coming up with intriguing melodies and harmonies, because, well, that's actual work.

I realized this while listening to Radiohead.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love all of Radiohead's albums (well, except for Pablo Honey... that one's missing something...) but it really highlights the shift which, after reading this, you'll probably notice in a lot of other music you listen to.

A lot of people were annoyed by Radiohead's follow-up to the monumentally successful (commercially, critically, and, well, musically) OK Computer, the somewhat harder-to-read Kid A.

One of the big things that happened in between the making of these two albums is that some parts of the band discovered Pro Tools and other studio software, and found that they could individually play around with that on their own. So many of the songs were based on demos that were made up of cut&paste rhythm. Songs like Idiotheque and Kid A sound like they were built on a rhythm, and are somewhat lacking in melody and harmony, compared with the songs on OK Computer.

This gets even more obvious when you listen to Amnesiac, which has songs that basically have no melody or harmony (Pulk/pull revolving doors) and songs which were clearly built rhythm first, and where what little melody and harmony is left seems coincidental (Pyramid Song, which has a repeating, syncopated piano motif which sounds wrong somehow until you add the drums and percussion back in.)

One of the biggest shames (for me, anyway) on that album is the penultimate track, Like Spinning Plates, which has an intriguing melody, and a really weird sweeping rhythm that basically obliterates any chance for there to be a compelling harmony. I say this is a damn shame, because when the song is performed live, it's usually played on piano, and it's one of the most beautiful tracks Radiohead have ever come up with, with haunting melody and harmonies.

Their last album, Hail to the Thief, seems to have tried to reincorporate melody and harmony, but this only comes together on about half the tracks, and none of the tracks are as memorable as Paranoid Android, Subterranean Homesick Alien or Street Spirit (Fade Out), for example.

I hear more and more rock musicians using sampling, loops and sequencing to augment their sound, usually because it's cheaper than hiring session musicians or learning to play/compose better, but often just because it's "cool" to do it. I keep hoping more bands will stay away from composing with loops, just grab their guitars or pianos, and start composing new melodies and harmonies.

I just prefer my music to come from the performances of real people. In the quest for a perfect rhythm that never deviates, a lot of music has lost its soul.

Prologue, Part 2

I intend for the two parts of this prologue to stand as the mission statement for this blog. Except that I don't yet have a real mission, a clear purpose for it. Like a lot of bloggers this will be an outlet for whatever I want to write until I figure out what I really want to do.

More about me, so readers will get an idea of the person behind the writing.

I'm an atheist. I was raised as a catholic, was an agnostic in my teens, and eventually came to find that I don't need to believe in a god or gods to be spiritual. I believe in Humanity and its potential, I believe in intelligence and wisdom and the ability to think for yourself (this last thing is something that almost all the organized religions I know about don't seem to acknowledge.)

I was about to write more about religion and atheism here, but I'll keep this for a future entry, otherwise, this prologue would turn preachy, and that's not what I want to write here, at this point.

I'm a big geek. I've always loved technology, as in, anything with buttons. When I was three or four, my parents gave me a pocket calculator (not a kiddie one, actually one that looked a lot like my dad's, except his could also do measuring unit conversions. Really handy.) and just a year later, they bought a home computer (a TI-99/4a, for those of you who know it. For the others, it's the kind you had to hook up to a TV set.)

At 4, I was typing in sample programs I found in books, and even modifying them, through trial and error. Video games have always kept me fascinated, which is why I'm so happy working as a video game designer now.

The only technology I'm afraid of is the technology that's not mine. Like most people, I'm very careful when using an ATM or using the company's phone system for anything more than simple phone calls, because the consequences of a small mistake with technology is exponentially larger than with something less technological. So I'm no technophobe, I'm just afraid of consequences.

I started getting into movies in high school, and then, in college, I took a course in video production, which gave me a great base on which to start my journey. My talent lies in writing, and crafting interesting stories, but understanding movies helps in that I can see how and why some movies work while others fail, and that helps me in crafting my own stories. I also started reading up on screenwriting, and I've found that it really fits my clean, to the point writing style.

What I mean by clean writing style is, the idea, image or situation that I need to communicate is the main driving force behind the writing, so my prose tends to flow pretty fast, without stopping for long, detailed and atmospheric descriptions and deeply philosophical ramblings. If a deep idea needs to be communicated, the story will do it, bit by bit if it's a big idea. Stopping for exposition is boring if nothing else happens to further the story. And that's one of the big things that screenwriting (for commercial films, anyway) forces you to do.

I can appreciate other writing styles, so-called "more stylish writing", and I sometimes enjoy them too, but I often aim to emulate (without imitating) one of my favorite writers, Isaac Asimov.

And that's how I bring in Science Fiction. From Star Trek to Star Wars (which is arguably not really science fiction) to the new Battlestar Galactica, from Asimov to Heinlein to Douglas Adams to William Gibson, I love Science Fiction. A few years ago, I would buy at least 4 SF magazines as often as they came out (SF Age, the first SF magazine I ever found on newsstands, Asimov's, Analog and Amazing when it made a short comeback through WotC) and I would buy almost any anthology I could lay my hands on, being particularly fond of older anthologies (two of my favorites are "The Best of Interzone" which came out in the 90's and "The Best from Orbit" which is a collection of the best stories from a yearly anthology of new stories from the 60's and 70's. If you really love SF, you owe it to yourself to track down these two books.

When I write stories, I tend to write science fiction, because that's what I'm most comfortable with. I'm actually annoyed at a lot of TV and books I see because it's so "down to Earth" and about mundane stuff. I have a real life, and it's fun and interesting enough that I don't need to envy some fictional character's life instead. All I can say to all those people who feel that their lives are much more boring than the the fictional characters they're hooked on is, do something about it. Just do something. Make your own life more interesting. Think for yourself.

I'm also into music. Now, that's a profoundly vague statement. Let me go into some details, that should clarify things. I play some guitar (I own an electric guitar and an acoustic one), some bass (I own an electric bass) and I believe I can sing, but I haven't reached a point where I'm comfortable performing in front of more than 2-3 people. I like songwriting, but I find it hard to match music and lyrics.

Even though I'm a technophile, I generally hate most music that is "performed" automatically, meaning that I'll always prefer the sound of real drums as played by a human being to synthesized, sampled or looped drums. One of the things I've found in the last few years is that most of the software tools that are becoming more and more pervasive in the music industry tend to make working on music's rhythm either easier, or more powerful. The problem is, music is made up of two other things along with rhythm: melody and harmony. Good music has a reasonable mix of all three aspects, but a lot of modern music shows very little harmony or melody, because rhythm is the part that addresses our most primal emotions.

I love the music of The Beatles, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, and most of the music that came out of the british progressive rock scene in the late 60's through the 70's. I listen to a lot of other things, but I tend to go back to these most often. I believe I should love Jazz more, but I have yet to find a proper doorway into this, even though I've heard some really great stuff, especially now that I live in Montréal, where one of the biggest Jazz festivals in the world is held, every year.

There. That's a nice prologue that tells you much and very little about me, all at the same time. Such a paradox makes me love being human.

Prologue, Part 1

From the dark, chaotic mass of gibberish white noise emerges a beacon of pure white light, illuminating all that surround it, its relevance self-evident, its truth immaculate, its wisdom transcendent. The Ultimate Blog.

And next to it, there's this blog, far from ultimate, sometimes irrelevant, possibly fictional, and certainly not transcendent.

I had to start a blog. I like writing, I've been told I write well, but I don't have the self-discipline to make myself write regularly.
This blog's objective is to force me to write at least once a week (I plan on posting a new major entry every Sunday night) so I can build up some discipline.
I prefer to write fiction, especially science fiction, and I plan on sharing some stories here. I also want to write about writing; I hope to help other writers out with some of what will show up in this space.
Otherwise, I will discuss whatever subjects I'm passionate about: geek stuff, music (especially classic progressive rock, The Beatles, and Frank Zappa) movies, books, and so forth.

Don't expect any investigative reporting, huge link collections, or extremist political discourse. I'm politicized, but I'm too moderate to present an entertaining viewpoint, so I'll probably stay away from political discussions, except possibly to balance out any extreme and uncompromising viewpoints.

Look for part 2 of this prologue soon, where I'll give short previews of the kinds of things I want to write about here.