Re: [microsound] MUTEK musings...

[Joshua Maremont <thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 05:56 PM 6/15/00 -0500, you wrote:
> it's microsoft that made pcs seem evil.

Before a full scale nuclear platform incident occurs, a few items:

1 - I recall reading years ago that Apple had added a major chunk of code 
to MacOs in order to making more friendly to Microsoft applications.

2 - Two of the most popular Microsoft applications, Word and Excel, became 
popular (and good) on the Mac), while lagging in the DOS market before 
finally dominating the Windows market.

3 - Microsoft stole plenty of its GUI ideas from Apple, but Apple took the 
Mac GUI from Xerox.

And then a few comments:

1 - The Mac is lauded for its simplicity, yet is plagued with extension 
conflicts and often - especially for audio - requires the sort of tweaking 
in the past associated with Windows.

2 - Is it worse (for developers and for users) to grandfather into a 
dinosaur OS decades of dead code in order to support every system variant 
under the sun as Microsoft does, or rather in the Apple style to pull the 
rug out from users' feet every few years with incompatible system upgrades 
(PPC, OS-X) and hardware evolutions (most recently, bye to ADB, hello to 
the still not quite functional USB and Firewire)?

3 - For musicians, computers should be transparent tools for the making of 
music, not tweakstations for the absorption of empty time.

4 - Much software is available for both MacOS and Windows, and it is in the 
software - not the OS - that the music is made.

5 - Microsoft and Apple are both big monster companies with different 
advertising and culture-illusionist strategies.

6 - The "better" system is the one that Works, whichever it happens to be.

7 - For countercultural rebellion, try BeOS or Linux, or - better yet - 
throw out your computer entirely; otherwise admit to shilldom in a 
corporate market.

My reality:

I just bought my second Mac (for Logic and Reaktor) and still prefer it to 
Wintel boxes (which I use daily for work).  But really, OS9 takes 
ALT-Tabbing and stay-down menus from - gasp - Windows - and is bafflingly 
complex and bloated compared to OS7.  Yes, MacOS still is free of 
horrifying under-the-bed monsters like the Windows registry, but having 
spent the last month trying to convince the various components of my audio 
system to talk to each other I am no longer convinced that the Mac is Simple.

Finally:

Brands are brands:  Coke and Pepsi; Roland and Korg and Yamaha; Cubase and 
Logic; Reaktor and MAX-MSP; Gibson and Fender; McDonalds and Burger King; 
Apple and Microsoft.  Music is about sound, not brands.  Musical sound is 
made by musicians through their instruments (computers or otherwise), not 
by gear through its users.  One asks now of a new Hollywood movie:  with 
which burger chain is it identified for tie-in marketing?  I hope this 
branding will not be the case with computer music.

PS:

Now playing here is Hox "It-ness" (Origin), a project of Graham Lewis 
(Wire, Dome, He Said, etc) in which vocal pop is quite nicely blended with 
almost danceable rhythms and DSP experimentation.  To be added to the very 
short list of digi-related pop compiled here several months ago...

NOTE NEW DOMAIN FOR E-MAIL & WEB:
joshua maremont / thermal - mailto:thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
boxman [hako otoko] label - http://www.boxmanstudies.com/