Hasta La Gadget!

Apple’s iOS App Store has been a huge success since it first launched in July of 2008, with billions of downloads occurring over the past three years. So naturally, Apple decided to recycle the model for software built for its Mac OSX desktop platform, launching its own App Store in January of this year.

It’s doing well, to say the least. Apple announced on Monday over 100 million Mac apps have been downloaded since the Mac App Store debuted nearly one year ago.

“In just three years the App Store changed how people get mobile apps, and now the Mac App Store is changing the traditional PC software industry,”Apple SVP Phil Schiller said in a statement.

The Mac App Store, a feature of OS X Lion, is structured similarly to Apple’s well-known iOS App Store. The iOS App Store has seen over 18 billion downloads and houses more than half a million apps. The Mac App Store is home to “thousands of apps” including things like Photoshop Elements and products from Autodesk.

The 100 million downloads figure only reflects individual app purchases. It does not include sales of OS X Lion or updates to apps purchased from the Mac App Store.

As Apple’s success with the app store model has grown, others have followed suit with their own versions. Last week Microsoft detailed its Windows Store, Microsoft’s marketplace for Windows 8 desktop and tablet applications. Although its policies and pricing scheme differs from that of Apple, it’s clear where the inspiration for the store stemmed from. Microsoft, however, boasts a much larger user base compared to Apple’s, with 500 million Windows 7 users worldwide compared to approximately 30 million Mac users.

With those sorts of numbers, it’s possible that Microsoft’s Windows Store could eventually prove to be more successful than Apple’s. But for now, Apple’s success in the app store arena is the one to beat.

It looks like Google has rolled out yet another update to its Android Market web store, bringing a slew of new filtering features for especially investigative users. In particular, the refresh allows consumers to filter user reviews by a handful of parameters, including star ratings, app version and device model. Best of all, you can use any or all of these filters simultaneously, thereby allowing you to isolate, for example, all five-star reviews of a specific app from users of a specific handset. It certainly sounds like a useful addition, and one you can check out for yourself, at the source link below.

Android Market web store update adds user review filters, changes lives originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Twitter has undergone a major transformation. Like a caterpillar that’s emerged as a weird looking tiny-text butterfly that hates direct messages. Some will embrace Twitter’s change in design philosophy, but grizzled social media veterans already hate it. More »

Get ready, street musicians: Today Apple released its popular music-making app GarageBand for the iPhone. Now you can jam away on a set of onscreen drums, or strum a touch-based Smart Guitar, to compose musical masterpieces wherever you may be.

The slimmed-down iPhone app has all the features of the iPad app: a multi-touch interface with Smart Instruments (to piece together pre-assembled musical bits) and Touch Instruments (for those who want to play and record their own instrumental tracks). You can also record vocal tracks using the device’s built-in mic, and (with the help of an adapter) plug an electric guitar directly into your iDevice and record tunes through GarageBand’s amp and stompbox effects.

In total, GarageBand helps you knock out impromptu jam sessions, all without having to lug around a bunch of equipment.

Naturally, the iPhone version of GarageBand is shrunk down for a 3.5-inch screen.  My app experience on an iPhone 4 was smooth, without any force quits or stutters. And, not surprisingly, it was fun to tap away at the onscreen keyboard and drum set using only my thumbs. I made a complete (albeit heinous-sounding) song in a matter of minutes. So, if you’re looking for a solid music-making app to jot down song ideas or even create passable tunes while you’re wiling away time on your evening commute, GarageBand is the answer.

GarageBand was first launched as a Mac application, and later ported to the iPad with the launch of the iPad 2 in March 2011. “This is no toy,” Steve Jobs said of GarageBand on the iPad. “This is something you can use for real work.” Since then, a number of enterprising companies have released capacitive touch tools, such as guitar picks and drum sticks, that you can use with the app.

The iPhone version of Garage Band is, like the iPad counterpart, a big download. At over 501 MB, it took me at least five minutes over a Wi-Fi connection to complete the installation.

The app opens quickly, and operates only in landscape mode. Navigation is intuitive, and will be familiar to anyone who’s ever used similar music-making and recording software.

You select an instrument to play, adjust settings like reverb and echo if you’re not happy with the app’s defaults, and then tap away at a virtual instrument interface, hitting the record button if you’re ready to commit your work to, er, memory. Most of the instruments and tools look identical to their iPad counterparts, but there are a few small variations, such as in the piano, which has only eight keys instead of 15.

In the upper right-hand corner of the app, you’ll find an icon that lets you make adjustments to a single track, section or song. In the upper left-hand corner, you can click for a pop-over menu that will take you back to the songs or instruments panel, or let you swap between different forms of your current instrument (like for the piano, you can choose between options like Grand Piano, Smooth Clav, Classic Rock Organ, or Electric Piano).

Next to that there’s an icon that lets you switch from instrument view to song editing view. The editing view shows each of your recorded tracks so far, with opportunities to adjust, edit and loop sections.

Using Smart Instruments is a sure-fire way to create a song that doesn’t sound like it was hacked out by a team of rabid baboons. In this respect, GarageBand succeeds as a music-making device for people with no musical training whatsoever.

But what if you have musical experience — is GarageBand for iPhone a legitimate composition device? Not necessarily, as the app’s puny user interface is quite cramped. Still, this is an iPhone app, after all, and anyone using it to create music should be well aware that the premium music-making experience will be found on an iPad.

As with the iPad version, you can record and combine up to eight tracks, and then export to GarageBand or Logic Pro on the Mac for a bit more polishing. You can also share your iPhone-made masterpieces via iTunes or e-mail.

The app is a welcome addition to any mildly creative person’s iPhone or iPod touch. GarageBand is $5 and is now available for iPhone 3GS and up, 3rd and 4th gen iPod touches, and iPads.

Images: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Be jealous no more Android fans! (OK, maybe a little bit longer.) FL Studio is coming to your mobile OS of choice. No longer will it just be iDevice owners who get to channel their inner 9th Wonder on the go. Soon enough the company will release a version of its loop-based music-creation suite designed to work on both phones and tablets running Google’s portable platform. We don’t have a price or release date yet but, as a consolation prize, there’s a video of the progress being made on the port after the break.

Continue reading FL Studio coming to Android, Google fans can make phat beats too

FL Studio coming to Android, Google fans can make phat beats too originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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