Members Unalaska Posted October 14, 2014 Members Share Posted October 14, 2014 iPhone 6 is cool because it bends! Mackie didn't fail with thier dl series mixers, I think it gave a lot of momentum to manufacturers to move toward tablet mixing. A lot of learning went on and consumers embraced it as a viable option to analog. Overall it was a success. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vito Corleone Posted October 14, 2014 Members Share Posted October 14, 2014 Good question. Sony was a leader and an innovator, and certainly was the go-to brand for electronics. Everyone did an end-run around the Betamax, and consumers somehow forgot that the format was (slightly) superior and more compact than VHS. Looking at Apple, they made their stuff cool and "better", but I'm seeing nothing exciting in the iPhone 6 at all, and I'll be interested to see if the new iPad is also just a larger tablet with the same shortcomings as the older models. Samsung especially seems to be making deep inroads with their tablets, so it'll be interesting to see Apple's future. Consumers 'forgot' about the Betamax's advantages because they weren't great enough to outweigh the affordability and availability of VHS. Nobody wanted to pay twice as much for slightly better and a little bit smaller. Apple's future as being cooler and better can't be dependent simply upon newer iPhones and iPads. What made those products so special was there was really nothing like them at the time. If it's just going to be about who has the fastest'/lightest/biggest/smallest/cheapest whatever, other manufacturers are going to win that battle in the same way PCs beat the Mac and VHS beat Betamax. Someday---and probably sooner rather than later---there will be another Next Big Thing. Whether Apple is the one to come up with it or not is the big question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wesg Posted October 14, 2014 Members Share Posted October 14, 2014 PC vs Everything (including Mac) and VHS vs. Betamax are both good analogies for the current digital mixer marketplace. In the end, the open-er but competent platform won. I hope to see that the current market and state of IP law allow this to happen again. PC beat Apple IIgs, Apple Mac, Tandy CoCo, Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, NeXT, and a whole host of other machines during its evolution. It won because it was easy for 3rd party manufacturers to make software and peripherals for the platform. And clones of the platform. This drove the cost of competent (albeit not necessarily awesome) components down, increasing the market, in turn driving software sales; rinse, lather repeat. VHS beat Betamax because Sony want (IIRC) a patent royalty of $45 per unit. That was a crap ton of money in 1985, and a very significant fraction of the cost of the unit. Consumers saw only marginal performance improvement for a significant price improvement. So the more available, competent but not awesome, product won gain. And yielded SVHS eventually. BTW I was still using Beta well into the 90s. I might still have some Star Trek: Voyager episodes I taped on first airing on beta around here somewhere. My player died about 10 years ago. It was a Sanyo unit with a sticker on it that said it was an official sponsor of the 1984 Olympics in LA. Wes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author Craig Vecchione Posted October 15, 2014 CMS Author Share Posted October 15, 2014 PC vs Everything (including Mac) and VHS vs. Betamax are both good analogies for the current digital mixer marketplace. In the end, the open-er but competent platform won. I hope to see that the current market and state of IP law allow this to happen again. PC beat Apple IIgs, Apple Mac, Tandy CoCo, Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, NeXT, and a whole host of other machines during its evolution. It won because it was easy for 3rd party manufacturers to make software and peripherals for the platform. And clones of the platform. This drove the cost of competent (albeit not necessarily awesome) components down, increasing the market, in turn driving software sales; rinse, lather repeat. VHS beat Betamax because Sony want (IIRC) a patent royalty of $45 per unit. That was a crap ton of money in 1985, and a very significant fraction of the cost of the unit. Consumers saw only marginal performance improvement for a significant price improvement. So the more available, competent but not awesome, product won gain. And yielded SVHS eventually. BTW I was still using Beta well into the 90s. I might still have some Star Trek: Voyager episodes I taped on first airing on beta around here somewhere. My player died about 10 years ago. It was a Sanyo unit with a sticker on it that said it was an official sponsor of the 1984 Olympics in LA. Wes I don't see a heckuva lot of difference in making someone pay a $45 royalty, or making someone "upgrade" to a newer but not revolutionary device in a too-short time span. A lesson, perhaps. EDIT: Seen the latest iPhone 6 ads? They're touting that they're bigger. Woah, gotta get me some of that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vito Corleone Posted October 15, 2014 Members Share Posted October 15, 2014 I don't see a heckuva lot of difference in making someone pay a $45 royalty, or making someone "upgrade" to a newer but not revolutionary device in a too-short time span. A lesson, perhaps. Neither way will work if people don't WANT to pay. No one is "making" anyone upgrade. Go buy another brand if you don't like what Apple does. Throw away your smartphone and go back to using a land line. Those things haven't required "upgrading" for a long, long time. No one 'makes' people pay more (a 'royalty' of sorts) for iPods than for other MP3 players. Apple has created that perception of greater worth and value. People WILL pay more for something they perceive as somewhat "better". Apple has proven that. Sony couldn't do it in the same way. I don't think a cheaper Betamax system that you had to "upgrade" every couple of years would have worked any better for them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author Craig Vecchione Posted October 15, 2014 CMS Author Share Posted October 15, 2014 You're missing my point entirely. I'm referring to Apple's penchant for the proprietary, and their more recent lack of innovation. The Betamax was proprietary and wasn't revolutionary enough to lure manufacturers into paying a royalty, and Sony lost market share dramatically. Apple hasn't been very revolutionary in their last several product releases, and this may foretell their future. I certainly wasn't implying that cell phones aren't the way to go....you really think I'm a luddite. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vito Corleone Posted October 15, 2014 Members Share Posted October 15, 2014 When I said "you", I meant it generically. And I was exaggerating to make a point. No one thinks we should do without cell phones, of course. No, I don't think I missed your point, except that I thought that you implied that perhaps had Sony gone for BS "upgrades" rather than trying to charge more for the Betamax out of the gate, that they might have had better success. I was just saying it has nothing to do with HOW they go about charging more. People will only pay more if they perceive a greater value. Apple has made people pay more out of the gate AND make them want to upgrade. They brand much better than Sony ever dreamed of doing. I agree with you that Apple hasn't been very revolutionary lately. Except to say that, other than the watch that hasn't come out yet, they haven't HAD any new product releases. Just new versions of the old stuff. That isn't going to cut it, because they'll get beat on price by others. It's about releasing new products that people actually want. Even if you have to somehow make them believe they want it first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Unalaska Posted October 17, 2014 Members Share Posted October 17, 2014 So I've downloaded and been playing with the x32 app and the xr18 app. I can only use the demo version since I own niether. Well, it's cool, but it keeps crashing (ipad2). And the 6 seconds it takes to reload is far longer than it takes for me to adjust an aux send or eq on an 01v96. This doesn't help sell me any tablet only mixer... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author Craig Vecchione Posted October 18, 2014 CMS Author Share Posted October 18, 2014 But it's......the future....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Unalaska Posted October 18, 2014 Members Share Posted October 18, 2014 To be clear, the xr18 app has been slow or crashing. There is no product out to control yet so I can only assume that this is a beta version. The x32 app is quite nice, learning curve but nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members OneEng Posted October 18, 2014 Author Members Share Posted October 18, 2014 To be clear, the xr18 app has been slow or crashing. There is no product out to control yet so I can only assume that this is a beta version. The x32 app is quite nice, learning curve but nice. The X32 Mix app for the iPad is very functional. As you point out, it can do quite a bit. In fact, it can do nearly everything the X32 can do (the iPad app is still missing cues, snipits, and the RTA as well as the very cool blue dots that show you where the signal is on the gate and compression curves). Because it can do so much, and because even the X32 Rack is a full featured digital mixer with tons of flexibility, it is necessarily a bit complex. For me, going from a MixWiz to a "DigiLog" mixer like the StudioLive would have been easy, but moving to a real digital mixer with a complete set of internal mix buses that can be routed to a huge variety of controls and outputs was a bit of work (or learning curve). It was fun for me to learn all the capabilities of the mixer. The X32 has the general capabilities of a big-boy mixer (flexible routing, LCD Scribble strips, matrix mixes, many (16) sends from each channel, digital stage box, DCA's, etc, etc). I think that once you learn one mixer of this class, learning others is quite simple since they all work on the same principles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nchangin Posted October 20, 2014 Members Share Posted October 20, 2014 I assume there is a main CPU for all the x32 does correct? Anyone know who the manufacturer is? That would mean the new boards use the same or similar chip? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members OneEng Posted October 21, 2014 Author Members Share Posted October 21, 2014 I assume there is a main CPU for all the x32 does correct? Anyone know who the manufacturer is? That would mean the new boards use the same or similar chip? It uses two SHARC processors (2137x I think). I suspect that these lower end mixers only use 1 and have much less I/O to worry about (compared to the X32 Rack their bigger and beefier brother). The manufacturer is Analog Devices. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wesg Posted October 21, 2014 Members Share Posted October 21, 2014 That hypothesis would also explain why the little mixers apparently do not support the protocol used by the digital snakes. Not enough I/O, as opposed to market segment differentiation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vito Corleone Posted November 2, 2014 Members Share Posted November 2, 2014 Well, first, they cost money. A lot of money. Business expects a positive return on investment (ROI). So what's the problem? The second point is that these changes are too often NOT an UPGRADE, as there are precious few real advances in technology. A relevant example is your earlier statement about "upgrading" your phone because your eyes are aging and you like the Samsung's larger format. A larger screen is not an upgrade, it's simply a form factor choice. There's nothing technologically challenging about increasing screen size. Another example is that you stated that your phone is no longer taking good pictures. It's not an "upgrade" to get a new phone to fix a failure in the old phone. Did you upgrade iOS on your 4S? If so, why? If not, why not? I didn't, because the OS "upgrade" didn't add anything I needed, and it didn't fix anything broken, as there was nothing broken. So my Settings icon has had the little "1" next to it for a year and a half. It'll stay there until Verizon gets the phone back. Just when I thought I was over the "get a new phone" GAS, I realized I hadn't been receiving any texts---or at least those were sent over iMessage--in over a week. I tried various resets and nothing seemed to work easily so I thought that maybe it IS time to just get a new phone. Plus my wife has been complaining that her 4S has been sluggish lately and taking forever to text photos. So we thought we'd go down and check out the new iPhones. So we both ended up with a couple of new 6s. The bigger size is a bit to get used to. She thinks it's too big as she can no longer do everything on it with one hand. She'll give herself a few days with it and if she doesn't get used to it, we'll probably exchange it for a 5S. It much faster than the 4 and 4S. That's cool. I understand the biggest speed change came with the 5, though. The better camera is nice. Don't really need Slo-Mo, though. It's lighter overall, which I like. Personally I like the size. Not sure I would have liked the 6-Plus though. At that size I'm not sure it would still fit in my pocket. The bigger screen is good. It gives the mobile version of this forum the look that it has on the iPad, so it's slightly less useless, although I STILL can't type longer posts without having to manually enter HTML code for paragraphs and breaks. I think I'll like Apple Pay once it works. So far, I haven't been able to enter a credit card into it. I can't decide whether the thumbprint think is cool or annoying. I've never been that concerned about security on my phone anyway. But I guess now that I'll have things like Apple Pay on it, I should be. But it's just one more step I have to go through to get to things. So much for Steve Jobs' rule about nothing should take more than 3 steps. Also, AT&T gave us $100 credit for her 4S and $50 for my 4, which helped pay for the new phones. on edit: The thumbprint feature DOES eliminate the need to swipe open the phone, so it eliminates that step. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dbMontana Posted November 2, 2014 Members Share Posted November 2, 2014 Guido, a word of warning about the thumbprint recognition: My 5s is a work phone and so requires a PITA 8-character password. Before "they" disabled the ability to use the thumbprint I got in trouble when I became so reliant on it I forgot my new password and after sitting in a hot tube for an hour it would no longer read my print. It turns out work-imposed security is set up such that the phone wipes itself clean after a set number of incorrect password attempts. Yup, bummer. Restoration went well after I returned to the office on Monday but I was certainly glad it didn't happen two weeks earlier when I was overseas! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vito Corleone Posted November 2, 2014 Members Share Posted November 2, 2014 Thanks for the word of warning. I'm leaving on vacation next week. There will definitely be some hot tub action! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vito Corleone Posted November 2, 2014 Members Share Posted November 2, 2014 Sounds like the same issue I have with speed dial. It's GREAT until you don't have it and you have to try and remember somebody's actual phone number..... Passwords drive me crazy because everyone has a different requirement and so it's impossible to remember them all and all the slight variances. What's the point of having secret passwords to get into everything "private" on my computer and on the internet when I need to a have a big sheet of paper on my desk with all my usernames and passwords just so I can get through the work day???? OTHO, I've been using the same 4-digit PIN code since my first ATM card I got in 1979! Works on my phone too! At least SOME things can remain simple. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vito Corleone Posted November 2, 2014 Members Share Posted November 2, 2014 And of COURSE the forum didn't recognize the change back from DST, even though I have it set to do so in my profile.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vito Corleone Posted November 2, 2014 Members Share Posted November 2, 2014 Also liking the Personal Hotspot feature so I can use my iPad or laptop in places that don't have WiFi. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dbMontana Posted November 2, 2014 Members Share Posted November 2, 2014 Also liking the Personal Hotspot feature so I can use my iPad or laptop in places that don't have WiFi. Agreed and I almost always find that LTE coverage beats the abysmal wifi offered by hotels these days. Way faster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members StratGuy22 Posted November 3, 2014 Members Share Posted November 3, 2014 Thanks for the word of warning. I'm leaving on vacation next week. There will definitely be some hot tub action! just keep a beer in that hand. Problem solved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author Craig Vecchione Posted November 3, 2014 CMS Author Share Posted November 3, 2014 Guido61, thanks for the review of the 6's. I too think they're too big, and that the smart move for Apple would've been to keep the original size and offer one "1 louder" version. Your wife's complaint is what I'd probably dislike...namely not being able to operate the phone with one hand. And since I keep the phone on and on me throughout the waking day, smaller is better. A larger phone will just get caught on corners and edges and ripped off the belt clip more often. Anyone else wonder if the "my older phone has been running slower the last few weeks/months" thing is more than simple coincidence that new phones are available? There's definitely no doubt that the newer iOS's are slower on old phones on purpose, IMHO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vito Corleone Posted November 3, 2014 Members Share Posted November 3, 2014 I can use the new phone with one hand just fine. My wife has little Hawaiian girl hands. . But the 5s are still plentiful for someone who wants most of what the new phones can do just as fast in a smaller box. It's hard for me to see why people would want to upgrade with every new version. I guess I've become and every-other-version upgrader (kind of forced into that by the terms of my phone service contract anyway) and even those differences are not that great. I also never updated to iOS8 on my 4. So that wouldn't have been the cause for the slowdown, but prior updates may have been. Getting two years out of a phone isn't that bad, IMO. Considering how much I use it and all the different things it is used for, it's amazing to me these things work as well as they do for as long as they do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vito Corleone Posted November 3, 2014 Members Share Posted November 3, 2014 definitely no doubt that the newer iOS's are slower on old phones on purpose, IMHO. They naturally are going to put faster processors into newer phones as the processors become available. Which is great except then it only becomes natural that they'll just add more stuff for the device to process because now it 'can'. End result being things aren't really any faster than they were at the beginning and you don't even necessarily need (or at least notice) all that more stuff it does. But it will definitely bog down older processors. Same thing happens with PCs as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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