Java may not be on the radar of the average Mac user, but to the Java development community, Leopard has been a bombshell. Apple’s been slow with Java releases before, but something’s different this time: there’s been almost no information on the topic, and Apple has even pulled an existing Java 6 development build (released for Linux, Windows, Solaris, and every OS on Earth late last year). While Java and Apple apologists alike bend over to explain why this doesn’t matter / isn’t really an issue, we received an interesting comment here on CDMusic that suggests something big has happened they’ve all missed. This tipster argues Apple has all but eliminated its Java development team, and future development may (finally) fall to Sun. From our comments:

i had a long chat with a sun engineer over tea today where this issue came up as well. he was basically saying:

• apple has moved all developers from the java team to the ical team except for one poor bloke who is mainly working on a stable java 1.5 version
• the guy doing the actual 1.6 port left apple, apparently finishing the port is just a piece of cake, could be done in a few days but for legal reasons he cant do it anymore.
• apple will most likely never release an opensource version of their vm because it is a big dirty mess using various old frameworks all tied together in spaghetti code/ secondly it seems to require sourcecode access to the mac os x standard frameworks sources e.g. coreservices etc.
• some people at the java fx team at sun have started making their own java 1.7 runtime for os x which hints that eventually sun might take java for mac back under its control
• speaking of sound and other java things missing in osx - the answer is: wait for java fx! its very promising, you’ll be surprised.

Why this sort of rumor may be wrong: Note that it’s not clear how much of this is an accurate picture. Java isn’t dead in Leopard — on the contrary, Java 5 has been updated for the new OS, even if Java 6 is missing. And there are still developers at Apple working on Java, as they regularly appear on the java-dev list — and there’s more than one person. Even among Java developers frustrated with Apple’s progress, it’s clear that those engineers do a terrific job — though they may need more resources, and it is unclear whether it’s still advantageous for Apple to be maintaining Java in place of Sun in the first place.

Java everywhere, media everywhere: Why bother putting this on a site called Create Digital Music, and not, you know, Create Digital Java Applications? Because Java is a key, cross-platform development platform for music and multimedia, in the form of tools like the open-source coding-for-artists platform Processing, and a significant amount of media research. The alternative is generally less-elegant, more time-intensive C and C++ code; Ruby, C#, Python, and others haven’t really proven themselves for multimedia applications.

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Read the rest of Rumor: Mac Java's Demise is Real, and Why That Could Be Good News for Multimedia (216 words)

© Peter Kirn for Create Digital Music, 2007. | Permalink | 27 comments

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The iPhone and iPod Touch have big, pretty screens, plenty of space for touch control, and fit in your pocket for lots of other useful things (like, you know, calls or music or whatever these things were invented for).

So, why not put them to use in performance? Just this week, Create Digital Motion has picked up two new solutions for doing just that, free:

MIDI Control with iPhone and iPod Touch: i3L MIDI Bridge

Mrmr : iPhone + 10.5 + Quartz Composer = Wireless VJ Nirvana

Mrmr’s support of OSC is geared for VJ apps, but something similar could be applied to OSC-supporting music tools like Max/MSP, Traktor, Reaktor, and others. And i3L’s support of MIDI, of course, will work with anything. I could see it cuing up scenes in Ableton Live or changing instrument patches, etc.

No iPhone? No problem. One quick note: if you don’t have the cash for a new iPod or iPhone, there are always alternatives. Jason Kramer’s Bluetooth MIDI solution works just fine with that free phone you got with your plan — maybe even one you recently retired. Much as we love all this flashy new stuff, there’s nothing quite like giving your toxic technological leftovers a new lease on life!

Control Music Software with a Bluetooth Cell Phone / PDA (Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Logic Pro)
LiveController [Jason R. Kramer]

© Peter Kirn for Create Digital Music, 2007. | Permalink | 7 comments

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AP - No criminal charges will be filed in the well-publicized scuffle between Kid Rock and Tommy Lee at the MTV Video Music Awards, the Clark County district attorney said.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Furby and Jesus, keyboards and guitars and laser gun blasters, pre-natal heart monitors, toys and instruments and strange unidentifiable electronics — in one day, all these things evolved from one thing into … something else. Babies and bigger adult people took to their shops, spent huge amounts of money (one dollar! two dollars!), and came up with remarkable designs. Some were beginners trying their first simple bends, some were serious builders, constructing really playable (if glitchable), convincing instruments. If you’ve never considered bending before, this could change/blow your mind. And for bending lovers, we have quite a range. Thanks to our friend Circuit Master at GetLoFi and Mike Una here on CDM, here come pages of results from the Circuit Bending Challenge I… -PK

(See also GetLoFi’s round-up, especially if you like all your videos on one page.)

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Read the rest of Glitching Guitars to Warped Toys: The Circuit Bending Challenge Roundup (425 words)

© Michael Una for Create Digital Music, 2007. | Permalink | 9 comments

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Just a quick note to say, keep those late entries coming for the circuit bending challenge! We know that, ahem, circuit bending doesn’t always go as planned. And we still want to see your stuff — even “casualties.” (We’ve already got a couple of documented dead instruments. Part of the process.)

Comments on that post preferred, though some are having trouble with our spam filter. If that’s the case, just email me at peter (at) createdigitalmusic and I’ll get you sorted.

Stay tuned for a full, formal round-up of all the entries coming soon.

© Peter Kirn for Create Digital Music, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments

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on the musical note from my last post on Swaram... read about the latest development in the music industry ... for the first time ever any renowned rock band has rokced the industry by releasing its album sans middleman or music label ... This English rock band is Radiohead and the album is In rainbows.... Read what experts have to say about this:

1. Radiohead's Free-for-all: Performance Art or New Business Model? : Knowledge@Wharton interview of Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader and Don Huesman, senior director of information technology at Wharton.

2. Seth Godin's Blog post