MSA Remote + VDMX + Ableton Live from Memo Akten on Vimeo.

Imagine what’s now possible with a mobile phone: anyone with a supported device can jam with other artists, walk up to an installation, connect to other creators and other software, all using supported protocols. Leaving behind the days of painstaking manual adjustment of MIDI commands and obscure drivers, and even the act of having to physically connect gear, software - and with it, digital art - can simply talk to each other in standard ways.

That’s why we’re excited about software like Memo Atken’s MSA Remote. It uses the standardization provided by the network-savvy, open protocol OSC, with additional plug-and-play (or, erm, don’t plug, do play) functionality from the TUIO protocol. OSC provides the communication; TUIO makes the messages standardized.

To avoid confusion: You do NOT need a Mac to use OSC. OSCulator is a cool app - and makes bridging to MIDI easier - but it’s just one tool among many. You can use this app with Windows and Linux, too, and visual apps like VDMX, Resolume Avenue, Pd/GEM, Processing… the list goes on. In fact, almost every visual app today worth using uses OSC, even as the music world is painfully slow to catch on.

Okay, having gotten my rant about Apple’s extreme level of secrecy out of the way (I’m standing by that), we can at least talk about what Apple is saying about QuickTime X, cutting through the marketing as best as possible.

We’ve known for some time that QuickTime X would be a ground-up rewrite – one badly needed. That could have some implications for compatibility, though, which is something to watch. The details are sketchy at this point, but here’s what’s possible to say:

• X is more integrated with Core technologies. Apple promises that QuickTime X will build on Core Audio, Core Video, and Core Animation. Some of that is to say that the long-in-the-tooth player application itself will work with those technologies more than the underlying QuickTime framework.
• There’s a new player. It’s about time: QuickTime Player gets an update. The nicest feature here is the slick trimming interface Apple has added. A lot of us use QT Player for quick edits and other tasks, so this is definitely welcome.
• There’s no more “Pro.” Finally, you don’t have to spend thirty bucks just to make QuickTime Player a useful tool. In fact, you’ll get all of Snow Leopard for that price (if you already have Leopard).
• Playback is more efficient. Here’s the part that could be most useful to live visual apps. Playback is now more “optimized” and makes use of the GPU for scaling, display, and hardware-accelerated H.264 decoding. Decoding, interestingly, uses the NVIDIA 9400M integrated chip. Most live visual apps already use the GPU for scaling and display, but under-the-hood performance tweaks and decoding features should be good news.
• HTTP video streaming. You can now stream video live over HTTP, which means you can use a standard Web server like Apache instead of a specialized video server, and you don’t have to open special ports on your firewall.
• ColorSync for maintaining color profiles on the computer and on mobile devices (well, provided those devices are also made by Apple).
• Built-in screen recording: You can now create quick screencasts using QuickTime player – groovy. (The Mac is, unquestionably, the easiest platform out there when it comes to making screencasts. Ask any tech journalist or educator.)
• Quick capture: Capture is improved in QT Player for quick recording – always a handy thing to have.
• Performance improvements. QuickTime X promises to take advantage of Grand Central Dispatch, the new Apple threading technology, and 64-bit computing for better performance.

Apple giveth and Apple taketh – again.

FireWire, back on the whole line. First, off, the good news coming out of Apple’s hardware refresh today: FireWire is again on the 13” MacBook, which is now confusingly called the MacBook Pro. It’s a FW800 port, too, which can be nice for fast storage. That means you can get a US$1199 machine with FireWire, a new SD card slot, and a decent if not dazzling NVIDIA 9400M. It seems that Apple heard the loud chorus of people frustrated with the lack of FireWire. My Canon HV20 HDV camera thanks you, Apple.

Good GPUs, still premium. Here’s the bad news: while there’s now a US$1699 MacBook Pro 15”, you still don’t get a really good GPU – the NVIDIA 9600M GT – until you jump up to the US$1999 price point. Given that you can get a pretty nice PC for half that, that means there’s a significant additional investment to go Mac for GPU-dependent visualists.

ExpressCard – 17” only. Adding an SD card slot is nice, though not such a big deal given you can add one via a USB device for about ten bucks. The bad news is that ExpressCard is now available only on the 17” MacBook Pro. Its price is down to US$2499, but that’s little comfort to people who like smaller machines – and could be a good reason to hunt down a used or refurbished 15” model. ExpressCard offers some very nice video capture opportunities. Again, this is standard equipment on cheap PC laptops.

Few ports. You also still need to get a 17” MacBook Pro to get three USB ports; everything else has just two (except for the Air, which has one).

About that battery… Those unibody Macs are gorgeous, but what’s the price? Apple now has a terrific battery that recharges “1000 times” and lasts for 7 hours. The catch here: it’s not user-replceable. I’m not sure where the 1000 number comes from, but that sounds like trouble to me. On the other hand, if it does die, I expect you’ll just cough up the service fee to have someone replace it for you.

Bottom line: pretty as these machines are, the previous models with user-replaceable batteries and ExpressCard slots remain solid workhorses, even back a couple of generations. If you love working with Mac OS, you still get an amazing experience out of your computer. And yes, these machines are damned pretty. You just don’t get a big leap forward with this generation versus the last-generation Macs, and functionality-wise, not that much more than the generation before that.

I happen to like really ugly computers, so I’m going to move on. And yes, choice is good. If you buy a Mac because you think you have to, you’re doing it for the wrong reason. Have a look at the competition, and you’ll be happier with any decision.

MacBook Pro [Apple]

In other Apple news, the iPhone 3GS does look really lovely as a photo and video camera – something devices from makers like Nokia have tried before, but at astronomical prices. So, to my beloved Google Android platform, I have to say – uh, can you get on the ball in the handset department? Please?

If anyone gets a 3GS, I’m sure readers would love to see what kind of photo/video output you get.

Apple unveiled QuickTime X at the WWDC keynote. Here are their bullet point slides:

• Modern foundation
• Hardware Acceleration
• ColorSync
• HTTP Streaming

I’m actually quite keen to know how the new QuickTime X works. What will it mean for live visualists? What does it mean for developers, not only on Mac but Windows? What does it mean for open source projects built on QuickTime, projects vital to music and visual applications and innovation?

Here’s the problem: we’re not allowed to talk about that. Apple didn’t talk much about what’s in QuickTime at their public WWDC keynote. Now, they’ll start explaining all the details at sessions at WWDC. Some of our readers are at those sessions, but because the entire conference is under a non-disclosure agreement, they can’t talk about them. In fact, in the past, I’ve contacted PR to try to get information based on a report and was told by upset Apple PR representatives that I should not even be asking the question, and that it was a real problem that someone had told me what they had heard in a session. Even more surreal, Apple has told me that I’m not allowed to know about things that are printed in descriptions of sessions from WWDC posted on their website. Apple will happily charge you a couple grand to go to California to their session, but they won’t share information with the press.

What’s the message to the press?

Repeat our hype and our PR. Ignore the technical details. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Memo’s ongoing quest to get his application MSARemote on the iTunes App Store has hit what is hopefully its last rejection today, this time because one of the screens “infringes an Apple trademark image.”

This is a reasonably well documented failure mode, so hopefully this is the final invisible, electrified hurdle they expect Memo to sense and clear before MSA Remote is made available.

In the meantime, Memo has published a new video displaying the app controlling VDMX [on CDMo] and Ableton Live [on CDMo, on CDMu], and showcasing its velocity sensitive keyboard.

MSA Remote + VDMX + Ableton Live from Memo Akten on Vimeo.

Via: Twitter @memotv. The CDM account is @cdmblogs. I’m @jaymis, and Peter is @peterkirn.