Dolby Atmos through MacBook Pro speakers: DO NOT WANT

What are your thoughts on Dolby Atmos?

More specifically: what are your thoughts on Apple Music automatically playing songs in Dolby Atmos through laptop speakers?

My MacBook Pro has pretty great speakers (for built-in laptop speakers). I’m sitting here listening to Talking Heads’ Fear of Music, and I could tell immediately that there was some kind of surround effect going on. It was very disorienting — it created a physical sensation in my ears and almost started to give me a headache. Then I realized I could turn it off and instantly everything went back to normal.

I’m not entirely sure what kind of dark magic Dolby is employing with this (I’m sure it has something to do with reversing the polarity of the stereo channels or something nerdy like that), but I don’t understand why it’s being foisted upon us. It reminds me of the trend about a decade ago of every movie being made in 3-D, and even 3-D TVs that no one wanted. Eventually they caught on to the “no one wanted” part and now it’s not much of a thing. I hope Dolby Atmos on streaming services follows in short order!

Related: Why Your Atmos Mix Will Sound Different On Apple Music

Limitations inspire design

What makes great design? Why did design seem to take such a wrong turn in the ’80s and ’90s? What has prompted a partial resurgence of “great” design in recent years? And why am I asking all of these highly subjective questions?

My fascination with design first took hold in the early ’80s, and was largely attributable (along with my love of technology) to my experiences with the Atari 2600. I became obsessed with package design and logos, and I also became obsessed with the art of low-resolution, pixilated on-screen graphics.

My interest in “current” video games tapered off as the ’90s wore on, especially when the 3D polygon-based era began. All the new games just seemed ugly and stupid, even though, in an obvious way, they were more complex and more graphically detailed than the Atari games I loved as a child. Simultaneously, my fascination with logos and package design waned as both seemed to just get more obnoxious and overloaded with swooshes and swirls and gradients and shadows and beveled edges and all of the other excesses technological advances made possible.

I’ve wondered for a while what it was about blocky, bitmapped video game graphics that I found so aesthetically appealing. And, in much the same way, what it was about package design from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s that just seemed so right to me, even though they were a lot simpler, and made using much cruder technology, than what was happening in the “now.”

Finally, I realized it was limitations that were the key to the great designs I admired so much. The designers were up against strict limits to what was possible. Mastering these earlier, more difficult techniques required years of practice and experience. And butting up against those limits to produce something of quality required real creativity. This realization led me to the axiom:

Great design happens when designers’ creativity exceeds the limitations of the technologies they use.

Once I understood this, suddenly it made sense to me why so many of the low-budget shareware games I’d seen for the Mac over the years looked and felt like crap to me, even though on a surface level they were clearly more advanced than those old Atari games: it’s easy to create a game on a modern computer, using modern graphics software and object-oriented programming languages. You don’t have to have any particular skill or knowledge to do so. But, because it’s so easy to do passably, it’s much harder to do really well.

Pitfall! and Super Mario 64: Yes, strangely, I really do prefer the one on the left.

Atari 2600 programmers needed an immense amount of knowledge of the intricacies of the system, and the tricks to exploit its extremely limited, but quirky, technical capabilities. You didn’t get into programming games for the Atari 2600 unless you knew what you were doing. Well, OK… there was plenty of shovelware in the system’s later years, but the ratio of good to crap was much higher among the 700 or so games released during that system’s lifetime than it is for the tens of thousands of mostly worthless games currently available for the iPhone.

So then, what is it that has caused — to some extent — “great” design to re-emerge in recent years, even as technology has advanced even faster than before? I suspect it’s due to a reawakening among designers to the merits of the earlier ways of doing things. Letterpress, for instance, has experienced a massive resurgence of popularity lately. “Retro” design is popping up everywhere. Perhaps it’s just that the hipsters are taking over the world, but I think this renewed awareness of what made mid-century design so great has led to designers re-imposing those limitations on themselves. Technology has advanced far enough now that there’s almost nothing that can’t be done, including recreating the limitations of earlier analog technologies in the digital realm. Think of things like Hipstamatic for the iPhone: it takes your iPhone’s digital photos and makes them look like something from an old point-and-shoot camera from the ’60s. Or look at the background design on Web Designer Wall, a visual style that saw a surge in popularity about a year ago but that’s inspired by watercolor and ink techniques that were especially popular in the ’60s. Or look at video games like The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (among others) that brought a cel-shaded animation style to 3D polygon-based video game design.

These are just a few examples off the top of my head of modern designers imposing limitations on themselves to inspire their designs, now that technology no longer forces those limits directly. If you can do anything, it’s hard to do anything well. It’s too easy to get lazy or to simply lack direction and focus. In the past, technological barriers forced designers to focus. Now, they have to do it for themselves. Fortunately, that’s starting to happen.

Seriously, UPS… you had to TRY to do that much damage, right?

The other day I ordered a RAM upgrade for my new MacBook. I had contemplated buying it at Best Buy, but I balked at their price of $199. I went down to the Apple Store (no Internet on the Macs on display at Best Buy, and apparently they have the store wrapped in RF shielding, as I wasn’t even able to get a signal on my iPhone there, either), not expecting them to sell RAM upgrades, but at least knowing I could spend a few seconds on a display MacBook checking RAM prices at Ramjet. $69. So I ordered it as soon as I got home.

The package arrived today. Or at least what was left of it. Fortunately the RAM appears to be intact, no thanks to the best efforts of UPS to destroy it. The question of whether such a tiny product really needed to be shipped in such a huge box is another matter, but at least the RAM was shrouded in bubble wrap.

Here’s what I found at the front door:

ups_ram_7

And here’s the prize inside:

ups_ram_9

More photos after the jump…

And now I’m going to shut down my computer and install this RAM!

At this rate, what is the RIAA going to have left to protect?

riaadevil.jpgI’ve already made my opinion of the RIAA known, but this latest development is truly unbelievable.

Apparently, the RIAA now feels that CDs you’ve ripped for your own personal use are unauthorized. What ever happened to the long-standing clause in copyright law that allows the holder of content to make up to five copies for personal use? What of the fact that it’s built right into the stupid DRM that the RIAA has forced Apple to implement on iTunes that you can put purchased music on up to five computers (and, implicitly at least, an unlimited number of iPods synced to those computers)?

It is patently absurd that any kind of legal case to this effect could be made in the current technological climate. According to the RIAA, just about everyone who owns an iPod (or a similar device) is a thief, even if they’ve paid for every single song on the device.

Well guess what: fuck you, RIAA. We are not thieves, we are your customers. But maybe we shouldn’t be.

It’s here…

My new iBook arrived today! I am very excited about it… although my enthusiasm has somewhat been tainted by the whole China thing.

I knew Apple was “assembling” many of their products, such as the iPods, in China now, although I had previously assumed they were still “assembling” the computers in Mexico. It was just seeing “SHANGHAI CN” as the origination locale on the FedEx tracking site that did it for me. I realize they ship custom-built Macs direct from the factory, but for some reason I hadn’t put together that that meant FedEx would be receiving the package in China and delivering it two-day to my house.

I’m not entirely sure why this is bothering me as much as it is; I guess it’s just that I usually have some (illusory) distance from the fact that the things I am buying are being produced by what might as well be considered slave labor.

I guess I buy into the illusion Apple no doubt intends to engender in its customers that their computers are being assembled at a hippie love-in at Haight-Ashbury. (Why else would they boldly print “Designed by Apple in California” on a card you are forced to look at as you’re taking the computer from the box, while relegating “Assembled in China” to 3-point type on the undercarriage?)

Sure the blueprints are coming from California, but c’mon Steve, it’s time to crank down the reality distortion field: Apple computers are MADE IN CHINA. It’s not just that Chinese products still carry the no-longer-accurate stigma of poor quality. China is a vacuum sucking up manufacturing jobs not just from the United States, but also from the countries like Mexico that had previously taken manufacturing jobs from the U.S.

Now I’m not draping myself in the flag here. I’m not about protectionism. But there are a host of problems that go along with choosing to move your operations to a place like China, and by buying the products of those operations, I’m buying into that choice, like it or not.

So… it’s a bittersweet day for me. I can’t help thinking about those workers in Apple’s factory in Shanghai, and wondering what their lives are like.