Tag Archives: iPhone

State of browser/OS/device usage on Underdog of Perfection, June 2012

I just had a look at my Google Analytics stats for this site. I made some interesting observations.

First, I saw iOS, iPhone and iPad showing up as separate devices. I wondered if iOS was a composite of both, but I realized Google was actually counting them separately. Looking at the daily stats it was clear that they made this switch on May 29, where before that date iPhone and iPad were being reported, and afterward it was just iOS. I’m not sure why they did that, but I am sure there was a very deliberate reason behind it.

Anyway, uncovering this switch was not relevant to my data observations, so I changed the date range to only encompass dates after the switch, June 1 to 20.

Here’s what I found:

True, I am a Mac user, and have for a long time favored Safari (although I recently switched my default browser to Chrome). But I don’t really spend that much time admiring my own work here on the blog. (Yes… not that much time.) So I don’t think my own activity skews the data here too much.

Do I then think this reflects the Internet as a whole? Absolutely not. I’ve learned over time that most of the people visiting my blog are stumbling upon specific posts based on a Google search, and these are almost always posts that are about diagnosing and fixing particular Mac-related problems. So, Safari’s dominance is logical (especially if Mobile Safari for iOS is lumped in here, which I have to assume is the case).

It’s nice to see Internet Explorer under 10%. And that’s all versions of Internet Explorer. But… what the heck is RockMelt? Yes, I am asking the two of you who use it.

Yes, even despite my blatant and unrepentant Apple bias, Windows still slightly edges out Mac in the stats. Interesting, then, that Safari is the most popular browser, since I suspect there are even fewer Windows Safari users than there are RockMelt users. But of course, we’re back to iOS. If you combine Mac and iOS, the total is well above that for Windows, and explains Safari’s #1 spot on the browser list.

Among mobile operating systems, iOS demonstrates a Windows-in-the-late-’90s level dominance. This despite the fact that Android famously holds greater market share in the US. Yes, my content will naturally skew my stats Apple-ward, but this data also, I think, reinforces the idea that iOS users actually use the web a lot more than Android users do.

BlackBerry and Nokia… how cute. Where’s Windows Phone?

And finally, we have mobile screen resolution. Now that Google doesn’t separate iPhone and iPad anymore, this is pretty much the way to distinguish between them in the stats. These resolutions are not the actual resolution of the screens but the pixel-doubled effective resolution used in the web browsers on Retina Display devices. 320×480 is the iPhone (even though the iPhone 4 and 4S have 640×960 screens), and 768×1024 is the iPad (even though the new iPad has a 1536×2048 display).

0x0? Really?

What I think is most significant here though is not the iPhone/iPad split at all, interesting as it is. It’s the fact that once you get past those, there’s no standard whatsoever on Android. That’s something to remember for those of us working on Responsive Web Design.

The real reason Android is (and has always been) in trouble

Over on Daring Fireball, John Gruber links to a Business Insider piece by Jay Yarow, called “Android Is Suddenly in a Lot of Trouble.”

Gruber responds:

It’s not that Android is suddenly in a lot of trouble — it’s that a lot of people are suddenly realizing that Android has been in trouble all along.

Exactly. But he doesn’t go on to mention why it’s been in trouble all along (though as I recall, he has in the past). I’ve seen plenty of reports, like this one from comScore that iPhones use WiFi networks significantly more than Android phones in the U.S. and U.K. This is one way of measuring the qualitative differences in how people use iPhones compared to how they use Android phones. You could also talk about app revenue, for instance.

All of these measurements and analysis revolve around one clear conclusion, especially when one considers how people end up walking out of a store with either an iPhone or an Android phone. Carriers are pushing Android because they can control the experience more. They’re giving away Android phones as stock upgrade models when customers’ contracts come up. People who don’t even care about owning a “smartphone” are bringing home Android phones because that’s just what the sales rep at the store recommended.

Android is in trouble because a lot of its users (the majority? the vast majority?) are just using it as a phone. It’s a commodity. A lot of the people buying it don’t really know or care what it is, and will never actively use its full potential. It’s just a phone. It may be capable of much more, but if it’s not being used for more, what difference does that make?

People who go into a store wanting to purchase a smartphone predominantly choose the iPhone. Not all of them, of course. Tech-savvy people do choose other smartphone platforms, including Android, especially those who want to tinker with the system. But the rest take whatever they are told to buy by their carriers’ sales reps.

This is the biggest reason Android tablets haven’t taken off, and it’s been discussed too. There’s a built-in market for the apathetic purchase of an Android smartphone. But no one (well, I hope) is walking into a cellular carrier’s store and saying “I want a tablet. What tablet do you recommend?” People who want a tablet don’t just want a tablet; overwhelmingly they want an iPad. Most people who don’t want an iPad don’t want a tablet at all. (Almost) everybody needs a phone.

The problem for the carriers, and the reason they’ve been promoting Android, has typically been that Apple retains too much control (from the carriers’ perspective) over the iPhone. That’s not likely to change, but with Windows Phone, suddenly the carriers have other options. Microsoft is definitely keeping a tighter rein on Windows Phone than Google does with Android, but with Windows Phone, the carriers still have options they don’t get with the iPhone. (Not that this lack of control has prevented them from selling millions of the things.)

If Verizon is serious about pushing Windows Phone (along with the fact that they still sell huge numbers of iPhones), then we’ll soon begin to see just how Android was, as Gruber says, in trouble all along. The success it has achieved to date was largely dependent upon carriers pushing it on unsuspecting or indifferent customers. If they stop doing that…

#rpm12 day 5: Pocket Symphonies

Progress on the RPM album continues. Five days in, I have seven tracks finished, two more in progress, and I’m hovering around 35 minutes (one of the two minimum requirements of the challenge). And there’s a lot more to come.

The most notable achievement of the day, however, is that I have settled on a final title for the album. I had been tentatively calling it i, owing to the fact that its central conceit is that all sounds on the album are being produced on an iPhone. But I was never totally happy with that title.

Then this morning, it hit me: Pocket Symphonies. The term was coined by Brian Wilson (or, if Wikipedia is to be believed, his publicist Derek Taylor) in 1966, used to describe what might be considered his crowning achievement as a composer and producer: the brilliantly crafted hit single “Good Vibrations”.

It is not my intention in the least to claim that what I’m producing this month is even from the same planet of artistic achievement as the greatest pop single ever recorded. But I think the idea of a “pocket symphony” is intriguing, and while Wilson simply meant that his song packed the compositional structure of a symphony into a 4-minute package, I am taking it in an entirely different direction.

I’ve been asked if I had considered also using my iPad in recording this album. No, is my answer. It’s not that I wouldn’t want to try it; many of the apps I’m using have fuller-featured iPad versions, and there are other great music apps that exist only for the iPad. But the thing that I find most compelling for this project is that every sound on it is coming from a device that I carry around in my pocket.

I suspect that Brian Wilson could not have imagined in 1966 that, in his lifetime, millions of people would be carrying around portable music studios in their pockets, masquerading as phones. And while only a small fraction of us iPhone owners are using them as musical instruments, the potential is there, for everyone. A “pocket symphony” means something in 2012 that was beyond the farthest realm of possibility in the mid-’60s. (Come on, Star Trek had only just premiered a month before “Good Vibrations” was released.)

And so, Pocket Symphonies it is. It’s exciting to watch this nebulous concept begin to take shape as the month wears on.

#rpm12 day 4: Where the line between instrument and composition is blurred

A quandary: What do you do when you’re not sure if you’re really creating music yourself, or just manipulating an interactive composition by someone else?

In the past, the only place this situation would likely have occurred is at an art installation in a museum, but what happens when that art installation is in your pocket?

I suppose in some ways the situation is akin to sampling. Or is it?

The key question all of the above leads to is this: What exactly is Bloom, the iPhone app by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers? Besides an app, I mean.

Is it an instrument? Is it an interactive composition? Is it a piece of art?

And, after you’ve found a passable answer to each of these questions, another: If you record the output of an app like Bloom, who is the composer? Can you release it on an album? Do Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers receive composer credits?

The questions have both philosophical and practical implications. On one hand, you fall down the rabbit hole of the eternal, unanswerable question: What is art? On the other, more mundane, tangible concerns: If I put this on my album, is it copyright infringement? Or, at least, is it dishonest to take credit for the composition?

I don’t have answers to any of these questions, but I’m pondering them a lot this morning, because a portion of my music-making activities last night was devoted to the creation of a piece of music using Bloom.

To further complicate matters, consider this: Bloom consists of a simple touch interface that controls a set of predefined algorithms within the app: tones, scales, repetition and delay. Those four parameters (and probably more; I’m just going by what I perceive happening within the app as I use it) were defined by Eno and Chilvers, with some options being configurable by the user.

The user “plays” this “instrument” by tapping in different places on the screen at different times. But the app also generates tones on its own. There’s a background wash of sound that the user does not directly control, and if the app is left alone long enough, it will randomly begin “playing” notes itself.

It seems clear to me that if you just start up the app and let it go without touching the screen, you’re not really composing anything. (Or are you, John Cage?) If you start tapping the screen, you are now “playing” the “instrument.” But since so much of how the app works was defined (with plenty of built-in randomness) by the developers of the app, how much of the sound produced is really your composition, and how much is theirs?

The more you add, the more I think you are the composer. What if you overlay multiple tracks of Bloom within your DAW? That’s what I did: I ended up recording three separate passes of Bloom: one panned hard left, one panned hard right, and the other in the center. (In an interesting twist on the question at the beginning of the previous paragraph, on the center channel I didn’t actually tap the screen at all until about 20 seconds before the end of the piece.) What if you take it one step further and make Bloom merely one track in a multi-track recording featuring other instruments?

With a musical tool like Bloom, there’s no clear line to be drawn between instrument and composition, between app developer and composer and performer. And maybe that’s a good thing, philosophically. But I’m always nagged by those practical concerns: Can I really call the recording of my Bloom performance my own? It seems to me that if there’s a line anywhere, it can most clearly be drawn at the idea of layering multiple tracks of Bloom, or of using Bloom along with other instruments, because it is at that point where the resulting sound is not something that could have been created by Bloom itself.

Let’s take this all one step further: Reflecting on all of the concerns I have above, the only aspect of the discussion that troubles, rather than inspires, is legal. Am I infringing copyright if I record myself playing Bloom and put it on my album? Why is that even a question? Copyright is broken. The fact is, there are very few original ideas, especially in music. Everything is borrowed. The cognitive dissonance that arises when we try to suppress that free exchange of ideas, which is an inherent part of human expression, can be paralyzing.

Or, you can just not worry about it. I’m trying.

#rpm12 day 3: A certain sameness

No profound personal reflection today, just some mundane observations on my efforts last night to continue exploring new territories in iPhone-based music making.

Not so much exploration. That’s the failure. Last night I did precisely what I had been trying to avoid: I went back and spent almost all of my time tinkering with and perfecting the piece of music I had made the night before, instead of setting it aside and cranking out something new.

All is not lost, as I did start working on a new piece of music during a brief break yesterday afternoon, which will be entirely composed and arranged using the Xenon app.

But my goal of making music that is more experimental is getting a bit off track. I feel like tonight I have to record an album’s worth of extended free-form improvisations as penance. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.

The good news is, the track I tinkered with sounds great!