This video captures Jordan Rudess‘s demo at the Windows 8 ”Build” Show. He kicks off with a prog synth jam, before moving on to demonstrations of his Wizdom music apps, MorphWiz & Tachyon, running on a 27″ Lenovo Windows 8 touchscreen computer.
The technical demos kick in around 9 minutes into the video.
via ouz1349
Microsoft today announced the global availability of Windows 8, the most radical change to its popular operating system since Windows 95.
Windows 8 is Microsoft’s reaction to Apple’s iPad – but it isn’t just an imitation. Instead, Microsoft has taken the technology drivers that led to the iPad – trends like miniaturization, increasingly affordable solid state drives, mobile computing and multitouch – and used them to create a new vision for Windows computing. While Apple created a new operating system, optimized for the tablet form factor, Microsoft has tried to use new technologies to create a new type of Windows.
?We have reimagined Windows,? says Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. ?Windows 8 brings together the best of the PC and the tablet.?
Today Apple made a variety of introductions at an event at the California Theater in San Jose, Calif.
Here are the key points on each introduction:
Universal Audio has announced ‘a complete re-imagination of the popular UAD-2 Powered Plug-Ins platform’.
Highlighted by the new flagship UAD-2 OCTO DSP Accelerator card, featuring eight SHARC processors, the UAD-2 Series offers new Custom and Ultimate software bundles and more affordable pricing for all UAD-2 SOLO, DUO, and QUAD DSP Accelerator models.
Rain Computers has released a new version of it?s Event Mini Audio Computer, the Event A2 (A for audio, 2 because it?s the second generation).
This is sort of the Windows parallel to the Mac mini – a $799 computer that packs a lot of power into a compact package.
Here’s what Rain has to say about the Event A2:
Since finding that the musical community was hungry for a low price, entry level system still capable of being the most powerful and stable platform for popular creative software like Pro Tools and Cubase, Rain has been on the hunt for ever increasing levels of power and flexibility while maintaining a budget-friendly price for those who can do without the ultimate in power (and expense).
?There are a lot of us here at Rain, including myself, who come from the songwriting and performance side of the music biz. We don?t need a super-power system to run a big studio; we?re just looking for a solid computer that will get out of the way while we?re doing a quick demo of a new song. That?s the type of artist Event A2 is perfectly designed for.? explained Rain Computers CEO, Kevin Jacoby.
Andy Hertzfeld, a member of the original Apple Macintosh development team, has some choice words for his former employer about the Mac Pro update that was introduced yesterday:
The next generation MacBook Pro announced today at WWDC looks fantastic. I ordered one immediately and can’t wait to start using it.
Unfortunately, the euphoria was negated by my deep disappointment with the meagre, lame update that was silently bequeathed to the Mac Pro today.
The Mac Pro is Apple’s top of the line, expandable Macintosh, aimed at users who need lots of computing power and disk storage, like programmers or other professionals. I have an 8-core Mac Pro with 16 GB of RAM in my home office that was an amazing machine when I acquired it in 2008, but it’s not so hot by today’s standards. I’ve been looking to get a new one for a while now, but Apple hadn’t updated the hardware for two years, so I was looking forward to finally seeing a new one announced today, with essential features like Thunderbolt and USB 3.0.
When they didn’t mention the Mac Pro during the keynote presentation, I got worried but figured they’d update it anyway, it just wasn’t worthy of mention from the high pulpit of the consumer-oriented keynote. And sure enough, when I visited store.apple.com, there was a little “new” icon above the Mac Pro. But I was in for a shock when I clicked on the link to check it out.
The specs for the “new” Mac Pro had hardly changed, except for a tiny, inconsequential processor clock bump. Still no Thunderbolt, still no USB 3.0, no SATA III or RAM speed improvements – it seems like it’s stuck in time in 2010. The only thing that’s still high-end about it is the bloated price.
Apple had interesting news about both the iOS and OS X operating systems, yesterday. And the updates for its MacBook Air and Pro lines should maintain and even grow their popularity.
The relatively minor updates to the $2,500 Mac Pro, and the lack of fanfare given to them, suggest that the line is becoming too small of a niche to warrant much attention from the company.
What do you think? Are giant towers becoming dinosaurs, even for power users like musicians, graphic artists and programmers?