Apple Announces AtticAuthor

I just ran across this on a tech newswire and thought it might be of interest to some people. Not as much hype as GarageBand, but still, perhaps, intriguing.

Have you ever wanted to write with the subtle, dry, almost impenetrable wit of Vladimir Nabokov? The structured, exquisite prose of Saul Bellow? The demanding, righteous sentences of Philip Roth? Do you only dream of composing melodic, mellifluous paragraphs like Pulitzer winner Michael Chabon? Well, today your dreams become reality. Apple is proud to announce an add-on package to our popular iLife '04 suite of applications -- including the easiest to use music playback and purchasing software available, iTunes, and the new, exciting GarageBand music composition software. Today we bring you AtticAuthor.

No more struggling for the right word, the perfect turn of phrase, the most expedient and direct yet elegant metaphor. AtticAuthor takes care of all that for you. With over 1,000 ApplePhrases, and an additional 2,000 available in the optional PenPack, AtticAuthor will have you immediately writing short stories, plays and even novels. Never has creative writing been so easy. And AtticAuthor takes care of the details for you. Like this passage from Updike and that one from Dickens? No problem. AtticAuthor smoothly transitions from one style to the other, across locales, time periods and even languages. Your half-baked detective plots no longer need suffer from semi-literate cacophonies of atrocious slice-and-dice prose: AtticAuthor puts John Cheever's pen right in your hand; you'll be churning out apocalyptic military spy novels with overt right-wing Christian undertones one after the other, each book in the voices of master storytellers of today and the past several centuries.

Apple's AtticAuthor will be available via the online and retail Apple Stores by the end of February, but you can pre-order now. AtticAuthor: Classic literature, your way.

Comments

[san]

In all seriousness, as skills and techniques that heretofore have taken months, years or even decades to perfect are readily available through software, will we refocus on and exalt the quality of the underlying content, or will society write off artistic endeavors as mere smoke, mirrors and Macintosh?

[Tony Walsh]

It's a Photoshop-filter for text! Initially dazzling as it injects mundane work with Zazz, yet quickly tiresome as students and cubicle-monkeys use it to excess (much to the admiration of their peers). After society at large comes to the inevitable realization that it was never much more than a silly sleight-of-hand trick, the real artists chuckle to themselves and continue to create actual works of art.

[Hetty Bembler]

Is this some kind of sarcastic comment about the creative soundness of Garageband? If so, it's totally inappropriate. No creation exists in a void, and if people decide to make music based on other music, they will be doing so with thousands of years of cultural reappropriation to back them up. Shared communication and appropriation of that communication is a big part of what makes culture.

Sure, lots of people are just going to use stock loops to "make music," but it looks to me you can use your own music, take samples from other sources etc. And that makes for the kind of production that exists everywhere today from indie hip-hop to the latest Madonna record. And it existed before the advent of sampling as well- they just used other instruments.

[Bryan]

This...is for real?

[Walter]

Very interesting. This program only makes me like Apple even more, even if I'm not currently using their computers. I really believe that the public in general is far too discouraged when it comes to creative writing, and if this works the way it's supposed to, it could give people a huge incentive to start trying.

It's real value, imo, is not that it'll let anybody write crap, hit a button, and turn it into something maybe semi-decent. Rather, it's that this process invites a direct, reflective comparison over a person's choice of words, or the structure of a sentence, paragraph, etc. A lot of writers attest to reading other people's writing not merely to read them, but to understand the process behind them, and AtticAuthor (not the best name, I think) can help lay bare the process even more.

The only real question is how dirty people will feel using an 'ApplePhrase'.

[Patrick Gavin]

Yes, and Bungie will finally be releasing "Pimps at Sea" in February as well.

http://www.bungie.com/products/pimps/pimpsatsea.htm

[Patrick Gavin]

Yes, and Bungie will finally be releasing "Pimps at Sea" in February as well.

http://www.bungie.com/products/pimps/pimpsatsea.htm

[Patrick Gavin]

Yes, and Bungie will finally be releasing "Pimps at Sea" in February as well.

http://www.bungie.com/products/pimps/pimpsatsea.htm

[san]

First, the initial comment to this post was mine -- perhaps that wasn't entirely clear -- because I wanted to use sarcasm to make a point without actually having anything over on anyone.

Second, Hetty: Inappropriate? Evaluation of mass-market technology on the creative product of contemporary artists is inappropriate? I think not. But in the event, I own GarageBand. I *love* GarageBand. It's marvelous, and entirely innovative for its price. I've used it to compose both loop-based tracks and original tracks via a MIDI keyboard. But it does signficantly lower the bar -- in cost, education, ease of use, and talent -- for producing polished compositions. What effect will this and other consumer-grade creative products have on art, art of all kinds? Of course all art is to some greater or lesser degree derivative, as all technology is derivative of its precursors. But eminently valid is exploration of the ways new technology will change creation of art and society's perception of that product.

I chose writing as my foil because it is one of the most difficult disciplines for which one could create such cookie-cutter tools. But the advance of canned art production tools on the consumer market is well worth our time in evaluating. And we can do that while still recognizing the marvel the technology itself represents.

[arson]

haha, that's funny...

[Hetty Bembler]

Didn't notice the name on that first post. :) Actually, I didn't even notice the first post.

But yes, I stand by my statement that it is in fact inappropriate. I understand your point and will concede that there will be countless low quality composers floating around everywhere, but many of them will undoubtedly lose interest. Maybe many won't? But also, there will be a handful who learn that it is a tool like any other tool and use it as such. There will be those who use it for things no one ever considered. Some will make boring techno remixes and some will create whole genres.

My point is, its a tool. Just like a guitar. Sure its not as physically demanding, but perhaps its just as complicated but with an entirely different skill set. Look at the magnetic fields. Their first few albums were created almost entirely with things like Band in a box. Yet they made pop music that was really very distinctive.

Garage band will be worth it if even one of the thousands of kids who is going to grow up with it uses it as a launching pad for greatness, and I'm sure there will be more than that.

Beyond that, what exactly is the bar being lowered from? How necessary is it (or should it be) to be a virtuoso? What if you are tirelessly devoted to your art but have never learned to play a note in your life? It is simply a different discipline. And like all art, the true greats will slave over their work like anyone else who truly considers what they do to be worthwhile.

I have to go catch a shuttle, but I just want to offer up another perspective- that the potential good far outweighs the potential bad of such products.

Peace.

PS Speaking of derivative art- almost every aspect of Beyond good and evil is derivative of something- yet it is the best game I've played in years! Cheers!

[san]

Argument: It's still appropriate to cast a wary eye on a flood of consumer creative tools saturating markets previously locked by the illuminati -- granted often self-ordained. It's appropriate to think about what will happen, as per my initial comment to the post: what *will* happen? I'm much less afraid that musical innovation will suffer than I am that the public, society at large, will discount it because the tools have lost their mystique and are so much easier to use. Same for film, and were it to ever happen -- perhaps unlikely -- same for my fictional AtticAuthor.

No argument: "Beyond Good and Evil" is superb. And the publisher slashed the price to $20 at major retailers within weeks of its release. I was plannig on buying it at $50, but got quite the bargain.

[Hetty Bembler]

Discount how, though? They may very well tend to look at them in a different way, but I don't understand how that is a bad thing. I have to admit that I am a populist when it comes to the arts. I really believe people would all be better off with access to tools that allow them to create.

Film may yet be too expensive for most, but do you wonder if people wondered the same things about still photography? About the hundreds of thousands of personal images and photoblogs that populate the internet? Or did putting good cameras cheaply in the hands of the masses do something positive? Or did it simply change the art? Not for better or worse...just different.

The music industry is in a huge state of flux right now, for something a little to the right of what we're talking about. The means of distribution has been taken out of their hands. And now tons of kids get all their music from the internet, and a lot of them have learned about music they would have otherwise never happened upon. And their tastes are growing, and they're sharing those tastes with their peers. The CD may be on its way out- or perhaps into the hands of collectors as it loses value to all but those who consider its visual and tactile components as essential as the aural- but recorded music will undoubtedly continue on in some new form for quite some time. Maybe this is an analog to the change that could occur if these tools make it into the hands of the masses.

Like you said earlier too, writing is one of the most difficult disciplines, especially to do well. But it is a lot different than music, where there is already a lot of shorthand as to what sounds good to people and what doesn't. One could argue that today's top 40 is already the product of such cookie cutter production.

One could also argue that people have bene wondering these very same things since the advent of the home multi-track, or protools, or ReBirth or the Mellotron, or any number of tools that made it easier for people to make music. Or Wacom tablets for that matter.

I am a mac lover. I am a mac user, but Garageband is only going to make it to less than 4% of all computer users anyway, so how does it make it that much different than any of the tools I mentioned above? In my opinion, it doesn't.

And I guess that is my take on your question as to the potential shift in value of the creative arts if the great unwashed masses are given the tools to do as they please. I don't think there is any danger of people giving up on it. But I also don't think that most people care about content at all, beyond a small percentage. And I don't think I'm being prejudicial or elitist, I'm merely observing the large scale consumption of media in America, and perhaps the world.

[bryan young]

last week Brian Eno was on TechTV's The Screen Savers and remarked that he can't play an instrument. Well I found that thought pretty interesting. Eno is really well respected as a producer and composer, but he can't play an instrument. He isn't necessarilly thought of as a musician though. Perhaps that is sort of the way to think about sample artist and what not -- as composers rather than musicians.

Personally, I have no problem thinking of sample artists as mucisians but I think using that mindset of compsers is an interesting way to go.

[san]

Hetty: For the record, I'm a follower of samplers back to they days of Negativland and do, indeed, consider it an art form, a valid genre of contemporary music -- creative merit and all.

Bryan: That's a fascinating little tidbit about Eno. And also an interesting take on how to categorize sample artists: composers. Most composers play a traditional instrument for the purposes of working out a composition, but that ability is not by definition of the disicipline a prerequisite. And with samplers, samples, loops, etc. *are* their instruments.

[Hetty Bembler]

That TechTV interview was great. Eno's discussion of his keyboard idea (a keyboard programs itself to the users liking, as opposed to the user having to learn to program it) was completely great, and pretty feasible, I think. I hope the merger between TechTV and G4 doesn't ruin TechTV. Never seen G4 so I don't know if its good or bad, all I know is that they ran Wesley Crusher off of his own show. Also, I'd like to state for the record that Leo Laport is a huge perve and should be taken down at least one notch.

Speaking of composers, you guys should check out Girl Talk. Gregg's totally taking it to a whole other level.

I get that you do understand it san, I'm merely responding to your question of potential effects.

Keep on keepin on.

[Tony]

I'm fascinated by the evolution of this type of 'simplified sequencer' software.

It looks to me as though it's a fairly straight lineage from the old Soundtracker and Noisetracker public domain apps for the Atari ST and Amiga, through Codemasters' Music on the Playstation, GBA, etc, and on to Apple's GarageBand.

As a guy with no physical music skills (ie. I play no instruments), but a good ear for a tune, I played with Noisetracker back in the day and had the results spread all over the world through the mail-order public domain catalogues of the time.

What with having the internet these days, and the more advanced nature of a tool like GarageBand... surely a kid in the position I was in back then could feasibly build a career that way now?

[Tony]

I'm fascinated by the evolution of this type of 'simplified sequencer' software.

It looks to me as though it's a fairly straight lineage from the old Soundtracker and Noisetracker public domain apps for the Atari ST and Amiga, through Codemasters' Music on the Playstation, GBA, etc, and on to Apple's GarageBand.

As a guy with no physical music skills (ie. I play no instruments), but a good ear for a tune, I played with Noisetracker back in the day and had the results spread all over the world through the mail-order public domain catalogues of the time.

What with having the internet these days, and the more advanced nature of a tool like GarageBand... surely a kid in the position I was in back then could feasibly build a career that way now?

[Skrik]

Stephen King and John Grisham have been using AtticWriter for years. Haven't you been able to tell?

[outsider]

jpb ppyt psycholog zdrowa ywno nieruchomoci projektowanie stron agencja reklamowa soczewki kontaktowe nauka angielskiego agroturystyka opony klimatyzacja domy opieki akupunktura hydraulik projektowanie wntrz soha jpk paa ki wypadki tfrd jh sw jft pp fdr

[Allan]

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