[Yr7-10it] iPhone Ocarina

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

So Many iPhone Apps, So Little Time  By DAVID POGUE 
http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2009/02/05/technology/circuitsemail/


Who was it who wrote, "You're witnessing the birth of a third major 
computer platform: Windows, Mac OS X and iPhone"? Oh, right--that was me.

Anyway, there are now 15,000 programs available on the App Store ..
  
For the moment, let's use a single program as a case study. It's one of 
the most magical programs I've ever seen for the iPhone, and probably for 
any computer. 

It's Ocarina, named after the ancient clay wind instrument.

Once you install and open this program, your iPhone's screen displays 
four colored circles of different sizes. These are the "holes" that you 
cover with your fingers, as you would the holes on a flute. Then you blow 
into the microphone hole at the bottom of the iPhone, and presto: the 
haunting, expressive, beautiful sound of a wind instrument comes from the 
iPhone speaker.

Different combinations of fingers on those four "holes" produce the 
different notes of the scale. (You can change the key in Preferences--no 
doubt a first on a cellphone.) Tilting the phone up or down controls the 
vibrato.

Ocarina has become a mega-hit. 

YouTube videos show people playing their favorite songs on this thing 
with amazing skill. (The "Stairway to Heaven" arrangement, featuring four 
people playing their iPhones in harmony, is especially memorable.) 

The software company's Web site, www.Smule.com, even includes sheet-music 
pages that show you how to play well-known songs on Ocarina.

Ocarina takes advantages of the iPhone's microphone, speaker, touch 
screen, graphics and tilt sensor. Incredibly, though, it also exploits 
the iPhone's Internet connection and GPS, as well.

If you tap the little globe at the bottom of the screen, the screen 
changes. Now you see a map of the world--and you start hearing the 
Ocarina performance of one person, in one city (indicated by animated 
sound waves on the map), who's playing the thing *right now*. Sometimes 
it's the halting fumbles of a rank beginner; sometimes it's a lovely 
melody played by someone who's got the hang of it. You can hit a Next 
button to tune in to another stranger, and another, all around the world.

It's a brain-frying experience to know that you're listening to someone 
else playing Ocarina, right now, in real time, somewhere else on the 
planet. (And then you realize that someone, somewhere might be listening 
to *you*!)

The best part of this story isn't just that someone has turned a 
cellphone, for crying out loud, into a musical instrument with fantastic 
expressive potential. It's that hundreds of thousands of people have 
bought this program in just a few months--for $1 apiece.

Apple, which runs the store, keeps 30 percent of each sale. Even so, 
Ocarina demonstrates that a programmer can make a staggering amount of 
money from the iPhone store. It's a crazy new software model that I don't 
remember seeing anywhere else. It's not a boxed software program for 
$600, or even a shareware program you download for $25. It's a buck a 
copy.

The beauty here is that at these prices, there's very little risk in 
trying something out. How many software programs have you bought for your 
Mac or PC? Two? Four? Well, the average iPhone owner may wind up 
installing 10, 20 or 30 programs. In all, according to Apple, iPhone 
owners have downloaded 500 million copies of these programs. Half a 
billion--since last July.

There's a lot of gloom in the tech industry (and every industry, for that 
matter). But even when the economy is crashing down around us, there's 
still amazing power in a single good idea. And the one on display here--
pricing software so low that millions of people buy it without batting an 
eye--is turning a few clever programmers into millionaires. DavidPogue.com

--

Cheers people
Stephen Loosley
Victoria, Australia