For low-tech I meant analog as opposed to digital. And I meant nothing pejorative in non-tech; these days, there's fewer and fewer positive connotations in being techie.
we're on a technical forum, but "low tech" isn't inherently inferior. All the MIDI's in the world can't truly replace a good ol' acoustic sound. That's why we still have Orchaestras.
The other half, sure. To think that all tech people are welcoming the current portrayal of AI/LLM's/Generative Art is simply tone deaf. Some of the most cynical detractors are in fact highly technical people.
On the contrary, I wish this was dismissive. It's about time that the Overton window gets shifted about the overly nostalgic articles that get praised by "the right people", which means we need to "read the room" and share the same opinions.
It is an absolutely good thing that an inexpensive device is replacing an expensive one, and that impoverished children will be able to create music with an inexpensive iPad and will not be forced to learn obsolete methods to "finger" an instrument.
How to even start here..
Calling the ipad inexpensive will make people in most of the world to laugh at you (even the discounted stock of ipad 9th is unapproachable for many).
While a guitar at a local store (just looked it up) costs under 80 EUR, needs no apps, no power, no subscriptions, has no EOL, doesn't have a battery that will go bad.
Yes you need time to learn, but you do not necessarily need to invest more money with an analog instrument.
I’ve never seen a guitar under about $300US new that was actually playable without some serious attention from a guitar shop, and on the lower end they’ll probably just tell you there’s not much they can do to make it better. They may need frets filed down to remove rough edges, neck adjustments, to simply have the tuners replaced because they’re so poorly-made they basically don’t work, et c.
Guitars that cheap are similar to crappy small-key $40-80 electronic keyboards that can only sound like three notes at a time and sound terrible doing it—they’re so bad that they will tend to frustrate and turn off even a beginner.
I bought my German made mandolin that's like 100 years old for less than 10% of an ipad, and it'll never be obsolete, that's the whole point...
It'll always be up to date, I'll always find the parts to fix it, and even if one-day it somehow gets damaged beyond repair I can recycle it in my fireplace in about 30 seconds
I feel like people making your point don't see the fundamental difference between a functional tool like a hammer and an artistic tool like a musical instrument, and it's kind of scary tbh.
> I can recycle it in my fireplace in about 30 seconds
not disagreeing w/ anything else (beside responding to a sarcastic comment, usually 'caring for the children' [esp. out of place] is a decent giveaway + repeating 'inexpensive'); however burning stuff is not recycling. If anything it releases all the carbon (CO2 + CO) in the atmosphere, compositing in the ground is a tad better option, but the lacquer might prevent that part... for a while.
>Not more than burning my regular fire wood, and infinitely better than fossil fuel
Not recycling still, recycling would be making something out of it, e.g. a plate, a toy, whatever.
Another option is making fiberboard alike material out of it from sawdust.
Dunno about termites, it'd depend where you live, but then again, I am not sure how that came into the discussion. Anyway compost is used in gardening, so it's a form of recycling.
> It is an absolutely good thing that an inexpensive device is replacing an expensive one.
Professional musician (pianist) here. It’s an outlandish take on solving affordability by destroying acoustic instruments and replacing them with iPads. Let’s see someone play the Prokofiev Toccata in real time using Garageband, no MIDI files allowed.
Aside from whether the iPad is inexpensive or not, it just doesn't replace an actual piano or trumpet.
If your use case is really covered by the iPad, you could also make do with a refurbished corporate DELL costing half the price or 3 years ago's Surface Pro, same way the track makers were doing 2 decades ago.
So no, Apple's marketing would sure want us to think so, but impoverished children are probably not saved by 2024's thinner iPad in any significant way.
I can just visualize the post iPad high school jazz band -- twenty kids sitting in chairs with their tablets, rhythmically tapping virtual buttons on their touchscreen. One stands for her solo, tapping her screen at a different cadence. Oh, she's playing trumpet? I thought she was a saxophonist!
What artistry! What musicianship! Thank God for Apple and the new iPad!
There's a lot to break down here, but I'll take the less obvious angle. If you're calling the shiny new iPad an "accessible, inexpensive device for the impoverished", Apple's multi-billion dollar, decades long marketing has clearly failed you.
Yeah, how dare people have emotional connections with musical instruments! The great (and very inexpensive) iPad will finally allow humans to become equals and set poor people free. Nostalgia is exactly what's wrong with this world.
Yes, this is very over the top, but the iPad is neither inexpensive (compared to your $50 garage sale guitar and synthie) nor is it sufficient to make music.
People enjoy music from instruments not only because someone was able to compose a song on it, but because the instrument carries emotion, there is sweat and pain in learning it, people become masters of their instruments and have actual connections to them. The iPad is a powerful device for making music, sure. But it's not exactly the device I would choose to allow impoverished children to create music. And I, personally, enjoy music more when I know it's actual people playing instruments rather than just a producer mixing some stuff and only recording the singing. Calling playing an instrument obsolete and "fingering" is insulting.
I get your sentiment, but I feel like your view on iPads and there being no musicianship to it is just wrong. The instruments in garage band have velocity sensitivity and can be played expressively by tapping the screen just as you can tap the keys on a piano or hit the marimba with some mallets.
In fact on some of the synthesizers you gain an additional mode of expressiveness because you can adjust your input as you're playing notes, similar to MPE synthesizers like the Osmose.
An iPad is more than sufficient for making music.
I say this as someone that really enjoys playing my instruments (mostly guitars) and wouldn't trade the experience for an iPad ever.
I mean that's just a nonsense statement. You can say "make music (that I don't like)" but you 100% cannot say that an iPad is insufficient to make music when thousands of people do that every day and tens of thousands of people enjoy their output.
Between the fact that you think that entry-level instruments cost more than iPads, that somehow "fingering" an instrument is a bad or obsolete thing, and that you think iPads are affordable to the impoverished, I'm really not sure where to begin correcting you.
Just... yikes. I hate to be flippant, but you're so out of touch that my only thought is to tell you to touch grass.
Yeah, why learn to play an instrument with your caveman hands when you can rent an iPad and make something that sounds the same with the AI in Garageband!
I'm not so optimistic these days. Poe's Law has long since died. Even if this was misunderstood sarcasm, you can probably find this opinion around the net (mayeb even further down the post).
This was really poorly worded and sounded very elitist and dismissive, I trust this was not the intention.