Alchemy available in logic now

[waltercruz]

found! thanks

[Jace-BeOS]

Thank you for the info. 183-PPI seems a bit on the low end to me. Yes I sit close to my displays (to avoid wearing glasses sometimes, when looking at details).

On the low end? Then you want a smaller display... go 5" if you want ultra high ppi!

I'm thinking you're maybe missing the point of high PPI...?

The smaller the display, the smaller the content and the smaller the workspace. I don't want either. I want a 22" to 27" display with lots of screen space AND resolution (PPI) that allows sharp text and the manipulation of my camera raw images with less (or zero) zooming. The point of high PPI is to create content with pixels that are too small to see (ie: "retina"). The result is sharp text without the blur of antialiasing or jagged ugliness of aliasing.

Essentially, what you see in print, at 300 dpi or higher, but on a computer screen. It's been a long time coming and it's still not the standard yet. Annoyingly.

[T-CM11]

I'm thinking you're maybe missing the point of high PPI...?

Not at all, I'm talking about devices that are on the market now - not about what anyone would like there to be.

[dnekm]

This is really just to satisfy my own curiosity.....

Can anyone who has the new Apple Alchemy tell me - have you looked at the preset files? Are they still plain text? Is your personal info still in there?

Or has the copy protection vanished completely.....

Just curious...

[Sampleconstruct]

However is interested in some fresh sounds for Alchemy 2 in Logic X, check out my new library Resurrection for Alchemy 2 here.

[basslinemaster]

Why have they made the interface all 'flat'? Do they even know why? I guess because somebody said it was 'modern', so that therefore = 'good'. It doesn't.

[trimph1]

Why have they made the interface all 'flat'? Do they even know why? I guess because somebody said it was 'modern', so that therefore = 'good'. It doesn't.

The way it was done makes one suspect that someone on the design crew got it into their heads that the clean "modern" look was the way to go.

But then, we are talking about Apple here

[ShawnG]

well, It's better than the ES2 type spaceship GUI anyway. and If we're being shallow, I would rather look at the new Alchemy than the old one.



nothing really wrong with the old one, but it is a preferred look?

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

well, It's better than the ES2 type spaceship GUI anyway. and If we're being shallow, I would rather look at the new Alchemy than the old one.



nothing really wrong with the old one, but it is a preferred look?

i much prefer the newer one. the only thing is that the performance section looks a little sparse. perhaps, if the 8 assignable knobs were bigger

[Jace-BeOS]

Flat design is a STUPID fad that is the opposite of what should be going on in UI design. Computers are difficult enough without having to guess at what every sparse and unintuitive thin line is on the screen and what they're for (if anything), and the font selections associated with flat design, especially by Apple's current and shitty designers, lead to readability that is shit. Apple has the greatest legacy for UI design education, but the people that have that knowledge are not in charge, are no longer present, and the hipsters of "different for the sake of different" and "clean" minimalism are in charge. What a damned waste of decades of research into human-computer interfacing.

The people that embraced this bullshit design style fad have never once produced any valid logic to justify it. Like people overusing the mostly meaningless term "warmth" for audio, flat look hipsters use and abuse the word "clean" to justify flat design.

I cannot wait till this stupid shit fad dies (and everyone previously raving about it pretends like they hadn't been; saying "I always thought it was dumb"). Like big hair in the 80s, people should look back and say "WTF were we thinking??" They should do that right now, in fact.

One of the reasons for this fad spreading so quickly is that tasteless and uncomplicated imagery is cheap and easy. Quality designers skilled with complex technique and tools are paid shit these days. Corporate cheapassness is likely a contributor to the spread of this fad. Why keep a design department of focused skills when you can get your existing programmers or marketing folks to do some simple clip art style line drawings in Adobe Illustrator as part of the "do more with less" mantra? Ditch the designers and illustrators because they cost too much. Who needs the ability to create fine details and textures when we can leave everything minimal and drab under the flag of "clean"?

Fits the economic regression perfectly.
[Edit: AND the USA's antiintellectualism]

[Jace-BeOS]

[Edited]

As for Alchemy... I like the darker feel, but that's all. It's not horrible, and I've seen much worse, but the colors suck. It's also low contrast, therefore hard on the eyes, and the controls are too small (all of which are standard Apple failings since iOS 7; who'd have thought that Apple would become synonymous with shitty design??).

Making fine adjustments on tiny knobs isn't any more sensible on screen than it is with real knobs in real life. UI design isn't arbitrary. We have over a century of industrial design that builds upon itself, where we see how humans and machines interact better or worse depending on various factors of control design.

If these flat fad hipsters are serious about going against skeuomorphic concepts, they utterly failed by way of keeping the same objects: Knobs, buttons, sliders, panels, tabs.

Why not use scrollable/dragable shapes and text boxes like Absynth? Well, you can go read a thread of people complaining about Absynth's lack of intuitiveness, which is why knobs get used more often than such non-real-world concepts as draggable numerical value fields.

Knobs don't actually belong on a flat surface to begin with. The computer screen has no tactile features. Touch screens are barely an improvement on that. The techno fantasy in fiction of "holographic" interfaces is beyond ludicrous impracticality (and physically impossible). Screen interaction is a linear x/y affair via mouse interaction; no depth, nothing to retain grip on objects for circular or other nonlinear motions. It doesn't change much with touch-based controls because there's still nothing to grab onto. Adding a z-plane with pressure sensitivity doesn't help this (though it does provide a new natural way to interact and I'm all for its existence, if not sure as to its execution). Rotating flat, non-tactile "objects" with gestures is possible, but it's inefficient and awkward in smaller diameters of rotation (or whatever the correct math term is).

These controls (buttons, knobs, sliders, tabs, panels) exist on computer UIs because they exist in our physical world. They are familiar abd thus intuitive. They're more or less instantly readable to non-computer-tech people who have spent their lives functioning in a tactile world with a full 4 dimensions.

At least, they were. Thanks to the flat fad, this is no longer true. Now people have to poke and swipe and guess at random, based on their history of personal experience with computer UIs of the past. Now people miss things. Now the visual language is inconsistent and beyond vague. People growing up with flat design UI have more time to discover things but "a new generation growing up with this stuff" is not an excuse to dispose of intuitive connections to physical objects. Maybe if your culture was entirely deaf and used sign language as a default form of communication... But even then. Objects have to look like something.

The skeuomorphics are still there. The actual functional concepts have not changed at all. There are still buttons, knobs, switches, sliders, tabs, and panels. No one invented a better language for interaction (partially because it's hard to displace a proven methodology, and partially because there's probably little else that is possible on a flat surface in the first place). The flat fad hipsters just re-skinned the existing skeuomorphic system so it looks different. The only change has been a massive degradation in readability.

Massive Fail.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

The people that embraced this bullshit design style fad have never once produced any valid logic to justify it

i'm guessing enough people prefer it that they don't need to

[whyterabbyt]

The skeuomorphics are still there. The actual functional concepts have not changed at all. There are still buttons, knobs, switches, sliders, tabs, and panels.

If you think they're still there, you've misunderstood the term. Its not about the functional concepts. Its about the representation of those elements, more specifically, the representation of redundant aspects of that functionality as ornamentation.

A skeuomorph /ˈskjuːɵmɔrf/ is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues from structures that were necessary in the original

[Jace-BeOS]

Thanks for that correction. I guess I mean that the lack of those cues can't be total, so skeuomorphism is necessary to some degree.

[Jace-BeOS]

The people that embraced this bullshit design style fad have never once produced any valid logic to justify it

i'm guessing enough people prefer it that they don't need to

Maybe, but we are talking about a market that dictates what consumers will have, not the idyllic myth of the free market where demand always creates supply. With objects like phones, that have very successfully taken on the sense of personal expression and style, rather than merely being tools, marketing has a huge ability to override effective design. The people clamoring to stand out as individuals, despite the actual herd mentality, or who desire constant feeling of newness and desire novelty to excite them (to combat a dreary wage slave existence) are prime targets for consuming flashy visuals over less flashy and more mundane functionality. These people may or may not be a majority, as well. The people that are most vocal aren't necessarily a majority (look at me, shouting from every rooftop). People will embrace discomfort for style (how many sports cars and high heeled shoes are sold daily??!!). It doesn't justify the style as a standard or median for all people.

Then there's cheapness (as i mebtioned in my prior rant). My dad has no aesthetic sense, so aesthetics impact his purchases hardly at all. He also can barely use a remote control, but he acquired an android phone (far inferior to Apple's UI) because it was offered free. I was astounded at how bloated and cluttered the thing was but he just presumes his ignorance is the problem, rather than the design (he's incorrect, but is historically the kind of person to always submit to authority and presumed knowledge of others).

I may be mistaken, but the flat fad was initially driven by cheap products and entrenched companies ("free product" and "IT department/corporate entrenchment) with a history of simplistic design (google/droid, Microsoft) before Apple jumped on that bandwagon and made it inescapable for the rest of us (as Apple is a massive trend setter, mostly due to the reputation of design greatness it once earned, and is burning, as well as their recent and continuing financial success being the thing everyone wants to emulate).

I think another facet is that the people who seem to prefer this style have already learned enough to get by in spite of it's shortcomings (learned from the prior visual styles they grew up learning in computing technology). They were there for the good design and learned interaction with it.

Putting this flat crap in my mother's hands (or anyone else not versed in decades of computing, or who has cognitive or visual disabilities) results in a hugely reduced level of effectivity and ability. If we target only those with prior experience (and full faculties), we leave out a huge percentage of humanity. We aren't yet at the point of every human being being intimately grown alongside these gadgets. Even if we were, the learning curve for the young (and again, the disabled) is greatly increased with the flat design. Accessibility isn't just for the disabled. It's for efficiency and comfort.

The iOS 6 and prior design was ideal for my mother and many like her. The iOS 7 and later design ruined everything about the interaction that made an iPhone an accessible device for her. I've seen this case example repeated by many others since. It's not just a lack of history with computers. She's used computers in the workplace for decades, but she just seems to have some kind of disability with certain types of cognition and motor skills.
Talking of accessibility... It's not just the formally disabled. Plus, accessibility for the formally disabled has also degraded with this flat dedign fad.

[edited for typos and clarity]