Nov 30th, 2016 - Category: Communication
What a month! It started with the vocal backlash of the tech community against the new MacBook Pro which prompted my post, “The Rise of the Incompetent Experts,” continued with the elections, and culminated with our fascinating trip to Cuba which I photographed with the new iPhone 7+. Along the way, the post, “Acoustics – Apple’s Future is ‘Ear’” explored the interesting acoustics related idea that Apple may be paving the way for an audio user interface accessed through the soon to be released Apple AirPods.
Despite what might seem like missteps, Apple definitely has a well thought out plan and acoustics will continue to play a major role. How could it be otherwise? They made the first commercially viable MP3 player with the iPod and pioneered the first digital music ecosystem with iTunes. Also, many people don’t remember that cellphones used to have proprietary audio connectors. Apple was the first manufacturer to standardize on the 1/8’ headphone jack. The BBC News post, “The 19th Century plug that’s still being used” is wonderful if you want the full story.
As for the title of this post, it comes from another major change in the world of audio recording that’s all but forgotten: the wire recorder. This is strange because it is still the recording format with the longest history, over 70 years! ArsTechnica wrote an excellent, in-depth article about it recently, “Forgotten audio formats: Wire recording.” Along the way, the article revisits Woody Guthrie’s recordings, the first audio bootlegging, and its impact on the language in phrases such as ”wire tap,” “on the wire,” and “wired for sound.”