Hi, Everyone!

Along with the new year, I have given my blog a new home, and therefore this Posterous is now deprecated and will no longer be updated. I apologize for any confusion, but going forward you'll find my blog here:

http://blog.mariusmasalar.me/

I look forward to welcoming all of you to my new online home, so drop in and say hello!

I suppose it's a testament to my geekiness that in a whirlwind of work, I looked forward to "taking a break" by installing a new operating system on my laptop. Or perhaps it's a testament to the past successes of Apple, who have consistently offered me the pleasure of a seamless upgrading experience, despite some of the snags encountered by others.

It was only two or so months ago that I trusted Snow Leopard enough to put it on my studio machine, and I suspect the same will be the case for Lion, especially since many of the music programs I work with are not yet compatible. But my laptop is my writing machine, my learning machine, and my fun machine, and so it made sense to jump on the Lion bandwagon early with it. I'm very glad that I did, but I wanted to share my thoughts in some more detail.

I won't review the OS from top to bottom, because if you're after something like that there are many other sources that have done so. Instead, I'll highlight what I noticed, what I liked, what I didn't, and why.

Without a doubt, Lion represents the absolute fastest OS upgrade I have ever performed. Including the download of the >3GB installation file, it took me less than an hour to get up and running. This is not only remarkable on its own, but also in light of Lion's price point, which is so low as to be almost humorous.

It made some kind of sense when Apple priced its "maintenance" OS, Snow Leopard, at $29, but when it takes the next leap forward in its grand vision of computing and keeps the price the same, it's just plain awesome. Of course, we won't be naive and pretend that it's not just a marketing push to get as many people updated as quickly as possible; after all, if Apple's demonstrated anything lately, it's that they're merciless when it comes to imposing forward motion on their customers. Remember Flash?

But I don't mind that.

Frankly, whether or not I agree with all the specifics of their vision for the future of personal computing, I wholeheartedly support their pacing. Technology, more than anything else, evolves quickly, and Apple trusts their customers to keep up or get left behind in whatever comfort zone they wish to inhabit. To me, technology experts have always been unified by their adaptability, because that's the one trait that defines the industry as a whole, regardless of what sector you're in. Leave the hand-holding of archaic paradigms to the dinosaurs. Like RIM.

Corporate philosophy aside, the installation was not only quick but also very smooth. The installer sets aside about a half gigabyte of space for a security partition in case something goes terribly wrong (you don't get that back, by the way, so be sure you've got enough space left over) and then gets to work updating the system files. After getting through the single installation screen, the computer rebooted into Lion. No configuring, no errors, no hangs, nothing.

Before you can actually do anything, a window pops up explaining the reverse scrolling concept that comes standard with OSX 10.7. In order to clear it, you have to successfully scroll to the bottom, which is a nice bit of gamification for you. If you haven't yet heard, there's been much gnashing of teeth from the peanut gallery about this scrolling thing, and I partly understand it.

Beyond the obvious problem of being the reverse of what everyone's been used to as their scroll behaviour since the beginning of scrolling on a computer, the system is actually pretty intuitive. If you own an iPhone or iPad or anything like that then you'll obviously find it familiar, so my impression is that the major complainers are those who do not have experience with those devices, or those who are on a desktop machine using a mouse.

I say this because, using a mouse, the scrolling is maddening. It just feels weird and backward, even with the Magic Mouse. But if, like me, you're on a laptop...then suddenly it's just like interacting with an iPad and somehow, subconsciously, it's much easier to get used to.

That being said, I was still scrolling like an idiot for the first few minutes...but I didn't have the desire to switch back to "normal" scrolling (which is dead simple to do, by the way, so don't worry). I still don't. For whatever reason, I find this scrolling makes sense to me now that I've given it an honest try, and it's responsive enough that it feels quite natural. Your mileage may vary.

One of the things that early upgraders warned about was the fact that Lion, by default, switches your initial Finder view to a new "All My Files" view and that it makes all Library folders invisible to prevent any accidental system damage. Neither of those two things occured with my installation, and I'm grateful for that, because, besides venturing fairly frequently into the Library folders, it is my humble opinion that the "All My Files" view is retarded.

Remember the convenient smart folders in the pre-Lion Finder that helped you locate documents from today, yesterday, past week, all images, etc? Yeah, those are gone now. In their place is the perplexingly stupid "All My Files", which offers what it says on the tin, organized by file type. Not date. You can scroll through them and set them to be organized by date if you like, but why would I want that over the much faster, single click solution from before? Still working on an answer for that.

Lucky for me, Lion decided it wasn't going to force that view on me after all, so my Finder still opens by default to my user folder. And I'm adding my smart date views back to the sidebar manually.

The experience of using Lion is worth mentioning briefly, especially given Apple's obsession with user experience over technicalities. Like it or not, their attention to detail has paid off in a big way. I simply haven't encountered a more responsive, quick, and well designed user interface before. Everything has been carefully refined. Gone are the bubbly interface elements, replaced by sleek rounded square buttons, delicious icons, and unobtrusively communicative animations. If you like colours and bubbles, you're going to be sad. If you like clean modern design principles, you can join me over the moon.

Regarding the new features, LaunchPad and the smarter Spotlight are cool to play with, but in practice I still just use Alfred for most of my file-finding and application launching. It's simply unmatched for speed and versatility.

Mission Control, on the other hand, is magnificent. If you're anything like me and often find yourself whipping between multiple windows in multiple programs, the new Mission Control view is a glorious extension to good old Exposé. The difference, for those still confused about it, is that Exposé shows you all windows from the app you have active, allowing you to quickly pull another one to the forefront, whereas Mission Control shows you all windows from all applications as well as your Desktop and Dashboard in a much more organized manner, and lets you zoom to any of them instantly. On my laptop, swiping up with 4 fingers shows me Mission Control, and swiping down shows me Exposé. It's intuitive, quick, and will save me some useless alt+tab-ing.

The gesture integration overall is quite impressive. I don't use hot corners or anything like them, so for me the basic multi-finger swipe gestures make more sense. Pinching brings up LaunchPad for now, and pushing three fingers apart scatters everything out of the way to reveal the desktop.

An unexpected consequence of the upgrade was that I seem to have ditched my favourite email client, Sparrow, in favour of the built-in Apple Mail. I was basically disgusted with the previous iterations of Mail, but the new version 5 that ships with Lion is truly incredible, and, while it admittedly borrows many things from other apps that came before it, it pulls them together and polishes them into a greater whole. The threaded conversation handling is unmatched, and the ability to keep track of flagged (starred) emails, drafts, and even notes across all accounts either together or separately is terrific.

To make it the ideal app for my purposes, I would love a deeper integration with Google's system of assigning "important" emails and sorting the inbox to show them first. I don't actually get enough email to justify needing that, but it would be a nice feature to have. It also took it a while to synchronize all my email content once I'd gotten my accounts added (interestingly, it pulled emails from the server in batches of 5,000 or so) but then that's not a surprise given the amount of data I have, spread across several different accounts.

To leave off, I'll mention two other issues I encountered that seem less common and that I hadn't previously heard of. For starters, the FaceTime app (which I did not have installed before) now comes built into Lion and...doesn't work. No matter what I've tried, I can't get it to connect, which is unfortunate since I would have liked to test it. A quick glance at Apple's support site reveals that it's a very widespread issue though, so I'm expecting an update in the near future. Which brings me to my other issue: the Mac App Store.

Besides having a slightly lighter-coloured icon in Lion vs. Snow Leopard, the Mac App Store has also been misbehaving for me. For instance, even though I'm logged into my account and it recognizes what apps I have installed when I'm browsing through them, I cannot consistently access my Purchases area. It either does not load, or tells me I have not purchased anything (ha-haaa!), or it crashes. So far I've managed to get it working just long enough to grab the Xcode 4.1 update, but something is clearly broken.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my birds-eye view of Lion. My first impressions. As I continue to play with it, I may have more thoughts to share, but hopefully my initial experiences will help you decide whether or not you have any interest in upgrading at this point.

Just before I wrap this up, I figure this is as good a place as any to announce a small side project of mine on a related topic. I've decided, in my spare time (...ha-haaa!), to learn Apple's Objective-C programming language so that I can broaden my technological horizons, become conversant in the issues of Mac and iOS programming, and perhaps even develop some of the app ideas I have floating in my head.

If you'd like to follow my progress, I've started a small blog where I share updates and chronicle my learning. It's more to help me learn and make sense of things, but you're welcome to follow along and laugh at my ineptitude (if you're an expert):

http://code.mariusmasalar.me/

Aaaand back to work!

Partly because I've discovered a cool new tool, and partly because I'm just a helpful kind of guy, I'm sharing with you a list of 182 iOS apps I would recommend for everyone.

The tool in question is called applist.me and you may want to consider using it if you ever want to put together a list of apps yourself. In my case, I'm not being too specific — there's stuff from every conceivable genre tossed in here and it's still by no means comprehensive. After so much time spent reviewing and toying with new apps though, I hope that my picks help you find some hidden gems.

Without further ado, I give you the list:

http://applist.me/VP7xNT

NOTE: Since this post was written, I have moved my blog to its own domain. This Posterous site is deprecated, so please direct your responses to the new location of this post:

http://blog.mariusmasalar.me/2011/05/daws-vs-notation-software-no-contest/

Thanks!

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This rant goes out to the software developers who assemble and maintain the programs that I make a living with, so I hope it’s understood that the critique that follows is in the spirit of improvement and goodwill.

I used to be a die-hard Finale user, and indeed spent 6 years or so writing music using nothing but. This changed in two stages. The first stage was the expected one where someone like me, who writes music for media, suddenly discovers the realm of MIDI sequencers, also known as DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations). The second stage was switching to Sibelius, but that's less relevant — the important thing is that I discovered there was a second category of music production software. This was a whole new world and I admit that at first I really didn’t like it very much, especially since I had always approached music very organically and working in most DAWs seemed rather more mechanical than I liked.

As with any novelty, I soon moved past that point and learned my way around my DAW of choice (Logic) well enough that it no longer felt like a chore or a mechanical process — I was once again simply using the tool to translate music from my brain to a form that I could sell to people.

Today, it’s very rare for a composer in my position to get the opportunity to work with live musicians; budgets for the projects we get simply don’t allow it, and fewer and fewer directors and game designers are considering the huge expenses a worthy investment. To a composer, of course, the value seems self-evident, but in order to understand the market one must step back and put on the horn-rimmed glasses of those on the other side. Doing so reveals that many directors — and, by extension, many eventual audience members — simply cannot tell the difference between a live orchestral recording and a synthesized/sampled one.

This is, first, a testament to the ground that has been covered in the past few years with the quality of sample libraries and music technology in general, but it’s also reflective of the truth that perspective makes a huge difference. At the end of the day, in most cases even those that can tell the difference simply don’t care one way or the other. Especially not in the context of a boisterous film where their attention is 90% on the visuals and only 10% at best on the music.

This shift has meant that for the majority of us, the final product of our efforts is the synthesized recording. The term “mock-up” is still used to describe these products, but in fact the word is no longer applicable. Mock-ups used to be just that — approximations of the final product to give the director an idea of what everything would sound like once it’s recorded. Now that there often is no live recording, the mock-up is the last step. This has led to an increasing number of composers working as I do: directly and exclusively in our sequencers.

There are several reasons for this. First, I believe, is immediacy. For those who are able to write music without relying on notation for input, working straight into your sequencer cuts out the intermediary step of transferring a score from your notation program (or, archaically, manuscript paper) to the DAW. In the fast-paced world of media scoring, where deadlines are constantly nipping at the rear, this is a practical necessity as much as anything else. There simply isn’t time to do both steps, so we pare it down to one.

The second reason is that the notation becomes functionally irrelevant. If you’re not recording with live musicians and you can write just fine without having to work exclusively with notation, then what is the engraved manuscript for? The only valid answer is personal gratification. Maybe you print them out and keep the hard copies as tangible mementos of your work. I know I’ve occasionally done that, so it’s not like it’s unheard of, but the point is that the composer becomes the only remaining appreciator of that manuscript.

So what of it? I have noticed over the past few years that developers of notation software seem to have reacted strongly to this obvious trend. They are, no doubt, threatened by the idea that their product is depreciating in value among the comparatively large sector of composers involved in media work. And this reaction is what I take issue with and what I’m discussing here, because the focus has shifted from making a good piece of notation software to trying to build chimaera programs that try to be the best of both worlds and end up failing, inevitably, because the two paradigms are not meant to be reconciled in a single environment. That’s not to say it isn’t possible, but the result would be an unwieldy monster of a program that (so far) no one has had the resources to develop.

Surely though, trying to simplify the process and close the gap between writing and sequencing is a good thing, right? In principle, I fully agree, but in practice the implementation has so far revealed some serious flaws. It seems to be a path that spirals downward rather than up.

For instance, let’s take the example of notation programs allowing integration with VST plugins for sounds. This is now possible in all major notation packages, and it allows one to load advanced sound libraries and trigger and record their sounds from within the notation program. However, advanced sample libraries are designed to be controlled with complex MIDI messages and precise adjustments in volume, EQ, panning, etc. That whole process is what sequencers were designed to do. They do it very well and provide a level of unparalleled control that is crucial for getting a good sound.

Trying to make use of all that potential within a notation program is akin to buying a Ferarri and then driving it around suburbia at 10km/h. In fact, it’s worse than that. A better analogy would be buying a Ferarri and then putting it on a trailer and pulling that around with an old pick-up truck. Notation programs simply don’t give you the precise MIDI control needed to make proper use of advanced sample libraries.

Thus, developers have tried to resolve this by adding built-in effects, and systems like Sibelius’s SoundSet framework. At this stage, heros like Jonathan Loving and his SoundSet project have done their very best to provide some extra help to those trying to use sample libraries with their notation software. But despite their best efforts, their work is still clouding the fact that it’s a bridge between two countries that don’t get along.

I should say that for many composers who are not at all tech savvy, this rudimentary control is enough — they get better sounds than the built-in ones, and they don’t have to worry about a DAW. But rather than waste all that development effort in trying to get notation software to behave like a DAW and accept plugins for libraries that are designed for sequencers and professionals, wouldn’t it be smarter to keep the program lean and focus that effort on building a customized sound library designed for use within that notation program? Notion got this approach right, and if they built up the actual notation part of their software I’m sure they would take over the game entirely.

At the end of the day, it’s unfair to those non-techy users too: rather than provide them with a simple solution to get better sounds without resorting to a third party, this method forces them into the scary world of advanced samples, which they will then be compelled to purchase without the foggiest idea of the scope of what they’re getting, nor its actual potential. And then when they load it into their notation software and it doesn’t sound anything like the demos they heard on the sound library’s website, they get even more frustrated. How is this a good idea?

On the other end of things, in the sequencing world, it’s worth noting that developers have mostly acknowledged the inferiority of their notation views. Rather than trying to get them to compete with Finale or Sibelius, they simply work on making sure that they’re as seamlessly integrated as possible so that the basic functionality they have is at least perfectly implemented and streamlined.

It seems to me like there is a clear solution to be had. Rather than try to compete with sequencers, notation programs should slim down to become entirely focused on quality engraving, and spend the money and development effort currently directed at DAW-like features on putting together a better integrated soundset for their core users.

Furthermore, for those more advanced users who, like myself, may need a mock-up and and an engraved score for musicians, implement a system that allows for seamless integration between the notation program and the sequencer. Make friends with a sequencer developer and work out some sort of bridge that allows the notation program to serve as an integrated notation view for the DAW, so you can write in the notes and produce a printable score, and then seamlessly flip over into the DAW and exercise the power of that program to create a quality mock-up of the score with all the advanced libraries and synths at your disposal. Sibelius’ ReWire support is a fledgling example of this concept, and I hope to see them continue down that path.

It’s like this: there are 2 basic types of notation software users. The first are those who want to work only in their notation program and just want better sounds: these folks should not be forced to seek a third party or learn a new program just to accomplish this, especially if sequencing is not a skill they need to do their work effectively. For them it makes sense to have a better integrated soundset that gives them quality sounds to work with while they write — ones that are designed to work with the program so they respond appropriately and require little to no additional tweaking.

The second group of users are those who use both a DAW and a notation program. Their biggest problem is getting from one to the other. They do their writing in one and must sequence in the other, so having a method of integrating the two would save them the unnecessary step of exporting/importing a MIDI, or re-entering the notes, or otherwise trying to reconcile the two environments. Until everything can be successfully built into one program (and computers are powerful enough to run the resulting beast), the focus should be on consolidating the separate functions that these two groups offer and making working between the two as easy as possible.

In the end, I would argue that developers on both sides need to come together and stop trying to replace each other. They should work on acknowledging that they are servicing the same market, but in different ways, and their current attempts at being the best for everyone are ultimately leading them down a path that’s detrimental to the users.

Maybe it’s just me.

Leave it to the folks at Tapbots to screw with my comfortable routine.

Those little app geniuses have just released their Twitter client, TweetBot, and as was the case with all their previous offerings...using it for five minutes convinced me to ditch my previous solution.

Said previous solution was Twitterific, by the way, and I have to say that despite the fact that I've firmly switched, it will always hold a place in my heart. And by "always" I mean "until the TweetBot 1.0.2 update goes live in the next few days". The one thing that made me stick with Twitterific over many other clients was the fact that it showed retweets, direct messages, and everything else in one huge integrated timeline. I'm not a Twitter power user and I don't have that many people that I follow or who follow me (hint hint), so for me it makes sense to have everything integrated in one timeline that I can efficiently scan every now and again.

One of the changes being implemented in TweetBot's 1.0.2 update is supposedly meant to address this very thing: retweets will now be visible right in the main timeline. So there goes that complaint! But all that aside, I felt the need to write this just to toss a bit more praise their way, because never before have I encountered a Twitter client that actually compelled me to want to use Twitter more.

I've always had a difficult time with Twitter. It's a nice idea in principle and I think that for businesses and news outlets it's an extremely competent platform, but for personal use I've always felt some unease...what can I share about my day, my thoughts, my work, that people will be interested in reading about? I'm always thrilled when I get new followers, and I really do try to make my updates as interesting and relevant as possible, but when I'm really busy and don't have time to think, I find myself neglecting Twitter. Which isn't nice for my tweeps.

Two things have recently been helping me overcome this. The first has been TweetBot, whose superlative user experience has made me want to post the most mundane possible crap just to have an excuse to use the app (please excuse any inanity over the past few days; now you know why it occurred).

The second bit of help has been Timely, a cool service that helps you maximize tweet impact and response by posting them automatically for you during peak hours based on the performance of your past tweets. I don't know if it really makes a difference from that angle, but I do know that the ability to collect a bunch of tweets when I have time and just add them to a queue that dishes them out periodically by itself is a huge help. It's given me the opportunity to prepare some interesting tweets when I have the free time to do so and know that when I'm swamped by work, I'm not neglecting that aspect of my social networking presence.

Now then, if only TapBots would make an iPad version of TweetBot, all would be well. For now I'm using Twitterific still on the iPad and, sadly, the disparity between the quality of the design and user experience between the two is beginning to show more and more clearly.

Now if you'll excuse me, Portal 2 calls!

I have a dilemma.

I hate to-do lists, and yet I need to make use of them to keep track of all the myriad tasks I end up having to get done. When I discovered Things, I figured I was out of the woods. It's got an absolutely fantastic interface that makes me want to use the program, it has a project and area system that lets me keep my tasks organized without becoming too bloated (I don't want a full-scale project management solution), and it's got an iPad and iPhone app so I can keep up to date with my tasks on the go...sort of.

This is where the problem emerges. See, Things doesn't do cloud sync. It does sync between your devices, but in order to accomplish this you need to pair your devices with the computer, and you must be on the same network in order to initiate the sync. In practice, this means that every time I tick off a task on my computer, I need to pull out the mobile devices and pop open Things on each to have them sync up before I head out with them. Then, if I complete some items on the go, I need to come back to base to sync everything up between all my devices. I can't sync between the iPhone and the iPad only, and if I have Things installed on multiple computers, I can't keep those in sync unless I work around the system by placing the database in my DropBox and linking both Things apps to it — and even then, I can't have both open at the same time because they panic when they're both trying to access the same database.

Tiresome.

CulturedCode, if you're listening, this is just not efficient interface experience.

Consequently, I have been toying with another competitor. Though relative newcomers, the folks over at Wunderlist have made a huge splash. This is, I feel, largely because they have designed their system around multi-platform interconnectivity. Not only do they have apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac like Things does, but they also have an Android app, a Windows app, and a fully-featured web client — neither of which Things can compete with. But it's not so impressive to have all these platforms if you can't keep everything in sync, and this is where Wunderlist has its greatest advantage: cloud sync. Not only can you have your tasks available on a native app for just about every platform, but your tasks remain in sync automatically between all of them so you never have to worry about manually syncing.

In addition, Wunderlist features some amazing task sharing features via CloudApp. Things, conversely, has a rather unhelpful "sharing" system. You can assign tasks to people, but not send it to them, which makes it a vestigial feature at best. 

But here is where my dilemma lies. For now, Wunderlist does not provide the robust project-based and area-based organization features (their lists don't really cut it), nor tagging — crucial lapses in functionality for my usage patterns.

For now, I'm sticking with Things, but the lack of cloud sync and meaningful collaboration is really starting to get sore. Thankfully, CulturedCode is well aware of these complaints as they're getting them from most of their users, and they're working on implementing a system to fix this. Wunderlist, on the other hand, has stated that they're also working on trying to expand their task management depth to include tagging and more organization features. Since, for now, neither is quite perfect but both are very close, I will give my vote to the first that catches up with the requests of their user base.

Any day now, guys.

I recently passed a milestone in my life.

If life was like a video game, I may have unlocked an achievement for it. It would be called "Fanboy", no doubt. What did I do?

I spent ten hours in a shopping mall. Waiting in line to get a shiny new iPad 2.

Having done so, I have a pretty good feeling that among your first thoughts was "oh, you're one of those." Am I right?

I want to take a few moments to address this because I used to have a very narrow view of people who like Apple products, and it's only in the wake of a series of small revelations culminating in my little adventure in the Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto that my perspective has shifted to a more balanced — and, I think, fair — place. Bear with me.

In the spring of 2010, Apple was introducing their latest little hardware device. The fact that it would be a tablet was fairly well established ahead of time. People were making guesses about the name: iSlate? iTab? The unveiling of the iPad was a merry day for me for several reasons. It wasn't because of the (rather cheap) jabs at the name for its parallels with feminine hygiene products, nor the YouTube parodies discussing the relative merits of this oversized iPod.

I was amused by the marketing. "Magical device", eh? We'll see about that, I thought. I felt a strange sense of glee, knowing that I would get to witness Apple finally reaching too far, trying to defend a stupid device that had no place in the market.

Having grown up as a pure-bred Windows boy, I had recently switched my studio over to a Mac Pro and discovered the wonderful world of OSX. Any skeptic will find it difficult to spend time with the operating system and not find it at the very least a competitive alternative. It taught me that it's very easy to pick on Apple products without actually bothering to try them. I had been a very vocal anti-Apple advocate before. No delete key? One mouse button? It was almost too easy to make fun of those silly fanboys paying premium prices for half-functional, aesthetically-obsessed machinery.

Time passed. I became aware of a certain amount of carefree joy I felt using my new system. The time I saved with the smallest things made me realize that it's specifically the attention to detail that makes OSX the robust system that it is. I am reminded of a scathing and revealing retort that I witnessed on a forum, launched against a Windows crusader by the Apple fanboy he had been belittling. "Thank you for your opinion," he began, "now go install some mouse drivers or something."

It certainly provoked a chuckle, but also an internal admission on my part (and, I expect, on the part of the people involved) that it had been fighting fire with fire. Just as OSX does recognize and make use of right-clicking, so too does Windows now bundle many standard drivers with its operating system. What made the comment incisive was precisely the fact that it made a point of showing the reciprocal biases.

Yet when the iPad release came around, I had apparently learned nothing at all. I reasoned that, despite its obvious advantage as the first mass-produced consumer-friendly tablet device, the iPad truly was nothing but an oversized iPod Touch. I maintained that view and refused to buy one. How could such a superfluous device be worthy of attention? It was clearly riding off the success and marketing clout of its creators and not on its own merits. I had not yet seen, let alone interacted with one.

Then it started selling millions. It broke records, it sold out everywhere. A scientist at heart, I felt my hypothesis eroding under the weight of mounting contrary evidence. Clearly, I would have to test my claim by going to a store and actually spending some time with this "magical" device — though I couldn't imagine what effect that would possibly have on my opinion. Somewhere deep inside, a little voice was crying hypocrisy and deja-vu. I did not hear it.

It was a few weeks later that, on a whim, I dipped into an Apple Store to have a look at their new marvel. By some fluke, I had managed to walk in at a time when the store was relatively empty (most retailers would kill to have as much activity as Apple stores consider "relatively empty"). With a test unit all to myself and no pressure to relinquish it to the next curious person, I buckled down and began to use the iPad.

Half an hour passed before I knew it. There were no particularly fancy apps on it, just the stock ones and a few extras that the employees had put on to show off some of the potential. I looked at pictures, I scrolled through the mail client. I changed settings back and forth. I didn't have any interest in what I was doing, I was simply fascinated by the interface's responsiveness and invisibility. It reminded me of my iPhone.

It is perhaps worth mentioning that somewhere in this time, I acquired an iPhone 3GS to replace my aging cellphone from before. It was my first smartphone and I decided on it because it seemed to me like a no-brainer: the only phone with a huge selection of apps, native integration with my now-loved Mac system, and a sleek design. What cinched the deal was, yet again, going into the store and playing with several of my options. I found the Blackberry offerings (especially at that time) to be obtuse and unpleasant to navigate, despite my love of the physical keyboard. The iPhone felt responsive and intuitive, and I found myself fluent in minutes. The decision followed swiftly thereafter.

Back in the Apple Store, I had another moment of revelation. There might be something to this iPad thing after all. But it was something strangely elusive. I didn't like it. I didn't trust it. Advantages should be easily describable, quantifiable, otherwise aren't they just the cult-like marketing brainwash at work? At the time, I did not understand it and the sour taste of confusion remained in my mind despite my change of heart: the iPad was, without a doubt, a truly impressive achievement and a fulcrum of change for media consumption. That much I understood. What I didn't yet understand yet was why I wanted one so badly. So I avoided the issue, hoping that by the second generation I would have a better sense of things.

I will say this: it has been a very long year. As more and more unbelievably impressive apps have been developed, my patience has waned and crumbled to the point where I often contemplated just going to the store and getting myself an iPad. I resisted, and when the rumor mill began rumbling about the sequel, I took some time to re-assess my position and figure out what actually made the iPad worth having, if anything. What I learned came from examining my love for my iPhone.

The iPhone's interface vanished beneath my fingers. It highlighted the content rather than pushing the device itself as the focal point of the interaction. It flexed to be what I needed it to be and didn't make me feel like I was the one adapting. It was a flexible system, constantly growing and evolving as developers learn to make use of the hardware's full potential — officially and unofficially in the jailbreak scene.

The iPad offered those same advantages, with the added argument of extra screen real-estate and horsepower. Not infrequently, I found myself wishing that my latest awesome iPhone app would be a little more spacious. My pianist fingers are spindly tendrils of touch-typing, but even so I found some buttons and interface elements hard to accurately and reliably hit.

This is all highly subjective, but I share my perspective to help illustrate my shift from anti-Apple to my current stance, which I'm in the process of describing. And now that the context for my adventure is clear, I will take you to Friday the 25th of March, 2011 at just about 7:00am, where yours truly was just settling into a lineup that I would spend the following ten hours inhabiting.

Several things happen when you spend that long in a line-up. The first hour goes by swiftly as you take in your surroundings. Comfort is important. I did not think to bring a folding lawn chair with me, as so many of my line-mates had, so I was at an immediate disadvantage. Stiffness sets in quickly and before long it makes any position feel awkward. There is a strange lack of appetite too. Everyone eats and continually gets up to fetch drinks and snacks, but it's eating out of boredom, not hunger.

The most important thing that occurs is that you make friends. I arrived with Shannon, my girlfriend, but she was not planning on spending the whole day cooped up in a line with me (and who can blame her), so it wasn't long before I was left to my own devices. If you've never been in a line-up for something, it's very easy to imagine that everyone there is some manner of twitchy freak whose obsession with the Apple brand makes them little more than zombies of consumerism. At least I know that was my image of them going in.

My first surprise, then, was finding out that everyone around me in line was completely down-to-earth, affable, and — dare I say — normal. Where were the raving lunatics?

I met doctoral students, photographers, and engineers. I met people my own age, younger, and significantly older. I met girls and boys in equal proportion, and I met people from all sorts of cultures and financial denominations. I talked to several of them quite extensively and learned that their reasons for wanting an iPad 2 were as varied and sober as one could hope for.

If I'm being honest, the most unpleasant aspect of the entire day was dealing with everyone else in the mall. The folks I was wary of were not those beside me, but everywhere else. It's more than a little off-putting to witness the arrogance, entitlement, and hostility with which passers-by treated us in line. I say arrogance with a sense of irony, since that was one of the many things we were accused of: feeling like we were making ourselves superior by getting the latest toy before everyone else. In ten hours, not a single person in line with me made any comments to that effect, nor did they imply it by their manner, nor — admirably — did they respond to the attacks with anything but good-natured diplomacy.

Respectable businessmen, kind old women, members of the press, all of them suddenly forgot their sense of politeness and unleashed against us a torrent of sarcastic belligerence. From them, I learned that I am crazy, that I have no life, that I am narrow-minded, stupid, obsessive, a freak. You may want to stop reading because I may very well cause cancer too if we take these otherwise perfectly normal people at their word.

What is it that provokes such vitriol, leveraged against a crowd that, in my best estimate, is guilty of nothing worse than being enthusiastic about technology? My guess is that it is, at heart, a misunderstanding of intent. The reasons that those people thought we were standing in line were not the actual reasons. Since I cannot speak for everyone in line, I will speak for myself and mention that these points were at least true of all those that I spoke to at any length.

I was not there to blindly support Apple, I was there to willfully give them my business for a device which I judged to be worth having. I was not ignorant of my role as a living billboard for the company — I was fully aware of the marketing assistance I was offering Apple by standing in line, and I enjoyed subverting it with my line-mates by answering the frequent "what are you in line for?" questions with quips of "Justin Bieber!" and the like. I was not in line ignorantly touting Apple's products over all others and ignoring their flaws; not only did most of my line-mates also carry Blackberry phones and Windows laptops, there were plenty for whom the iPad 2 would be the first Apple product they've ever owned. And everyone was fully willing and able to call Apple out on its missteps and discuss its idiosyncrasies.

The iOS notification system, for instance? Could definitely use an overhaul. No custom SMS ringtones? I could do that in the 90s! The "Smart" case being too dumb to protect the back of the device as well? What a joke.

Why, then, was I bothering to actually wait in line to be among the first to get the iPad 2, rather than ordering online or waiting a couple of weeks like a civil person? The answer is simple: I had waited a year already, I love and am excited about technology, there was no longer a question of "if" I'd get the device or not, and I was willing to spend my day waiting — a day I would have spent waiting anyway, lest we forget, just doing other things. I felt that one day of dedicated waiting rather than two more weeks of indirect waiting was a worthy exchange.

And that is how, at 5pm on Friday the 25th of March, I walked home with an iPad 2 and a newfound perspective of those who lined up for it. Let me be clear and say that I do not claim that the crazed fanboy does not exist — the stereotype did not spring from nowhere, after all — but I have seen with my own rational eyes that it is a stereotype that applies rarely. It is the exception, not the rule, and in any event does not excuse the reprehensible behavior that so much of the public permitted themselves against those of us who waited in line that day.

Would I do it again? If I felt the product was worth it and I was in a position to do so, sure. Would it have to be an Apple product? Of course not.

After only a few days, I am thrilled by the potential that the iPad represents for the media industry. The way it could revive magazines, gently replace aspects of the print world that are wasteful of our earth's resources, and consolidate much of the information we are all increasingly forced to digest on a daily basis. Perhaps you will disagree with me, and I respect that entirely. All I ask is that you learn from my mistake: before you sit down to bash a device and insult its users, make an honest effort to interact with it yourself. Base your opinion on tangible effort, not hearsay and the prevailing attitudes of peers. And don't be afraid to defend the result.

So am I an irrational, narrow-minded, obsessive idiot who can't see over his own high brow? Am I, in other words, a fanboy?

You be the judge.

This entry was typed the following Monday morning. On my iPad 2.