Stories By Devin Wilson

SpellTower's 3.0 update brings with it one big new feature and a bunch of smaller ones. The small ones are all thoughtful tweaks, but the big one is multiplayer, and it's a lot of fun.

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Rockmate is a pretty good idea on paper: multiple virtual instruments on the same iPad so you and some friends can have a digital jam. This kind of use is certainly the way the app’s developers are trying to position it, but it doesn’t seem to be its real strength. In fact, figuring out who this app is for and what they would want to do with it is a bit of a challenge no matter how it has been marketed.

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I’m always on the lookout for new ways to make music with my iPad and Moog Music has thankfully brought us Animoog, a new app that proves itself to be a unique addition to any musician’s digital toolbox. If the name Moog means anything to you, then it’s nearly impossible to think of a reason for you to stay away from Animoog. Robert Moog, founder of Moog Music, is undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the development of electronic music. The synthesizers he invented are of monumental importance in the history of audio synthesis, and now you can carry these sounds around with you on your iPad. However, Animoog isn’t simply a dry collection of samples from legendary instruments. It’s a robust, flexible audio synthesis package with a comfortable, useful interface.

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In a move that will be surprising to many, Adobe has announced that it will no longer be supporting its popular Flash plug-in for mobile browsers. Instead, the company will shift its mobile efforts to the open and burgeoning HTML 5 standard. Some are characterizing this as late Apple CEO Steve Jobs getting the last laugh in the mobile arena versus Adobe, as it certainly deflates any of the Flash-based arguments against Apple’s iOS platform. Jobs had steadfastly opposed the inclusion of Flash on iOS and slammed Adobe in April 2010 in a rare blog post. Competing Android phones and tablets are often marketed based on their ability to run Flash content, but Adobe abandoning the platform will clearly affect the viability of that selling point.

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The English developer Mode 7 has announced that their popular online game Frozen Synapse will be available on iPad “in the first half of next year”. The game is sort of a turn-based action-strategy game, if you can imagine such a thing. You and your opponent both tell your glowing minions where to go and how to act while the game is paused, and once you’ve both locked in your instructions, the little guys move and shoot their way around the level (which is randomly generated in multiplayer-- very cool).

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I’m terribly interested in interactive music and unusual musical interfaces in general. I’m also a fan of the Icelandic singer Björk, who I’d consider to be the greatest female musician of the past 20 years. So when I found out that she was going to be releasing an iOS app alongside her new album Biophilia, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to help myself from being anxious to play with it. Now the app is available in its entirety and I have to say: I had good reason to be excited.

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I love hockey, but over the past few years I’ve been unable to watch as many games as I'd like. In high school, it was somehow possible for me to have enough time to see at least 70 of my Pittsburgh Penguins’ 82 regular season games, which each take 60 minutes plus breaks, intermissions, commercials, and possibly overtime. I don’t know where that time went or how I could get it back, but thanks to NHL GameCenter Premium, I don’t miss it quite so much.

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We all know that the iPad is great for consuming media, but what about creating it? Both the iPad and iPad 2 are fantastic tools for music creation, offering diverse and powerful tools to musicians. Ever since the App Store first launched, there’s been a remarkable subculture surrounding the development of music creation apps for iOS. Writing and performing music with iDevices is no longer simply a novelty. Jordan Rudess of the progressive metal band Dream Theater has not only incorporated iDevices into his live rig, but he’s also helped design a few different apps himself, including MorphWiz and SampleWiz. He also often promotes apps he had no part in creating and, though I’m no prog rock superstar, I’m going to let you know about some music apps that I think are really interesting. I’ve also recorded a short (or long, in the case of ThumbJam) demonstration of each app.

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