Best iPad Apps: The Guide for Discriminating Downloaders (Paperback)

Peter Meyers

  • 出版商: O'Reilly
  • 出版日期: 2010-12-20
  • 定價: $770
  • 售價: 2.6$199
  • 語言: 英文
  • 頁數: 240
  • 裝訂: Paperback
  • ISBN: 1449392474
  • ISBN-13: 9781449392475
  • 立即出貨(限量) (庫存=2)

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商品描述

What really wows iPad fans is when their touchscreen does what's impossible on other gadgets: the finger-painting app that turns a cross-country flight into a moving art class, the mini music studio (two-dozen instruments strong, each with motion-induced warble effects), and the portable fireworks display that you sculpt by swiping.

Problem is, with tens of thousands of apps available for your iPad, who knows what to download? You can try to sort through a gazillion customer reviews with a mix of 5- and 1-star ratings, but that’s a head-hurting time-waster. The stakes are getting higher, too: instead of freebies and 99-cent trinkets, the price of iPad apps is steadily creeping up and beyond their iPhone predecessors.

Best iPad Apps guides you to the hidden treasures in the App Store's crowded aisles. Author Peter Meyers stress-tested thousands of options to put together this irresistible, page-turner of a catalog. Inside these pages, you’ll find apps as magical as the iPad itself.

Flip through the book for app suggestions, or head directly to one of several categories we've loaded up with "best of" selections to help you:

  • Get work done
  • Manipulate photos
  • Make movies
  • Create comics
  • Browse the Web better
  • Take notes
  • Outline ideas
  • Track your health
  • Explore the world

No matter how you use your iPad, Best iPad Apps will help you find the real gems among the rubble -- so you make the most of your glossy gadget.

8 iPad Apps that Let Non-Musicians Make Music
by Peter Meyers

Early iPad critics were sure about one thing: this gadget was gonna be for consuming, not creating. iPadders, the argument went, will spend all their time feasting on The Man's media (movies, music, TV shows) while their own creative urges whither.

Turns out, people love making stuff with their iPads. And not just pros. The App Store's packed, for example, with ingenious tune-making tools that can turn iTunes lovers into active players. None of the apps that you'll read about below will make you a maestro, but man are they are a fun way to make some noise.

Soundrop

Soundrop

This simple-to-operate, impossible-to-exhaust take on tune building will lure you into love-life-jeopardizing amounts of time spent with your iPad. You “compose” by positioning one or many line segments beneath a drip-drop cascade of music- generating pellets. As each dot hits the various lines, the app plays a note. Add more lines, tweak their positions, and watch this you-made-it-yourself production unfold.

The free version offers a stripped down palette: line segments produce one sound only (part wind chime, part marimba.) Upgrade to Pro ($2) via an in-app purchase for the real goodies: multiple instruments (piano, saxophone, and synthesizer); tempo and beats-per-minute controls; and the ability to save your creations.

ImproVox

Today’s music stars famously benefit from the vocal equivalent of plastic surgery: a little AutoTune-aided voice sprucing. So there’s no shame in us musically challenged crooners seeking a similar boost. The remarkable thing about this app is that its assistance is delivered as you sing. Some serious computer science wizardry went into this feat—most software-powered music magic is added post production. Here you simply plug in any earphones with a mic, start singing, and add harmonies and effects (auto-wah and flanger are especially fun). Save and export when you’re done.

Glee Karaoke

Glee Karaoke

Karaoke has never been less humiliating with this voice-primping singalong software. Among its other talents the app software-magically keeps you on pitch, adds optional harmonies, and turns your iPad into an iPrompter: highlighted lyrics appear as the instrument track plays. Three songs come with the app; buy others that have appeared in the namesake show for a buck a pop. Bonus treats include the chance to listen to recordings made worldwide by other app-using fans; the ability to share your own efforts; or—how’s this for social software?—a feature that lets you join in and add your voice to songs other fans have posted.

ThumbJam

If the best you can do with a piano is Three Blind Mice, give this hugely popular alternative a try. Not only do you get substantially more eclectic sound options than most app synthesizers (darabukka or a round sine, anyone?), each comes with its own uniquely designed “play area”. Some sorta/kinda look like a piano (picture the keys arranged in a vertical stack of rows). Others offer a big chunky grid. Hundreds of included ready-to-use scales, from common ones like major and minor to Javanese Pentachord, puts music-making within reach of amateurs. It’s actually a bit of a challenge to play something that sounds bad. Shape your tunes further by moving your iPad: shake for vibrato, for example. Recording and sharing options aplenty make it easy to let others sample what you’ve made.

Bloom HD

At first glance this app appears to be nothing more than a stream of cool tones—some triggered by you, others played by the app itself—accompanied by visual bubbles. But that’s like mistaking yoga for mere stretching. What’s on offer here is a new kind of audio/visual instrument cooked up by ambient sound guru Brian Eno.

You start, simply, by listening and looking. You might think you’ve wandered into a hearing test, but soon the trance of ping-pongy tones takes on a zen flavor. Meantime, the multicolored bubbles expand and evaporate like raindrops on a pond. Next, swirl your finger in this multimedia koi pond by tapping the screen and watch as your finger placement generates its own sounds and circles—each an echo, a kind of tap-and-response pattern to your input: all software-magically woven into a soothing spell that’s partly your creation and part travel to EnoVille. It’s like a xylophone that’s impossible to play incorrectly.

Bubble Harp

This odd, charming duck of an app will fascinate as many people as it frustrates. Nominally, it’s a--heck, let’s turn the keyboard over to the developer, because this thing’s just too weird for words: “It’s a combination of drawing, animation, music, art, geometry, and gaming. You can record long movements of a single point, or stream many points out of your fingertips like ink.” Yeah, you know: for those of us spiderpeople whose wrists spray multi-colored music-making webs. Back in iPadLand, what you’ll mainly do is swipe the screen and watch the pulsing line (representing the current note being played) spider across the web you’ve helped make. Tap the note-shaped icon to adjust the chords that play. It’s wacky, it’s wonderful, it’s worth a buck.

GrooveMaker Free for iPad

GrooveMaker

Today’s DJs, of course, work digitally, and you can too with this portable beat-spinning station. What’s most impressive is what’s within reach of newbie MCs. After familiarizing yourself with the cockpit-complex console (flatten the learning curve by checking out the tutorials at Groovemaker.com), the soundscapes you can create are stunning. Fill up to eight tracks with an almost infinitely customizable assortment of loops (prerecorded snippets).

Pick your loops from a few dozen that come free with the app, or buy genre-specific collections: hip hop, reggae, and so on. When you’ve got your track collection just so, save it for the final step: sequencing, where you stitch together and then export to a WiFi-connected computer a high-quality version of the mix you’ve made.

Relax Melodies HD

The name of this app captures perfectly the service it aims to provide. Yes, it’s got a bunch of mechanical noise replicas (white noise, train tracks), but what it’s really good for are all things melodious. Wind chimes, zen tones, flutes, and on into its more subjective but thoroughly pleasing interpretations of themes like Immersed, Night, and the slightly tautological Melody. Play each sound separately or mix ’em together by using the simple tap-to-activate controls. A built-in sleep timer and favorites list make this some easy listening that you’ll actually want to turn on.

商品描述(中文翻譯)

iPad粉絲最讚嘆的是,他們的觸控螢幕能夠在其他裝置上無法實現的功能:像是將橫跨國家的飛行變成一堂移動藝術課的手繪應用程式,擁有兩打樂器並具有運動感應顫音效果的迷你音樂工作室,以及透過滑動塑造的便攜式煙火展示。問題是,iPad上有數以萬計的應用程式可供下載,誰知道該下載哪個呢?你可以試著通過閱讀數以萬計的顧客評論,但這樣會浪費時間且令人頭痛。而且,風險也越來越高:iPad應用程式的價格不斷上漲,超過了iPhone的前身。

《最佳iPad應用程式》將引導您找到App Store中擁擠的選擇中的隱藏寶藏。作者彼得·邁爾斯(Peter Meyers)經過數千個選擇的測試,編輯出這本令人難以抗拒的目錄。在這些頁面中,您將找到與iPad本身一樣神奇的應用程式。

翻閱本書以獲得應用程式建議,或直接前往我們為您準備的幾個類別之一,其中包含“最佳選擇”來幫助您:
- 完成工作
- 處理照片
- 製作電影
- 創作漫畫
- 更好地瀏覽網頁
- 做筆記
- 梳理思路
- 監測健康
- 探索世界

無論您如何使用iPad,《最佳iPad應用程式》都將幫助您在繁雜的選擇中找到真正的寶石,讓您充分利用這個光鮮亮麗的裝置。

《8個讓非音樂家製作音樂的iPad應用程式》
早期的iPad評論家對一件事非常確定:這個裝置將用於消費,而不是創造。他們認為,iPad用戶將花費大部分時間享受媒體(電影、音樂、電視節目),而自己的創造慾望將消失。

事實證明,人們喜歡用iPad創作東西,不僅僅是專業人士。例如,App Store上充滿了巧妙的音樂製作工具,可以將iTunes愛好者變成活躍的音樂家。以下將介紹的應用程式都不會讓您成為音樂大師,但它們絕對是一種有趣的方式來發出聲音。

《Soundrop》
這個簡單易用、無法用盡的音樂製作應用程式會讓您花費大量時間與iPad一起創作,可能會影響您的愛情生活。您可以通過將一條或多條線段放置在音樂生成顆粒的滴答聲下來“創作”。當每個點碰到不同的線段時,應用程式會播放一個音符。添加更多線段,微調它們的位置,觀察這個由您自己創作的作品展開。

免費版本提供了簡化的調色板:線段只能產生一種聲音(部分風鈴,部分木琴)。通過應用內購買升級到專業版(2美元),您可以獲得真正的好東西:多種樂器(鋼琴、薩克斯風和合成器);節奏和每分鐘節拍控制;以及保存您的創作的能力。

《ImproVox》
今天的音樂明星們都因為有了聲音整形的等效物而受益:一點點AutoTune輔助的聲音修飾。所以,對於我們這些音樂上有挑戰的歌手來說,尋求類似的幫助並不丟臉。這個應用程式的非凡之處在於,它在您唱歌時提供幫助。這需要一些嚴肅的計算機科學技術,因為大多數軟體驅動的音樂魔法都是在製作後添加的。在這裡,您只需插入帶有麥克風的耳機,開始唱歌,並添加和聲。