I was interested to read the Telegraph article today (see here) in which they talked up the iPhone as a new musical instrument. Whatever you make of the music in the video clip they link to, this ‘development’ has been a long time coming, and something I have been predicting for years (since SSEYO got into mobile music making apps and tech in 2000).
Even before SSEYO was acquired by Tao in 2002, SSEYO was already developing interactive audio frameworks and technology for Tao intent. Tao intent was a virtual processor, and we (the SSEYO, and now Intermorphic, founders) created the intent Sound System (now owned by Intermorphic!) to be a programmable, and versatile framework for application developers.
Our vision for many years was that the phone was going to be the next electric guitar (well, a musical instrument in the general case!). In 2003 we created a paper for Tao about the ‘Musikfone’, and this was sent to a number of handset manufacturers and operators (and various presentations were made, too). We were hoping they would listen, see what was coming, and decide to deploy Tao intent and let developers create rich, interactive music (and other) apps for those mobile devices. You can guess what happened; it turns out no one really got it…
On the lines of ‘the mobile phone is the next electric guitar’, back in August 2006 I wrote about this for Vodafone Receiver (see here) and in October 2006 presented/demoed the precursor to the 12-track mobile music mixer ‘Intermorphic Mixtikl’ for smartphone / PocketPC PDA at the Symbian Smartphone show (see David Wood, Symbian EVP Research refer to it here).
Tao intent went on to be embedded in many millions of handsets (mainly because of its Java engine), which was great. But sadly the Tao intent SDK (with the advanced intent Sound System) was never freely available to application developers. There was never a freely downloadable intent runtime, either, that might have helped kickstart the intent music app side of things. Many complex chicken and egg business issues there, for sure.
Here we are in 2009, though, and Apple appear to have done it with music apps on the iPhone – their own hardware/software platform. I say well done to them!
Well, Apple have not exactly done it entirely themselves, though. Yes, they put everything in place for it to happen: the iPhone with a great set of hardware and software capabilities, including audio, and deployments in volume; an SDK with audio support that any developer can get hold of and develop with; an easy to use store; lots of marketing etc.
But, there was still still something missing – the apps and games themselves, and this was where the 3rd party developers showed just how important they were (imho) to the iPhone success.
The Telegraph article, at least to my way of thinking, affirms that to me.
