The Story of garageband – Interaction Design History Spring 2022

GarageBand is a digital audio software that allows users to create music.To understand why Apple wanted to create a free music-making app for beginners, you need to understand Apple’s goal for the Macintosh during that time because the iMac had been a very successful products for the company, and Apple had been slowly releasing new software for the machine to make it even more appealing and valuable for customers they also wanted to reinforce the reputation of being the go-to computer Brand for creatives. For example, there was iMovie in 1999, iDVD in 2001, and iPhoto in 2002. and all these applications in empowered users to express their creativity in different ways, which worked to differentiate the machines from their competition and attract new customers. So it made sense for Apple to offer the everyday Mac user a simple piece of software to create high-quality music easily. But there was a problem: Apple didn’t have any expertise in the area. So they took the acquisition approach — buying a company called Emagic in July 2002, which was run by Dr. Gerhard Lengeling. Emagic developed their music creation software in 1993 called Noted or Logic, which was originally only available on Atari machines. And the software accomplished something pretty impressive because it integrated track-based operations with pattern-based operations — something uncommon in other music applications of the time. But it didn’t achieve any high level of success until it was re-written with an object-oriented graphic user interface which allowed it to be exported to the Mac and Windows PCs. This was also when Emagic changed the name of Noted or Logic to simply Logic. As the application grew in popularity, it caught Apple’s attention — that’s why the company eventually acquired Emagic along with its creator Dr. Gerhard Lengeling and used their technology as the foundation of Apple’s own logic music creation app. But Apple knew Logic was a complex piece of software that would only serve professionals, so they asked Gerhard Lengeling to simplify Logic in order to make it accessible to everyday Mac users. And this led to the creation of GarageBand, which was eventually introduced at Macworld in January 2004.

It featured digital audio recordings, MIDI sequencing, virtual instruments, and support for plug-in effects. So from the start, GarageBand really did offer users a full-featured music creation experience in a user-friendly style, and in order to convince people that GarageBand was a very capable piece of software, Apple had John Mayer demoed it on stage during its introduction, which gave the application quite a bit of credibility, but not everyone agreed that GarageBand could serve as a suitable piece of music creation software. Some were critical of the 16-bit maximum recording quality and 44.1 kHz sample rate, which were much lower than its professional-level counterparts. Also, GarageBand could only record one track at a time, which may be sufficient for amateurs, but it didn’t cut it for professional artists. What users probably loved most about GarageBand was its price because it was included with every Mac for free as part of the iLife suite. but if previous Mac users wanted to upgrade to the latest version of the software, it had to be purchased, and this was only the beginning for GarageBand because, over the next few years, Apple added new features and capabilities with every new version of iLife. In 2005 GarageBand was capable of recording up to eight tracks at once, and users could view and edit music in musical notation. While in 2016, users could include mid-track tempo changes and more than 200 sound effects or jingles in their podcasts. And alongside these regular updates to GarageBand, Apple began promoting expansion software called JamPack, which included collections of loops, samples, and software instruments designed to expand the creative capabilities of the standard application. Apple created five different JamPack extensions, which were sold for $99 each. GarageBand also served as a great gateway to the professional music software called Logic because every project created with GarageBand is to be opened in Logic, along with all the Apple loops and plug-ins. So users felt like they were outgrowing GarageBand and desired a more capable piece of music creation software. They would likely purchase Logic from Apple rather than looking to other companies. But it wasn’t just software extras that apple sold for GarageBand. They had a close relationship with apogee and M-audio which led to the creation of some high-quality hardware accessories designed to work specifically with GarageBand. As a result, their products received official endorsements from Apple he’s accessories included audio interfaces called the Apogee one and M Audio, which led to the creation of some high-quality hardware accessories designed to work specifically with GarageBand. And as a result, their products received official endorsements from apple. These accessories included the Apogee One and M Audio iControl, which were actually designed to resemble GarageBand’s user interface. in the summer of 2007, GarageBand was updated with the new iLife suite applications. Some of the additions were 24-bit recording and exporting, multiple takes on one track, the ability to print musical notation new effects, and more advanced automation controls. But one of the headlining features of this update was something called magic GarageBand, which allowed users to assemble custom jam sessions and backing tracks by simply selecting a genre and a few instruments. in 2009 Apple introduced a feature to GarageBand called Music Lessons. There were two types of lessons users could download — basic lessons that were free and talked about the fundamentals of piano or guitar and artist’s lessons, which could be purchased for $499 each. Artist Lessons were special in that an actual musician would teach users how to play this song, so users could attach a MIDI keyboard or guitar to the computer and play along with the artist. In 2010 GarageBand was given a small update which included flextime, a tool that adjusted the rhythm of a recording, the capability to match the temple with one track with another instantly, and 22 new lessons for guitar and piano, along with a new “how do I play” feature to measure how well the user performed during the lesson. and as of GarageBand 10.3, Apple included 1000 new loops and made all the artist lessons free, which is good news. But the bad news is it doesn’t appear there’ll be any new artist lessons for GarageBand in the future.

In 2011 Apple released a version of garage band for iOS. Although the app was available on the iPhone and iPod touch, Apple focused primarily on the iPad when promoting it. GarageBand for iOS had an impressive amount of features comparable to the macOS version. it had on-screen instruments, smart instruments, multi-track recording, Stompbox effects, and guitar amps.when GarageBand was first released, it was a $6.99 download from the App Store, but as of 2017, Apple made GarageBand completely free for all iOS users. in recent years, Apple isn’t as focused on GarageBand as it had been during its early days because updates to the application aren’t nearly as regular as it once was. This has brought into question: what plans Apple might have for the future of GarageBand. garage band may be simplistic compared to other professional music creation apps, but it’s still a competent piece of software that’s simple enough to be used by almost anyone. So, rather than concentrating on what it can’t do, consider just how incredible it is at so many advanced features included in a piece of software that’s free for every Mac user.

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