Analog or digital creativity?

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A friend made a remark about artistic creativity, and suggested that an artist can be more free working with analog tools compared to digital tools. Many people have ideas about this, without really knowing what it’s like to draw and paint digitally. For me it’s not about deciding if it’s better to paint with real, analog watercolours or digital watercolours – every way to paint or create art has its benefits and way to be creative. To me it’s a matter of what one likes to work with and also, how the result will be used. When I know that a drawing will end up in print or digital publishing for example, then I might as well work digitally from start so that I can control the quality better. But, others have other ways to create drawings and I think part of the creative work is to find working methods that suits you and give you the result you want.

Anyway, I started to paint eyes with the purpose to show how I work digitally, but also with ”digital analog tools”. Note: I just painted my inner image of what eyes look like, I didn’t look at any photo.

Brown eye, I used any digital tool that I wanted to use and I worked with layers.

This is the first eye I painted. I used Tayasui Sketches on my iPad Pro. I had no limits to how I could use the digital tools, I used many kinds of brushes, shapes, layers and blending effects.

Green Eye, I used ”almost analog digital watercolours”. It was difficult to get an exact shape though, so in the end I just couldn’t stand the imperfection and used a circle shape so that I could erase the edges and get a better circle. I also added a black circle as a pupil.

I really tried to work in an analog way with Tayasui Sketches. I used wet watercolours and let the colours blend as long as the digital paint was ”wet”. Then I added some details on the dry paint. I worked in only one layer.

But, it was really difficult to get the pupil black enough and I couldn’t stand that the shape of the eye wasn’t a circle, so I gave up my ambitions and used a circle shape so that I could erase the edges until the eye became a circle and I added a black circle as the pupil. And yes that means that I added layer to this otherwise ”analog digital painting”.

Blue Eye, I used digital airbrush, shapes and layers.

I just couldn’t help myself, once I started to paint eyes, I had to do one more… This one is made in Tayasui Sketches using the digital airbrush tools, shapes and layers.

Grey Eye, using digital oil, pastel and chalk in ArtSet

I told myself that I shouldn’t paint more eyes, but then I got the idea to try to do it in ArtSet. ArtSet is digital of course, but it is so analog that it’s almost annoying. No layers. You can’t change the size of the brushes, except for the oil paint – there you get a set of brushes and can choose how thick you want the paint to be. The tools for blending the paint are a bit clumsy to use.

I really tried hard to paint this eye, but in the end I couldn’t stand the imperfect shape and also, the paint looked smudgy and flat. So, again, I decided to open the image in Tayasui Sketches, work on the shape and also use airbrush to soften the smudgy paint, add a black shape as the pupil and of course, to do all this I used layers.

So, would it be more creative to use analog tools? I did think the thought of painting an eye with real, analog watercolours, but, just the thought of it makes me feel trapped into something that I don’t like. I am a digital girl (eh, woman, I am 55 actually) and digital tools feel more easy and natural for me to use.

I think that every artist can release their creativity best with the tools they prefer to use. Simple as that.

I tried to paint the big picture of the Apple concept…

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Click on the pic to get a bigger image!

This is a mindmap that tries to cover all the Apple products and services. I won’t say that it’s complete, but it gives an impression of how many things that are part of the total Apple concept. Even if I know about all this – I have just put everything down from my memory, I have never seen such an overall picture of what Apple is and I think it’s impressing. (And I have forgot some things, I’m already starting to recall what should have been on the map as well…)

When you think about it, someone can get interested in buying an Apple device for so many different reasons. Maybe you get curious when you see someone use ApplePay? Maybe you wonder how reading e-books works? Maybe you just need a new computer? Maybe someone took a photo with her iPhone and you are surprised by the good result? Maybe you see how a broadcasted TV-show is filmed with iPhones and you think ”Can they do that?” Maybe you drive a excavator and report your jobs on an iPad? Maybe your kid brings home his iPad with e-books, apps and instructions from his teacher and you are amazed of how well it works?

No matter what your reason is: once you start to appreciate Apple, you get curious about what more there is.

Some people judge Apple from using just one device or the market for just one device. I want to remind everyone about how big the world of Apple is. Compare with Microsoft, Google or Amazon and they offer just fragments of what Apple offer to the market. That’s why Apple keep on making progress, it’s almost a bit scary when you look at it like this.

New times mean new ways to do things, so of course, one day someone will start to build up a new concept for how we do things and one day Apple will be history. But I think that Apple will keep on being a huge company to count on for at least ten more years and I wouldn’t get surprised if they can hang on even longer than that, because, a certain way to innovate is in Apple’s DNA. Could they go on for ever? Who knows…?

 

Apple’s big system has many entrances

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You always need a reason to buy something or start to use a new technique. When I bought my first MacPlus computer it was just to get something more modern than a typewriter – hey, it was 1989 and we didn’t even know about the internet.

Soon I found out that I also could use Macs to draw and paint digitally and that was huge for me, but it didn’t matter to most people. When I discovered Fractal Painter in combination with Wacom’s digital pen, it gave me so much joy. However, this was not something that made everyone buy a Mac or even a computer.

I think Internet was the first big entrance to the world of computers for people in general, but not many of them bought Macs. Many believed that Macs were toys and maybe just useful for creative people – oh, how wrong they were! They didn’t even realize that Microsoft Windows was a bad and ugly copy of the MacOS…

The next big entrance was music, or rather, the possibility to carry music with you in a small, cool device called iPod. I still remember when my daughter borrowed her dads iPod and her class mates wonder how big the memory was and she said 15GB and they laughed at her, believing that she said 15 MB, so she had to repeat it: 15 Gigabyte. Then they understood. Wow! Her coolness factor sky rocketed at once.

The iPod became a big success for Apple and it also meant that they sold music on iTunes. A legal and easy way to pay for digital music. So music combined with the coolness factor was now the big entrance for many to the Apple world.

Then Apple launched the iPhone. Hallelujah, jackpot! Everyone, I say, everyone around me bought an iPhone. This time it was not something for kids or young people, this time it was a tool that many CEOs found to be useful and of course, also employees and iPhone became the norm of mobiles. As we know, other companies tried to produce smartphones as well, but they are all iPhone wannabes. I remember, for example, when a man from a newspaper apologized that he had to use an HTC smartphone, because of the company’s policy. He was not happy.

The iPhone has changed so much in how we solve our daily tasks. We use it as a telephone, but it’s also a tool for email, internet and even reading, taking notes and much more. In fact, one of the features that totally has change our behavior is the camera. It has changed the camera market. The average person doesn’t need to buy a camera today because the iPhone’s camera is so good!

The next thing was the iPad. It didn’t become as successful as the iPhone, but still, very successful and it changed the way we work, study and entertain ourselves, even when we travel. It sure became an entrance to the Apple system for many.

By this time we became used to buying not only music, but also apps and e-books via Apple. One Apple ID and we get access to so many digital items and services. One category are the bank apps, which are very useful.

Today there are so many ways that Apple makes our lives easier to handle and for every way that people discover, no matter which entrance they used, they will become more curious about the rest of the Apple devices. This has lead to that Apple sell more Macs, even though other companies see declining sales of computers.

This autumn Apple released Apple Pay which might be the next really big entrance to the Apple world. It’s such an easy and safe way to pay that I think it will set the norm for what people expect.

Next year Apple Pay will continue to grow and it will get a boost when the Apple Watch is launched. The Apple Watch will also become a huge entrance to the Apple system. Many have already learned about health bracelets, but as usual, when Apple adds health features to a device, they do it so much smarter and cooler than the others. The Apple Watch will be used for so many things. Health is one big reason to buy the Apple Watch, but imagine the coolness and simplicity when you can pay with just tapping on your Apple Watch!

And, I haven’t even mentioned how much cash Apple Pay will bring to Apple…

Once you start to use an Apple device, it’s very likely that you will continue to buy more devices from Apple, which means that you will buy more digital items or services and then you will start to use Apple Pay when you buy other things. To think about this almost makes me dizzy… Imagine how much you buy at AppStore, iTunes and iBookStore, add everything you will be able to buy in your local stores or online – paying with Apple Pay. Is this the future, that almost everything we buy will go through Apple’s system for transactions? If that becomes the daily reality, Apple will have so many streams of money flowing to them.

And I will still use Apple because I think their devices and services are outstanding.

I think the best way to get some money back from Apple is to buy Apple shares. It’s like a variation of ”if you can’t beat them, join them!”, except, I don’t want to beat Apple. I want to be a happy citizen in the Apple Global Country. As long as Apple keep on doing good. And that’s the danger in all this: the moment Apple starts to do something evil, then this system will fall apart, because we are all in the system because of our free will. We can still choose other products and services outside the Apple system. But we don’t.

We enter the door to Apple and very few of us leave, once we have discovered what Apple can do for us. As long as they keep on making our lives better, we will stay.

Apple’s next innovation will be, eh, MacBooks?

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There’s a lot of talk going on about Apple and what will become their next innovation. The pressure to deliver innovations get harder and harder for every year. Apple’s shareholders are very demanding and it sometimes seems like anything except miracles are regarded on as disappointments…

The buzz is about an iWatch or some new solution for TV, together with spy reports with pictures of new product details that comes from the ”next iPhone” and so on. There’s also some talk about a new, large iPad and I really hope that rumor is true.

But, we don’t hear much about the MacBooks. What will the next generation of MacBooks be like? We got a mind-blowing cylindric MacPro the autumn 2013. We also got big upgrades on iWork. It’s about time to get new models of the MacBook as well.

Horace Dediue writes:

But the bigger story is how Apple’s mobile platform has nearly reached the sales volume of Windows. In 2013 there were only 1.18 more Windows PCs than Apple devices sold. Odds are that in 2014 they will be at parity.

If you look at this graph from his blog Asymco, you can see that Macintosh (Apple’s computers) have just a small part of the amount of devices that Apple has sold.

I am sure that Apple wants to expand and gain more market shares also when it comes to computers. iPads and iPhone are fantastic devices, but most people need computers to do their work. The thing is: once someone has bought their first Apple device, they kind of want one more and then another. I think it often starts with that someone buys an iPhone.

Another trend is BYOD, Bring Your Own Device. It has been going on for a couple of years now and like Horace writes, the center for decision has moved from the IT departments to the individual user. The result is that more people are free to choose what they like and in a lot of cases it means Apple devices.

Therefore I think that the next big wave of development for Apple is not  TV-solutions or watches. I think they will start to sell a new generation of MacBooks that will be so delicious that everyone wants one. It seems like they are starting to revolutionize the MacBook in many ways and the last week we have seen evidence of a patent for flexible display device and a pressure sensitive touchpad. I think that we are getting closer to a MacBook without a keyboard… actually I started to think about that during the autumn 2010, so it’s not a new thought. Physical keyboard means more parts that can go broken. I always wear out my keyboard with my nails. It’s time for a touch board also on the MacBook.

Though, we won’t know what it will look like until we know. But I’m convinced that a new generation of MacBooks are an important part of establishing a solid market share filled with people that will use their Apple devices for work as well as private. The competitors need to work a lot smarter in order to challenge the growing success of Apple.

Business as usual in the Apple world

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Despite all the negative investors, Apple is doing fine as a company. It’s still hot no matter what you Apple-haters say. Anyone heard of a big fuzz when Android releases a new OS?

Yesterday my feed on Facebook was filled with friends that was upgrading to iOS7 or at least tried to, because, apparently so many wanted to get iOS7 at once, that we had some technical problems with downloading it. Some persons I know stayed up very late to do this, others actually woke up in the middle of the night to get iOS7…

Today I have got some reports saying that people in Stockholm were so obsessed by checking out how their new iOS7 worked, that they almost forgot to get off the train or the bus at the right station… hey, I wonder when I will get the news about someone who actually did forget!

One week ago when Apple launched the 5C and the 5S everyone talked about it the next day. It seems like everyone wants the gold iPhone…

Conan O’Brian has produced a hilarious video about the Gold iPhone!