There’s a prophead-type gent in Cambridge UK that proposes to give you exactly that. Seems this Lyndsay Williams fellow and his company, Girton Labs, are busy working out how to build knobs that magnetically stick to your lappy screen, and via both hardware and software, let you manipulate the underlying onscreen controls and therefore the attached software function.

It’s all very much in the beta test phase, and no prices or delivery date is set (or even hinted at). But there are videos on the website showing the SenseSurface in action… you should go check it out for yourself.

I’m not sure a laptop is the best platform for this — I’m thinking 30″ flat-screen monitors angled back — but if this can truly be made to work it would give us DIY controllers that could be easily re-configured on the fly, depending on the application. I can visualize a box ‘o pots and sliders next to the monitor… sweet.

Hat tip to Charlie Richmond at Richmond Sound Design; the full story at Girton’s website: girtonlabs – SenseSurface – Girton Labs Cambridge

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There are three of them, and each is designed specifically for laptop use. They connect to your computer via USB, and appear to be bus-powered (at least for one at a time use. Don’t know if you can connect more with a hub or not). They all speak MIDI, so it should be possible to program them to perform various functions, as most Mac and PC software editors now support MIDI controllers and Continuous Controller (CC) messages. The music keyboard and drum pad units look like fun, but the money piece is the mix controller, shown below.

The nanoKONTROL comes with nine very short throw faders, nine associated knobs, and eighteen buttons for (I presume) mute and solo. It also features a transport section that lacks only a jog/shuttle wheel, and speaks MIDI Machine Control (MMC). A software app called Korg KONTROL Editor promises to provide a friendly interface when it’s time to program this Bad Boy, and the ability to store programs and settings on computer for later recall. I’ll def have to get my mitts on one of these mix controllers for review in RAP, ASAP.

Pricing and delivery information is not yet available, of course. But you can get firsthand info at Korg’s USA website here, or if you’re fluent reading Japanese you can check it out at the source here.

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But I’ve been playing with two very kewl products… the MicPort Pro from CEntrance and Magix’s Samplitude 10. Actually I’ve been playing with both at the same time. MicPort is a USB-to-audio converter that so far sounds great, unlike some others out there. Most of the existing converters are noisy and sound like crap, but the MicPort actually sounds very good, and does 96k/24 bits to boot. I think I’m keeping this one.

Samplitude 10, like previous versions (the last one I reviewed was version 8 back in 2005), is very deep. My concern with it is finding whether it’s still a resource-hog… I’ll be checking that this week. More later.

The nice folks at ifixit.com in Atascadero, CA have documented a complete teardown of a MacBook Air, including photos. Click this thumbnail to see it all:

BTW, iFixit is my first stop when I’ve got an Apple-related hardware problem. Their how-to guides have walked me through more than one laptop teardown. Others sell hard drives and memory for less, but if you need other bits for an Apple product you need to go there. Seriously.

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Now before we all go bonkers, let’s remember that there are no inputs on this little dingus. So while it’s great for mixing and editing on an airplane flight, it won’t really do for cutting voiceovers in a hotel room, right? ‘Cause there’s no inputs, right? ‘Cause Pro Tools won’t recognize any inputs other than the one that’s on the Digidesign interface, right? And this interface ain’t got none, right?

Right.

I can imagine some workarounds that might make this little dingus useful for voiceover work, but they’re definitely workarounds. For the moment, I’ll be keeping my Mbox 2 Mini in my briefcase. It has inputs.

More on the dingus at www.audiotechsupport.com or on the Digidesign website.

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The downsides are so very minor — ClearOne says it can be used as a remote speaker for an iPod. Well, yes it can, but you won’t like the results for that… it’s a bit boxey-sounding. But for speech, it is fabulous. I’m keeping mine. Check it out in November’s ProAV, which can be found here.

Now it seems they’ve sold through the first three production runs, and won’t have a loose one for me until mid-May. Damn thing must be good, or at least popular with the early-adopter crowd. More to come, but meanwhile you can look at the pretty pictures here.

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If you’ve never been to an Apple Store, the Genius Bar is where you take your Mac or iPod when it is misbehaving. The friendly (and uniformly young/hip/gen-Y) technicians will examine your machine, answer your questions, and run some diagnostic software to see what’s troubling it. It’s a busy place, and you have to make an appointment and get in line to see an Apple Genius. You can make an appointment via Apple’s website before you leave for the Store, or you can do it in the Store on one of the (surprise) Macs on the retail floor. Your name and place in the waiting list is then displayed prominently on one of several large plasma displays in the Genius Bar area.

This should clue you that This Is Going To Take A While.

Most problems with recent Macs arriving at the Genius Bar seem to fall into one of two categories: pilot error and abject hardware failure. The Genius Bar is ideal for the former, since it would seem that Geniuses’ education covers not only the technical workings of Macs, but also how to politely educate misguided Mac users. The educational process takes some time as the question and answer session between Genius and user moves from the original issue to unrelated topics. And why shouldn’t it? After all, when one has waited for three-quarters of an hour for an audience with a Genius, one wants to take full advantage.

Actual hardware failure is more problematical, since there’s little that a Genius can do on a retail floor to fix a hardware problem short of swapping the broken unit for a new one (a rare occurrence). Typically the customer is told to leave the computer, which is then returned to Apple for repair.

The trouble with the concept of the Genius Bar is that there’s no mechanism to prioritize the appointments based on difficulty. While I’m not a Certified Apple Technician, I’ve been disassembling Macintosh computers since the Mac 512, and have had the pleasure of completely disassembling a TiBook, white iBook G4, and more recently the aforementioned MacBook Pro (to install a larger hard drive). So I have a pretty good idea going in of how long a diagnostic session will take.

Let’s see — your computer won’t boot and the hard disk is making a clicking or grinding sound… your drive is toast. Ship it back to Apple for HD replacement. Diagnosis time: 8 minutes.

Your desktop randomly crashes after you’ve approved an automatic System Update… re-format the hard disk and reinstall OSX (hope you’ve backed up your data). Diagnosis time: 15 minutes.

Your Powerbook’s display flickers and shows horizontal lines, especially when you tilt it… the video wiring harness is failing. Ship it back to Apple for screen replacement. Diagnosis time: 10 minutes.

Your MagSafe adapter nearly caught fire… swap it for a new one under warranty. Diagnosis time: 30 seconds.

Of course the first three will include a fair amount of extra time for whining as the customer realizes that he or she will be without the computer (or the data!) for a week or two. But the last example clearly does not.

Why does the appointment procedure not require a brief description of the trouble, allowing appointments to be prioritized by estimated time and difficulty? More directly, why was it necessary for me to wait 45 minutes to swap out a toasted power adapter?

C’mon guys.