From our press release:
“TapeDeck is a new audio recorder exclusively for Mac OS X 10.5, designed with a quick-capture workflow in mind. You’re never more than a single mouse click (or keystroke) away from making a new recording, which are called, unsurprisingly, “tapes.” TapeDeck records directly to compressed MP4-AAC audio, making it equally useful for quick high-fidelity samples or hours and hours of lecture.”
I worked on TapeDeck for the past 6 months with Daniel Sandler, a friend I once worked with at Be, Inc back in ‘99/’00 (well, our tenures overlapped—I was an intern on the networking team and he was a full-time UX designer/coder. We’ve kept in touch ever since, and Dan’s even provided a lot of feedback for FuzzMeasure over the years.
Late last year we agreed this application needed to be written—a very simple, useful audio recorder that leverages Core Animation for the Zing! and Pop! you expect from Leopard apps today.
I am very proud of the things I was able to pull off in this application, and plan to write some blog posts about the long (well, it
So, check out TapeDeck and let us know what you think! I hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed writing it!
May 9th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
This would be *super awesome* in an iPhone version.
May 9th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Sadly, being in Canada means (a) no iPhone for me (well, legitimately anyway), and (b) no developer program love from apple yet to let me talk to real hardware.
I’m sure we’ll see a lot of feedback along these lines…
May 9th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
After you see the way the Tape Box scrolling interaction works, I think you’ll believe me when I say I’ve always envisioned TapeDeck would work really, really well on iPhone.
May 9th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Interesting piece of kit here. I love the idea of the stack of tapes - how I hate managing Finder items! I also like the way it’s actually modelled after an old style tape recorder. I don’t think I’ve seen one application with this innovative concept yet… The animations are fluid too, which is something we should come to expect with OS X software.
However, there’s not a lot for $25 here. The main focus of the app, recording, can be set up in Garageband for free - with multitracking, audio units etc, then pushed to iTunes / iLife suite.
I also don’t like the way Marker Felt is used for titling - ‘Casual’ (it’s a default system font) is a good alternative if you wanted the handwritten style, but I know I’d prefer a decent screen readable font over the less readable ‘fun’ alternatives. For me, Marker Felt was a huge letdown on the iPod Touch ‘notes’ app - when the rest of the system uses beautifully set Helvetica.
In this regard it’d probably be a good idea to setup some kind of font selection panel (Apple already provides one) and let the user decide which font to use - this is what other apps tend to do.
Most old recorders had at least a ‘tone’ control - more sophisticated ones had more options - but for a recording app it will need EQ, even if to cut down the ambient noise.
So in summary, $25 is a lot given there are many free alternatives with much more expansive audio recording capabilities. It will be perfect however, for people who just want a basic, no frills alternative to MS SoundRecorder (and it is far superior than that).
Add some more features, guys!
May 9th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Hi Ben!
This is exactly the type of stuff we’d love to hear discussed over in our Get Satisfaction site:
http://getsatisfaction.com/smug/products/smug_tapedeck
Though, since we’re here…
* A font panel is probably a good idea. You’re not alone with the Marker Felt sentiment. I added this to our bug database to track for a future release.
* We deliberated for a while on the price, and actually settled lower than what folks in the beta were indicating that they would pay for such an application. So, everyone has their own perception of what value they get out of a particular app, and we respect yours (and will take it to heart).
Now, with that said…
* Free alternatives? Like Steve Jobs said when asked if people would pay for digital music - do you want to work for less than minimum wage? Getting audio files recorded and already in .m4a format that you can drag into an email/voodoopad document/iChat/etc is a _huge_ time savings for a user. Doing the same task in, for instance, Garage Band, is a nightmare (Oh - and with metadata! There’s an extra step in iTunes!). Just one of many situations, but you get my drift…
* Also, TapeDeck is an app that is deceptively simple. Much of what it does is not immediately obvious until you’ve spent some time with it. Once you’ve worked with it for any period of time you’ll appreciate the little details that go a long way towards making the application useful as a whole. For instance, our tight .m4a integration means that a Time Machine restore down the road combined with Quick Look will tell you right away if the file in question is the correct one to restore in a backup…
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, Ben!
May 9th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Hello Chris,
- Obviously, there has to be some kind of ‘tolerance’ of certain tasks - and it would also depend on how knowledgeable you are. For me, tagging in iTunes isn’t that painful, given that it does help you out with autofill.
- Of course I can see your point with immediacy - record export done, that’s always great. In fact I’m more attracted to the simpler software because it works, and it’s usually nippy and not bloated down with features.
- There is also the question of how much value do *I* as a user get out of recording applications? So far, none. I don’t blog, or podcast (yet, it’s a big if at the moment), so such an app is beyond my needs. Having said that, if I do start podcasting, I will definitely have a look at TapeDeck.
… as long as it has some basic EQ built in :)
- I also agree that this would make a perfect iPhone application. I’m sure you’ve already thought of that!
May 10th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Does this app record system audio?
Or does it only record input audio?
It would be much more useful if it could do that.
I would pay $25 if it recorded everything you hear, like Wiretap ($30).
Love the UI by the way.
May 10th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Like jamie said above, if it could replace the old Wiretap or Wiretap Pro by recording System audio (no input) it would be an instant replacement and a steal at $25. (Wiretap and WT Pro will open but not work in Leopard)
Wiretap ‘Studio’ is now $69 with “increased functionality.” Their $30 ‘upgrade’ qualifies as a pisser when I’ve previously bought their product twice (at, I believe $12 and $20) and only desire their original functionality.
Audio Hijack Pro is $32 and a more complicated undertaking.
I love the UI. Even if this issue is never addressed I say thank you. Love the Mac, Love TO Mac Dev Folks!
~N
May 11th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
What are the limitations of the demo version? I cannot find information on this anywhere.
Thanks!
May 11th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Robert,
You can record up to 15m of audio (which declines down to 5m as you lose a minute a day).
Also, at the same time, there’s an internal ‘battery’ in TapeDeck that degrades slowly. After approximately 2 weeks, the tape will play at half of its real speed (and everything will be going very slowly).
During this time, though, recordings are unaffected by the slowdown, and when you register everything will be back to normal.