Ins & outs

LIVE 10 LARKS Some nice lampoonery from producer Kill The Noise, who’s redubbed the Ableton Live 10 trailer with a very different soundtrack. Watching earnest musicians pour their souls into CBeebies-style bleeps and pings never gets old. http://bit.ly/2CYWk9d

CARD TIMES Who’d have thought 2018 would be the year of the cardboard musical keyboard? First Nintendo announced one as part of their Labo kit, then the origami-style, build-it-yourself Kami-Oto arrived on Kickstarter. Just be careful not to get it wet.

GET YOUR FREK ON What happens when Ikea and Teenage Engineering work together? You get Frekvens, a new music range designed for “getting the party started”. Prototypes are currently in progress, and we can expect the results of this partnership to appear next year.

SINGLE SPEAKER (PUT A RING ON IT) An Apple product launch wouldn’t be complete without some kind of controversy; in the case of the HomePod, it was the fact that it might leave a white ring on your r wooden furniture. Not such a smart speaker after all, then…

PURPLE PAIN However well-intentioned, Justin Timberlake’s recent Super Bowl halftime Prince ‘duet’ show wasn’t particularly well received, not least as the Minneapolitan funkster had expressed his dislike for such technology-powered artist revivals when he was alive.

ANDROID ANGST Compiled by JUCE, the Mobile Quality Index was sobering reading for Android users. With a few exceptions, Android devices still trail iOS phones and tablets when it comes to latency levels and glitchiness. Will they ever catch up, we wonder?