Here’s something we didn’t see coming.
Gibson has announced an App Store for guitars – if yours happens to be a Gibson Firebird X.
Here’s what they have to say about it:
We are only using about 20% of the power of the Pure-Analog™ Engine. This leaves enormous possibilities for future enhancements without any hardware changes. The entire Firebird X system is designed to a new Gibson standard which will allow other companies to develop hardware and applications that can integrate with any guitar that uses this standard, including the Firebird X.
Gibson will set up an authorized store – very much like the Apple iPhone/iPad environment – where all vendors can sell their applications, which we will verify are compliant with our system. Like Apple, this involves a sophisticated e-commerce site that removes the hassle and overhead for a development company and just generates a pure revenue stream for the developer.
It is our intention to roll this out to hundreds of thousands of guitars in different price points, giving all fans and consumers the ability to take advantage of this new technology. This eco-system, with a well-specified and published Gibson environment, will open up thousands of enhancements for our customers.
EASY FIRMWARE UPDATES AND UPGRADES
Product enhancements, both paid and free, will be very easy to install via a simple firmware update option in our Tone Editor software. The firmware is downloadable, and updates and upgrades take about a minute.
Sound interesting – as long as you don’t have to reboot your guitar during a gig.
What do you think about the idea of loading up apps on your guitar?
via engadget
Who’s going to be buying a $5,000 guitar so that they can load up $2 apps on it?