Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
Comments
These are not random mistakes they made. Not having file management has been a very conscious design decision from Apple right from the start. In fact, I believe that keeping nasty, unpleasant stuff like managing a filesystem out of sight from the users and not turning their mobile devices into little old-skool computers has been a huge influence in making iOS and their mobile paradigm a success.
A few of us may like managing files and folders, but for the majority of people out there it's a chore. And Apple's reluctance to add it until now it was the right decision in broader scope.
If so, what changed? Why does it have to be one way or the other?
As @EyeOhEss did correctly state what I was implying this is the way Apple seem to operate across iOS and MacOS in both software and hardware technologies. With the switch from Intel to Qualcomm on the horizon, who knows what the implications will be, maybe the introduction of the iPadOS is the start of this process and a convergence with MacOS.
which one thing related to music app Apple "unceremoniously dumped" since 2010 ? If you mean IAA then :
What is Apple doing is iterative progress, in some iterations are added features which, if later turns out they weren't best choices), are replaced by something else. This is normal way how SW evolves (especially operaing systems). Developing operating system with trillions of apis is not easy job, and it involves a LOT of people. They all workin hard. Sometimes something breaks ? Yes. But in general there is progress and clear intention to push things forward.
I'm using iOS music apps since 2010 and i see continuous progress, improvements, system is more and more stable, capable and mature (so as apps are, at least those which are not abandoned - stucked in using old APIs, and their developers are willing to move their products forward)
It is good, and it will be better. We live great times, all that tremendous technologic progress around us
Don't think Apple has significant profit from
music apps segment ... it's still too small , insignificant, compared to for example gaming segment ...
I fully agree with @brambos about Apple's IOS design decisions, in particular about the 'missing' file system.
Tbh I prefer Audioshare's style of file management over the OSX Finder anytime, not to forget that wireless transfer is generally faster than most USB media - which you have to copy 2 times to reach your target
And btw: 'music producers' make up less than 5% of Apple's customers
There are valid technical reasons why mass storage devices weren't available on iOS before iOS 13. iOS has always had security as a priority and mass storage devices required kernel level drivers.
In iOS 13 apple has moved these drivers to the user space, removing them from the kernel. This means that you can't crash the system or do anything malicious with a thumb drive anymore. This isn't a trivial task as there were performance reasons drivers were kernel level before.
Drivers have also been moved to the user space in Mac OS Catalina.
Apple may be good at making profits, but to think Apple kept drive access out of iOS for profit motives is I think unfair. There are plenty of valid reasons to criticise Apple for putting profits before users (Just 5GB of free iCloud storage for example!) but I don't think files access to drives is one of them. In fact I'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with profits at all.
It’s not just about ‘Music Producers’ but still that 5% is no small $$$$$$$.
@dendy just take a comparison with USB it’s progress as opposed to all the connections/ports and protocols Apple has dumped in that time, this is just an example of quite a few.
I can still find faults, bugs and other issues with just about anything I touch but I've mostly learned to live with what we've got instead of putting to much energy in complaining about things we don't have.
Part of the frustration likely comes from expecting 'instant gratification' without putting in an effort to see what's already there and finding alternate ways of doing things.
Perfect examples of these are things like 'Oh, it's useless it's got no slicer so I can't make drum'n'bass' or 'pitching the sample doesn't keep it's lenght'(ie. no 'time stretch').
And all these 'I want Ableton Live for iOS' personally I can't stand Ableton Live it just doesn't click with me.
Some complaints are viable for sure but using 'strong' words(useless, worthless, piece of sh*t etc.) to express personal frustration with an app is just a sign of well...
it really is a god awful time to be alive..
@EyeOhEss I'm not onto any kind of nostalgia, but only interested in functionality.
That's what Audioshare provides, with some restrictions that are probably system based (like the inability to mark several items for 'Open in...').
But just it's existence alone is a proof that an independant developer CAN in fact establish a general data management paradigm that gets wide acceptance.
While Apple (in it's natural greed) promoted iTunes, at least they didn't suppress this approach.
As far as I'm concerned the desktop has never been of much technological relevance.
I use the most antiquated DAW because it's simply... functional.
No more no less, and it stayed in the same functional shape over decades.
Of course this was a 1 time purchase and it could only be supported by the developer (a one man show) because the price was a serious investment, but it paid off greately over the years of use.
This is contradictory to what Microsoft and Apple (or rather all big players) do today.
IOS made a great start with it's alternative 'cheap buy and forget about it' sales model, a lot of original designs appeared because there were few risks for a developer.
It all went down the drain with this kind of biz like model with 'refunds'.
Which is a joke on it's own because you NEVER get refunded by ANY big player in the software industry anyway and they don't compensate YOUR time on cleaning what THEIR bugs ruined on your machine.
Bottomline: IOS developers are expected to deliver at lowest cost, but to comply to higher quality standards than ALL industry leaders. If it wasn't so sad I would LoL
@EyeOhEss
Because devicekit is available now. It wasn't before. And probably because the iPad Pros have USB-C and that made it more of a priority to move device drivers away from the kernel.
I don't think Apple give a flying fig about the surface.
I think their hand was forced. But it was forced by their users becoming increasingly dissatisfied in the direction Apple were going. There are now good signs that they've corrected course.
Of course they do, the ipad pro (as a laptop replacement device which is how they are selling them) is directly competing against the surface and currently losing in sales trajectories. The Surface is also potentially threatening Apples Mac business. after a shakey start it's now a 1/5 of the size of entire Mac business and growing, so I'm sure they are very interested.
There's growth in laptop and hybrid tablet PCs and steady decline in tablet sales because the average user just uses them for Netflix/email etc, why bother upgrading?
I've been thinking of getting a new Macbook or Surface for years as a replacement for my laptop but there's no reason why the iPad Pro can't take back some of this market share because the hardware is all great, just needs the software to push it into this area and invite deeper apps to be developed.
@BitterGums, nice to see you. It is always a god awful time to be alive. Also god awesome.
I do not see why iOS is not afforded the time to evolve by many folks. I came upon it full blown, but many have seen the evolution and it is rapid since the introduction of the iPad a little over ten years ago.
The introduction of the automobile had many failures over decades, and enhancements were thwarted by big business (Tucker). The design cycle was impossibly slow compared to the change that took place in the 70s (80s?). Did people scream and complain for something better? Are we victims of a society that inculcates the expectation of instant gratification? We all know the answer to that one,
Ultimately things work out. Are people equally impatient that meat grown in a laboratory is not on the supermarket shelves by now? They can still buy the old fashioned kind.
Most agree the iPad Is perfect for sketches and stems. When steam came to ships they had steam power and sail. Then the sails disappeared. iOS DAWs seem incredibly capable to me and would have seemed miraculous to, say, George Martin.music production is a very niche market. On iOS you can pretty much get a complete setup almost for free. What technology ever offered that?
What I meant was I don't think it had much bearing on iOS 13s mass storage support, etc. The surface isn't really much competition for the iPad as a tablet. It's more competition for the MacBook. Apple have taken a different approach obviously and keep tablets and laptops as very distinct devices even though the developer tools are converging again (they've always been built on the same basic core).
The only way Apple can compete with the Surface is by doing what they always do; building the products that Apple think are the best possible. I don't think they're worried about the Surface per se. Most of their wounds in terms of Mac sales are self inflicted or due to Intel supply issues but they seem to have course corrected over the last couple of years with respect to their product line.
It probably won't be too long before Apple start making ARM powered Macs too. And this won't be because of the Surface either. Apple have always done things their way rather than react directly to competition.
I think it does have a connection since I'm their market and it's affecting my potential purchasing decisions.
If I know I can use my ipad pro professionally with files I'm more likely to upgrade it. I don't really use the pro Art apps until now much because of the storage system.
The tablet market is thinning out so it's clear, I think anyway, from the reports why they are making these decisions. If people were just continuing to buy ipads as they were originally designed they wouldn't need to make them into more capable platforms. Which is good news for us
I think the key thing is there's growth in a market which Apple don't really have a clear proper stake in, the "Pro" touch OS and their only stake in this area is the iPad pro, which is why we're seeing the ipadOS grow and splinter off from iOS.
and that's good news for musicians as well as other creatives
If you want a DAW that competes with (it’s own) desktop, look at MTS. No clip launch but most everything else listed as must haves. It’s a direct port of its desktop version except for 1-2 features, in fact has led* the desktop in innovation (the workflow is smarter in a couple areas)
Apple was always a hardware company.
Selling hardware was always their main business model.
Having separate capabilities for desktop and mobile platforms meant people had to buy both to get the entire scope of computing capabilities.
But, now that the technology exists to make a mobile device that "can" do it all...
And the world is now a place where a company can make a device that "can do it all"...
It's only a matter of time for such a device to become available.
Therefor... To remain competitive, Apple is forced to modify their business model so they won't get left behind.
It's better to be at the cutting edge, adapting existing and new technologies into new products, and retaining an established user base.
The "smartphone mobile computing experience" has caused cultural changes that people have become dependent upon.
This thread is a perfect expression of that cultural change.... Why can't my mobile device do what I want it to do?
People don't have to be engineers to see that their mobile devices already have the capability to do "more"... and it's not far-fetched to think they can be made to do more.
The market demand is there. If Apple doesn't move satisfy it, someone else will.
The difference between 399 and 49?
After reading this thread I see why people asked for an "ignore user " option haha sheesh.
Certain people need to.... Never mind.
If people wanna hate on iOS and apple then why are you using it, That's what I never understand... Go grab a Windows PC and be happy lol
I actually meant the opposite...
“Simply getting good at a ‘tool’ (dare we call these instruments?) is what it is all about. “
Meaning we should not be insecure about calling these instruments.
These impressions are often based on naive assumptions of people who don't understand the reason some limitations exist or the technical challenges of adding certain kinds of features to a particular code base. Even non-OS developers are often not aware of some of the issues.
Making secure ecosystems is a non-trivial challenge. I think we often assume that implementing feature X should be easy because another OS has feature X without realizing that there there are architecture or security implications.
As annoying as lack of a Finder on iOS has been for me personally--it has for sure been to the benefit of the overwhelming majority of users.
And people need to realize that if they are on this forum, they don't represent anything like typical users.
Anyone who has had significant experience doing technical support for a desktop environment or written documentation for them knows that the overwhelming majority of people using computers are thoroughly baffled by file systems and create all kinds of problems for themselves that they can't solve.
So, it was a carefully considered plan from long ago to wall it off. And little did we all know that Apple also knew about USB driver vulnerabilities before that was on people's radar.
Once the decision to wall off the file system was made , there were implications for how to reduce the sandboxing which has taken time to (hopefully safely) implement in ways that hopefully won't result in the support nightmares Apple has done a pretty good job of reducing. (Something people unconnected to large scale tech support might not realize).
When I look at reviews of various things I expect the reviewer to critique the good and bad. Why should iOS be an exception to this? This forum carries far more positive threads that promote iOS than not.
I recall someone in my family loading WP.EXE into Word Perfect and deleting it ‘cause it was just a bunch of junk on screen’.