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.
VR: Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro announced
Quest 3 is here and the rumours that Apple are about to reveal a £3K headset seem to be very strong, which could be why Meta have announced this just before the Apple event. Somehow I can't see how in this current climate such an expensive VR headset would do well, but will be interesting if it happens.
I've lost a bit of interest in VR this year and haven't used my Q2 in a while but i'm still interested in it's future. One of my favourite music apps of last year was a Quest 2 app. The mixed reality and slimmer build will make a huge difference overall. Especially for productivity and music apps.
Comments
Well the rumours so far are that some within Apple have mixed feelings about the device. And they arent expecting to sell an insane quantity of them at the price of the initial model, it will be for the luxury/early adopters/developers/specialist applications market rather than expecting to appeal to the multitude in its initial iteration.
Personally I would like an unobtrusive headset that actually manages to do a good job of showing the images from the real world in a way I dont find annoying to look at for long periods, ie nail the AR/Mixed aspect. Because I would like to use such a thing for applications. such as showing advanced graphics overlays over the top of musical hardware interfaces. Possibly Behringer showed off that sort of thing in an early DeepMind 12 proof og concept demo many years ago, but the tech that would make such a thing really compelling hasnt been ready for prime time in all the years since then. Anyway I focus on this sort of use because for music I find real physical feedback from touching things important, if my hands are just floating in the air then they get tired more quickly and the sort of timing and precision required for realtime musical uses is missing.
Yeah I agree, it gets tiring quickly using the current tech which is affordable, I'm waiting for better, thinner devices which don't cost an arm and a leg. It has a lot of possibilites, but real life touching will always be better. But then for mobile use it does offer something that iPad cannot provide by itself, screen space. Apple always want to make large profits on their devices so I can't see them competing against Quest in that games market, but I would like to see a device which is good to work in and create AV experiences with. Also I think it could go well with iPad integration if they do it right as they are potentially good partners with mixed reality.
I've got a couple of VR headsets but it really needs to be like Ready Player One where as soon as you put the headset on you're straight into the environment. Almost instant on times.
Since we’re hearing $3,000, rest assured that number is a leak that was seeded to the press to set expectations high. The real number will be less. I’m thinking it’ll be in the $1,200-$2,000 range and it’ll be far more advanced than Meta’s.
I expect they'll introduce different models, an entry model and higher priced pro, even if they don't do that for the initial release. The benefits could be that you can already use your iOS apps with it in a mixed reality way.
i believe rumours are that apple will release AR glasses instead of VR headset …
I would prefer that.
If it's just AR then I think I'm not interested, would need to do both for me.
On the other hand, I have zero interest in a VR headset.
If it ends up being more of a fashion accessory like Apple watch that'll be disappointing, but if it does get released it will be an interesting moment in showing how Apple see themselves and who they're aiming at.
LOL. Are you kidding? Apple Watch is amazing.
Amazing why?
I like being able to answer the phone from my watch
Tracks all my activity, Is a GPS device, sends me notifications, checks my sleep, measures and tracks my heart rate. When running it tells me what cardio zone I'm in, holds my pwds, stop and start music etc... It's an incredible device.
And there are millions sold world wide because they are the market leader and they are amazing.
Why would you think they are not amazing?
It doesn't really do anything special an iphone can't do already. For me it's a luxury item, I can see the appeal though
You don't tend to wear a iPhone on your wrist though.
My only real negative is that the battery life isn't great.
I'm really glad I don't need to wear anything on my wrist anymore
That's the great thing about having a smart phone and you can get smaller devices which link with your phone if you want to do that anyway.
So for me it's next to useless. I can get more use out of a Raspberry Pi zero which costs £10
I've been trying to get a Raspberry Pi 4 for normal money for ages. It's ridiculous.
Yeah but it's getting easier this year, so by the end of the year should be better hopefully. I bought an 8GB 4B recently
Great to hear. I'll start looking again. Want to run octoprint on my 3d printer.
That's really good. I get a day out of mine. Think it's 5th gen.
Yeah I want to do that too, I can't seem to get my Ender 5 plus working with octoprint yet, but I think because I need the right cable to connect to the pi. Will try again soon.
As far as i saw it should be mix reality headset, so vr and pass trough for ar capabilities. 4k screens per eye. It should be light, most of computing stuff will hang on a belt or like separate attachment, while headset will contain just lenses and cameras making iy slim and light. Having sad that i think it's positive that apple as one of biggest tech brands are entering this space, it will make other companies to push for better quality headsets them selfs
Yeah hopefully it'll be like that. The space does need more attention and apps + competition. The problem with the Quest 2/3 is that the hardware is decent but there needs to be more quality apps. So if somehow Apple manage to make your existing iOS apps useable with this technology then that will be quite appealing.
So, it is a VR headset after all, with mixed reality.
Great news for the VR community overall.
There will be many more people such as Apple loyalists who were previously not interested in VR since they only buy on brand, who are now looking into this space, which is positive since all manufacturers in the VR field will benefit from that.
I’ve been watching some of the WWDC video content, and Apple is pushing hard on the idea that the vast majority of iPad apps will work on Vision Pro out of the box, though of course they’re encouraging devs to creative VP-optimized versions that take advantage of the new interface guidelines and expanded capabilities. So Apple will already have a massive leg up in the Quest platform in terms of usable apps.
Yeah that's good, I was hoping for this. It's one of the reasons I'm interested in buying one eventually if they become more affordable. Perhaps they'll release a non pro model without a front screen since that is really just not that useful most of the time. I'd rather a better and quicker way of removing the headset when talking to someone.
I’m betting that the current device will be the non-Pro model (for $2000 or so) in 2-3 years when Apple announces an updated Pro. That’s in keeping with the way that formerly top-of-line iPhone models stay in the lineup for years, which I’m sure helps to offset their design costs. I’d also bet that sometime in that same period an iPhone Pro with 3D photo and video capability will be launched. There’s no way that "take a photo with the headset" is ever going to catch on as a general-use behavior.
Yeah absolutely, I'm sure you'll be able to capture the data with an iphone, agree that it would be socially unacceptable to use it at gatherings like that. It's already a mis-step by Apple that they had the father in the ad taking a photo with the headset on of his children. it's weird how they didn't anticipate the reaction to that, but they now have feedback which is good.
...although maybe it would be difficult for a phone to capture similar data because it can't have that wide field of view
The general range of human interpupillary distance is ~54-74mm. The iPhone 14 is 146.7mm x 71.5mm.