Will ipad replace Mac computers

[Antaren]

I had a huge argument with my cousin who knows nothing about professional music creation. He said ipads will replace computers and apple computers will no longer be availale. I tried to make the argument about Logic, why I need a computer, monitor, etc., but he wouldn't budge. Any good talking points here that I can counter his arguments with? Thanks.

[fuzzfilth]

I'm not sure you need to proselytize your cousin, but what do I know.

 

I remember having a lively discussion on this here a while ago. Just looked it up, turns out it actually was one question and one answer. Anyway, here it is:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=157067

[Antaren]

Thanks Christian. And I see the person who answered is you!

[David Nahmani]

In my opinion, at some point, computers as we've known them for the past few decades (a keyboard, a mouse and a screen) will disappear. As technology evolves, most devices we use will be computerized, or have part of them become computerized. This already started with our phones. Our TV sets. Our cars, fridges, cooking devices, watches, connected heaters, lights, alarms, self driving lawn mowers, self driving vacuum cleaners, book readers, etc.

The last time I purchased a main entry door for my house, some models didn't have a keyhole, they were computerized and connected, so that one could let someone else in remotely, lock the door remotely, or authorize someone specific to get in only at a specific time, etc.

So my guess is that ultimately you'll have multiple devices for each specific use, but they won't necessarily be the computers we know today. After all, a music recording/production device would be better equipped with faders, knobs, and transport controls than space bars, volume-plus and volume-minus keys, etc. Sure, a keyboard is a great device for entering text, and maybe they'll stick around for a while, just like they do on large consoles in big recording studios today.

[MikeRobinson]

Be that as it may, David, my front door has a lock. And, it does not have a video camera. So far as I am aware, neither my thermostat, nor my refrigerator, nor my kitchen stove is listening to me. I do not share my files with Apple on "iCloud," and I do not "ask Siri" for anything.

[David Nahmani]

MikeRobinson said:

Be that as it may, David, my front door has a lock. And, it does not have a video camera. So far as I am aware, neither my thermostat, nor my refrigerator, nor my kitchen stove is listening to me. I do not share my files with Apple on "iCloud," and I do not "ask Siri" for anything.

Yes. For now.... And perhaps you won't have either of those things in your lifetime, in fact that's likely. But what about future generations?

I look at the past to know the future. I'm reminded of my grand mother. She lived in a small village in the mountains. When the telephone company came to our house to offer to install a (wired) telephone, she was stunned: she said: "Why would I ever need to have a telephone? If I need to talk to someone, I put my coat on, take my cane, and go to their house talk to them." A few years later, she had a telephone installed and we could communicate with her, which she had never conceived as something possible or of any interest. Fast forward one generation later, and everyone spends their days on a wireless smart phone that allows them to browse the internet and play video games. Can you guess what it will be like in one or two generations?

[MikeRobinson]

I think I'll defer that intriguing notion for another day – except to say that I detect a certain "overly eager naïvité" in our present adoption of technology. People are not looking at the down-side. Or maybe even considering, soberly enough, that a down-side could exist. Would you knowingly drive a car which had "drive by wire" in which someone out there on the Internet could take control of the car away from you while you're travelling 70 mph on the highway inside of it? Undoubtedly not. But, you might be driving just such a car today ... not knowing, and certainly not suspecting. Because there is no historical precedent; nothing to relate to in your entire lifetime history of "driving a car."

 

They could fling you into oncoming traffic or against a bridge abutment and kill you in an accident that would be blamed on you. Or, they could pull you over on the side of the road out in the middle of nowhere and trap you inside of your own car until you smashed the windows. And they could suddenly send you down the highway at 80 miles an hour when they detected (using the built-in video camera that tracks your every move ... didn't you know it was there?) that you were trying to get out. All of these things are possible, right now, in millions of production cars.

 

"This is not a drill. Repeat: this is not a drill!"

 

The law hasn't caught up to the technology yet, and "what eventuality will finally force the law to do it" is very unpleasant to think about. I'm afraid that it will only happen after great and very-public tragedy.

[simoncroft]

If anyone can show me an iPad that can run two monitors, has 7TB internal storage, accepts multiple audio streams via FireWire, and allows me to control LPX using a full-size QWERTY board, a mouse, trackpad, MIDI keyboard and MIDI controller with 9 hardware rotaries, I'll maybe think about buying one. But before I do, could some one please spell out the advantage to me? Oh, did I mention 128GB RAM and my video editing requirements?

[robinloops]

I think iPads and even smart phones have already pretty much replaced desktop systems for general users. I don’t even turn on my iMac anymore except for music stuff. 

But the desktop solutions will still be around for a very long time. Basically, an iMac, minis, or even laptop have become replacements for the Mac pros. 

But over time, iPads will probably even replace these devices for power users. Just not for a very long time. 

That being said, my mentor, who has always been two steps ahead of the game, has already moved on to using primarily an iPad for his music creation. He however also has a new hardware solution for when he wants tactile feedback. The thing is huge but does everything under the sun. So as David mentioned, hardware solutions will probably be part of the mix.

[Atlas007]

If the trend keeps moving towards virtuality, chances are that direct brain interface will replace many hardware peripheral devices... Which will freak out many of us today, considering @MikeRobinson's post.

                                         

Edited July 25, 2022 by Atlas007

[olavsu1]

 

On 1/29/2022 at 11:38 AM, Antaren said:

I had a huge argument with my cousin who knows nothing about professional music creation. He said ipads will replace computers and apple computers will no longer be availale. I tried to make the argument about Logic, why I need a computer, monitor, etc., but he wouldn't budge. Any good talking points here that I can counter his arguments with? Thanks.

It all depends on the role of the user. Simple customer don't need a workstation (example: a sound engineer isn't a simple customer).
And also about whether music is written or maked.
To do write music, need only  note sheet and pencil. iPad can do this.
To do make music, need more things. iPad alone can't do that, but iPad can be a remote controller for music making/playing/delivering devices.

[Atlas007]

14 hours ago, olavsu1 said:

To do make music, need more things. iPad alone can't do that, but iPad can be a remote controller for music making/playing/delivering devices.

AFAIK, music could be created using Garageband on an iPad…

[Danny Wyatt]

On 2/10/2022 at 7:18 PM, MikeRobinson said:

I think I'll defer that intriguing notion for another day – except to say that I detect a certain "overly eager naïvité" in our present adoption of technology. People are not looking at the down-side. Or maybe even considering, soberly enough, that a down-side could exist. Would you knowingly drive a car which had "drive by wire" in which someone out there on the Internet could take control of the car away from you while you're travelling 70 mph on the highway inside of it? Undoubtedly not. But, you might be driving just such a car today ... not knowing, and certainly not suspecting. Because there is no historical precedent; nothing to relate to in your entire lifetime history of "driving a car."

They could fling you into oncoming traffic or against a bridge abutment and kill you in an accident that would be blamed on you. Or, they could pull you over on the side of the road out in the middle of nowhere and trap you inside of your own car until you smashed the windows. And they could suddenly send you down the highway at 80 miles an hour when they detected (using the built-in video camera that tracks your every move ... didn't you know it was there?) that you were trying to get out. All of these things are possible, right now, in millions of production cars.

"This is not a drill. Repeat: this is not a drill!"

The law hasn't caught up to the technology yet, and "what eventuality will finally force the law to do it" is very unpleasant to think about. I'm afraid that it will only happen after great and very-public tragedy.

I like it how you worded your thoughts. Not because of the iPad vs laptop/desktop discussion, but how you perfectly said "Or maybe even considering, soberly enough, that a down-side could exist". I think looking at the past to predict the future, as @David Nahmani said is not always enough or accurate. 

I think that everything has a tipping point where anything after that, is only going down. For example, let's say you are in your bathtub and the temperature is just perfect. If you increase it by 0.5 degrees, it won't bother you, right? Then you increase it another 0.5 degrees. Using David's example of "in the past people didn't think this would happen and now it is", we could say "well, if in the past this increase of 0.5 degrees didn't hurt, I'm sure I can keep doing this forever". Truth is, after a certain temperature, your body will start to feel it and it will affect your organs. So no, we can't just keep going and going and going as if there's no limit, as if there's no down-side, as you said.

I think this obsession for "more" is not healthy. Sure, there's a lot of things that make our lives easier, but how "easy" do we want our lives to be, if we then lose other important things?

Using David's grand mother as an example: sure, David and her could communicate, which is great, but she would also spend less time outside, walking to go and talk to the people near her, which is not a good thing. Exercising is necessary. Being outside is necessary. So I agree with you: people, when looking at all the benefits of "evolution", often forget that a downside could even exist. And in my opinion, nothing is all benefit, so I not only think a downside "could" exist, I say that a downside DOES exist and we should always have it in mind. We shouldn't just discard evolution, but we should always have in mind that tools are to be used, not to use us.

[Atlas007]

Life has a price: death.

 

[MikeRobinson]

In fact, you can find material ... I don't know if it has achieved commercial success ... which was "created with Garageband on an iPad (or was it an iPhone?)," and it sounds pretty darned good.

In the end, I think, nobody really cares whether "pretty darned good music" was created in a million-dollar studio or by Morse code. 

Today, "we live among an embarrassment of technological riches."  In decades past, artists spent well more than $100,000 for less(!) than what we routinely have today.  But still, "it's all about the music."  Not the nifty tools.

Edited December 5, 2022 by MikeRobinson

[des99]

> Will ipad replace Mac computers

Not in my world, unless the iPad becomes *way* more sophisticated, to do the kinds multi-app cross-app workflows that, well, a Mac can do in it's stride. Until then, it just slows me down.

Every attempt at making the iPad stretch from it's original design - the whole "the iPad *becomes* the app" thing - hasn't been very successful, and while initially resisting implementing it for various reasons, when they finally started to add multi-app/multitasking features, they were awkward, complicated and painful to work with. After rethinking and redesigning the multitasking aspect three times now, things are better than the earlier attempts, but still doing any kind of productivity is quite painful. I still get calls from people where their iPad has gone into some split window, paired app state, and they have no idea how they did it, or more importantly, how to get out of it.

I think the iPad could probably get somewhere a lot closer the ideal to be able to work fluently, but that's a way off yet.

I do like the iPad for what it is though - a multi-purpose touch device than can do a single thing quite well.

I wonder whether we'll have new general computing paradigms in the future, rather than just computer/tablet/phone... I think more than anything, the actual *computer* part is destined to shrink and more or less "disappear", perhaps by then we'll all be able to manipulate our digital lives and work by thought and retinal implants...

Edited December 5, 2022 by des99

[robinloops]

They will evolve. Like the evolution of the Mac. At one point you had to have a mac pro for a studio. At some point iMacs got fast enough. Then at Some time after MacBook pros, up next… iPad.

I would have never thought I’d use my phone more than a desktop (for general computing) but it’s faster than my 2013 iMac and is my only work ‘computer’’ I use at work. I don’t even turn on the Mac anymore except to make music. And most the time I want to do basic rough take music stuff (I.e. record a classical guitar song) I get good enough results I just use the iPhone garage band. 

iPads and phones will get as fast as we could possible dream right now of them ever needing to be. Of course by then, what we do with them will require even more power and we’ll still be upgrading every year. Lol. “My virtual reality experience isn’t doing it for me anymore. I need the iPhone 66 that has added sense of smell, and taste.” By then iMacs and MacBooks will be a niche market.