Apple brings Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro to iPad

[enossified]

22 hours ago, zipb said:

Is someone really going to record anything serious with the built-in mic of his iPad?

At some point, yes. 

I remember the first feature film shot with a Canon DSLR and the first one shot with an iPhone.

[Nunstummy]

Despite all my concerns, I’ll be putting Logic on my iPad the day it becomes available 😉.  Who’s with me?

[anp27]

8 minutes ago, Nunstummy said:

Despite all my concerns, I’ll be putting Logic on my iPad the day it becomes available 😉.  Who’s with me?

I'm not. I want to at least read the user guide first to find out the full list of features. 

[fisherking]

28 minutes ago, Nunstummy said:

Despite all my concerns, I’ll be putting Logic on my iPad the day it becomes available 😉.  Who’s with me?

buy me an ipad and i'll do that too.......

[analogika]

13 hours ago, oscwilde said:

Not how my accountant does things (in Oz), but this isn't the forum for discussing taxation.

(I’m quite certain that tax write-offs work the same way everywhere in the world. What you describe would make buying any gear for business literally free, be it computers, studio equipment, musical instruments, or an office building. 
What actually happens is that the expenses are figured against income — so you subtract what you’ve spent on the business from the revenue you’ve earned, and only pay taxes on the remainder. How much that actually saves you depends upon what your tax rate is. 
I urge you to confirm with your tax accountant, because this is a major misconception that can really bite you at some point.)

 

*ahem*
 

back to the topic, sorry. 

[sunbrother]

I can see why the app is priced that way. If Logic Pro was typically priced low to sell hardware, what hardware is being sold here? I paid thousands for a Mac Studio and less than $250 for the iPad I’m typing this on.

[des99]

1 minute ago, sunbrother said:

If Logic Pro was typically priced low to sell hardware, what hardware is being sold here?

Well, I would say that part of the reason for porting the pro apps to iPad is a push to legitimise the iPads for "pro" work, and especially make the iPad Pro's more attractive purchases, by having software than can better exploit their potential.

2 minutes ago, sunbrother said:

I paid thousands for a Mac Studio and less than $250 for the iPad I’m typing this on.

Will yours run Logic? The larger iPad Pros, with a decent amount of onboard storage, the pen etc run into the 2-3K price range too, so those are not inconsiderable purchases either.

[Mania]

1 hour ago, des99 said:

Well, I would say that part of the reason for porting the pro apps to iPad is a push to legitimise the iPads for "pro" work, and especially make the iPad Pro's more attractive purchases, by having software than can better exploit their potential.

Yes! Now i can say it's worth to buy a PRO iPad. Until now the cheapest iPad did the exact same thing as the PRO version. The only difference was that the PRO version was a little prettier.

[FuzzBub]

I'll be very interested in this if I can do audio track comping (like on the full Logic Pro). I tend to doubt it will have that capability, at least at the start. But if somehow it dos, it'll be hard for me to resist.

[StudioQ1]

I'm getting so excited to play with this! The more I think about it and how I could use it the more excited I get about this. I can't wait to see what people make with this. Honestly, imagine just being in a room full of producers and passing around the ipad everyone takes a turn adding a layer. no key commands to be like this persons logic is different then mine bounce it here. just click and touch. this is clearly where the ipad will excel. this is imo where if they get this down I could see this being preferred over a laptop by some producers. 

[Atlas007]

15 hours ago, des99 said:

Well, I would say that part of the reason for porting the pro apps to iPad is a push to legitimise the iPads for "pro" work, and especially make the iPad Pro's more attractive purchases, by having software than can better exploit their potential.

I would bet that LogiPad users would eventually be interested into Logic Pro on new M desktop machines as well, eventually...

[Atlas007]

Personally, I'll go for it when it comes out.

It owes to be at least fun to play with.

If I don't like it, I'll simply cancel the subscription or not renew same.

AFAIK, Apple is a reliable company and is of no fuss when customer satisfaction is at stake...

[zevo]

Every time I've tried to use my ipads for audio/images/video over the years it hits me very quickly that tablets of all the major players are really primarily media consumption machines for me. I find doing anything more on them frankly painful.

I hate the form factor for creating things (I/O mixed with display, OR spend a gob tacking on a decent 'laptop' like keybaord/trackpad), not to mention the very noticeable lack of processing power, and I've never had a single bit of fun trying to do anything real on them.

That said, I have a great time with my kids playing little audio 'sample' apps where I can make all the little creatures make different 'songs' by dragging them around on the screen.

iOS/iPad OS also just isn't up to the task yet. As much as I hate to say it, the Surface crowd, of which I'm now a member thanks to work, had this done right a long time ago. Everything on my work laptop works on my work surface pro, and the form factor's ability to 'convert' over to basically being a laptop is much better than the iPads I have/have had.

Apple actually is in sort of a corner here... the market 'thinks' it wants application parity (I'm not sure it actually does); Apple, on the other hand, really try to 'distinguish' the tablets from the 'computers' in a way that still just feels made for 'consume' things to me.

And I'm totally find with my iPad being a consumption device/little helper/time-waister kind of thing, and it fits perfectly when I'm on my keyboard and want to stop/start Logic apps, mix audio, etc with the Logic app. Even the Omnisphere app from time to time.

And a Macbook Air is 350 US cheaper than a comparable ipad pro with bumped SSD and keyboard/trackpad added. Doesn't even make economic sense to me.

Edited May 15, 2023 by zevo

[analogika]

28 minutes ago, zevo said:

And a Macbook Air is 350 US cheaper than a comparable ipad pro with bumped SSD and keyboard/trackpad added. Doesn't even make economic sense to me.

It never did to me, either, nor why I would want an M1 or M2 chip in an iPad. It does now. Your perception of lack of processing power has been moot for a year or two now. 

Apple have been establishing Mac-level hardware at Mac-level prices, but what's been missing has been Mac-level software. 

While I do agree that iPad seems limited and "painful" in many ways, I do see that this isn't about us old fogeys. We grew up on traditional computers. I've developed my skillset and honed my workflows over thirty years on mouse-based, traditional computers. 

 

My daughter is growing up in a "Post-PC" world, and may only ever encounter a traditional PC in an office somewhere. She got basic training in elementary and middle school, but has been iPad-only for years now. 

She will be using "Post-PC" devices for anything and everything she can get away with before ever touching a traditional computer in her life. It's just the default "computer" for anything beyond what can be done on a smartphone. 

And we're starting to see the "post-PC" platform growing in power and capabilities to match the old platform model. 

For US, the question may be "What does Logic on iPad offer over what we have now?". 
For her generation, the question is "What does a Mac/PC offer over what I can do on iPad now?"

The answer is "not much, and ever less". 

[Atlas007]

1 hour ago, analogika said:

For her generation, the question is "What does a Mac/PC offer over what I can do on iPad now?"

The answer is "not much, and ever less". 

I don't agree.

Serious coders working exclusively on iPad to be ported on PC? I don't think so. But the other way around, most of the time. Nor do you see any serious company running exclusively on tablets.

Will that change, probably... but not guaranteed...

Edited May 15, 2023 by Atlas007

[analogika]

35 minutes ago, Atlas007 said:

I don't agree.

followed by

35 minutes ago, Atlas007 said:

Will that change, probably... but not guaranteed...

…you just agreed with me. 😃

 

Not sure why anybody would offer "serious" software running exclusively on tablets at this point. Traditional PCs are the de-facto standard for our generation(s) of 25-65 year-old working adults in most industries. Ten years from now, the default will have shifted. 

Edited May 15, 2023 by analogika

[des99]

1 hour ago, analogika said:

While I do agree that iPad seems limited and "painful" in many ways, I do see that this isn't about us old fogeys. We grew up on traditional computers. I've developed my skillset and honed my workflows over thirty years on mouse-based, traditional computers. 

Yeah - I agree... for me now, working on the iPad feels constrained and clunky, whereas I'm sure as a kid I would have embraced it in the same way I embraced the technology of my time - drum machines, sequencers etc. Compared to what I had access to, it would be amazing!

However, for a lot of things, the reason the iPad feels clunky to "work" in is not so much my inability to embrace new workflow patterns and learn new software and stuff (although as a semi-old now I'm aware that these things *do* factor in), it's that in many cases, it *is* clunky. It can have some great advantages, but most of my computer-based activities involved multiple tools, windows, apps working together fluidly and quickly, and iPads just don't do that well *at all* yet, despite Apple continually trying to revise it's multitasking abilities in a way that's useful and makes sense (it's better, but it's still poor imo).

I find it best to not try and fit my existing workflow into an iPad environment, and just embrace something simpler and different from normal (eg, using it as a sketch pad, or making music differently, or generating ideas) rather than trying to use it to do what I'd do on a Mac etc. And there are probably some advantages to trying new approaches, creatively-speaking too.

[Atlas007]

4 minutes ago, analogika said:

…you just agreed with me. 😃

Sorry to disappoint you, but I didn't...

At contrario of your statement:

Quote

 

For her generation, the question is "What does a Mac/PC offer over what I can do on iPad now?"

The answer is "not much, and ever less". 

 

While you are stipulating that the iPad supplant the PC now and it will be even more,

I am affirming the opposite and questioning about its future usage spread in the industry (with some doubt about same).

[analogika]

4 hours ago, Atlas007 said:

Sorry to disappoint you, but I didn't...

At contrario of your statement:

While you are stipulating that the iPad supplant the PC now and it will be even more,

I am affirming the opposite and questioning about its future usage spread in the industry (with some doubt about same).

I meant "already" — not "on iPad now" as in "at this time", but "on iPad now" as in "the iPad I already have and do everything with". 

We're already at the point where the majority of adults don't use traditional PCs, because the smartphone is their primary (only) computer. 
iPad is the natural extension, far more so than jumping to the complete paradigm shift that is a traditional mouse-based computer. 

How fast the adoption as default happens is a question of industry/use case, of course. But it seems as inevitable as the GUI takeover of the industry over the decade following the release of Macintosh. 

And of course there will always be pockets of hold-outs — just like there are scenarios today (like server administration) where the command-line rules, and always will. 

Edited May 15, 2023 by analogika

[analogika]

3 hours ago, des99 said:

However, for a lot of things, the reason the iPad feels clunky to "work" in is not so much my inability to embrace new workflow patterns and learn new software and stuff (although as a semi-old now I'm aware that these things *do* factor in), it's that in many cases, it *is* clunky. It can have some great advantages, but most of my computer-based activities involved multiple tools, windows, apps working together fluidly and quickly, and iPads just don't do that well *at all* yet, despite Apple continually trying to revise it's multitasking abilities in a way that's useful and makes sense (it's better, but it's still poor imo).

I agree with your assessment of the status quo, and I'm in the same boat.

But the same is absolutely true going the opposite direction. There is stuff that is so utterly natural on iPad that feels tremendously clunky on a traditional computer: this fact is the entire reason that Wacom even exists as a company, for example. 
Or why we have external fader boxes for our DAWs, or Touch OSC templates. 

The trade-offs are different, and going forward, I suppose it will be merely a question of which paradigm you're coming from as to which kinds of clunkiness annoy you. 

Sort of like switching between Pro Tools and Logic. 😉 

[des99]

1 hour ago, analogika said:

But the same is absolutely true going the opposite direction.

Sure. I'm not talking about a specific case, even music/Logic in this instance, I'm talking generally and using iPads to do "work". As i said, iPad apps can be great and have some great benefits for specific cases, but I'm really talking more generally about how I use computers productively, versus using iPads productively.

Interestingly, there were a lot of (younger) people in the Apple ecosystem who a few years back were all in on iPad - making it a point to just use iPads for all their work, not using a computer at all, and I used to think along the lines of "wow they must be happy working generally slow and painfully, or have very limited use cases where the limitations don't factor in so much", because I've tried some of those workflows and they were super painful. But I was interested in their experiences and solutions, because I'm *always* interested in better workflows. Or I've seen, for example, my partner struggle try to do a job application in the real world using only an iPad and no access to a computer, typically kinds of things normal consumers need to do, and wonder why it's so difficult.

All of the ones I'm thinking of finally reverted back to (or discovered) the Mac, and use Macs for their productivity now.

It's absolutely a fact that kids these days are likely "tablet-first" users, and may well be way more comfortable on a tablet than a computer, at least in the first stages of their life. And maybe by the time they've grown up, the iOS system may have evolved enough where you can do the kind of complex multi-app, multi-window work that technology-based professionals need to do. Or possibly the nature of that work may have evolved (eg, using AI to handle and abstract away a lot of the grunt work we had to do manually) so it's less of an issue.

iPads are great, but that kind of work is just not something that they do well - and until they do, it's best imo to use iPads at what they are great for, and use computers for what they excel at, because while there is certainly overlap (and that will likely grow over time), there are still areas (software development is an obvious one) where the options for iPad etc are still way too limiting at this time. And it doesn't seem that Apple has a good idea yet of how to really go from that original "the iPad becomes the app" design philosophy, to turning the iPad into a powerful tool capable of performing the complex tasks we typically need regular computers to do, at this time.

Having said that - I wouldn't bet on qwerty keyboards with function keys being the primary input devices for computing tasks in, say, 50 years. I really wish that consumers weren't so resistant to keyboard changes (the response to the touch-bar is an example of that), because I think there's a lot of mileage in re-inventing the keyboard somewhat. Probably it will take the older, keyboard-centric generation to die out and the children of the tablet to finally get past those old paradigms.

And now I'm starting to sound like I'm writing a science-fiction story, so I'll leave this one there... 😄

Edited May 15, 2023 by des99

[zevo]

An interesting side-note/personal experience:

My 12-year-old is definitely the 'tablet/touch-screen first' generation. He's fine using his iPad, though they use computers for school, and learned to type on normal keyboards.

I got him a pen, and a keyboard for his iPad, and a variety of graphic apps and audio instruments/beatmaking apps.

He doesn't use them anymore, past his initial playing with them, and wants a Macbook for 'real' applications (his quote). He plays games on it, but he wants what he sees me do on my various Macs. He's also in to coding these days, and wants to build VMs, so there's a whole other realm of things tablets right now just can't really do (and I'd cut a finger off before I tried to code ON a tablet).

My 18-year-old is arguably also a 'tablet first' kind of guy, but quit using them in favor of his surface pro years ago.

I think tablets have their place, and yep, the place is expanding, but even 'the kids these days' in my experience (not just my kids, but their friends) move on to the horsepower and far more 'serious' applications and workflow, which tablets don't currently have (sans the semi-hybrid surface pro).

Quote

Your perception of lack of processing power has been moot for a year or two now. 

I'm aware of the somewhat comparative processing power (though MEMORY has yet to compare at all).

It's the increase in cost for that processing power, which is the 'what's the point of this' bit of my post.

Edited May 15, 2023 by zevo

[analogika]

The power is not “somewhat comparative”; the M1/M2 in the later Pros and Air are literally the same processors as in the entry-level MacBooks/Mac mini. 

[Atlas007]

4 hours ago, analogika said:

I meant "already" — not "on iPad now" as in "at this time", but "on iPad now" as in "the iPad I already have and do everything with". 

I guess I misinterpreted your intended meaning. Sorry about that.

 

4 hours ago, analogika said:

We're already at the point where the majority of adults don't use traditional PCs, because the smartphone is their primary (only) computer. 
iPad is the natural extension, far more so than jumping to the complete paradigm shift that is a traditional mouse-based computer. 

While it seems obvious that a lot of people do use mobile phone, which are mini tablet in essence, I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that they use same for actual computer work… Does the computer is less in use for leisure purpose, that is likely indeed. IOW, while people are using more cellphone and tablets, the use of PC is still very strong and not so much in decline, people in general are simply using more and more computer devices in general.

My 2 cents.

[Atlas007]

7 minutes ago, analogika said:

The power is not “somewhat comparative”; the M1/M2 in the later Pros and Air are literally the same processors as in the entry-level MacBooks/Mac mini. 

I don’t think power is at stake. It’s more the way it is implemented, the working environment as previously mentioned. I.e. it is only relatively recent that one could open more than one window, which is something that is decades old…

[analogika]

49 minutes ago, Atlas007 said:

I don’t think power is at stake. It’s more the way it is implemented, the working environment as previously mentioned. I.e. it is only relatively recent that one could open more than one window, which is something that is decades old…

I agree. The post I responded to explicitly referred to processing power, though. And while there are no Max/Ultra iPads, we all remember being floored by performance of the first M1 MacBooks. The current iPad pro is faster. 

[analogika]

56 minutes ago, Atlas007 said:

I guess I misinterpreted your intended meaning. Sorry about that.

While it seems obvious that a lot of people do use mobile phone, which are mini tablet in essence, I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that they use same for actual computer work… Does the computer is less in use for leisure purpose, that is likely indeed. IOW, while people are using more cellphone and tablets, the use of PC is still very strong and not so much in decline, people in general are simply using more and more computer devices in general.

My 2 cents.

For the vast majority of humans, the smartphone is their ONLY computer. Most people only ever needed a PC of their own for basic housekeeping, research, communication, and entertainment. The “home computer” has been completely supplanted by the smartphone, or iPad at least. 
 

The global PC market has been in steady decline for over a decade, save for a heavy boost during the pandemic, which has since collapsed. 
 

Apologies for the confusion about the term “now” — I see how that would be misunderstood. 

[zevo]

I was referring to relative performance. Sorry I wasn't clear, but that also includes the points Atlas made. My performance + my peripherals + the system's performance = relative performance.

Just for giggles though, I checked the benchmarks between the M2 iPad Pro and the M2 Macbook Air, and the iPad Pro is somewhat lower. It's negligible when the numbers are as high as these chips are getting these days, and it IS geekbench, which in my experience can be somewhat misleading (somewhat), while also being relative to other things on the system, like SSD size/speed, amount of RAM.

But it is there, and always will be because I doubt Apple will change their direction of having a 'somewhat' entry-level chip in the iPad Pros, else start to hit there other marketing strategy of battery life, which even the M* chips will go down the more 'power' they have.

And that's comparing the entry level chip, which I can upgrade on the Air/Pro, significantly, and the price differential pays for it. Power + Cost = Macbook win.

But I digress anyway. The LP app looks cool, and I'll give it a go. I doubt I'll use it, since I have a perfectly capable setup, but I get that if all you have is an iPad and it works well, then sweet.

Edited May 15, 2023 by zevo

[One100]

I see it as a sketchbook. You can sit in the couch, pretending being part of the family and lay-out some ideas. 😁

[fisherking]

7 minutes ago, One100 said:

I see it as a sketchbook. You can sit in the couch, pretending being part of the family and lay-out some ideas. 😁

sure. and for someone else, it's a path to finishing a song on their mac. for another, it will be the DAW they make full songs on. 

i don't own an ipad, but i look forward to seeing this in action, and to seeing what people create on logic on their ipads...