I just purchased an iPad Air. I’ve considered buying an iPad previously, but for some reason I just couldn’t justify holding onto one as a long-term computing device. I’d have to say the iPad never fit into a need to have device category for me. It isn’t a phone, which fits my needs for business purposes, and it isn’t a laptop, which fits my needs for content creation and all-purpose computing. It’s something in-between; something entirely different from the other two. And it never felt necessary.
But now, with the new iPad air, Apple has trimmed considerable weight off the chassis of its tablet, slimmed the device’s width and added a screaming-fast 64 bit A7 chip. I’m not usually one to sweat tech specs, but here’s what those improvements have meant to me:
- The iPad Air no longer feels heavy in one hand when holding for extended periods
- The form factor feels closer to the iPad Mini rather than the 3rd or 4th gen iPad
- This thing is fast; it actually feels as fast as my 2009 Macbook Pro (I imagine this is as much a function of iOS’ slimmer profile / feature set as it is the underlying chip architecture)
So while it’s still not a necessary tool like a phone or a laptop, it’s a great tool to do just about anything, including content creation.
The first app I fired up was Garageband and I was on my way to laying down some music. For someone who has always felt hindered by the mouse-and-keyboard paradigm in music recording software, recording on the iPad was intuitive and frictionless. I encountered a few bugs and things that need to work a little easier, but the general flow of laying down an audio track was astonishingly simple.
With desktop software, from Cubase to Pro Tools to Logic, I was always frustrated by the feeling that the software stood in the way of music creation rather than making it easier. Granted, I’ve known some guys who absolutely fly in those tools – but for me, I wanted to spend more time playing the instrument than learning the software. Making all the adjustments in those apps also had an effect on what I was actually trying to record – by the time I got it working the chords I was thinking of were gone. The iPad changes this for me.
Granted, Garageband is a consumer tool meant to be easy enough for people who have never played an instrument to get in and try their hand at recording something. It does this job well. But I contend that there is a small but vocal subset of musicians (both professional and amateur) that simply want to get their ideas down without much of a hassle. The iPad does this really well, too.
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