Why I don’t buy new iPads for music making anymore | GAS Therapy #29

There is no alternative to iPads unfortunately. I currently have iPad Air 2 and you can imagine how slow it is... 2014 technology crippled by useless iOS updates. Over the time I have purchased tons of auv3 plugins and it is most convenient device for me currently but Garageband is so slow. And new iPads are so disgusting, no 3.5mm, poor cheap options (slow 10th gen) and overpriced pro models.

Idk really, I have Macbook but it has some shitty screen that makes my eyes pain. I thought of buying monitor but it would remove the option of being mobile. It is literally endless loop. I even thought to go dawless but there is simply no device to suit my needs

I Agee but the music Synth apps aren’t available on windows nor android that’s why I got a iPad used it’s a shame these apps developers only make a apps for only apple platforms that’s the real problem

I've used a 2017 iPad Pro 12.9 for the past few years. I bought an Apple Certified Refurbished 2021 M1 Pro iPad Pro 12.9 in 2023, but I feel like I overpaid and really didn't need one. I just caved into peer pressure. Everybody else was buying a new iPad, so I bought a new iPad. I now feel like I should've just put a new battery into my old iPad Pro because it's still more than adequate for everything I do with an iPad.

all this crap is over priced, i say if anyone makes a tablet that you can upgrade will win!!!

It’s such a shame that apple are such greedy dicks because iOS music apps are brilliant and much cheaper than vst equivalents.
I got bought a 32gb iPad by my Dad a few years ago and it’s been an absolute boon !
It has a headphone output socket which I plug straight into my mixer / audio interface and to save space I record into Reaper. More recently I’ve been recording into AUM so I can separate each instruments recording but that soon gobbles up space and then I have to have a session offloading as much as I can. I just got a big fat cheque for Christmas and thought great, I can get myself a nice 1TB iPad Pro so I don’t have to keep pulling back apps from the cloud and have access to more of them at a time.
Unfortunately apple have shot themselves in the foot on that front because connectivity on new iPads is shite. I also want to use the iPad for live looping with loopy pro but without even the simplest of outputs like a headphone socket it’s useless and the latency using Bluetooth would be rubbish.
I really hope someone comes up with another product like the iPad that can run iOS apps and give apple some healthy competition to make them up their game! I am so so disappointed with apple, they really don’t deserve to still be in business.
Having said that, I still love this iPad and use it every day, so I’d like to get a secondhand iPad with more storage but one that still has the headphone output. Can you please recommend one such model. If I could at least increase storage to say 128gb that would still make a huge difference 😊
Cheers Gary

iOS music production is so shitty it really doesn’t matter what POS you’re doing it on anyway. Your apps WILL crash, your files WILL be lost or corrupted, etc etc. Don’t even dream about running a live show on these things. It’s all garbage. That said, once you accept that, you can have fun with these dinky little apps

Im still using the first iPad Pro 12,9 and it’s still an amazing piece of hardware the battery while beat making on the go lasts for around 6 hours. I can load around 60 auv3. Plugins in AUM without problems.

You make a damn good point.
Apple is crap for value.

iPad pro would not even update iPad OS on USB C tethering whereas MacBook Pro does. No help from Apple, only told by Apple that IpadOS used to be much worse.

Logic for iPad changes everything

I though you were Robert Kiyosaki

Suggest something from the android end. Device and Daw wise

Just watched again and laughed so much. Especially the end comment “Apple or Banana”.

I was into iOS Music Making scene since ~2010 as well, and for me most favorite era was really the "early" one, 2009-2016 maybe.

Don’t agree. Sure an iPad Pro doesn’t support tf cards for external storage but you can hook up an external SSD. You don’t want the read and write speed of a tf card when making music or transferring files in general. SSD is a far better solution. Higher read write speeds and affordable. Buy a 3rd party usb hub for $40 with high quality headphone jack, usb c, usb ports, hdmi, whatever and you can hook up anything you like for your music purposes. Also, iPad shell is thick? You must be kidding. The iPad Pro is just 5.9 mm thick. That’s a very sleek design and a lot thinner than any iPhone. About the Apple Keyboard case. You aren’t forced to buy the official Apple branded stuff. You can look at other manufacturers for wireless keyboards and cases. Also cheaper. I’m currently still on an iPad Pro 2020 and I will not upgrade anytime soon. It’s the model that came out a year before the M1 Pro, but I assure you that this iPad Pro with the A12Z Bionic chip and 6GB RAM is still an overpowered beast in todays iPad landscape. Nevertheless, great video. Sometimes it’s good to vent and rant about certain things. Good luck 🍀 and stay safe and healthy! Edit: the A12Z Bionic outperforms my iPhone’s A15 Bionic chip. Both in CPU and GPU. Let this sink in for a moment, people 😊

Thank you VERY MUCH for your HONESTY. Apple is hungry for money.

My Ipad air 3 of three years old is still working perfect, mostly on stage so I don’t need a pro and if I would need more power and memory I probably would buy a computer.
The dongles don’t bother me.
Yes Apple is after our money, so is every other company and buying Ipad apps still is much cheaper than buying computer programs or VST’s and my Ipads last for years giving me plenty of time to save for the next even better one.

So I am still very satisfied with my Ipads, Logic on Ipad even made it better and simpler for me.

I’m still using my 2015 12.9” iPad Pro. Yes with many instances of auv3 it gets sluggish but it works; 4gb of ram luckily (I can’t believe your 2017 has 2gb ram…what were they doing releasing that two years later with half the ram for a “pro”).

You’re absolutely right about the keyboard. I got one and it wasn’t working after only 2 years - absolute overpriced garbage.

I’ve considered upgrading but I mean, why? It still works for what I need it to. I got it new and the pencil wasn’t cheap, needed a keyboard, needed the camera kit…it added up to be a pretty penny but I’ve gotten windows laptops that lasted shamefully shorter. The lack of headphone jacks on later ones really makes me not want to upgrade.

Frankly I think iPads are a good deal for music given the lifespan. However I would almost certainly say to buy used. I won’t be buying a new one again. My model can be gotten for absurdly cheap now, and compared to the newest gear influencers are pushing it can do WAY more for a fraction of the price. Is it shiny and new? No. But it is more capable than the shiny new Push for example.

Keep on preaching man. You’ve got a great message, informative and entertaining.

careful with the new macbook pros. their RAM and Hard drives are soldered into the motherboard so if anything breaks its not easy to recover your data. older models you could just take your hard drive and put it on a new computer, this ones you have to send to apple or a specialty shop. NOT PRO PRODUCTS AT ALL

haha you was having a little rant on apple aren't you?

i use a usb hub on my 11” M1 iPad pro. lets me charge it, use midi drums & a headphone dac. got to write it off for tax too. its the only apple product i own, & even though i wish it had 3 usb c ports & a sd slot im still pretty happy with it.

Noob

This borders on clickbait to drive your channel which is, of course, just marketing. But you're deliberately choosing NOT to talk about how to re-purpose your iOS devices. WHO CARES what the iPad "looks like" when you're making music. I'm still using my 3 old iPhones as dedicated devices — I don't give a sh*t about the speakers because it was designed as a PHONE not a synthesizer. It just happens to handle doing synthesis pretty well.

Your admission about continuing to use your existing Apple devices speaks volumes but the rest is just dishonest and pandering to the PC Boi and Applebasher crowd.

To quote Shakespeare, "... the lady doth protest too much."

As a windows guy I bought ipad for for procreate and drawing in general. By now, it just pretty much lies on my table unused. Laptop (especially windows laptop for me) is just so much more versatile I see no point in using ipad

Just get a PC.

ive been using my phone with fl mobile thats almost 7 years old, as an 8 dollar DSI from japan running Korg M01, with a modded GBA using Bleep & Nanoloop2 this has been my set up for year , but if your just trying to make music on an ipad i use to use tabletop its enitre free daw or caustic

This episode was brought to you by...err.

Yeah, after 2012, when crApple decided to start soldering on the memory and hard drives to their laptop, I knew it was the beginning of the end. I still haven't bought a replacement laptop. Wish I could say the same about the iPhone. I hate the stupid dongle for the headphones that I had to buy. The first one I bought got thrown away before I even took it out of the box without realizing it,k and had to buy another one.

Nothing has entered the chat.

The only think I like in the Apple products is the USB midi convenience. Anyway I prefer to buy for example a good and versatile synth like Access Virus or a Blofeld plus cheap used Thinkpad for sequencing and a MIDI controller. With a little help of the Cakewalk or the Ableton lite you get a monstrous combo for music production. That's just an example what you can get for the money. The list of great gear is long... The Ipad sucks in any aspects in my opinion.

So why sell your sampler on iOS

What do you recommend as a mobile alternative

I’m so grateful for your channel. Finally someone saying what I’ve felt for years. I’m still using a 2015 MacBook Air and an original 13 inch IPad Pro and no, I don’t want to support a company that can’t even put something as simple and useful as a headphone jack on their products. So last year I bought an $800 1TB ASUS laptop with USB, USB-c, HDMI, a headphone jack - my god! - I was surprised you could actually get a laptop that had all the useful stuff built in. No dongle bullsh*t. Steve Jobs would be appalled by Apple today. Windows it is now.

Your videos are so good man

Truth hurts. Chapeau!

Edir: this said, my 10 year old mac is still running like the 1st day. They started fking everything up a bit later...

Solution: 3rd party gear for dongles (some higher end ones work really well and are supported by Apple) and buy last gen. You can get an M1 iPad now for pretty good prices

Help,I'm a musician looking for an affordable set up to record my songs.Ipad air has some up sides.Can anyone help with my mini setup?

the problem with Apple is eventually you will have to buy it again to move forward with the platform. Once they antiquate the device through planned obselence (stopping the updates) you ending either buying new or buying newer used...

its all true. so i dont work in daw anymore when i travel. i just create music via analog. then import into a daw when i get home. I cannot multitask on ipad with just 1 usbc port. i need to charge, transfer files, plug in an external ssd, plug in my dac and headphones. Imagine if apple just integrated dedicated ports on the ipad -like a tablet/laptop hybrid. So now, its just easier to bring a laptop for travel or invest in a true desktop setup at home.

Awesome. Telling it like it is. Thank you.

So almost a year later I come here to say: all you need is a samsung tablet (there are several good ones nowadays with 3.5 jack and expandable memory ) with Koala Sampler, and a windows pc with Serato Studio or Ableton Lite (can be Suite if you want 🏴‍☠) for finishing tracks.

I'm glad you made this video to show the reality of trying to make music on the iPad.its not a one all end all and tablet makers are not going to change their way of giving you less and for a lot of money.seriously Apple is all about the money .for example the first iPad came out I think in 2011 and for all those years the basic iPad had the speakers on one side 😂 ,they could have moved one speaker to the other side years ago but didn't till just this year.that alone I'm sure saved them alot of money but the consumer had to deal with the mono effect of both on one side.i remember when you used to get a full size USB A port and some tablets had 2 full sized USB ports but that's no going to happen any more . because they all follow each others ideas when they produce new tablets.bottom line is that tablets are good for quick ideas.but not much more than that. Let's get real Apple is never going to make a iPad that has 2 quarter inch stereo inputs and 2 quarter inch stereo outs 4 full sized USB ports 16 gigs of RAM and 512 gigs of storage oh and how about a full sized quarter inch stereo headphone jack 🤣. You'll just have to settle for all the crap coming out of one stupid lightning port that looks like by the time you're finished hooking up everything that your iPad looks like it has just vommited it's insides out .

Real talk!!! ❤

Is there any android tablet model that you rate highly?

I’ll keep my 8th gen

I'm still using two 2018 iPad Pros and no issues with Beatmaker 3/Garageband along with using it as a controller for Logic Pro X. I bought a newer iPad last year and returned in a week. They're making it impossible to use right out of the box for music production. You have to purchase Air Pods and other Apple wireless/cable audio devices if you want to get the full experience of music production. The 3rd party add-ons are also expensive.

Hey Michael. I just wanted to say that i think you are doing something truly amazing in today's world: showing people a way forward to make their lives better and asking almost nothing in return.

Most importantly, there is no HIDDEN AGENDA and even more importantly, you take care to be HONEST and tell the TRUTH!

Thank you for doing what you do. To be honest, seeing your work gives me hope for the future of humanity. That might sound like I'm being over the top for no reason, but I really feel that way. It's so inspiring to see people out there trying to help people because it's just the right thing to do!

Cheers to you in the new year my friend, and keep making great MUSIC while you're at it!

- @bobbymobetta

yep

My Opinion. I Disagree. Bought a Ex display iPad Pro 2019 Model with 256 & iPen for $300. Did R&D on Best Apps. Bought Samplr, Borderlands, AUM, Looper, Drambo, Mozaic, Gauss, etc Cost another $100 in apps & iCloud monthly for a Dream studio set up that would have cost me $10,000 a decade ago. You know the deal. Used my Steinburg UR44 to connect & AL Sync over Bluetooth. Mixed via my Studiocraft hardware desk into AL inputs. After one year I have 75% Free H/disk. Sound Mix, Composition & Quality is a 10. I now have 56 Tracks finished & have quadrupled my output flow by using this method - Idea to simple chord structure - Increased Music Sketch with AUM - mix of at least 8 Instruments, All Synced and saved for recall - Output to AL multichannel as needed. ONE BIG TIP - Always use AUM first, even If you disable and use instrument's without multi track (Quick sketch) as the coding is incredible and behind the scenes the AUM "sets" the correct audio signal path & stops all glitches, pops & cracks. Also dont go cheap on the Camera adaptor & powered USB (Audioforum for R&D info). "Your welcome". Now go make some music. PS Love your channel playpm ! The Sampler you just made is great, well done.