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Comments
Sure @Tarekith didn't take it that way - we're just chatting around the fire ;-)
@MusicInclusive
Going back to your post where you talk about 8.x and a further round of updates...
When are we talking? January? April? Could be June by the time it all settles down..
Three or four months before iOS 9 and we get to do it all again.
Just to explain something about iOS 8 breaking apps, from one developer's perspective:
Documented API changes (what @syrupcore mostly describes) where the SDK tells you exactly what the changes are and how apps need to be modified to adapt to the changes, are by far the easiest part of the problem. Usually they'll do what @PaulB suggests - they'll create a new API and deprecate the old, which gives developers 1-2 years to switch over to the new thing and stop using the old. That works great.
What happened to Guitarism on iOS 8 was far more problematic. For reasons I have not yet been able to understand, landscape orientation completely stopped working. As in, it'd work for some cases but not others. And it'd work sometimes on app launch but as soon as I switch to another app and then come back to Guitarism, everything's rotated and going off-screen. Now I'm not saying that landscape orientation doesn't work at all on iOS 8 - that'd be too obvious an issue for just about every app out there - but something about the way Guitarism uses orientations was clearly not tested by Apple when they made some underlying changes to the way iOS 8 uses orientations. And thus, landscape mode on Guitarism is completely broken.
After trying a zillion different things I had to settle on the simplest-yet-worst solution: stop using landscape mode. So as of v3.25, Guitarism is actually running in portrait orientation, but the contents of the screen are all rotated around to appear to be landscape. You'll notice the facade whenever any system-level UI comes up e.g. task switcher, on-screen qwerty keyboard when entering text, IAP dialog etc.
People bash Windows for a lot of good reasons, but this kind of fundamental change under the covers doesn't typically happen on that platform. If stuff used to work, it typically continues to work without requiring apps to be rewritten. The downside of that kind of backwards-compatibility is that it takes longer to move forward. Pros and cons.
(Throws empty beer mug into fire). Due to stuff working so horribly in this iOS 8 fiasco, I can say that my first music production tablet (mini retina) will also be my last. For the amount that I have spent on apps, I could have a massive amount of actual hardware.
Like @Rhism said, APIs don't change quickly, that isn't really an issue, but runtime behaviors of the same APIs do change.
Here is another real world tidbit from the lovely dev world of iOS version updates - a default behavior of some Core Audio routine that was unchanged for the past 5 years suddenly changed in iOS8 causing ThumbJam (and all my other apps) to sound like an alien screaming over its dead child. Now, I should have been explicitly setting the appropriate value all along, but it only came along to bite me after 5 years when some Apple dev changed an internal default. Luckily, I could fix it before iOS8 came out, but you can imagine similar scenarios that might not be so readily discovered or solved. There are a lot of APIs in there Apple is responsible for.
And then there is Audiobus itself, the whole reason that they had to reorient the internals to use IAA is that the shared memory technique they had been using to stream the audio between apps was rendered inoperable by Apple for unknown (probably security) policy reasons. This in turn required a few modifications by all app devs to support the new AB SDK, and there have clearly been some teething issues. It doesn't help that getting IAA support right is itself a little squirrelly.
I can't speak to @MusicInclusive's issues with restored older versions of everything mysteriously acting up, but hopefully he is working with the devs of the affected apps. But it sounds like one of those really hard to reproduce nightmares none of us ever like to hear about!
Incidentally, I just submitted an update to TJ that fixes some stuff, including the unresponsive-fest if you try to edit/create instruments or use the mic in any way with TJ on iOS8. Just another one of those things they changed behind the scenes that put TJ into an audio engine restart spiral. No single party's fault, just unpredicted cause and effect.
Anyway, I wish I had made some recordings of the alien death cries, it would make a good soundtrack for some of your woes.
I think it's safe to say that I'm using an iPad for music DESPITE Apple's cutting edge, forward moving, hang on or be brushed off mentality. If Android had had better touch and audio latency specs, then more music app developers would have produced apps for it and I'd probably be using an Android device right now. We'll see what happens down the road, but by the time I can afford to invest in a new device with a bigger screen area, I suspect I'll be able to avoid Apple entirely. I don't need the latest cutting edge stuff, I just need something that does what I want reliably, without dropping support for older devices on a yearly basis. Who knows, on another platform, I may be able to develop my own personal music apps without being forced to buy a Mac or paying a developer fee for the privilege...
@Rhism said:
If Apple is leaving behind developers and apps, and forcing the remaining ones and their customers to go through weeks if not months of incompatibility, are they really moving forward?
I mean, how much has each new version of iOS really brought to the table? Isn't the whole purpose of an operating system to get apps and programs working? Beyond that there is no real significant function of an operating system.
I think its very simple, choose a few developers and choose wisely, stay with them.
(i had it in 7 too, but it took me forever to come up with something that freaked out every time )
Everyone is happy.
if iOS 7 dosent work for you anymore, switch to 8. (sipping coffee)
the early days of iOS 7 were much more unstable.
if you are unhappy with the state of your apps, create a scenario which is repeatable, then its easy to fix things.
(sipping coffee) where do you think the latest audio dropout fix came from
Pass the cookies.
@1P18 said:
Word!
Very interesting discussion. Great to be able to participate, even though it feels like I can't bring much new to the table, anyhow. Me I tend to have a very positive attitude toward the whole thing (still, this is). This far, everything still seems to be working fine for me in ios 7, and working with Apple-devices since the nineties, in the long run I never felt let down by them. Of course, I realize, I might be one of only a few lucky ones without baaaad hickups, or even complete fuckups in their setup, and on top of it, I'm not dependent on the setup working reliably for gigs, right now. Hopefully, all will be better for the most of us soon.
Thanks for great information and adult exchange of experiences!,
Cheers, twobeers
I guess I'm a bit cheap, since I'm still using my old iPad2 16... which is still functioning, although not completely painlessly. I haven't gone to iOS8 yet, (perhaps I never will) and I'm not updating any music apps atm.
I have to say, I'm really impressed by the developer community that are providing apps at ridiculous prices. Since I started making music on my iPad I have spent more money on beer than on music apps... and I think it's really cool that so much can be done on these devices.
But... there are some things that are bugging me more and more:
Memory. There is no way to add ram or storage. Even if I take out a new mortgage on my house and buy the new super-maxi-pro-iPad Air I'll only get 2G ram and 128G storage. That's it. Can't even expand with SD card.
No access to files. No, I don't want to JB, or connect to a PC and use iFunbox. That goes against the whole idea of simplicity. I want to know where my files are, how big they are etc.
No control over OS/app versions. Again, I don't want to JB or use other workarounds. I just want it to work. If I upgrade a PC from W7 to W8 and don't like it, I can easily go back to W7. Same thing with apps/programs. That's how it should be. I bought the thing, it's mine and I want control over it.
No really good drums. Yes, Drumperfect is good, and Drum Studio (which I use) is also good, but there's nothing close to EZ Drummer or Superior Drummer available. Goes back to the memory issue I guess, since multilayer samples take up a lot of space.
No functioning midi sync. Something like playing Cubasis and Drum Studio in sync, and being able to stop and start at the same place shouldn't be impossible, but appearantely it is.
Now it sounds like I'm really bashing iOS as a music making platform, but I'm not. There's so much you can do with it, and I have learned a lot since I started (had never recorded anything before I bought my iPad). There are for sure some awesome apps out there, like my favourite, Gallilieo (yes I'm a sucker for slightly overdriven drawbar rock organs :-) ) and others, again at ridiculously low prices.
I'm not demanding anything from anyone, nobody held a gun to my head when I bought my gear.
Maybe it has something to do with the kind of music I make. I've never been into electronica/techno/house/dubstep/transient etc. and maybe (just guessing) iOS is better suited for those genres than for what I do.
I want to learn to do some serious recording and mixing (serious as in good quality, not as in making it a career), so I want to be able to use efftects (minimum EQ/compression/delay/reverb) on all tracks in a project, including automation. My current device simply can't keep up with that, so I will have to upgrade. Taking the price of a high spec new iOS device into account... I will most likely switch to PC instead.
It's been great, but for me, it's time to move on. I think.
I echo the sentiments of that last sentence, for me, that's definitely where this is headed.
I don't think these problems are particularly new, they are typical of Apple. Despite the "it just works" slogan, I have seen the exact same kind of issues occur in graphics programs during the development of OS X.
For example there was the sudden announcement that Power PC was being dropped, and for about 18 months anyone who bought one of the new Intel-based Macs had to run their core programs via emulation.
Another example was the transition to 64 bit: Apple assured developers that the Carbon APIs would still be supported, and then a year later dropped them with no warning causing many developers to lose a full year's worth of work.
It's been echoed in other posts, but Apple are ruthless about dropping certain technologies, and that combined with their secretiveness can sometimes be a recipe for chaos. Eventually the dust does settle, but disruption is the norm in my experience.
Speaking purely as a musician and computer user, the disruption of the annual update, the hype -inflated expectations of users of their music apps, the inferior performance of iOS to desktop applications, and the notorious short shelf life of the average app are all symptomatic of an emergent mass market in capitalist mass consumer society. My initial expectations of music production with iPad were limited, until I saw the possibilities that specifically loopy, samplr and AB afforded beyond GarageBand. as I have explored those possibilities further, I have become a more sophisticated and demanding consumer. I don't as a rule buy every app, I haven't gone down the dj, guitar effect/ emulation, Auria or synth frenzy route I simply play with workbench, samplr,loopy. If I want to do something fancy I go to logic. The initial rush was venture capitalism, explorers developing a market. Now we are in a developing market phase where brands and genres are established, where the principal limitation is hardware not software, which is why the hardware will be getting its concurrent notch upgrade to accommodate the next venture rush. This is small beer to the larger story of convergence between iOS and OS X, which I wouldn't be surprised could be marketed cross platform,leaving Mac hardware in a brand inflated premium niche, and lower level users experiencing glitchy iOS/OS X on non optimised(ie.third party machines). This also needs to be set against the market distortions facing apple with the roll out of glass, if any.
The future of iOS music apps be they IAA or AB, will rest entirely on the innovatory imagination of the developer. I've been here since the beginning, I'm continually fascinated with what developers squeeze into the iPad, but the bottom line for me, and this applies to nearly every other application( with perhaps the exception being the kings of dragon pass game), the IPad is a sketch pad for snatching ideas quickly whilst in movement. Those are the apps I still use. Almost everything else I can do better in logic. Find me ways to do that better, and I will always consider buying you, because the third phase is consolidation and brand definition. Apple have it, so do AB, loopy, samplr,werkbench,the aufx series,the holderness apps and the jams. The rest seem stuck in phase one or two, but that pattern might be dictated as much by the pattern of my own consumption as anything else. The efforts of all developers are to be applauded, particularly given the relatively low level of monetarisation that exists in the current market. It is our duty as consumers, if we want to continue the attention of a developer, to continually adapt and develop their product, by clearly volunteering what we want adding( thx AB forum which is a pretty unique space in my experience) and by advertising our preparedness to pay more. By the way Chris Carleson I am still prepared to pay more for your upgrade to borderlands granular, providing that it is released in my lifetime.
For me iOS 8 is not the problem. IAA, Audiobus and MIDI and the entire worflow are a pain in the ass and they drain all the fun out of experimenting and making music.
If I could only get a refund for all the apps I bought except Caustic, Gadget and Figure...
I think one very simple truth emerges for me from all these upgrade tribulations:
'the first release is for general public. 3rd or 4th for people who do some serious business on it'
We should all just stamp it in our heads that the first few releases are basically beta in terms of IOS music.
And as far as downgrading of the non working apps to the previous state is concerned, we should all have a folder on our hard drives for old IPAs of all of the precious apps we use a lot and rely on. Ifunbox is there to make the app downgrade a doddle. I am a veteran of windows XP and times when every 3 months I had to reinstall the operating system because I'd downloaded something stupid. This meant reinstalling all the drivers: asio4all and the rest of it. It was like a war zone. If you've been through those 'tough times' the IoS 8 updates feel like a really small deal indeed.
That is sounding pretty bitter @raz. Hindsight is a beautiful thing but if it leads to thoughts like this it turns towards the bitterness and disillusionment. I say: make mistakes, learn and move on.
Edit: It's like when you're a little kid and your favourite toy gets broken. You either ask your daddy to fix it or you have a cry and move onto another one or you just make do with the broken one and use your creativity. If you spend too much time crying and reminiscing of what could have been you never move forward.
@Mrjonscho agreed with your sentiments especially the "convergence" and our "duty" parts. Apple wont let ipad become an imac untill there ready to sell it that way. That is where the "control" is.
With the growing trend towards pc/mac intergration, where does it leave the "100% ios" and "ios music". It is a marketing buzz word that will eventually fall by the fireside, its time limited.
One last though on this from my side... I'm willing to accept (some) limitations, if it brings simplicity. If not... meh.
@raz... I don't think it sounds bitter. I think it's a reasonable position and I suspect it might be a bit tongue in cheek (on the 'refund' bit) in order to make a point.
I have on various occasions reflected on the same thing... basically when I was just using Gadget and a few midi-out apps to drive it (StepPolyArp, Guitarism etc...). I spent about 6 months doing this, and yet I had hundreds of pounds worth of synths and DAWs and sound-making apps lying dormant because using them together to make a full track was just too much of a pain in the ass. Exactly as you say.
However, the Gadget stuff I was making started to all sound a bit samey... and I was getting a bit bored.
Then Gadget got (limited) audio in and suddenly... all my sound making / slicing and dicing / FX etc. apps became useful again. Really, really useful... [I know Caustic allows audio samples too].
I still don't string lots of apps together with Audiobus/Midi/IAA - because as you say it's too fiddly and nothing syncs. And when you have to get off at your train station you have to shut everything down (to stop battery drain) and then it takes you at least half an hour to set it all up again on the way home. Nightmare.
But what I do do is a play apps over Gadget in the background until i'm happy with something to add into my Gadget track (might just be a drum track or something in Gadget at this point). Then record that synth or app performance into AudioShare with AudioBus (or use ACP) - then import into Gadget.
This workflow is not much more difficult than just using Gadget - and opens up huge, huge possibilities (vocals, FX and sounds). And allows me to use any and every weird and wonderful app I spent money on.
Its not as good as having everything loaded in as a VST and still editable (i'm sure). It's a total pain that Gadget doesn't allow longer audio samples so you have to glue multiple samples together (and doesn't have FX)...hopefully it will soon... But for now i'm pretty happy as long as all this works reliably... which, touch wood, it does. Then of course you can save every track out of Gadget quite easily to Auria, Ableton, Cubasis or whatever for mixing and mastering if you so desire.
No good for live performance - but for producing tracks quickly and easily - i'd recommend this workflow to anyone disillusioned with the current state of things. Although I appreciate this isn't for everyone.
@Matt_Fletcher_2000 that's exactly it.
My hope was that Cubasis will have IAA working reliably enough that it will be just like VSTs inside a desktop DAW. Then all the players like PSP, Sugarbytes, Fabfilter also implement IAA giving us the only reasonable thing really - great effects and plugins working with any DAW, all in a standard way.
The reality is that at least for electronic music, where having a sequencer and good automation is essential, apps like Caustic and Gadget are the only ones offering a mostly headache-free workflow.
Mostly because I have some really nice synths and effects apps that are not so easy to integrate. Audiocopy can work, especially that Caustic doesn't seem to limit sample sizes (haven't tried longer than 30s), however, automating parameters of a synth or effect like WOW is difficult (maybe impossible) to do, especially in sync.
It's not that this is having any sort of impact on my life as a (just a) music tinkerer, but I can't find my "flow" state which makes it less fun, and more like work.
@supadom this is more like learning enough to realise that one's toy was always sort of broken when one thought it was this super duper cool thing.
@Raz... Yep - exactly what i'm going through.
I've been modulating external synths 'live' (with their own controls) as I play via StepPolyArp and record the output into audioshare (with Gadget playing out in the background). Not ideal - but it works. But obviously for more intricate modulation and effects this isn't going to work. (Although StepPolyArp can do some basic modulation).
I've also played a bit with getting a BM2 midi track to play and modulate a synth (it could also send midi cc's to WOW or Turnado or whatever) - then recording this. It works but it's fiddly setting it all up - and it's another app to worry about and BM2 can get a bit convoluted.
So not ideal and not as super duper cool as having everything loaded into a VST-type environment with total editable control/automation... But that's where we're at. I would also say i've found that Audiobus has always been 100% reliable recording any single iOS app into AudioShare. I've never had a problem - and i've been doing this a lot in the last few weeks.
Second best would simply be Gadget (or Caustic if you use that - I don't) sending Midi notes and cc's out to synth that can Midi learn... That would be a huge, huge step forward again... It really would, I imagine, be pretty simple for Korg, for example, to code Midi Out for Gadget. The really frustrating thing is they have the best sequencer/piano roll out there but no Midi out...
I gave up on Cubasis long ago... don't like the piano roll (I like Gadget's piano roll you can set to a key/scale) and there was just too much configuring to be done.
Sorry - in terms of the topic of this thread, I guess my view is:
Lots of apps connected together at the same time... avoid if at all possible (even before this iOS 8 thing i'd moved well away from this). I think iOS is a good way off this being in any way pleasant or reliable.
Don't give up on iOS though... just limit the apps at any one time and find a workflow that works with how things are right now - and hope we get a few more features in the key apps to make things easier.
I agree with the break neck pace of iOS versions not helping things. I suspect a lot of internal resources have been redirected towards the new Watch and the other platforms are suffering from it. The current level of quality assurance is not sufficient in my opinion.
There was a nice post by some other developer asking for a snow iOS 8, like there was a snow leopard version of OS X that just fixed stuff instead of introducing new things.
I think that is exactly what's needed. But a slower pace with less new features sadly clashes with Apple's need to release new products on a yearly basis, just to keep up with the competition.
That's the underlying issue: the need to be compatible with consumer culture. Without new devices with new features there's no new sales record. And without new sales records the stock price is going to be affected negatively.
The paradigm of perpetual growth that the vast majority of politicians and CEOs subscribe to is the reason why your music apps don't work as well as they should. Funny how that works, huh?
Also: yep.
@sonosaurus said:
In the last year Michael had to change the whole backbone of Audiobus from mach ports to Inter App Audio. That's equivalent of replacing the well tested and working engine of a car with a brand new one. While the car is running.
@Sebastian said:
I think this is at the core of why music making isn't as smooth as we'd like on iOS. I would say that at least Apple has invested in some core music APIs in their OS which Android hasn't which is why iOS will continue to be ahead of Android in terms of music making along with the wide range of hardware and Android OS variants out there which make music app development difficult.
Apple does seem to have a ratcheting approach to developing their products. Each version of iOS and the devices they run on has a shelf life of a couple years. This is consistent with the reality that the batteries aren't replaceable and the user agreement talks about how wed together the iOS and hardware are in contrast to PCs where multiple manufacturer's and OSes can run on them.
Shelf life of two years ties in nicely with the 2 year phone contracts most iphone users have.
@Sebastian said:
As a developer, with a lot of coding experience.... I'll say that this is an understatement. What the AB team has pulled off is astonishing.
Apple makes frequent hardware and software changes to be able to compete with Samsung and everyone else. The developers can only do their best to roll with the punches. iOS 8 threw a few more punches than normal.
Updating to new operating systems and hardware is a choice. When things change, they can also break. My wife is an architect; she uses an iMac, but runs Windows XP under VMWare, so that she can run Autocad 98LT. The system was very reliable, until the last XP service pack was released, which seems to have screwed some things up. Maybe I'll gripe at Autodesk, and see if they'll fix everything for free.
I just did a quick count through, it's almost 300 apps back on the bus on iOS 8 in one month, that's not to bad, isn't it?
so hurray for that!
Indeed.
What frustrates me about what Sebastian, Patrick, and other developers are reporting above is that Apple's popularity really isn't about being cutting edge from a technological standpoint. Communities like this one are openly mocked by Android users and tech snobs, who view Apple devices as underpowered for the kinds of things these music apps are trying to do with them. And from a purely specifications standpoint, it's hard to argue with them. I can walk into a computer parts store and buy a 32GB or 64GB flash drive for $10 - $30, but the entry level Apple device has about 13GB of available HD space, and no way to expand? Processing power tends to be about 12-24 months behind the best-positioned competitors, as well.
But that was never the appeal of Apple devices. Simplicity and reliability were, and...most importantly...universality. You are buying something that dozens of your friends (and possibly even your relatives) have an exact copy of. You don't need to check a model number to know if your device can run something in the App Store. Apple didn't invent the MP3 player, smartphone, or tablet - not even close. But they managed to sell me the first model of each of those I ever owned because of the software and functionality supporting those devices.
At least that's the way it's supposed to work. I guarantee you: I have spent hundreds of dollars on music apps because there is a thing called AudioBus that allows music apps to talk to each other. If there were not an AudioBus, I would not have spent money on those apps - I'd be buying guitar pedals or something, and treating iOS instruments like the toy kazoos I thought they were in 2010. I don't regret the vast majority of those purchases because I really enjoy the apps, making music, and I know I would not (or could not) have done similar things on my 4-year old PC.
So it's tough for me to have patience with Apple if I suspect that they are purposefully fireboming the functionality that I love to force me into buying new devices I don't need, or new apps to replace the ones that may no longer work. Much of it is probably inadvertent, except that I see things "continue to work" on PC and in other things based on computers, as mentioned above.