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What iOS Music Production Apps Need in 2025
What iOS Music Production Apps Need in 2025
I raise 11 or 12 important points in this vid regarding some stuff I think devs need to improve in regards to app design etc. Premiere starts soon, come join it if you’re free, and share your thoughts about things you do or don’t like about the state of iOS music making in 2025. Cheers!
Comments
You raise some good points and I hope developers will seriously consider what you bring up here.
By the way, that flickering light in the background was driving me crazy. For a while it seemed like it was reacting to your comments as some kind of elaborate prank on your part...
I want to see an end to the 'Microscopic Font Syndrome' which plagues way too many apps...
Good point. And not an easy one to solve if a UI has a lot of touch targets in one screen, especially if the UI is resized for everything from the iPhone to the largest iPad. One thing that helps: Adequate contrast between text and the background.
Haha, I actually liked the flickering light, but fair enough 😜, and glad u agree, this platform needs to step up its game
Oh yeah, poor contrast is another one I will add if I do a part 2 list, along with the MFS that @Samu mentioned!
Bingo, usability (large enough controllers for 'fat finger' use) and visibility (size & contrast so I can see what the F is going on) are two primary points I evaluate before considering buying any new apps. If I can't see what the F is going on I can't use it, doesn't matter how good the DSP etc is.
And sadly most new apps that do pop up are mostly re-packaging of already exiting features and functionality to satisfy the 'instant gratification crowd'
They are. People should really vote with their feet to ensure devs are forced to do more creative and properly implemented stuff. Everyone benefits from that in the end.
😗🎶 I wonder who. Why, certainly not me. 😂 (Joking.)
A UI that adapts to both landscape and portrait orientation .. especially on iPhone
There are things I would be buying if they would ever drop for the iPad (Like Waldorf Blofeld and FF Pro-Q 4).
For me it's more of a challenge to see what the apps I already have are really capable of when fully tweaked.
I didn't even think about creating custom phasers in Mela before Nikolozi pushed out his latest video.
And then it struck me that I can build phasers in FF Volcano 3 as well by modulating the all-pass filters...
Guess it's the 'geek side' in me that is now more than ever interested in what makes things go beep in the way they do instead of shortcutting the life-long learning journey
That's pretty cool though not gonna lie.
Building our own phasers. Sign me up! And I do have Volcano 3 but never realised I could build a phaser in it.
That said, I'll probably wait to get Pro-Q4 but will jump on Blofeld as soon as it drops for iPad (if it does). Microwave is that "special sauce" wavetable synth that makes high pads that sparkle and shimmer. Perfect for Ambient and other genres.
Gavinski face reveal was not on my bingo cards for 2025, but hey, that’s awesome.
Great points.
Idk how one would reinforce a standard for UX/UI design but I’m open to suggestions.
MPE is amazing and all, but MIDI 1.0 has held steady for so many years that it would be hard to breakaway from that.
Let me toss two questions
Do we really need another synth? Or another effect? Or another DAW?
Are there lessons we can learn from successful media formats like video games that can be applied to the iOS space?
And why do I bring mobile games? Because it’s the most profitable platform in the mobile space. Even more profitable than desktop and console games.
Take this with the irony cap on, I'm feeling silly today...
Yes I think so as the current app-economics make it less than likely that we'll see super major updates to existing apps.
And if I'm honest most 'iOS DAWs' are less than half-baked compared to free offerings on the 'desktop'.
As long as iPadOS is as it is things won't really move forward and we'd need something like macOS Touch to really shake things up and then people would start complaining that apps are too expensive... (I'm really starting to loose faith in iPadOS ever becoming a real 'Pro-Platform'(for audio), it is and will likely always remain an 'accessory' because of iPadOS and its unwillingness to mature into an un-crippled fully featured OS).
More Micro-Transactions maybe?
IAP/Ads to do one-time export/mastering, IAP/Ads to publish songs, IAP/Ads to save presets, Ads every 30 minutes to remind us that it's time to take a break or extend the trial-period of a synth-plug-in, and yes 'Software As A Service' subscriptions to avoid the ads, skip paying the subscription and you can go on using the apps and suffer an ads-galore avalanche
As for games in general I play some free games and watch an ad from time to time but I've never bought a single micro-transaction thing for any game that I've ever played over the years and don't plan on doing it either...
Games are very,very seldom productive but rather more like brain-rot and/or escape from reality that will slowly turn people into zombies if they aren't already?!
(I mean look at the IAP prices in some of the games, a few more candy-coins goes for the same as monthly sub to LogicPro for iPad).
Oh well, I look forward to WWDC'25 and if there's no major shift in the direction where iPadOS is heading my current 11" M1 iPadPro will be the last iPad I ever bought...
Cheers!
Obsidian AUv3, that’s what we need 😅
Care to elaborate on that? I personally really don’t find that to be the case. Combined with an audio interface, i find I’m able to do everything in an iOS daw that i can in a desktop daw. What functionality do you have in a desktop daw (let alone the free ones) which renders iOS daws half baked in comparison?
Not trying to be confrontational, genuinely interested to know.
Great vid and points. Nice to put a face with the voice of all those tutorials/reviews that have been a great help to me.
Audio (warping, comping and multi-track editing of longer 1h plus audio files) and Midi editing leave a lot to be desired for compared to say Reaper and LogicPro on the Mac.
I can easily get the files onto my iPad via USB-C on location but it becomes a total nightmare to edit them as none of the DAWs are really optimized for actual audio-editing duties, they work more or less as 'glorified tape-records' with very basic editing capabilities.
The iPad has its benefits no doubts, but for some duties (that bring in the actual cash) the 'desktop' still has the edge by a long-shot, at least for me. I had hoped things would have evolved a bit faster but for now the 11" M1 iPadPro will likely be the last iPad I'll ever buy...
Interesting, thanks for taking the time to answer, appreciate it @Samu. Obviously it’s different needs and experiences but as i said, i find the iOS DAWs perfectly capable for my needs (without having to restrict what I’m trying to do). Then again, i always compare backwards and think how incredible it is that we have such functionality on handheld devices compared to the technology of, say, 20 years ago, so that probably skews my viewpoint too! Cheers.
I thought it was deliberate homage to David Lynch 🙃
Seriously, though, I thought it was an excellent summary.
We need apps that offer something unique and wonderful, otherwise the platform just becomes a poor relation to the desktop. That said, I’m really grateful for a whole bunch of desktop ports that are tolerably done, but we need apps that really use the touch interface in innovative ways.
Everyone on this forum needs to see this video. Thanks , great job!
Yeah, preaching to the choir mostly here, but it never hurts to set things out straight like this.
You could look to games beyond the business model. Menu systems, UI, input handling, multimedia design, helpful tutorials, and multiplayer come to mind as features to take notes on.
There are a ton of games that aren’t just brain rot. I’d argue Mario Maker or RPG Maker are good examples of the potential for gamified utility. And the point on games as a means of escaping reality - can’t the same be said for music? Tweaking knobs on a touch screen vs using an analogue joystick are two very different experiences.
At its heart, video games are meant to be fun and accessible for a wide range of audiences. Doesn’t seem like a bad philosophy to apply towards music production software now and then.
I think the biggest need is better support for peripherals as input devices beyond MIDI controllers - gamepads, Wacom tablets, Apple Pencil, Mouse and Keyboard, etc. External HID beyond MIDI control support is lacking, and shows that accessibility is not top priority for developers. Most of my points revolve around the lack of external HID beyond MIDI controllers.
Some great points there! Regarding testers, there certainly are some good ones, Samu springs to mind. I feel I often give highly valuable feedback when beta testing apps, but I just can't do that for many apps for free, it should be paid. Regarding offering it as a service, you'd basically need to contact individual devs directly.
And yes - would love to see more apps able to properly take advantage of mouse and attached keyboards. I often have a Bluetooth keyboard attached to my iPad.
Having HDMI out features would help a lot as well. IAA is much more manageable when you can have the app open on one screen and the host on another. Baking that feature into more apps would be nice. The other night I had fun using Touchscaper on the iPad going to Animoog on my monitor. Trippy 😵💫
Signed in to specifically post to this topic, although it will fall on deaf ears.... AUv3 for Lumbeat drum apps
Are many of the issues mentioned in the video as common on PC/Mac production software? I’ve really only ever used the iPad for that purpose, other than GarageBand on my old now deceased MacBook Pro from 2011. What does desktop bring to the table that can be brought over?
Ah haha, well, that seems feasible, he did make the bassist app AUv3. Though seemed that was a lot of effort and probably didn't result in that many more sales, so who knows. Was probably a mistake to make the update free. The bigger mistake was, perhaps, not simply switching to straight up making the new apps AUv3 from the getgo a few years back.
Yep, agree!
Two under-utilized iOS features in music production: Widget and Shortcut implementation.
Widgets to quickly open your last project from the home screen or a sequence player on the home page would be cool. Shoot, an XL widget could have some keys or scales to interact with.
Shortcuts could have some interesting applications. I would love to have a shortcut for opening a few specific Lumbeat Drummers simultaneously. Setting up a shortcut for MIDI routing or communicating between AUM and Cubasis are some other examples I can think of.
The less friction there is between the artist and creating music the better. Using Widgets and Shortcuts would save a lot of screen taps to get a project up and running.
Edit: scratch my last edit. Got mixed up on some iOS and macOS version features.