Yes, I know. We’re all a bit disappointed with the “New New New iPad”, a.k.a. iPad Air. And remember what Apple pulled off when they discovered that they had a game-changing new component, the Retina display, but the overall hardware wasn’t up to the level yet – they sold it as the iPad 3, only to be replaced with the iPad 4 less than a year later.
No, I’m not bitter with Apple over that. Well yes, I am, but the problem with my iPad 3 is that processing power has become an issue when using it for making music – an important use case for me. Waldorf’s Nave is a dream of a soft synth, but it’s pushing my iPad to the limit – run Nave, and you won’t be able to run much else. So processing power is increasingly becoming the driving force in deciding on what to buy and when.
The least thing that you could say about the iPad Air is that it’s going to drive down the prices for iPad 4’s. But considered that the Air is sporting a variant of the last-generation Apple A7 processor, you can expect it to have about double the processing power of an iPad 4, or about six times the performance of the iPad 3. That’s presumably worth a hundred Euros extra.
To get rid of the iPad3 now might be a good idea anyway. See Tim Webb’s analysis over at Discchord:
The iPad 3 shipped with an inferior processor incapable of keeping up with the huge retina display, and suffered a life-time of sluggish performance and annoying bugs. Developers consistently tell me that the majority of their bug reports come from iPad 3 users.
Now there you go. Unfortunately, this means that my carefully hand-modded IO Dock becomes obsolete – the iPad Air, due to its smaller bezel and different overall dimensions, just won’t fit, and there’s the issue of the Lightning connector which the IO Dock doesn’t have – although there are reports that an adapter would work, this would mean additional tinkering, soldering, dremeling. With hardly any chance of producing satisfactory results.
So what I’ll probably do is build a USB setup from scratch, with a modded Lightning-to-USB-adapter capable of charging the iPad; maybe with a powered hub, and a multi-channel interface like the Akai EIE. (Good list of class-compatible, iPad-friendly devices here.) It’s far from perfect, and maybe sometime I’ll integrate it into my own Dock. Once again, terra incognita.
Verwandte Artikel:
- Tech Hack: Alesis IO Dock with USB Hub (Wednesday, 2. January 2013; Schlagworte: Alesis IO Dock, Hacking, iPad, Midi, modification, soldering, USB, USB Hub)
- Proof-of-concept: Alesis IO Dock bekommt einen Hub (Sunday, 30. December 2012; Schlagworte: IO Dock, iPad, Modding, Musik, Synthesizer, USB Hub)
- I’ve put my modded IO Dock on eBay! (Friday, 23. May 2014; Schlagworte: Alesis, Hack, IO Dock, USB)
Perhaps the Griffin Studio Connect would be a better candidate for modding now. It already has a lightning cable, and they are relatively inexpensive. I am working on a similar project over at my blog.