Not to be a downer compared to the effusive enthusiasm for the iPad for music here - but I’ve actually sold my music iPad on. Like any piece of technology, there are tons of things you can do with it, but what’s not often considered is whether it’s better (in some specific way) than doing those things other ways. For me, the biggest drawbacks were:
Dongles, cables, adapter, wireless trouble, and other various connectivity issues:
The iPad has very limited connectivity and almost always requires a breakout box or external interface or other stuff to get your audio in and out of it. These are not cheap, they’re bulky, not all of them permit charging while operating, and so you end up with a spaghetti mess of additional components with a variety of frustrating limitations. And once you add a controller or whatever to it, you’re really not portable anymore as you need a stand for the iPad and a place to set the controller and even if you’re just working on the sofa things just aren’t very ergonomic for getting stuff done. so it’s relegated to an expensive toy and I know a lot of other toys I’d rather have for that purpose that are more dedicated to the job (Deluge comes to mind immediately).
This basically kills the real mobile utility of the iPad unless you stay purely in software-land, and in that case the decision revolves around…
The touchscreen:
I find that touchscreens are a terrible interface. Yes, I know some people love them, and you’re welcome to them all. I want nothing to do with them anymore. Know why? Cos you can’t use them without staring at them. There’s no “feel”, not even muscle memory since the apps keep changing their UIs. This means a lot when you’re working on a performance routine, or even just wanting to get in the flow and get the interface out of your way. At first it felt liberating, “wow I can do all this on this one device” and after a while the constant context switching, flipping, swiping, trying to accurately grab a control and move it, etc just because frustrating and a drag on the process rather than an aid. And I’m not a boomer - I grew up using touchscreens and am very used to them. I just find them the least-useful way to interact with musical devices in a fast manner. I even ended up buying physical flying faders for my DAW because I work so much faster and more accurately with them.
The UI:
The iPad’s one-app focus (or split-screen on some) is a big hindrance too. Having a variety of windows open so you can see multiple pieces of essential information (audio levels, effects GUIs, performance controls, etc.) makes for a fluid workflow. The iPad limits this too severely in my opinion (see my comments about swiping around between apps above too). One of the real advantages of the iPad is as an interface for external hardware (my H9s, for instance) and you can’t run that plus an audio interface/router (AUM or whatever) plus your sequencer all together. And don’t ask me how many times I’ve had to go through more than one app to hit various stop buttons because they don’t always sync together nicely or some of them are necessarily not synched. Much more of a pain than having all your windows facing you and just going click-click-click done. This was especially a problem for trying to use more than one app for making rhythms and sequences, or resampling, etc.
Anyways, sure there are nice things you can do with an iPad musically, but I, personally, am not convinced it’s better by any metric than using a general purpose computer for any serious use cases involving a usual production’s worth of various apps, plugins, external gear, etc. and the more and more you get towards it’s core value (one or two apps, tops) the less and less you can do with it. To me, it’s more of a solution in search of a problem.
That said, it’s just one person’s experience and you have to decide what you really want to do and how you interact with it and what you value in terms of flow (and what yanks you out of it - probably different things than yank me out of it).
