Hardware and software need to be ported into iPadOS

Jean Voyage

As soon as NI has Maschine running on M1 natively they could bring it to iPad as an alternative for people with big laptops or underpowered Maschine Plusses.

Mutis

Probably not happening if first Apple doesn’t do the same with Logic but whatever is coming will be follow by others as usual.

People could rant over Apple and “ARM been a thing from long ago” but in the end the difference is the OS. Where windows failed (winRT) iPad has success and it will keep doing it.

Kubrak

WinRT failed mainly because it came too late. People already had iPads or android tablets. Similar with Win based phones. Too late.

Some NI HW might be ported to iPads, other not. The problem is on Apple side as Apple does not "aprove" it to be iPad HW.

And SW? Who knows... It is not worth it, if it does not bring enought profit. NI should focus on its traditional paltforms first....

nightjar

So there is this dichotomy....

"WinRT failed mainly because it came too late. People already had iPads or android tablets. Similar with Win based phones. Too late."

But also...

"NI should focus on its traditional paltforms first...."

NI will fail if it does not very actively pursue the future simultaneously with maintaining the current status quo.

They have the resources within Soundwide to to this... but it takes excellent forward vision and leadership to bring it all together in a smart, competitive strategy that predicts the market with reasonable accuracy.

Kubrak

There is not dichotomy. Porting to tablets may bring money or bring loss... And not big problem if NI enters iPad market when it becomes attractive.... M1 iPads for music production is niche of niche.

And some, or many of NI HW will not ever work on iPads as Apple will not allow it....

nightjar

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/27408#Comment_27408

Yes, it IS a big problem if NI enters the iPad market "when it becomes attractive"..

I quote your own words:

"WinRT failed mainly because it came too late. People already had iPads or android tablets. Similar with Win based phones. Too late."

Success requires resources, leadership.. and VISION.

Kubrak

Well Win tablets is quite different thing than audio plugins. Win tablets did not bring anything so attractive, it would make users to move from iPad/android....

NI will bring something new even if it enters iPad market later on. If it has limited resources, they'd better fosus on current market base, then trying expand to market that possibly might be profitable one day. Or not profitable.

Mutis

And latest iPad had usb-c and DriverKit but as usual @kubrak talks without knowledge/research meanwhile reality keeps going…

When disruption become “obvious” then what will be the excuse? “Nothing could know the future?” lol…

Kubrak

That's great iPad Pro has USB c. And what is special about it? You mean that previous models of iPad did not have USB c?

Let's speak about disruption, when M1/M2 based iPads have at least 10% of tablet marketshare.

And there is another aspect. Apple probably does not want, iPad would canibalise sales of Mac. Apple wants, people buy the both.... And so, there are artificial boundaries. For example one program may use only 4 GB of RAM.....

nightjar

"And so, there are artificial boundaries. For example one program may use only 4 GB of RAM....."

Nope.

Last years iPadOS update allowed an app to use 12GB.. and the upcoming update increases that to 16GB.

The disruption is already here.

Kubrak

How it comes that 11 months become years.... That is some kind of Apple magic?

But still, at least 10% marketshare of M1/M2/M.. iPads is not here, yet.... No need to hurry to niche of niche market.... And when it comes, I would port Kontakt Player plugin to iPadOS and sell Kontakt Libraries for the same price like for PC/Mac. For sure not for a fraction of price of PC/Mac price.... Those who roll out 1000+ just for a tablet have money to roll out 1000+ for Kontakt Libraries...

But still, would be better if NI made M+ MK2, with stronger CPU and more RAM....

nightjar

Sure.. and what's Einstein's definition of insanity?

...doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Kubrak

The question is if NI needs different result.

And maybe iPadOS and MacOS will merge in one and the whole the discussion will loose relevance.... One day...

IPad Pro's "competitor" is, for example, Surface Pro. It is tablet and runs the same Windows like notebooks/PCs. No real problem to rum full blown DAWs and/or NI SW on Win tablet...

Apple should do the homework and unify its three artificaly separated platforms.

Mutis

You are right and that’s why NI needed to state “priorization on Apple Silicon”… :rolleyes:

The thing about usb-c and other technologies like DriveKit are hints into “any hardware support” but meanwhile class compliant were there since long ago so yes, it’s NI who failed the strategy versus iPad and Apple ecosystem being too much x86 dependent. In fact M+ was aborted by old NI board but later re-born due one of the new board was its developer… and it was a “flight over” that still is giving issues and showing how underpowered feels against a mk3+fanless macbook air and it was released at 1.6k $/€

mk2? Hard to see it happen due NI needs to optimize better the soft inside it like Akai has been doing after junping out the iPad market with the nefairous retronyms.

iPad market isn’t perfect but was the perfect playground for M1 and AS transition. Those who get the hints are now in better place that those don’t. You can choose even avoid it like Akai but that decission should be made long ago and maybe even them were late or wrong. Only time will tell but Apple is the standard to follow… not NI.

Kubrak

Apple is not standard in any way. It is closed system and it brings its own proprietary solutions, avoiding most standards.

It should do at least its homework, unify all three OSes and improve Rosetta 2.