The iPad and creativity
Jul 2, 2010 Uncategorized
Wow, I didn’t post anything in June at all?
Well, this started out as a quick test of the WordPress app for the iPad, but maybe I should talk about that a little.
I got an iPad around the beginning of June. It really is a neat device, and there are a surprising number of music apps for it. I have been especially impressed with the Korg iElectrine-R, which mimics the drum machine it’s named after perfectly and sound great. The interface is a joy on the touch screen. It’s basically like getting a several-hundred-dollar rhythm box for ten bucks. Now that Line 6 has an iPad MIDI interface out, I’m hoping it will get tempo sync (master and slave) in a future release, which is all that’s really missing. Are you listening, Korg?
All of that being said, the iPad is really a consumption device. Yes, you can create things on it, but that’s not what it’s really good at, nor what it was designed for. Watching videos, playing games, reading comics, surfing the non-flash prtions of the web, all fantastic. There are even great educational apps galore. But creating content, you always feel like you’re fighting a bit of an up-hill battle.
And yet, the device is so handy, so convenient, so fun to use that you find yourself altering what you do with your time to fit its talents, and therein the danger lies. It’s very easy to wind up letting it become a tremendous time sink. In the first three weeks that I owned it, I didn’t turn on my laptop once, didn’t launch Logic or Nodal once, didn’t touch the modular once. And so, other than popping out a couple of rhythms on the iElectribe (which, for all its niftiness, is not really an ideal app for my creative process any more than an actual Electribe would be), I didn’t do anything creative at all. And that happened across the board really, not just with music.
So I think I will need to limit how much time I spend on the iPad, and try to view it as mostly a commuting and travel machine.
I finally got some time lately with the laptop and the modular again, and it felt really good. I’m hoping to do more of that. I even plan to bring it down to Sarah’s for the weekend. (The laptop, not the modular.) So hopefully I’ll have more to share soon. And maybe if the WordPress app for the iPad works out, I can use more of my downtime to write here. 
Tags: Gear