Interesting Pianofly details

To be honest, this isn't just about Pianofly, it is also about some of the things that miniMusic may also be doing in the future, but I thought it was interesting so I've pulled some quotes from the Pianofly FAQ.

Why don't you offer triangle waves, sampled waves, LFOs, etc.?
There are hundreds of features that could be included in any piece of music software. Designing Pianofly required countless choices. To include every possible feature would make Pianofly very hard to use, and it would mean spending forever in development. We settled on a feature set that we felt made a strong product that we could get into users hands sooner rather than later. We will continue to add more features to Pianofly and would be happy to hear your requests and suggestions.

Good to hear that Pianofly will continue to get new features, and historically miniMusic have been very good at updating existing apps with new and improved features.

How do I record what I play?
We are anticipating a simple recording or sequencing capability in a future upgrade of Pianofly. We decided to release version 1.0 now, without recording, at a lower price than we originally expected. We hope to add recording within a few months and will likely raise the price at that time. Upgrades for current users will be free.

Nice to know that recording will be on the way in a later version. Of course the Palm equivalent 'SoundPad' didn't have recording or sequencing and acted as a sound creator for the other miniMusic palm apps.

How do I get good icons for my sounds?
We used a variety of methods to create our icons. You can find some good artwork using Mobile Safari, hold your finger on the image and a menu will pop up letting you save the image. It will be saved in your Photo Library and you can choose it for an icon in Pianofly. We will post some icons on our website following the themes shipped with Pianofly. We also used the drawing program No.2 from our Lint Labs brand to draw some of the icons.

One of the nicest little touches in this app in my opinion. I love the ability to use my own photos as icons.

How can I see the precise frequency or amplitude values for sounds?
We are looking to include precise frequency, amplitude and duration readings in a future version of Pianofly. At this time it was felt it would clutter the screen and impact performance. This will likely be offered as a setting that can be turned on or off, so 'pro' users can have it if they want it.

Again, miniMusic pre-empting what users will want next.

Can I change the phase of a wave form?
Not in this version. This is one of those features that would let you do a few cool things, but more often it would cause unnecessary confusion. Changing the phase of a node would be more likely to cause a click (from a sudden amplitude change) or cancel out a desired wave than to do anything very interesting. We may allow phase changes as an option in the future.

Now that would be very cool wouldn't it.

I want to see more from miniMusic, how can I help?
In addition to buying our current products (which funds development) any way that you can spread the word helps us spend more time and money on developing upgrades and new products. Also, please rate or review our products in the iTunes App Store, and on other websites (like iusethis, apptism, appbeacon, whatsoniphone, appvee, etc.) or forums or leave comments on existing reviews or articles.

And here I am, spreading the word. Of course, I'd love to see more apps from miniMusic, and I'm sure I will.

How can you sell Pianofly for just $1.99?
There are several reasons for this price. Let me start by apologizing to other music app developers; we are not trying to drive down the price of good music applications! This is a temporary price. We intend to raise the price as we add features, and we will release future products at higher prices. Part of this current price is for us collect data on different price points for future marketing decisions, but also just to make a big introductory splash for our miniMusic brand on the iPhone. In the future we expect our applications to range from $5 to $20.

I think that users will be happy to pay those kind of prices for apps that really make sense, and if we see something like miniMusic's NotePad notation app (Palm version) that will easily justify a high price.

Pianofly at the app store: