As we approach the middle of 2013 (and hasn't it gone quick) I started to wonder what the next big thing in mobile music will be. Will it be hardware? Will it be a new app or apps? Will it be a new glue like JACK and Audiobus or a development of one or both?
I have to admit to being often surprised by the ideas and concepts that developers come out with these days and so asking what's next can be a somewhat pointless exercise. Nevertheless, it's always fun to speculate, so here are a few ideas.
Hardware:
Something radically new from Apple? I doubt that WWDC will bring anything amazing and no one expects the iWatch this year, so will we see anything good for mobile music? Possibly some hardware revisions, but as for anything more I doubt it.
What I'd like to see is the CCK for iPhone, but I'm not holding my breath for that one.
Software:
iOS 7? Hopefully something worth shouting about from an audio / music perspective, but my guess is that the focus will be around the UI and bringing an overhaul to this. I just hope that iOS7 doesn't make life difficult for music developers.
JACK. An obvious one really. Hoping for more apps to integrate to see a bigger ecosystem here, and also to see maybe some ways for JACK and Audiobus to move a little closer together.
Audiobus. I'd like to see features like recipes (routes?) and Wifi (which has been hinted at), but also more usability features like the ability to launch all apps from a recipe (or route) in one go and restore the files/tracks/songs at their previous point. Is that asking too much?
MIDI. Of course I want to see more MIDI and more apps adding simple features like start/stop for starters. Lately I've felt that MIDI implementation has been patchy and I think that there's still plenty of room for improvement in a lot of areas. Perhaps Midibus will help there?
Undoubtedly what will arrive will be out of the blue, and I like to be surprised, but I'd like to think that we can hope for some more innovation soon as it feels to me like the mobile music world has slowed down just a little.
2 comments:
yes, the path of mobile music did get slower - but i think thats because of the hardware
i think the next big step will come if the current lineup of devices has @ least an a6x chip, because until now there is no music app that is for a6 only, or did i miss something?
because looking @ numbers to crunch - iPad 2/ iPad 3/iPad mini are the same ...
lala
android will sort out audio issues and release many devices with D-pad, joysticks and buttons such as N-videa shield and JXD, archos game tablet...Littlegameparktracker will be ported to android and updated. more developers will start to make music software to be controlled by gamepad again because it is much more comfortable. only three programs like that so far, littlegamepark tracker, lsdj and pspseq...woul dlove to see the next generation of this kind of program. filters, reverb, ring modulator etc...
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