24 apps of Christmas: 23 - miniMusic ...

We're nearly at the end of the list now and down to the final two, and if you've been a reader of Palm Sounds for any length of time it'll come as no surprise that it's miniMusic. If you don't know what I'm talking about then just to be clear, it isn't an app, or rather it is a company that makes apps, but not all iOS apps.

miniMusic is really where my own journey into mobile music began, on a Palm PDA, and quite a long time ago now. miniMusic made some of the first Palm OS apps that allowed you to make music, and back in the early days that was a really big deal, a really really big deal in fact.

I'd say that if it wasn't for miniMusic and the Palm OS I wouldn't have started talking and writing about mobile music. So I've got a lot to thank them for. In fact I ended up corresponding a good deal with Chad from miniMusic who's always been really helpful and supportive, right from the beginning of Palm Sounds.

So what does miniMusic do? Well thay've made loads of Palm apps, things like BeatPad, NotePad, MixPad and SoundPad. These apps were the building blocks of making music on the Palm OS in the early days, and as Palm OS 5 arrived they evolved and developed into a great little ecosystem of apps for making music.

Then miniMusic evolved too and started making iOS apps too. That is, they made two and released one. The one that got released is called PianoFly. Sadly it hasn't been updated in quite a while, but when it was released it was pretty excellent. Their second app was going to be called Tympanum, but again sadly it hasn't every come out, and I'm not sure that it will now.

Even so I still like to mess around with their old Palm apps on occasion. Especially with external MIDI gear.

So I think I have a lot to thank miniMusic for. I still hold out a slight hope that they might do something new or update stuff in the future, but even if they never do, I'll always be a fan.