Price of the Kindle Fire is awesome. Apps (especially for DJ’ing/production) of the Ipad 2 are are awesome.
I know this comes down to personal circumstances/situation/needs, etc…but would I be making a horrible investment as a DJ if I bought the Kinde Fire? As in, am I really missing out on the DJ apps by not buying the Ipad 2?
(I’m most likely going to stick with Itch for a while so MIDI control is not likely to be a factor for me. I can’t justify buying an Ipad 2 simply for sweet programs like iMaschine/TouchOSC, or can I?..)
Thoughts?
edit: Mods this actually seems on topic to me now…could you maybe move this to the general forum so we can get more responses/views? Doesn’t really matter though haha
iPads have been getting more and more popular, so the market is exploding, resulting in more developers creating new and innovative things.
Also I’d get hands on with both, from my limited personal opinion Apple is the only one to have no noticeable input delay whatsoever. Android, which the Fire is running afaik, still has that issue. It can be horribly frustrating. See if it’s there on the Fire as I haven’t seen one in operation.
Also think about peripherals, using the Camera Connection Kit you can hook up many USB devices, including MIDI instruments as the iPad has CoreMIDI. Albeit they reduced the power outputted by the iPad, so you may have to use externally powered equipment.
Best purchase I had made in a while, if you use traktor and or ableton you are missing out by not using TouchOSC and Touchable. Touchable is the greatest controller for Ableton, period.
FWIW, I love my iPad, and there are just an amazing number of really cool apps both music-related and for various other things. I have an Android phone and I can’t stand it. There are some cool apps but as the above poster noted, the OS is extremely frustrating in many ways, especially as you add apps. I shudder to think what I would do if I needed to use my phone in an emergency; to just dial 911 requires six distinct hand motions (and requiring watching the screen) with a noticeable delay between three of them. Of course you won’t use a tablet to make phone calls but it gives you an idea of how poorly designed it is in some ways.
No idea if that is true of the kindle too – I have the regular kindle and I absolutely love it; but it only has the ereader features and I don’t (can’t?) install anything else on it, so it’s kept simple. A tablet is a much more complex animal than an ereader, which is essentially a one-trick pony. The other thing is there just aren’t as many apps available for the Android for music-related stuff, and what’s available is more of a mixed bag in terms of how polished it is. Say what you want about the Apple store censorship process but it does seem to add at least a tiny bit of quality control. And of course people are designing for the ipad, not for the android, in general.
All that said, even though I religiously purchase and install nearly every DJ-related app available on the ipad, I rarely use them and I never DJ with them in public. Some immensely cool stuff can be done with it but I’m more of a tangible controller type guy, and it adds a layer of complexity (and a point of failure) that I really don’t need in the few gigs I do these days.
The screen real-estate on the Kindle Fire is also much smaller than on the iPad. I see it as a smaller, more portable tablet. Bigger than an iPhone, smaller than an iPad. Really, that’s the niche it’s going after.
You’ll be able to fit the Kindle Fire in your purse, but it doesn’t have the app development backing or size to make it much more useful than the basics IMO.
The Ipad is basically a big toy. Anything actually useful that can be done on it is the product of some amazing app development, but it is hard to get much serious stuff done on there. Now if Amazon is coming out with a less functional competitor I find it really hard to think you will get much more out of that than the books and media that it’s designed for. Watching videos of the test model is like watching high school dunk mixtape for basketball players, it’s too short and too cherry-picked to provide real information about what it will be like in real life.
But can you read for 2 hours straight on a glossy display (as opposed to the kindle’s matte e-paper display?). I am thinking there’s going to be some eye fatigue issues there…I love my Kindle, would likely love an iPad, but not for reading on.
Having an iPad, I used to love it, but now it is the domain of the family. Reading was tough for more than a hour. Everything else is as magically wonderful as Steve promised. Never owned a Kindle of any kind, but they look to be more readable and over all less “fun”. Even stupid games like Block Me are a treat on iPad let alone Plants vs. Zombies which I think was waiting for the medium,
Music apps, I can’t get enough iPad time to play with, but iOS has a ton, thank goodness the kids are bored of my phone.
As much as Apple tries to say that it’s not a laptop replacement, it is definitely the case for me. The only thing I use my MacBook Pro for these days is Traktor and downloading music. Every other daily computing task is done on my iPad (email, facebook, web browsing, etc). It’s a wonder to travel with being just over one pound. This is the primary reason why I love my iPad 2.
On top of that, I have games and various audio apps that are fun to mess around with. I’m not trying to do any “serious” audio work with it, but there are definitely several apps that are capable of doing more than just goofing around.
Looks like the tablet wars are getting even hotter! Now Barnes & Noble just released their rival to the Kindle Fire…the BN Nook Tablet. For $50 more than the Kindle Fire, you get twice the RAM, twice the on-board storage, AND microSD slot…
Wait! I’m almost positive that B&N will be announcing a similar product on Monday. It would have to be some form a fully functioning Android tablet as they have copied exactly what Amazon has done move for move starting after the Kindle DX.
Which maybe good for you as if one fails but is still a good product you may be able to grab one for 99$ or less. Kinda like the play books that went like hot cakes.
edit: Looks like GI Trackt dug up some info before the launch kudos.
