iPad as Media Creation Tool

There's no doubt that in the last year that the popularity of iPads and other tablet computing devices has soared.

For the most part, the iPad and other tablets have excelled as media consumption devices. They are wonderful devices to watch movies and videos, listen to music, and read web sites and electronic books. But as media creation tools, these tablets really lack. Sure, you can compose text in many apps including Apple's Pages, but the lack of a physical keyboard really makes typing more difficult than on a desktop or laptop. Even drawing on an actual computer is much easier if you have access to a graphics tablet and pen.

Creating and recording audio on tablets is easier than drawing or writing, but I wouldn't say that the iPad is a better audio creation tool than an actual computer—until now.

At the iPad 2 launch a few weeks ago, most people (myself included) were most excited about the new device. But the launch of GarageBand for is equally exciting. It makes working with and creating audio easier than on a computer. The ability to press the screen and make a drumbeat, to glide your finger across the glass and strum guitar strings, and playing piano keys is no much more natural using the touchscreen than using the QWERTY keyboard on your laptop.

There are really dozens of apps that truly impress me for the iPod/iPad, but these apps usually do not have a Mac/PC counterpart—they exist only on a mobile computing platform. But GarageBand for iPad is a perfect supplement for GarageBand for Mac. It is not quite a fully-fledged replacement for the Mac version, but it is a great place to start on an audio composition and then send it over to your Mac, especially is you are experimenting with virtual instruments.

Most of the shortfalls of creating media on a tablet occur when looking through the lens of how this would work on a desktop. Maybe we need to re-imagine how we create and communicate using a tablet— utilizing the device's strengths instead of looking at it as a touchscreen laptop.