I just watched the video from the event, and as someone who likes to record music once in a while, Garageband looks completely amazing. As it is, most of the time when I have spare time to spend on making songs I'm not around all the equipment that I need to do that. If it holds up to the promise of the video, it looks like I can go on vacation and just bring the ipad and a guitar, and I can record full song ideas with basic drumming, chords and singing parts, arrange different parts etc.
This looks like it'll be huge for song writers, really. Sure, an acoustic guitar and a simple four-track recorder does the same basic thing, but this is like a mini pro tools. Can't wait to play with it.
I agree it looks stellar. But as a developer of songwriting applications ( I believe the "Smart Instruments" are a basic implementation of our ideas ) my heart dropped when I saw the price. $4.99 for this amount of content is amazing, but also impossible for smaller devs to compete with head on.
With that in mind I hope shortly after release Apple publishes some sort of easy way to export directly to Garage Band so that more niche products can ride the coat tails.
This looks like it'll be huge for song writers, really. Sure, an acoustic guitar and a simple four-track recorder does the same basic thing, but this is like a mini pro tools. Can't wait to play with it.