iOS Apps: ur doin it rong...

My goal today was going to be to put up a fairly thorough review of the Fairlight App for iOS devices. However, I’m a little pissed off now, and with the mood swing comes a goal change.

I purchased the app essentially the minute it went live in the app store. It was $9.99, and I didn’t really read the description. I was just like “ten bucks for a Fairlight IIx. Buy now. Click.” Here’s what I didn’t know:

The $9.99 version is, for all intents and purposes, useless. All you can do with it is browse the IIx library, play those sounds from the on-screen keyboard, and play two fairly shitty Page R demonstration songs. That’s it. End of story.

Right now, you’re saying “but Chris! It says MIDI is a built-in feature right there in the App description! Plus I know from Audanika’s recent experiences with Soundprism that you can’t sell MIDI support via an in-app purchase! So it’s still useful, right?”

Wrong.

CoreMidi support is not available in the $9.99 version. Page R doesn’t send MIDI. The voices don’t respond to MIDI. The keyboard doesn’t send MIDI. It is, for all intents and purposes, a fart app that plays shakahuchi flute samples instead.

Is that image big enough to read? The entries without checkmarks are the ones you get in the Pro version, for which you need to pony up another $39.00. Now, the next thing you’ll say is “well, it’s a total of US$48.98 for a full-featured Fairlight IIx. That’s not so bad.” I agree. So what the fuck is the point of the trick, then? The $9.99 one should be free, because it is useless. The “Pro” one should be $49.99. And that’s that.

I’ll tell you what else I don’t like: the fucking gimmicks. The keyboard and disk drive sounds are irritating. The little puzzle you have to complete at the beginning about made me want to frisbee my iPad across the fucking room. When an app is more than, say, $1.99, no matter what its price point beyond that, I expect it to be professional. Not a toy. This thing is made of wood, and someday, if the In App Purchase Fairy comes and touches it with a magic wand, it’ll turn in to a real boy. It gets a “DO NOT BUY” from me.

EDIT: I was able to get the CoreMidi working by killing the app and restarting it. Note that it only works on the instrument that is selected via the P3 page. In the simple version, the MIDI implementation is just the selected voice, and that’s it.