IPad Apps Suggestions

[jimilee]

I use eTools Legacy for resistor stuffs also

Very cool app!  Much better than circuit playground.

well that's cool,I was thinking of checking out circuit playground,but now. Don't have to. Etools is way helpful if you're trying to figure out if you made a bonehead mistake with your resistors.saved me a few times.

[Vallhagen]

Polytune from TC electronics. Simply the best guitar tuner.

...when i recently worked as a music teacher, it saved my day daily, say 30 times a day. Definately worth the few bucks if you dont always tune your instrument by ear. I have it on my cellphone though, i dont have an iPad.

Cheers

[pickdropper]

...
Meanwhile, those of us with Androids continue to have nothing even remotely decent.

I looked into porting some my audio software to Android. There is potential there. The problem is that Android's audio latency really makes doing any musical audio useless. If they can get that issue fixed, you'll see a bunch of apps hit the market.

This.  Additionally, there is no standard to the way that audio is handled.  Often, developers need to write specific code for each phone model, which is significant when one considers how many Android devices are out there.

[selfdestroyer]

Apps I use at my bench:

Google docs for all my build docs since I like having it sync with my MacBook and my PC at work to have access anytime.

Netfix so I can watch "Its always sunny in Philadelphia" on my bench since my wife HATEs that show. Also for movies.

Pandora for bench music.

GoodReader to annotate on PDF files for notes and changes that need to be made.

Cant this of anymore at this time.

[GermanCdn]

Both Etools Pro and Circuit Playground here.

All schematics downloaded into iBooks.

Audible for listening to books from authors my wife hates (yes, I realize every Jack Reacher novel follows the following format - drifts into town, meets girl, sleeps with her, she gets killed, he wipes out half the town with vicious abandon, drifts out of town, but I still like them nonetheless).

Lick of the Day for when I actually take the time to try and improve my playing instead of building pedals to improve my existing sound (the Texas Blues series is ridiculously simple, but so much fun).

Shark Dash for when I get PO'd at a build and need a brief distraction.

[alanp]

This.  Additionally, there is no standard to the way that audio is handled.  Often, developers need to write specific code for each phone model, which is significant when one considers how many Android devices are out there.

That's pretty damn primitive. Last time I saw that on a PC was when Gravis Ultrasounds were hot sh!t, and you needed to set BLASTER in your autoexec.bat

So Android doesn't have a standard code set with drivers for each model phone?

[pickdropper]

This.  Additionally, there is no standard to the way that audio is handled.  Often, developers need to write specific code for each phone model, which is significant when one considers how many Android devices are out there.

That's pretty damn primitive. Last time I saw that on a PC was when Gravis Ultrasounds were hot sh!t, and you needed to set BLASTER in your autoexec.bat

So Android doesn't have a standard code set with drivers for each model phone?

Well, I won't profess to be an expert on it as I am no programmer.  I took some assembly and C++ back in college, but it's been a while.

I have been peripherally involved in an audio app for both iOS and Android.  The iOS one is fairly stable, but the Android is a total pain.

[Matt]

I use eTools Legacy for resistor stuffs also

Very cool app!  Much better than circuit playground.

well that's cool,I was thinking of checking out circuit playground,but now. Don't have to. Etools is way helpful if you're trying to figure out if you made a bonehead mistake with your resistors.saved me a few times.

Yeah, I believe the legacy covers everything the CP does.

[aballen]

Wow guys I'm surprised to hear your opinions for development env/tools.  I happen to think java is just an outstanding development env, Android too, not sure if say javax.sound.sampled will work with android though, haven't tried it.  Admtidedly biased, I've been coding java since java 0.8

iOS, is just terrible imho.  I mean Objective C is terrible, they syntax makes me nauseous.  I'm really not fond of Xcode either.  Everything I try to do in there feels like I'm swimming through mud, and its missing obvious things like BigNumbers and crypto.  Don't get me wrong, I love apples devices, I've had an iPhone for like 8 years now.

[RobA]

Objective-C and Java both have their places. But, Objective-C has C built in. All of the actual audio work in OS X and iOS is done in straight C. This is a major advantage for audio work. That said, the problem isn't particularly Java. The problem comes from the fact that the Android developers blew the audio subsystem. OS X and thus iOS has a very sophisticated threading model that allows the audio subsystem (the HAL) to be run as a realtime thread. This is the basic reason that OS X has advantages in audio software too. It seems that to bring Android onto a comparable level, the Android systems developers are going to have redo some of the low level architecture of Android.

I've developed in both Java and Objective-C for as long as both have been available. The syntax of both of them suck. But hey, so does the english language and we all figure out how to use that. The libraries are the key. Java is great for business software and backend systems work. The libraries for Objective-C for UI development and graphics (and audio) simply blow Java's away.

[aballen]

I'm not a fan of cocoa either.  I actually like the container based model in java.... but this is becoming s huge derail