iOS 4.2 Update: MIDI Support Wire/Wireless On iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
Now your iDevices will support MIDI devices over both USB, through camera connection kit and Wi-Fi. The folks at Create Digital Music have discovered that now actually iOS 4.2 will allow iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches to support MIDI devices. Also, Apple’s NDA which still covers 4.2, is one reason worth mentioning. There aren’t any code samples for the MIDI features too so it could be fun to play with.
Core MIDI on iOS from the developer perspective should work just as it does on Mac OS. So let’s see how it turns out to be. However, power requirement is the main concern, which may prevent the use of some of the more compact devices like M-Audio Uno.
But still that is not that serious, atleast when you can have a decent viable alternative to the MIDI Mobilizer. Even developers won’t have to set up an agreement with a separate hardware maker for iPad, though you still need the MIDI Mobilizer on iPhone and iPod touch, since as readers note, they don’t support the Camera Connection Kit.
Yet again, the two avenues for MIDI which the Core MIDI framework appears to support are:
1. WiFi MIDI, via Apple’s own (apparently unique) wireless implementation, which should allow communication with other Apple handhelds and Macs, but likely not other devices. (WiFi is a common standard, but the way MIDI is transmitted over it is not necessarily so.)
2. USB MIDI support for class-compliant devices, using the iPad Camera Connection Kit’s USB adapter.
