At Tuesday's iPad 2 launch event, Apple also introduced a few new apps for the iPad that were previously only available on the Mac. One of the most impressive was Apple's GarageBand, a $5 music recording, mixing, editing, and teaching program. It's an excellent Mac app, and appears to be similarly great on the iPad.
If you don't own a guitar, GarageBand can simulate one on screen. You tap on the display to play individual notes, strum chords, or bend notes; you can even touch the strings in two places at the same time to palm mute. The intensity at which you strike the notes and chords affects the volume of the sound, like on a real guitar. There's also an on-screen piano and drum kit, which offer similar features and controls.
As a guitar player myself, the most exciting feature is amp modeling—you plug your guitar or bass into the iPad, and play using touch-based digital amps and effects that look like floor pedals. The amps and pedals feature adjustments for tone, reverb, tremolo, presence, and gain, and more. It packs a lot of expensive equipment into one $5 app.
I also saw some of GarageBand's recording and mixing features. You can lay down up to eight tracks, arrange 250-plus loops and incorporate both on-screen instruments and real ones. As you'll see in the video below, it all ran extremely smooth, without any stuttering, thanks to the iPad 2's new, upgraded hardware.
GarageBand is a testament to how much iOS has matured, as well as the power of the iPad 2's processing capabilities. With the iPad's large, 1,024-by-768 display and powerful A5 processor, Apple is offering desktop-class applications like GarageBand on a mobile device.
See the slideshow above and video below for a closer look at GarageBand for iPad, which is available on March 11.