The iPhone has been subject to a lot of development, and more and more of it is starting to become about the external gear. Accessories have long been cornered to the cases, skins and in best case scenarios, a dock. However, the more the market responds to the development and the marketing of gear that further makes the iPhone a versatile tool, the more the market will open up their wallets it seems. With over 10 billion apps downloaded and many more being added to the App Store each day, we can only speculate what the market will look like in a couple of years, let alone what the new iPhone (the one that Apple is being uber secretive about), will do to the market. This is especially true when it comes to accessories.
The Pocketloops, developed by Gear4 in collaboration with Novation, is a pretty neat little piece of technology. It comes as an app, and with it is a keyboard accessory which holds the dock where the iPhone goes. Once connected, the iPhone becomes a slick mini midi recording studio for you to play around with your music creativity.
I have had my fair run-ins with small midi keyboards, and I can say that I have never liked them. It’s not so much because they are small, but because they pretty much always have that plastic feeling to them. When I play piano, I like to have weighted keys in order to bring out that true feeling of playing a piano. Since there is no way of saying if this small midi keyboard has that, I am prepared to give it a shot. Plus, this one only lets you layer 16 loops from the Pocketloops library at a time. So as you can understand, if you’re not the Gorillaz, you can pretty much kiss that Grammy wishful thinking goodbye. It’s pretty neat, but I, for one, really want to try it out before I go over the clouds for this gadget. It hasn’t yet been released, but will have a price of $69.99 when it is. The app used with it; however, is free.
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