Kemper new iOS/iPad app, do you think fractal will be next?

For all these years fractal has avoided making an iOS app. Kemper having built a blue tooth module into that stage for later use was smart. They seems to think way a head and just get to stuff when they can.
 
Personally I do not care for an iOS/iPad app as its own thing BUT since Apple did the transition to ARM chips across the board the desktop editor could eventually be given a face lift to work on the other devices.
 
Not trying to bash anyone with this, only wondering if this is the plans for the near or far future, I think that would be awesome!
 
Kemper app works easily only with stage.

With Rack and Toaster you need to connect via Ethernet to the wireless hub and then the hub to the remote. Ok, it works, but I don’t see a practical use.

I see more the need for an app with the Kemper where the display is like my casio calculator and you need a lot of work to edit a preset. With Fractal (or helix) maybe it is less crucial.

Anyway, anything extra will be great! ;)
 
I would like to be able to plug a Bluetooth stick into the second USB interface of the FM3 and then be able to use my iPhone, iPad or a Tablet with Fracpad or a maybe new Fractal mobile app to control the FM3! (Has been in the wish list for a while!) and also be able to send or receive Midi Data with iOS Apps
 
DaveO said:
So question if you dont mind, is the Fracpad not as robust as Ax-edit? (I do not have it but have considered it when I owned a AX8) would you recommend paying $50 for the app and $50 for the BT-MIDI device?
Click to expand...
In my experience no. I had a ton of difficulty getting Fracpad Lite (the free, limited iOS/Android version) to connect to my FM3 + CME WIDI Master wireless BT-MIDI dongle. Very flaky with Fracpad often not recognizing the dongle despite showing the device in the logs and the app was very prone to eventually crashing after trying to find the dongle for a while. Over USB it should work no problem but for that you need a MIDI to USB interface since the FM3 does not work as a USB host.

When my iPad Pro did connect Fracpad to my FM3 it worked just fine. I think it has a lot of smart ideas and good execution but if you look at the screenshots above vs Axe-Edit you can see that it lacks a big layer of UI polish:
  • The controls are too close together. I guess it is just iterating a list of controls to the UI whereas FM3-Edit has custom on screen arrangements for them. Tablets are of course more difficult for scaling since you have anything from 7-13" models whereas on desktop you just increase the scaling factor of the window while keeping everything in the same place.
  • There's text that gets cropped. I don't know if it's my 12.9" iPad Pro but things like Save button texts would be cropped. Nothing but long texts like say preset or scene names should ever be cropped on a UI like this. Use icons instead of text if fitting the text to a button is difficult. What gets cropped and what does not can be defined in configurations for each button.
  • The font sizes are all over the place and many of the relevant texts are downright tiny like the control labels.
  • A better font would do wonders here for making it look more classy. That Impact (or similar) font just is not very good looking.
  • Some of the touch targets are way too small. See those little question marks under the controls? Clicking those is very difficult.
  • Overall there's a lot of alignment and spacing issues. Like that little triangle icon and fw version under the Axe-Fx 3 text looks like it's going to escape the header area and the same goes for that CPU indicator. Leaving more space around elements everywhere would relax its overall look a lot.
I am not trying to throw @AlGrenadine under the train here as he has done a really great job at getting Fracpad where it is, especially without Fractal providing official documentation on how to do a lot of it. Al has made the right choice here where instead of painstakingly replicating FM3-Edit he has adapted that UI to work well on a touchscreen with controls suited for fingers rather than a mouse. I am still totally on board with Fractal just hiring him and working together to make a mobile editor for Fractal products because he has already done most of the job.

Getting Fracpad to connect seamlessly to the FM3 and making it look as good as Axe-Edit/FM3-Edit does are comparatively simpler tasks to do vs building the whole thing from scratch.

If you want to try Fracpad without the necessary dongles for a tablet, you can download the free PC or Mac version of it and try it for yourself with your FM3 connected to the computer. While it's not the same user experience as using it with a tablet, it operates the same.
 
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