I can drag its samples straight into a GarageBand project, and drop them. Now, when I want to copy audio files to and from the sampler, I just put it into USB mode, and it mounts on the iPad. I now have its USB cable permanently attached to the USB hub on my desk, which is the same hub I use to power the iPad. The capability to use USB on iPad really opened things up for me. It can send multiple huge video files from the Mac to the iPad, but wired is faster (and you don’t have to stop using your iPad while you watch AirDrop’s progress ring). It can’t load presets onto my synthesizer, for instance. While AirDrop is fantastic, it doesn’t begin to cover all the use cases of USB. He said that he’s all in on AirDrop, but that some people still want to connect thumb drives.īut that’s a bit disingenuous. In a podcast I listened to recently, Craig Federighi made light of it. But when you do, you realize just how amazingly useful it is to be able to connect the tablet to external hardware.
It takes a while to get used to the iPad having a proper USB port. If you buy it for USB ports, expect your devices to disconnect randomly. If you buy this to use with the HDMI port, expect your monitor to randomly turn off when you move a bit.
External drives and iPad: A paradigm shift (Update 10/2020): I also brought my Macbook in to Apple a few weeks ago and had them checked the USB ports and everything was running fine).
