MPC Fly 30 now $150 on the Akai site...

MPC Fly 30 now being offered at $150

http://www.akaipro.com/mpc-fly-30

Are people really buying these things?

Good fun, or iPad gimmick...

really? but it hardly works at all right?
my suspicion has always been that they need to blow these out to make room for a newer model compatible with new iPads. WWDC apple address happens on Monday too and what do you know another price drop.

psr wrote:really? but it hardly works at all right?
my suspicion has always been that they need to blow these out to make room for a newer model compatible with new iPads. WWDC apple address happens on Monday too and what do you know another price drop.

$149 is not a bad price for a controller with dedicated buttons (transport,note repeat,etc.) and velocity sensitive pads. The iMPC app. is coming along slowly but surely. The only major function missing now is Audiobus, but that just means you have to use audio copy/paste for now.

It is a fun to use and the export feature works well. I export projects and copy them to my Dropbox folders using iFile. I then load the entire projects into the MPC Studio seamlessly and continue working on them.

As far as compatibility with the Ipad 4's lightning connector, the current fly should work with a simple lightning-to-30pin adapter. I have the Ipad 2 so I can't confirm, but the way the Fly is designed with the side that slides off it would be easy to make the connection. I may try testing it with my wife's Ipad mini which has the lighting connector. (Akai should thank me for doing their work for them:)

Anyone got a link to a positive review of the Fly?

MPC-Tutor wrote:Anyone got a link to a positive review of the Fly?

Only review I saw anywhere was one a guy I know that did one on You Tube. He was fair about it, and it was not favorable. I posted it here in an iMPC thread.

He had issues with build quality and the random hard wired MIDI map, especially in light of the Core MIDI support being a major advertised feature. But it's as if Akai just said Core MIDI? you're on your own, so what?

A simple desktop app to make maps that are loadable through iTunes file share and 4 banks and none of this would have been an issue. Hats off to guys like Coolderb that managed decent yet hardly optimum workarounds, but it just shouldn't have played out that way. A camera kit and a $50 Korg mini pad joint is still superior, although obviously lacks the unified form factor aspect.

I also had to raise an eyebrow over the Limited Edition moniker as it's obviously dead stock as they made too many with the old connecter and waited too damn long to release. I would doubt they have manufactured one unit with the latest dock connection and won't until they blow out all the 30 pin ones. So I see the whole business model of the 30 pin version as them essentially saying, customers you underwrite our bad planning and then you can have an up to date one. That would still suffer the same MIDI headaches.

Maybe for $75 or $99USD I would stomach the shortcomings, the current Apple wrap around cases can't fit a CCK, or any of the video cables but Apple often does inexplicable design flaws too. So if those are $40-$60 I would maybe go up to $100 if the Fly's dock opening is wider and see the pads as a decent although intrinsically flawed addition. Then pursue the 3rd party MIDI app workaround that Coolderb and others had the patience to muster through.

When i requested a review loaner they were pretty firm that the FLy is not yet available "officially" for media review. If you cop the 30pin joint you can obviously review it but i really dont think this is the prime time unit. they are just trying to unload em before the latest iteration is unveiled according to Apple's latest form factors and specs. Also, isnt there a thread on these forums where folks were saying how it doesnt do like a gang of stuff that it should do?

Yes that thread is extensive and in it you'll see Coolderb and others going the length to sort it out as best they could and doing a highly commendable job of sharing what they found.

Not surprised they fronted on a review unit, Nekron99's overview video was of the one he purchased just a big time iOS app user. He actually told me, "I waited a week to make the video as I was so mad, but hate to come off all trollish in a vid even when the criticisms are well founded. But you can still see/hear the disgust despite my best efforts."

As far as I've seen nothing about the lightning version other than the connector is slated to be different. Akai pull the plug now, don't manufacture the new connector ones if you haven't already, again I highly doubt they have. In the US years ago the MPD24 wasn't in shops until 18 months after it was said to be released, just a year and a half of coming soon, and if I recall it had an active retail SKU the whole wait period.

They should just look toward a Fly 2 with 4-8 banks and a mapping tool, all problems solved. Hardly rocket science here.

MPC-Tutor wrote:Anyone got a link to a positive review of the Fly?

This site shows some reviews. Mixed but mostly positive. The key point is that when used with the iMPC app. the Fly is good, but 3rd party app. support is lacking:

http://akaimpcblog.com/category/akaipro/mpc-fly

Here's a quick review - 'Obsolete landfill'.

Apple have spoilt the party by changing the dock connector, but they're also changing the form factor of the iPad later this year, so Akai will have to somehow find an elegant way of accommodating it.

^again I don't think they made a single lightning/iPad 4 form factor one, for just the reasons you're describing.

Coz wrote:Here's a quick review - 'Obsolete landfill'.

Apple have spoilt the party by changing the dock connector, but they're also changing the form factor of the iPad later this year, so Akai will have to somehow find an elegant way of accommodating it.

Thats exactly why I always skip a generation (or 2) of Apple's new releases. I still have an Ipad 2 and it works great! People always ask me why haven't I gotten the Ipad 3 or Ipad 4. My answer is simply "Why?". All of my apps. run fine on my dual-core, 64Gb Ipad 2 so I'm good. There are also plenty of accessories available for it so even if Apple changes things up in the future it will still be quite useful.

I honestly don't think the change in the dock connector was that big of a factor in terms of Akai bringing the Fly to the market. It was a convenient scapegoat, but I think the bigger problem was on the software engineering side.

I disagree, they held back an iPad keyboard for over a year at one point, it was them holding their breath on Apple for sure.

Yeah I have iPad 1 and 3 and a 5 or 6 will be the next one.

Lampdog wrote:The standard impulse is to get the newest shit, some people lack self confidence/worth and need the newest shit to make them feel better imo.

The problem with the iPad/Apple is that each successive iteration doesn't exactly 'supersede' the previous one, but try and run a moderately resource hungry app on an iPad 1 and the hardware will struggle. The iPad 1 only came out 3 years ago, so it's not as though it's had an amazing lifespan. It'll basically just wither away as an unsupported legacy product. That fate will be the same for any tablet computer IMO. They've got a similar lifecycle to phones.

That doesn't mean you can't keep your current gen for ever and ever, but a few years down the line you won't be able to update the OS, and you end up with a less functional device with a progressively failing battery.

With that in mind, that's why I say the 30 pin Fly is 'obsolete'. It's cheap enough to take a gamble with if you're still on the 30 pin dock connector and can put up with shaky software, but there's also plenty of other things that would be a better investment.