UCLA has a $10B endowment. I find it bollocks that they and these other academic institutions can't just dip into that for their researchers to (hopefully) ride out the current funding situation at a minimum.
I don't think they officially support leasing to individuals directly, but it's very easy to setup a leasing/biz account with them as a business. I think any Apple store has a POC there that can help / see: https://www.apple.com/shop/finance/business-financing
You can very easily setup an LLC and obtain an EIN. It's been a minute since I've setup an Apple financing account, so I don't recall what they require on the finance side. I'm certain they will want to see some sort of financial proof, but I doubt they will care much if you're not a proper operating biz. I'm not sure if proof of finances will need to be linked to a banking account under the business name, but if so, that's easy enough to setup with an ebank once you have an EIN.
All of that being said, the tradeoff will be if you're willing to deal with the potential state/federal tax and biz reporting requirements of having the business. It's not hard esp if it's not a real active business, but just another thing to deal with.
Also speaking from similiar experience, ^^^ this is the best combo. Where both parties have a certain degree of humility and self-awareness and understand how their skills, personalities, and personal circumstances (ability to travel, life stage, etc.) compliment one another.
I like the idea as someone working in a regulated environment. We just paid ~$10k to a counsel to help craft our documents, but they are highly bespoke to our needs.
That being said, I don't know how much I'd trust the results without having a human legal review in the loop. Perhaps that could be an up-charge/add-on: partner with a few firm/counsel that has deep experience different niche regulated areas (e.g. FDA), and then say e.g. for an add'l $500, get a stamp of approval on the document from a counsel who is well-versed in the space.
Also to clarify, yes: I understand most digital pianos have midi baked in. It's an easy signal to get out. I think this is a great product concept and there's nothing wrong with it--people will buy it! Just spitballing if hardware and all the baggage a hardware business model comes with is necessary.
I'm suggesting that the user's phone that they already need (since the hardware pairs with the app in the article) is the hardware in this context. A phone already has a microphone and--if the environment is too noisy- many also support direct audio input through the phone's charge/data port with a simple off-the-shelf converter. Most smartphones can perform real-time audio progressing nowadays.
The trade-off is that midi is going to be lower error than an audio processing algorithm and much easier to implement out-the-gate, while it's certainly a step-up in the software engineering needed to develop and implement an audio processing algorithm to implement pitch/key detection as well as capture relative timing and velocity.
Correct the product in the article has no dependence on synthesis, but in pretty much all contexts in which someone will be using the device, there will be a corresponding audio signal present. Most people don't tap out music with a midi controller just in silence/without some sort of synthesis in conjunction.
As someone with a professional background in consumer hardware (and music production) my first thought is always "how can I solve this problem without hardware" first. Don't get me wrong--hardware is fun--but manufacturing and selling consumer hardware is brutal from a business perspective (of course fun in its own masochistic way). With hardware, you're dealing with annoying cashflow issues unless you can easily build to order (money tied up in inventory or even the supplies), supply chain management, inventory management overhead, logistics and fulfillment overhead, additional regulatory overhead.
My understanding from OP's product is that there is an inherent assumption that this is targeted towards people dabbling on standalone digital pianos that also typically have built-in synthesis/sound modules.
Anyway, I'm just giving my reasons for why wouldn't you start with a software approach to answer your question. Putting all that aside, OP's solution is really cool and, independent of the decision to go custom hardware, it seems like a great product solution for the problem it's solving.
This is awesome! One question, though: why not just work with straight audio and convert to midi with some basic* signal processing assuming a use case of instruments/sounds that aren't crazy synthesized. You could then also use this app for certain acoustic instruments as well and make this run all on mobile, potentially with an audio jack dongle/splitter if connecting to a digital instrument. Could also focus the audio processing on specific acoustic instruments out the gate and role out algorithms one at a time for each kind of instrument (e.g. piano vs saxophone)