I pretty much agree with all the people who replied. VSTs with heterogeneous interfaces, windowing issues, and having to use a mouse all just get in the way of making music for me. Obviously you wouldn’t produce / master some serious but if you’re jamming it’s leagues better imo
I agree you won’t find a DAW as powerful, but some of the purpose built DAWs are so much fun. Loopy Pro you can build whatever interface you want via widgets.
And while VSTs don’t run, the AUv3s on the App Store tend to be much cheaper.
If for nothing else, I think it’s an excellent replacement for a guitar effects processor like Helix. Plus everything is backed up / restorable and you don’t have to suffer with a knob-based interface
Music production is the killer feature that benefits a lot from CPU performance.
I only recently bought an iPad for the first time this year after realizing this was feasible. I’ve always preferred digital music workflows, but hated dealing with a laptop and DAW. iOS supports AUv3 plugins and cross app audio, so it’s pretty much a full DAW experience (I use loopy pro). The form factor forces AUv3 devs to design smarter interfaces.
Plus, I dislike using the iPad for literally anything else, so I’m less likely to get distracted :)
I build the ISO via a Github action as well. The biggest pain point is adding / removing disks after initial install, which I do imperatively (but still disko for mounting / fstab equivalent)