GarageBand 10 review: Great tool for musicians (sorry podcasters)
If you’ve followed the saga of changes wrought by this year’s iWork applications it should come as little surprise that Apple’s iLife applications have also seen their share of alterations. GarageBand version 10 for the Mac is no exception. Unlike some of these applications, however, GarageBand is a give as well as take effort. You lose features such as the ability to assemble and produce enhanced podcasts as well as the Magic GarageBand feature where you could jam along with a band of virtual players. But you also gain a new instrument library, the Drummer track, Smart Controls for adjusting common instrument and effect parameters, iCloud support, and the ability to control GarageBand with the free Logic Remote iPad app.
Logic Light
Part of accepting what GarageBand 10 is and isn’t is understanding its relationship to Apple’s professional digital audio workstation application, Logic Pro X. While GarageBand has always been a lighter version of Logic, Apple added features such as podcasting and Magic GarageBand to help make the application more appealing to a broader base of users. Those days are largely over.
Today’s GarageBand is unapologetically a Logic spinoff that concentrates solely on music. Open Logic Pro X and GarageBand 10 side-by-side and, given the striking similarity of the two interfaces, you can imagine Apple’s music creation team running down a list of Logic features and ticking off those appropriate for a music-oriented GarageBand audience. “Keep these features, lose the professional stuff, and build it. Done.”
GarageBand 10 looks an awful lot like Logic Pro X.
And that means exactly what for those accustomed to the old GarageBand? There is no support for creating enhanced podcasts—chapter markers, broadcast effects, embedded artwork, vocal ducking, and export settings designed with podcasters in mind don’t exist. As someone who has been producing enhanced podcasts with GarageBand for years I’m sorry to see these features go. But I also understand that the vast majority of podcasts are not issued in the enhanced format. My best guess is that Apple came to same conclusion.
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