Awesome app. There is so much to explore. In some instruments, there is a pitch setting whch lets you smoothly transition from one note to the other. The fact it is available on many different instruments is the awesome part. All these advanced features for just $5.00. Unbelievable.
There is a bit of a delay to load and also to change instruments. I thought it was that way in iPad. I tried it with iPad 2. From a cold start, it took around 8 seconds to display the instrument view. Not bad at all, but the difference in delay between iPad and iPad 2 is not that much.
Now to some minor but counter intuitive parts of this otherwise incredibly awesome app.
It took me some time to realize that I am always in the context of making a song. It was not obvious when I first got into garageband. I was just playing some instruments. But somehow I got into editing that but I struggled quite a bit t to get back to playing the instruments. I had to pick 'New Song' to get back to that view. This discoverable UI thing is quite frustrating.. Apple seems to take that concept too far. How the hell am I supposed to know that I am in the context of a song when I first launched it? If I am not recording a song or editing a song, why am I in the context of a song? The way it presented the display to me, I naively thought it is a place to play with the instruments without even thinking about composing a song.
What confused me even more is, when I hit the Home button when in Garage band, as it transitioned to the home screen, a red banner appeared at the top with the word "Garage band (recording)".. Well, I did not press any record button. I did not want it to be recording something in the background, wasting space etc. So I killed it forcefully from the multitasking bar. Later I realized I need not worry about it. But that was a bit unsettling red banner.
The help button is nice, it puts up little yellow thingies next to the controls explaining what it is. May be, Apple can add a few more hints like that to make the UI a bit easier to discover.