The big news over the last couple days has been BT’s recent announcement of iPhone/iPod touch application Sonifi, a tricked out app engine with pre-loaded samples allowing you to remix his tracks on the fly. From BT’s post:

It is with a deep sense of pride, tonight, a week before the release of the first single from my new album….That my software company Sonik Architects, and I…have completed and are submitting as we speak
The worlds first portable remix application for a mobile device, Sonifi™ will be shipped this month. It contains ALL the remix parts of The Rose of Jericho and a special bonus acoustic mix of the track for you to remix your A** off with

And quite simply is the coolest F***ing thing you’ve EVER seen on an iPhone. **BT Drops the mic, kicks over the stereo, throws up the horns and makes out with someones GF before leaving the building!  **
Sonifi™ + The Rose of Jericho mid June…..and 12 seconds next week

For anyone wanting to know why there isn’t a solid release date, the wait is actually indeterminable due to the unpredictability of the App Store review process by Apple. Submitted apps with no issues can be fast-tracked within 48 hours, while others with lingering issues (See: SlingPlayer Mobile) can be delayed for weeks. Due to the likely nature of Sonifi, we should see it available for purchase by this weekend, right before Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) hits.

There’s quite a bit of turf to cover here, because Sonifi is simultaneously hitting the beaten path and blazing new ground. How much it takes off depends largely on the app’s interface and usability, and how well catchy content is able to change iPhone user behavior. I have been covering, following and participating in the iPhone application development process since long before the official SDK, back when Lucas Newman created Lights Off as a native app on his jailbroken iPhone with no documentation or frameworks to guide him. It’s a brazen, ever-changing market, and not just because Apple decides to revise their App Store policies every week.

There’s a few apps already in the portable digital audio workstation (DAW) market, to varying degrees of usefulness and success:

Touch Mix - Deadmau5 - A virtual set of decks with a plethora of mixing effects and exclusive Deadmau5 content for toying with. Don’t be fooled by the “Create your own remixes” language used by the description—no actual remixing is going on here. A few friends of mine (artists) beta tested this four months ago and weren’t particularly impressed.

iDrum: Depeche Mode Sounds of the Universe -  Make no mistake, if there was ever an app Sonifi was inspired by, it’s this. A mobile version of the renowned iDrum desktop app by plugin development maestros iZotope, this client comes with a slate of sounds from Depeche Mode’s latest album Sounds of the Universe completely at your disposal to remix on the fly.

BeatMaker - Despite the hefty price tag of $19.99 (4 to 6 times the price of similar-purpose iPhone apps), BeatMaker is an astounding proof of concept that semi-professional audio production can be done on the iPhone platform, even despite the severely-limited hardware of the iPhone and iPhone 3G. The comprehensiveness, however, is also the achilles heel. More on that in a bit.

Here’s a few fundamental (and well-documented) issues with iPhone applications and it’s users, and how an app like Sonifi fits in:

1. iPhone users are fickle, with extremely short attention spans and a disposable mindset.

iPhone users, by and large, view apps as forms of distraction from brief spells of monotony throughout the course of a day. Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, NYTimes, SMS, and YouTube are slapped dozens of times a day and noodled around with, perhaps every 60 seconds if the user also suffers OCD. The top-selling apps at one point were iFart and iBeer, and the average price of a paid iPhone app hovers right above the base price of 99 cents. Most games and news portals aim to give you a satisfactory, complete experience within a five minute window, and for good reason: Users on the go are very rarely idle for longer than that. An audio remix application on the iPhone needs to be a quick, efficient sketchpad for ideas that can later be fleshed out in the presence of a fully-capable DAW. In the case of BeatMaker, the complexity of the user interface is counterintuitive to creative spontaneity, which should be the only purpose of a mobile platform in the first place. Nobody is going to pick up their phone for some serious production work with a desktop anywhere within reason.

Sonifi in context: It needs to be an app with a very accessible, simple UI that quickly engages the user, let’s them pause from distraction, and pick up where they left off.

2. The resourcefulness and replay value of an app must exceed the price tag.

This one is not as obvious as it should be, and it’s also the crux of the iPhone experience. Recent studies have shown users are more likely to reuse an application they pay for, but that falsely implies that people guilt-trip themselves into using something they’ve paid money for. More likely the case is people are willing to pay for quality apps with initially high potential that turn into solid bets over time. A classic case in point is Zenonia, a Zelda-inspired 16-bit style 2D scroller RPG with dozens of hours of depth and play, and leading the push for iPhone to become a major portable gaming platform worthy of contention with Nintendo and Sony. You’ll have a wide range of expected value from Sudoku ($0.99), Frenzic ($2.99), Zenonia ($5.99) and Sims 3 ($9.99). Apps like Netter’s Anatomy can command a $39.99 price tag due to it’s resourcefulness and practical use for medical students on the go.

Sonifi in context: With a reported price tag of $4.99 for the program and $1.49 for future remix packs, Sonifi goes beyond “mildly amusing gimmick” territory ($2.99 and under) and into “must have legitimate use for prolonged periods of time” turf. That’s a tall order, particularly when apps in the same price range are offering a unique content experience in excess of 30 hours. (For the record, I maintain iZotope’s mobile iDrum series is overpriced.)

3. Advanced mobile platforms with little ability to coordinate and sync with their desktop counterparts risk abandonment.

There are many exceptional apps on the iPhone that operate completely within the confines of their own existence, and no need to ever expand beyond that. But if the user’s goal is productivity of any kind, they need a viable option export, transfer or otherwise pass along the information in tangible form to be plied upon later. There are apps that utterly fail in this regard (Apple’s own Notes app), leverage existing avenues to roughly pass data along (GasCubby allows you to import and export spreadsheets via email attachments), or in perhaps the finest, slickest example of fluidity, Cultured Code’s GTD app Things syncs directly with their desktop client via Wi-Fi. The ability to transfer your work directly correlates with how much time and effort you put into an app. That’s the fundamental weakness of the entire iDrum series: Users will not consistently put extensive time and effort into composing and remixing with no way to output their results.

Sonifi in context: Without an AIFF export option or at least plans to include it in a near-future revision, consider the app without purpose and subsequently dead in the water after five minutes of use.

To clarify, this is all personal speculation based on reasonable assumptions and features of audio-based iPhone applications. Nobody will know for sure whether Sonifi is the real deal until it hits, but I for one look forward to trying it out and have reasonably high confidence that BT’s efforts have yielded a successful product.