FL Studio breaks its 13-year Windows-only run, launches new iOS app

Image-Line studios on Tuesday released FL Studio Mobile and FL Studio Mobile HD, the first mobile versions of the company's popular Windows-based music production and beatmaking software FL Studio, which is now in its 13th year on the market.

Like many other iOS music apps, FL Studio Mobile can be used as a multi-track sequencer to create music from scratch, giving users resizable piano keys and assignable drum pads to link to the app's built-in synthesizers. The major difference that FL Studio Mobile offers over other music creation apps, however, is its interaction with the desktop software. Projects created in the desktop version of FL Studio can be exported and loaded into FL Studio Mobile for manipulation on the go, and vice-versa.

Like Garageband for iPad, pulling files off of the iPad is kind of a chore. In order to load FL Studio Mobile projects into FL Studio for Windows, users need version 10.0.5 or later of FL Studio, and files must be dragged and dropped from the FL Studio Browser (or Windows folder) to the desktop one by one. There's not yet an easy export feature for fast file sharing.

The two versions of the software are available in the iTunes App Store today: FL Studio Mobile For third and fourth generation iPhone & iPod touch costs $14.99, and FL Studio Mobile HD For iPad 1 & iPad 2 running iOS 4.5 costs $19.99.