Audiotorium on iOS 4.2: Multi-tasking, audio-streaming goodness

We are really excited about next week’s release of Audiotorium Notes, which includes full iOS 4.2 support. While the last release did support most of the new 4.2 features, it was missing background recording and AirPlay streaming. Here is a breakdown of all the cool new features of Audiotorium Notes on iOS 4.2.

Backgrounding — Backgrounding allows Audiotorium to maintain state after it is no longer the currently running app. This means you can close Audiotorium while you are taking notes and browse the web to look up information. When you open Audiotorium again, it will still be on the note you already had opened. This is particularly useful if you are recording audio. To ensure you don’t forget that recording has continued, the status bar will be red and indicate Audiotorium is recording. Tapping on the red status bar will take you right back into the app.

AirPlay — AirPlay is a great new feature of iOS 4.2 that allows audio streaming to wireless speakers. This makes it easy to play back your audio notes to a large group of people without having to huddle around the tiny iPad speakers. If you find yourself reviewing your audio notes with other people, you’ll love this feature. To play back audio on AirPlay speakers, bring up the scrollable dock by double-clicking on the iPad’s home button while in a note that has an audio recording. If you scroll the dock to the left you’ll see playback controls and the AirPlay button. Tapping the AirPlay button will show you a list of available AirPlay speakers which the audio can be streamed to. For more information on AirPlay, please see Apple’s AirPlay page.

Dock Audio Controls — As you may have noticed from the AirPlay screenshot, you are now able to control Audiotorium audio playback from the iPad dock’s audio controls. So, you can have other apps open, such as Safari and still pause, rewind and fast-forward audio notes without having to open the app again.

iTunes File Sharing — While this is not exactly iOS 4.2 specific, this is a new feature which we recently enabled and we thought it was worth a mention. In addition to the other options for backing up and sharing your notes — WiFi sharing, email and Dropbox — you can now access your notes directly on your iPad from iTunes File Sharing. This is available in iTunes under the “apps” section when your iPad is connected to your computer. Select the .sqlite, .txt and .caf files and choose “save to”  in order to create a complete backup of your notes that can be restored any time.