Blue Mikey: anyone use one. Problem on iPhone4

What is Blue Mikey?

mauijiminar wrote:
What is Blue Mikey?

What is an iPhone 4G?

+What is an iPhone 4G?+

If you have to ask, you'll never understand.

In all seriousness, though, this is sort of a small disaster - the mikey has been a great way for me to get some quality audio from my iPhone 3GS in interviews I do for my podcast. I love my Mikey, I love my new iPhone 4, and I'm a little upset over the apparent lack of ability to ever use the two together.

A new version of the Mikey was supposed to ship in the last month or two and it's just been in a holding pattern, going from "available in May" to "coming this summer" - this likely explains why.

Apple probably needed the pins for the new USB input support. However, the USB input is disabled in the iPhone. This is likely because most USB devices get power from the USB connector, and they probably use too much power for the iPhone, leading to reduce battery life.

It doesn't seem like a solution is on the horizon for stereo audio input into iPhone 4. A possibility is for next generation USB mics to provide their own power through a battery or separate power adapter input. A stereo USB mic needs phantom power for the mic capsules, power for the analog preamps, possibly significant power for the A-to-D converters, and power for the USB signal processor. That's a lot more to pack into the mic then is currently required for simple analog mics. The Blue Yeti is such a USB mic, and does work with the iPad through the camera connector. But likely requires too much power for an iPhone. And its pretty big (but a very nice mic).

I'm in the exact situation, but to me it's a really big deal!

I can use though, and highly recommend, my Zoom H2 and even get a 5.1 capable recording instead--its just not as convenient and as tiny a solution that the Mikey was. 😟

What's worse, this is an iOS 4 issue, which means that happy Mikey owners who start iTunes and do Apple's RECOMMENDED update to iOS 4 on their 3G and 3GS Phones will NEVER be able to use their Mikeys again!!!

BAD APPLE!!

What's worse is Apple and Blue are partners, and Apple has highly recommend Blue products in Apple stores and online as a way for creatives to work with quality sound.

This is very bad move on Apple's part, because now the many thousands of Mikey owners can no longer use the Mikey with iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and very likely now the iPod touch.

This is going to spoil a lot of good relationships.

Mikey features Blue's superior quality stereo condenser capsules, 3-position user selectable gain settings (enabling high quality recordings from a whisper to a rock concert), and a unique user-positionable head. Mikey works with the iPod touch 2G, iPod 5G, iPod nano 2G, 3G, and 4G

So their site suggests it works when it doesn't. Lawsuit!!!

Meanwhile; they will have been notified of this change like 12 or 18 months ago... Blue's own fault for not sorting it out then.

From Their Site:
Model Discontinued

They also call the 3GS a 4G and the iPhone 4 a 5G

Fools.

iZian wrote:

Mikey features Blue's superior quality stereo condenser capsules, 3-position user selectable gain settings (enabling high quality recordings from a whisper to a rock concert), and a unique user-positionable head. Mikey works with the iPod touch 2G, iPod 5G, iPod nano 2G, 3G, and 4G

So their site suggests it works when it doesn't. Lawsuit!!!

Meanwhile; they will have been notified of this change like 12 or 18 months ago... Blue's own fault for not sorting it out then.

Notice in what you posted above, they have completely removed the iPhone as being capable of using it AT ALL!! I saw 4G and at first, too, thought they were talking about iPhone which doesn't even have a 4G (yet) but they're talking about iPods.


I know FOR CERTAIN that Blue was advertising the Mikey as working with iPhone--if they have removed it completely I have mixed feelings.

I guess they should remove it since now it no longer works, but I also think it's misleading to remove information that was there once before!

But what voice has Apple left them? And make no mistake this is APPLE's FAULT, NOT BLUE's.

The Mikey was invented when iOS 3 was out, and used specifications of the iPod and iPhone software that were already existent. That's why you just plug in a Mikey and it would work--there was no software required because Apple had already written the drivers and the architecture.

Its not something like a device "driver" or software that Blue could just produce and make available for download--no one has done that for iPhone. Blue just made some hardware--that BlueFire recording app was nothing more than the voice memo recorder with nicer graphics and a built in server applet to let you get the recordings out over wifi so you weren't required to use iTunes to get to the recordings.

NOW, with iOS 4, Apple has completely removed all that functionality that Mikey relied on from the iPhone and even made the Phones that once supported it perfectly (3G and 3GS) now completely unable to use Mikey, and with no clear way to roll back to iPhone OS v3 to get the ability back. UGH!!

ThIs is something ONLY APPLE can fix--and they really need to make it right.

Its

um, i just plugged my mikey (V1, of course) into my 3Gs 32g running os4, and it works fine with FiRe.

iZian wrote:

... iPod touch 2G, iPod 5G, iPod nano 2G, 3G, and 4G

I don't see the word "iPhone" anywhere. Also, the iPhone isn't usually referred to by generation, but rather by name. A quick analysis of the sentence would reveal that they mean *4th-gen iPod nano*. They're not suggesting it works… they're just not mentioning it at all. Apple deprecated an API. It *****, but it happens, and just happened.