Ferric vs Fingerophone

Ferric brings back the cassette tape as a real music player for your iPhone. Not a gimmick, not just a skin over your library. A full cassette experience where you build the tapes, curate the tracks, and watch the reels spin while your music plays. MAKE YOUR TAPES Start by picking a shell. Chrome, midnight black, amber, clear, oxide brown, electric blue, or retro. Each one has its own look and feel. Give your cassette a name, then fill both sides with songs from your music library or Apple Music. Side A and Side B are real. Flip the tape during playback just like you would with a physical cassette. The progress carries over correctly, the reels spin the right direction, and the tape fills up as you listen. DECORATE THEM Every cassette has a drawing surface you can paint on. Use the pen tool to write labels, draw art, or scribble whatever feels right. Swap between colors, adjust the brush size, drop in stickers, or grab the eraser. You can decorate the front, the back, and the top spine. It is your tape. PLAY YOUR MUSIC The player shows your cassette up close with both reels animating in real time. The supply reel shrinks and the takeup reel grows as the tape runs, using the same physics as a physical cassette. The reels spin faster near the end of the tape and slower near the start. Tap forward or back to skip tracks. Hold to seek. The speed ramps up the longer you hold, so scrubbing through a long tape stays quick. Lock screen controls and background playback work the same as any music app. BUILT-IN WEAR Every cassette accumulates wear as you listen. Scratches and surface marks appear gradually, placed deterministically based on each cassette's own wear pattern. No two tapes age the same way. Heavy-use tapes start to show it. YOUR LIBRARY All your cassettes live in a grid view. Tap any one to see its track listing in a style that mirrors the J-cards that used to come inside cassette cases. From there you can flip to the other side, launch the player, or open the drawing editor. WHAT FERRIC IS NOT It is not a streaming service. It does not generate playlists or make recommendations. It is a deliberate, analog-feeling way to organize and play music you already own or have access to through Apple Music. Building a cassette takes a minute. That is the point.

Fingerophone brings the feel of a classic pocket electronic instrument to your iPhone and iPad: slide a finger to play, with no extra hardware to buy. Slide across the compact hex keyboard to play an electronic tone instantly. It is a real monophonic touch synthesizer that makes its own warm, analog-style sound: two slightly detuned oscillators give it a vintage warmth, a resonant low-pass filter rounds off the digital edge, and vibrato adds the familiar wobble. Every control stays within reach while the note is still playing: - Four waveforms (sine, triangle, saw, square), crossfaded as you switch - Vibrato for the classic pocket-synth wobble - Tone to darken or brighten the sound - Drive to push it from clean into gritty - Volume A live oscilloscope draws the actual signal coming out of the synth, so the screen moves with the sound instead of running a canned animation. Scroll the keyboard across several octaves and play quick melodies, sustained drones, and noisy little riffs. Plug in a MIDI keyboard to play the synth, then map its knobs to the controls with MIDI Learn. The sound is generated on your device. You can play without an account or an internet connection. Whether you want to experiment with a pocket synth, explore warm analog-style sounds, or try a finger-played instrument without buying hardware, Fingerophone keeps everything on one focused screen.