GarageBand 4 features?

MacWorld San Francisco is coming next week, and it’s pretty likely that iLife is going to get an update, with GarageBand getting revved to version 4.

Here’s what I’d like to see in a GarageBand update:

1. The ability to have multiple projects open at the same time. iMovie HD 6 can do this now, why not GB too? It would be nice to cut and paste loops between projects without stashing them in the library as a workaround.
2. More automation than what there is now (volume, pan, and the modulation/expression stuff on Software Instruments) – This probably isn’t going to happen (Apple do want people to move up to Logic, so they can’t give GB everything…). There are a few ways to fake this a bit, which I intend to demonstrate in a future article here later this month.
3. Allow opening in Rosetta (or have some other kind of workaround to allow PPC-only AUs on my MacBook Pro, or pay apulSoft to Universalize all his ports). Even if this doesn’t happen, my previous instructions should still apply.
4. Something like Quartz Composer for developing AudioUnits would be extremely cool – like an easy to use SonicBirth (I tried it a bit, but didn’t have any luck). It would probably lead to a glut of AUs along the lines of all the SynthEdit-based VSTis for Windows out there, but that’s a chance I’m willing to take. This probably outside the scope of iLife, but it would be killer inside, say the Leopard Developer Tools.
5. Heck, I’d still like to see Apple come out with the “Asteroid” device that caused all the rumor site controversy a few years back. I have extreme doubts that this is going to happen, since the project was supposedly scrapped, but it would have been nice.