This will mainly be put on a boom-stand and used for recording acoustic guitar and violin tracks into Garage Band. I might use it for vocal too if I’m feeling brave!

The iRig one standard out as very simple as it pops straight into the headphone/mic jack hole. At £30, I’m guessing it’s not amazing sound quality.

Or something else?

I use a Tascam IM2X – http://www.thomann.de/gb/tascam_im2x.htm for field recording and mobile recording, interviews and a whole host of stuff, the quality is very good for such a small package and will be significantly superior to anything which uses the analogue ins on the phone/ipad – the main problem is that it is only old docking connector compliant, and won’t work with the new lightning connector.