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Originally Posted by mattrixx  Hang in there mate..... i remember you from the early Logic user group, when everyone was on 28k dial up. Your posts were always helpful etc... and we used to have a bit of fun there too with the devs.... times have changed |
I remember these days pretty well, too. By now I have unsubscribed from the mailing list and asked a moderator for my account at the forum to be deleted. I feel much better this way because over the last 1-2 years the moderation wasn't what I associate with being fruitful or whatever you may call it (I'll save you from more details...).
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I'm with ya on the frustration etc, but as long as we keep on makin' stuff we get paid for, then things aren't dead in the water.
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You know, for my own main work I probably wouldn't even need any advanced sequencer (I make almost all my living by being a live guitar player). It's just that I do as well some parttime work as in teaching sequencing classes at the local music university, and further, I somewhat just happen to like living "on the edge of technology". In addition, I'm betatesting for quite some companies, something I pretty much like as well. And seeing Logic to be that much behind in so many areas is just frustrating. When I finally made the switch from 5.5.1/Win to 7, I also didn't expect a much better communication with Apple (I mean, it's quite wellknown how they deal with such things), but I certainly *did* expect much better support in terms of Logic being updated and probably even setting some new standards. Regarding all that, Logic 8 was the biggest dissapointment I've ever seen in my "sequencing life".
Sure, it's running quite well, and as said, I haven't seen any other laptop/OS/sequencer combination offering that much power and mobility, not even remotely. But that doesn't make dealing with the countless bugs, annoyances and missing features much easier.
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As you mention, there are heaps of options in the windows world, but they don't come without the price of portability and reliability.
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Seriously, while things were horrible with Windows 95, while they were better with 98 but still annoying sometimes, ever since I use XP, I haven't experienced any less reliability than with my Macbook and OSX. And while Vista was more or less a flop, Windows 7 seems to be a rather nice step forward.
Sure, it *is* a fact that there's some security issues when dealing with Windows, but once you are aware of them and know how to deal with things, they're really not crucial anymore (fwiw, just as with my Macbook, all my Windows machines were/are connected to the web as soon as I switch them on, and the last time I got a problem was when I really had no clue, back in the Win 95 days).
And regarding program stability, I experience just as many/few crashes on either platform. In fact, I think the most stable sequencing environment I ever used was Logic 5 under Windows (ok, I needed to weed out certain bad plugins, Logic wasn't that much compatible...). Too bad it's really not useable anymore on any more or less up to date computer - I'd probably still be using it if it supported multicore machines and larger amounts of RAM. Apart from very little things, the improvements from L5 to L8 are not essential to my workflow at all (in quite some areas it even was a huge step back, at least IMHO).
Anyway, sort of back on topic: I do think that hiring such a competent person could be great for Apples pro audio (and probably also video) division. But, we all (including me, even if I was quite frustrated when Emagic dropped the Windows platform) did already expect that from the Logic/Apple buyout already. IMO it hasn't exactly taken off yet. Sure, Core Audio seems to be a really userfriendly standard, and I'm sure that the Logic programmers had their fair share in bringing it further. But I don't see much else that is really spectacular or anything. Yes, Logic is extremely efficient, especially at low latencies - but it has been like that even back under Windows (the performance improvements compared to the machine I was using back then are pretty much along the lines of higher CPU speed and larger RAM amount). When Im looking at the hassle tons of people are having with system overloads, "error to synchronize audio and MIDI" messages, pretty much flaky multi CPU support, a lot of old and still annoying bugs, etc. - then I really need to ask myself what the heck they were doing during the last 5-7 years.
Compared to what others have achieved in the same time, the true technical improvements are rather minimal. On the MIDI side there's absolutely nothing new (and it could be improved massively) and audio-wise Logic isn't even remotely catching up with any of the other somewhat bigger sequencers anymore. Sure, there's some welcomed improvements and I certainly also don't mind having some cool plugins and a whole bunch of samples (some of them even rather nice) being thrown in for free. But none of the improvements adressed the major issues or requests people were having (ok, post pan sends are really welcomed and have been asked for quite often). I don't remember anyone asking for more plugins, more content, a cheaper price or whatever...
So, as said, in my book the Apple takeover wasn't of much benefit for Logic, so hiring someone like Dave Lebolt isn't necessarily something I'd expect too much from.
OTOH, it might as well be that Apple realized the situation. While they do in fact have a video editing suite (FCP) that could probably be called "industry standard", "flagship" or whatever, Logic isn't even close to such a position in the professional audio production scene. Sure, it's still installed in about any studio working with Macs, but once it comes to tracking and editing larger amounts of audio (especially in a multitracking scenario), it's almost certainly something else that people are using (usually PT, but there's also a tendency towards Nuendo in some parts of the world).
So, in case Apple really wants to set new landmarks in the professional audio scene, it could as well be a great idea to hire such a competent person.
All too obviously, the combination of the best low latency compatible sequencer, companies doing the hardware required to achieve such low latencies (Apogee) and companies doing control interfaces (Euphonic) is pretty much what it takes to become the socalled "Pro Tools Killer". Add the right personal to finally bring some new life to the development of things and the future could indeed be sort of bright...
But I have been dissapointed by such things too often to really put too much hope into it.
Guess we'll see.
Bleh, way too many words. Gotta have a swim now.
- Sascha