# Melda releases statement suggesting Mac users finally consider switching to Windows



## jcrosby

Melda Production released an official statement this afternoon suggesting Mac users might finally consider switching to Windows, citing Catalina as disruptive:

Link, and statement below:

_"*OSX Catalina turns the audio industry upside down. Perhaps you are tired with that...*

Over the years, many users of non-trivial applications have reported compatibility problems in OSX and it looks like there will be even more reports in the future, starting with Catalina. This may be a good time to review your options and consider switching to a different platform. It quite doesn't matter if you are tired of compatibility problems, the lack of functional software choices or the value per $. It's actually really simple to switch to a PC, it will save you money, time and nerves. Here's how!"_

https://www.meldaproduction.com/text-tutorials/switching-from-osx-to-windows
Discuss!


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## ProfoundSilence

Apple has made some pretty odd choices the past few years... 

I imagine invested users will take quite a beating before they uproot and come to pc


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## Mornats

I guess "Macs just work" is dead then.


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## Geoff Grace

I’m content with my Mac as is for the foreseeable future. If music software makers are still struggling with Catalina compatibility in a year or two, I’ll revisit my platform options then. 

Best,

Geoff


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## Wunderhorn

If there had been no more new Mac Pro I would totally agree with this, I would be switching platforms. But with the new Mac Pro finally in sight, I'm not quite yet ready to abandon the iGag universe.


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## jcrosby

Updated the link to the full article...


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## jcrosby

Also, I didn't post this to kick off a flame war... I've been a mac user for about 13 years. I am however glad a developer as widely used as Melda came out and made the statement.

When I switched to OSX 13 years ago Apple was pretty solid and I was a happy camper. The past 6-7 years have increasingly become a series of red flags to me however.

Between high price tags that underperform, the IOS-ification of OSX, and overly long product cycles that leave many models _long in the tooth,_ I've been looking at alternatives; my interim solution being a hackintosh... Even if people stay with Apple, it's about time a popular developer initiated this conversation and people at least explore why the statement was made...

I'm personally not crazy for Windows, I left 13 years ago and moving back would be a step backward... What I'd hope this symbolizes is that developers finally consider settling on *one* development-friendly Linux distro and consider supporting it. (The most obvious candidate being Ubuntu...) Doubtful for sure, but I could easily get down with Ubuntu steering the ship...

Obviously Windows users feel different and that's cool with me... I never really understood the mac/pc war thing, always just seemed like a pissing contest... There definitely is a camp of people who'd prefer an alternative to Windows however should they find themselves finally putting Apple in the rear view...


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## charlieclouser

What a laugh. For one-rig people, or those who have the time and patience to figure out which chipset works with which motherboard and how to get Thunderbolt working... maybe. 

But for the last two weeks I needed to track hours of multitrack drum recordings at 96k, and on the morning we were setting up I decided that I wanted a spare rig to do it with. In a total of three hours I'd found a used Mac Pro cylinder on Craigslist, drove to pick it up, grabbed a pair of MOTU 1248's at Banjo Center, brought it all home, wiped the computer, installed MacOS, installed ProTools, configured the MOTU AVB rig with an interface in the control room and another in the live room on the other end of 150 feet of Cat5 cable, set up multiple monitor mixes for the talent in the live room, and we started recording without any hitches or confusion at all.

Then I ordered lunch.

A quick turnaround like that isn't really an option with any platform besides MacOS.

I didn't have to install any antivirus or utility software - just MacOS, the iLok driver, MOTU AVB drivers, and ProTools. I didn't need to adjust any system settings - I left WiFi and Bluetooth turned on and browsed the internet while recording hours of 16 channel audio at 96k to the boot drive and simultaneously synchronizing files to a pair of Samsung T5 SSDs.

Although they probably exist, I don't personally know anybody who's "tired of compatibility problems or the lack of functional software choices (???)". As for "value per $" that spare Mac Pro 6-core cost $1500 and needed nothing to be up and recording in a couple of hours - the interfaces cost more than the computer did! The money we were spending per hour on talent, drum techs, engineers, etc. eclipses the paltry few hundred $$$ I could have saved by ordering a Windows machine one chip at a time from Amazon and assembling it like some kind of Lego kit.

Time is money, and I can always make more money - but I can't make more time.

Maybe having more users switch to Windows will make Melda's job as developers easier, but it sure wouldn't make my job any easier!


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## ProfoundSilence

as someone who has built many PCs your comment is incredibly misguided

1.) it's really not an issue unless you buy incompatible hardware. Very very rarely is there some strange interactions between core components. 

2.) your argument could be 100% applied to any pre configured retailer. Plenty of companies built preconfigured machines - doing exactly the same thing that apple does.


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## Damarus

lol well that's not a bias comment at all


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## charlieclouser

1 - Exactly. "Unless you buy incompatible hardware" has never been an issue for me with Macs. I bought a used Mac Pro, and I didn't need to know or ask which chipset / motherboard / ports it had. That's the whole point. "2013 Mac Pro" was all I needed to know and I'm in my car with cash in hand.

2 - Exactly. Do you know where I can pick up a Windows machine with Thunderbolt, within driving distance, on a Saturday morning? Best Buy? Fry's? The local gaming store / vape shop? They've got nothing but HP Envy and similar boxes with USB in my local store - not one box with Thunderbolt in stock. I mean, look at this neon-colored plastic trash that costs $200 more than I paid for a 6-core Xeon Mac Pro with 1tb SSD and 32gb RAM:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/ibuypower-gaming-desktop-intel-core-i7-9700k-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-super-1tb-hdd-480gb-ssd-white/6362984.p?skuId=6362984
So if I'm misguided I'll stay misguided. It's been working out pretty great for me so far.


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## j_kranz

From the user experience side of things, honestly it's not too surprising to me that Melda is in the Windows camp. It's still pretty odd to see a developer weigh in on the PC/Mac debate though, I'm guessing they're just frustrated with Catalina.


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## W Ackerman

I use both PCs and Macs with pro apps daily and have since the Stone Age. For the past several years, I have experienced far more compatibility/stability/reliability issues of all kinds with the Macs. "It just works" is no longer valid. Sad, but true.


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## Symfoniq

jcrosby said:


> Also, I didn't post this to kick off a flame war... I've been a mac user for about 13 years. I am however glad a developer as widely used as Melda came out and made the statement.
> 
> When I switched to OSX 13 years ago Apple was pretty solid and I was a happy camper. The past 6-7 years have increasingly become a series of red flags to me however.



Someone said not long ago that many of Apple's biggest critics aren't haters, they're lovers. That's certainly true for me. I started on the Mac IIci and Opcode Studio Vision. Even in the Apple wilderness of the mid-90s, I never imagined owning anything else.

But Windows 10 isn't Windows XP any more than macOS 10.14 Mojave is Mac OS 10.0 Cheetah. Windows 10 is a very good OS, and the trope that Macs "just work" while Windows PCs don't just doesn't hold water anymore.

So if you feel neglected by Apple (or jerked around on the rare occasion that they do pay attention to you), I agree with the article in the OP that you should at least investigate your alternatives. I don't see Apple changing its ways until the financial winds change, and considering the extent to which iOS and Services revenue dwarf the Mac, that isn't likely to happen any time soon.


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## jcrosby

Hold on though. Doesn't that compatibility extend to people running older incompatible versions of Pro Tools? Or any other other application they depend on simply because they prefer running a stable system for a number of years instead of upgrading?

If so than compatibility isn't 100% in Catalina, whereas those same applications will run in Windows 10. Even though I don't use windows, (or am particularly nuts about it), I can absolutely applaud MS for understanding the demand for compatibility.

I'm also curious why someone like Neil at Heavyocity moved to Windows recently... If Windows machines were the compatibility disaster mac users have been lead to believe they are, I doubt very much someone with his workload is a gambling man when it comes to compatibility/stability...
(In fact he cited that as the motivation for switching...)

Just food for thought, not looking to incite a flame war as I said...


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## jcrosby

Symfoniq said:


> and considering the extent to which iOS and Services revenue dwarf the Mac, that isn't likely to happen any time soon.



Which has been a growing red flag for me over the past 6 years. At least to me, Catalina looks like the OS where Apple reached the misguided conclusion that above anything else, the 'mac' user _is_ the 'Apple eco-system' user.


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## dcoscina

charlieclouser said:


> What a laugh. For one-rig people, or those who have the time and patience to figure out which chipset works with which motherboard and how to get Thunderbolt working... maybe.
> 
> But for the last two weeks I needed to track hours of multitrack drum recordings at 96k, and on the morning we were setting up I decided that I wanted a spare rig to do it with. In a total of three hours I'd found a used Mac Pro cylinder on Craigslist, drove to pick it up, grabbed a pair of MOTU 1248's at Banjo Center, brought it all home, wiped the computer, installed MacOS, installed ProTools, configured the MOTU AVB rig with an interface in the control room and another in the live room on the other end of 150 feet of Cat5 cable, set up multiple monitor mixes for the talent in the live room, and we started recording without any hitches or confusion at all.
> 
> Then I ordered lunch.
> 
> A quick turnaround like that isn't really an option with any platform besides MacOS.
> 
> I didn't have to install any antivirus or utility software - just MacOS, the iLok driver, MOTU AVB drivers, and ProTools. I didn't need to adjust any system settings - I left WiFi and Bluetooth turned on and browsed the internet while recording hours of 16 channel audio at 96k to the boot drive and simultaneously synchronizing files to a pair of Samsung T5 SSDs.
> 
> Although they probably exist, I don't personally know anybody who's "tired of compatibility problems or the lack of functional software choices (???)". As for "value per $" that spare Mac Pro 6-core cost $1500 and needed nothing to be up and recording in a couple of hours - the interfaces cost more than the computer did! The money we were spending per hour on talent, drum techs, engineers, etc. eclipses the paltry few hundred $$$ I could have saved by ordering a Windows machine one chip at a time from Amazon and assembling it like some kind of Lego kit.
> 
> Time is money, and I can always make more money - but I can't make more time.
> 
> Maybe having more users switch to Windows will make Melda's job as developers easier, but it sure wouldn't make my job any easier!


Exactly. I’ve had windows fanatics hassling me about why I stick with Mac. In my experience having to turn over music quickly For ads, I’ve had no issues with Macs. I have to use Windows at work and despise it. It’s a royal PItA. I’ve had computer techies go up and down about why windows is better. Well that’s good for them. When I’m not in the middle of a project, I’m focusing on developing my composition skills more. When I do turn on the computer, the technology is transparent.
I dig the cylinder MP and have had no issues with it once I moved up to Mojave (high Sierra wasn’t great).


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## gsilbers

For me its the small things. file management and system settings. seems windows is an ever ending of different ways to do different things. i woudnt mind working with windows but since i have the option i rather mac. 


anyways... does anyone know why exactly melda doesnt like the catalina OS? the only thing so far is the lack of 32 bit software and XML file for itunes. 
And woudnt it be better for apps to be in 64 bit? or why not?


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## gsilbers

and i dont have the data but seems a lot of poeple are still either on sierra or high sierra. there hasnt been a lot of real changes since sierra. so imo thats about 3-4 OS upgrades where 64 bit was already something. and im guessing apple will still support up to mojave for at leat 5 years.


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## Geoff Grace

It is worth noting that Catalina's dropping of 32-bit support is a caution flag for those who upgrade without much thought. This may well be the biggest macOS change since moving to Intel. This is NOT the OS musicians want to adopt early.

If I had to buy a new Mac within the next year, I would search for one with Mojave (or earlier) installed; and if one weren't available, I'd buy a used Mac with an older OS instead. *Charlie*'s Mac Pro cylinder is a great example.

Best,

Geoff


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## jcrosby

gsilbers said:


> anyways... does anyone know why exactly melda doesnt like the catalina OS? the only thing so far is the lack of 32 bit software and XML file for itunes.
> And woudnt it be better for apps to be in 64 bit? or why not?



There's a few things I've seen and they're not small changes to the OS. The biggest I'm aware of being:

1. The OS is now read only. I'm assuming this means developers have to completely rewrite where some files were previously installed. (I really don't know for sure though.)

2. Kernel Extension/kexts are being replaced by a completely new format Apple calls Systems Extensions. Many 3rd party drivers are deployed as Kexts... (This would include things like say Loopback or Audio Hijack, probably SW SystemWide, etc... Not to mention the obvious stuff like some audio hardware.)

Apparently installing new kexts will require a restart before functional.
(Replacing the "it just works" notion with It just works after you restart your machine.)

The biggest concern about this is that this will most likely be the last OS to allow kexts, meaning a complete re-write of drivers or software that previously deployed any kind of kernel extension is I'm assuming mandatory.

Other stuff. (Most of which frankly I don't understand all that well):

You OS is now split into two volumes.

More notifications/prompts before you can run your new software. (You might want to read about this below... Sounds like a headache to me)

Developers must notarize the software before it can run. The short version? If it isn't in the app store it has to go through an Apple notarization process before it'll run in macOS. (This seems to encourage the long time suspicion that Apple wants to move all software purchases to the App Store, which would ice the cake for me...)









Studio One 4 on Mojave and Catalina - Notarization, Hardened Runtime, and how it affects 3rd-party plug-ins


Notarization and Hardened Runtime: With the release of Mac OS 10.14 (Mojave), Apple released "notarization" as well as "Hardened Runtime." This is a way for Mac OS to identify ...




support.presonus.com













macOS Catalina - Why It Might Take Software Developers Some Time To Be Compatible With macOS 10.15 | Production Expert


In our recent article, over 30 pro audio developers have issued statements advising users not to upgrade to macOS Catalina. As a result of extensive research, we have discovered at least two reasons why it might be some time before the software we use will become macOS Catalina compatible and it has




www.pro-tools-expert.com













macOS 10.15 Catalina: 7 Big Security Surprises To be Aware Of


Apple have announced big security changes to macOS 10.15 Catalina. How will they affect the enterprise? Find out today with our early-bird take on what's new!




www.sentinelone.com


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## brek

As a pretty regular user of both... (Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, homegrown PC, Surface Pro)....

I much prefer Mac software. Finder is excellent compared to Explorer. I'm even using a $ Explorer replacement and still Google ways to make it work more like Finder.

Stability on Mac is great. Definitely, weird things happen BOTH... but less on Mac and I _seem_ to spend less time dealing with them there. 

CoreAudio is (mostly great). You know what I can't do on my Windows machine? Run more than one audio application at a time (yeah yeah, blame Steinberg for not making a better driver). Either way, never had a problem with that on Mac.

Except... Now I have a MacBook pro, and why does it need to reload all of my plugins in Logic if I simply plug in headphones? I'm glad they didn't remove the headphone jack (yet) but they seem to have f'ed up how it works somehow.

Now hardware. Used a MacPro 2013 for many years. Frequent problems with external drives disappearing, displays disappearing, dongles disappearing. It was a precursor to the dongle dystopia that was to come with the current MBP. 

Seriously, the ports on the (new) MBP are turible. Presentations and meetings become a clumsy landmine of someone forgetting their dongle and for God's sake why can't they just put some proper ports on the dang thing.

Oh yeah, the keyboard on the new MacBook Pro is also awful. It's the worst keyboard I've ever used by a long shot.

Last, point.. which I guess is software related. I had to open a really old Finale project sorta recently. Now, I switched to Sibelius well over a decade ago so am not exactly up to date with versions of Finale. My paid for version of Finale on the Mac would no longer open. No problem on PC. Opened it up right away, did what I needed to do and went on about my day.

So the whole, "it just works" or the thing you can depend on when you need it...

I'd say, "it's complicated."


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## JeffvR

charlieclouser said:


> What a laugh. For one-rig people, or those who have the time and patience to figure out which chipset works with which motherboard and how to get Thunderbolt working... maybe.
> 
> But for the last two weeks I needed to track hours of multitrack drum recordings at 96k, and on the morning we were setting up I decided that I wanted a spare rig to do it with. In a total of three hours I'd found a used Mac Pro cylinder on Craigslist, drove to pick it up, grabbed a pair of MOTU 1248's at Banjo Center, brought it all home, wiped the computer, installed MacOS, installed ProTools, configured the MOTU AVB rig with an interface in the control room and another in the live room on the other end of 150 feet of Cat5 cable, set up multiple monitor mixes for the talent in the live room, and we started recording without any hitches or confusion at all.
> 
> Then I ordered lunch.
> 
> A quick turnaround like that isn't really an option with any platform besides MacOS.
> 
> I didn't have to install any antivirus or utility software - just MacOS, the iLok driver, MOTU AVB drivers, and ProTools. I didn't need to adjust any system settings - I left WiFi and Bluetooth turned on and browsed the internet while recording hours of 16 channel audio at 96k to the boot drive and simultaneously synchronizing files to a pair of Samsung T5 SSDs.
> 
> Although they probably exist, I don't personally know anybody who's "tired of compatibility problems or the lack of functional software choices (???)". As for "value per $" that spare Mac Pro 6-core cost $1500 and needed nothing to be up and recording in a couple of hours - the interfaces cost more than the computer did! The money we were spending per hour on talent, drum techs, engineers, etc. eclipses the paltry few hundred $$$ I could have saved by ordering a Windows machine one chip at a time from Amazon and assembling it like some kind of Lego kit.
> 
> Time is money, and I can always make more money - but I can't make more time.
> 
> Maybe having more users switch to Windows will make Melda's job as developers easier, but it sure wouldn't make my job any easier!


Thing is. Most people don't need a computer the next day. Also if it's a headache for you to configure a new PC there are DAW builders around. You end up with a more powerful machine which is upgradable (yourself) and future proof. It looks better because with a Mac you'll get a Frankenstein setup with all the external shit you need. Plus it's way cheaper.


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## gtrwll

Last time I did a major upgrade to my rig, I thought about switching to a mac, but the only viable option was iMac (for about 500€ more with equivalent specs). Having upgraded the rig couple of times along the way, last time yesterday, I'm more than glad that I stayed on PC.


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## Dewdman42

Melda's complaint, which is entirely valid, is that Apple makes 3rd party developers jump through enormous hoops at times to conform to new development libraries, new OSX frameworks, etc. Way more so then the same devs have to do on windows. He is not alone is expressing his frustration. This same phenomenon is not as noticeable to end users because we don't realize the amount of work that has to go on behind the scenes when Apple declares that everyone re-do a lot of their software. Essentially its like the foundation of OSX is a foundation of sand that Apple can at any time decide to flush away with water...and have done so numerous times in the past. Devs feel it big time. End users will only feel this if it takes a long time for our favorite software to catch up with the latest version of OSX and Apple hardware. Or if our favorite software one day says "screw it" this is Windows only from now on. Then we'll feel it, but mostly we just feel it in delays, increased software costs that we absorb as consumers when developers have to spend money re-doing things that didn't really need to be redone. Apple has done this several times over the past few decades and you can find lots of developers complaining about if you google around.

What this means in terms of Catalina, if a developer is making such a bold proclamation, is that Apple has done this again and that in order to use many products on catalina those products will require some re-architecture to run on Catalina and it may take a while. Some may require more than others. Its not just about 64bit I doubt, I'm pretty sure all the Melda stuff is already 64bit. That is just one issue, but underlying frameworks may have been change in some fundamental ways that will make lots of old code break. Honestly, that has been Apple's MO for years. They don't care about backwards compatability and never have. They make disposable computers and I guess they expect developers on their platform to spend more on development also in order to keep up. Many small time devs gave up on OSX many times exactly because of this. 

Sorry to say this, because I love OSX immeasurably more than MS Windows. And I will leave OSX when they pry it from my cold dead fingers most likely, but still....the assertions from Melda are very true.

In the past few months I have received dozens of emails from audio manufacturers telling me not to upgrade to Catalina. Its pretty simple. Stay on Mojave if you're doing audio. And it could be quite a while before its completely safe to consider it. I think it will get there eventually but if Apple is also expecting all software devs to change their software at some architectural level in order to support something in some framework change or something...then it will take quite a while for all of that to shake out.

it is what it is...


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## Mornats

charlieclouser said:


> 1 - Exactly. "Unless you buy incompatible hardware" has never been an issue for me with Macs. I bought a used Mac Pro, and I didn't need to know or ask which chipset / motherboard / ports it had. That's the whole point. "2013 Mac Pro" was all I needed to know and I'm in my car with cash in hand.
> 
> 2 - Exactly. Do you know where I can pick up a Windows machine with Thunderbolt, within driving distance, on a Saturday morning? Best Buy? Fry's? The local gaming store / vape shop? They've got nothing but HP Envy and similar boxes with USB in my local store - not one box with Thunderbolt in stock. I mean, look at this neon-colored plastic trash that costs $200 more than I paid for a 6-core Xeon Mac Pro with 1tb SSD and 32gb RAM:
> 
> https://www.bestbuy.com/site/ibuypower-gaming-desktop-intel-core-i7-9700k-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-super-1tb-hdd-480gb-ssd-white/6362984.p?skuId=6362984
> So if I'm misguided I'll stay misguided. It's been working out pretty great for me so far.



To be fair that's got an $800 graphics card in it which is bumping up the price but I get your point about "macpro 2013" is all you need to know.


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## charlieclouser

JeffvR said:


> Thing is. Most people don't need a computer the next day. Also if it's a headache for you to configure a new PC there are DAW builders around. You end up with a more powerful machine which is upgradable (yourself) and future proof. It looks better because with a Mac you'll get a Frankenstein setup with all the external shit you need. Plus it's way cheaper.



But some of us DO need a computer same day - even the next day is too late. We literally were getting set up for a tracking session that would last for two weeks without a day to spare, with people flown in from the UK who had a hard departure date, cartage showing up with a truck full of drums, drum techs and percussionists arriving, spending thousands a day (not including the studio), and during setup we decided "It would be easier if we had another rig". So, not having time to spare, I threw money at the problem and it was solved by lunchtime.

And what's this fantasy about a "Frankenstein setup"? Who doesn't have cables and shit coming out of their DAW machine? What rig fits entirely inside a PC case, and anyway - why would that matter? Who doesn't have synths, speakers, and effects, and why isn't THAT a "Frankenstein setup"? People keep going on about "all the external shit you need", as if their rig has no cables coming out the back. But I WANT my peripherals as "external shit". I have entire rooms full of external shit. I'm not running a desktop operation with a PC tower on the floor under an Ikea desk, with only an RME card and a pair of speakers - this is multiple rigs, with each rig having multiple computers, and I need standardization and simple exchangeability of any component from rig to rig or room to room. It's not "I've finally assembled my ultimate DAW dream machine" - it's "Grab a ProTools rig and come with me."

The PC tower hasn't been built that would hold a meaningful collection of the peripherals I need. My main DAW has 8x 4tb sample SSDs plus 4x audio drives, the boot drive, and four 3.5" docks for spinning backup drives - and I WANT the SSDs in the BlackMagic MultiDocks so that I can swap them and move them between rigs as needed. Stuffing them inside a PC case would be a big step backwards. No component or peripheral that I would want to use is available ONLY as a PCIe card, but most ARE available ONLY as Thunderbolt devices. So what would I do with a PC tower with sixteen drive bays and nine PCIe slots? I'd have eight empty PCIe slots and have to leave the lid off so I can grab drives as needed. If there's a PC case that has sixteen front-mounted hot-swap 2.5" drive bays plus four front-mounted 3.5" bays, and doesn't have a fan louder than a Volkswagen, I haven't seen it. Plus, with the MultiDocks I can have them mounted away from the computer so I don't have to bend over the racks to grab drives - or I can plug one of the 4-drive docks into a different computer in seconds. And the huge LED activity lights on the front are easy to see out of the corner of my eye and that's very useful to me. (And the Mac Pro cylinders and Mac Minis are dead silent - no machine room needed anymore.) My audio rig spews 64 channels via MADI to a separate ProTools stem recorder, AND has 64 more i/o in analog, AES, and ADAT to talk to all my synths and outboard hardware. No way does that fit inside a PC tower. And, yes, I've had RME HDSP cards. They're not enough, and their breakout cables definitely qualify as Frankenstein material.

Then again, if I did want a truly un-Frankenstein rig, I could just copy any cue done on my big rig over to my 2012 MacBook Pro i7 and run it off the internal speakers. And I've frequently done just that, with the biggest cues from the SAW movies that have 200+ instances of EXS, 60+ audio tracks, 14 convolution reverbs, and dozens of soft synths - and they barely hit 50% on CPU. On a seven-year-old laptop. No iLok, no dongles, no nothing.

When I switched to the cylinders five years ago, my silver Mac Pro towers were absolutely full, with four SSD drives in the bays plus more stuffed in there hanging off a SATA card, UAD cards, audio cards, and every port and bay was full. I've been running out of slots since the NuBus era, and had (and trashed) many expansion chassis boxes over the years. Thunderbolt eliminated ALL of this. New peripheral? Plug it in, it works. The audio interfaces I want to use (MOTU AVB) are Thunderbolt. The UAD boxes I use are Thunderbolt. The MultiDocks are Thunderbolt. Nothing I want to use is even available as a PCIe card anymore (except UAD Octo, but I think the Thunderbolt version even came first.)

Look, I know the Windows stuff can be cheaper in some situations. And at the risk of sounding like a total douche, I just don't care how much this stuff costs. It's all expendables, consumables, and deductible... like gaffer tape. You use it up and move on. When it comes to computers, I want what I want, when I want it, and I don't need to have long conversations with some DAW builder half my age about "which processor best suits my needs".

I'm 56 years old and I've been using Macs since 1985 and PCs since 1984 (IBM PC/XT with 640k RAM, two floppies, DOS 3.1, Roland MPU-401 and Roger Powell's Texture software) - and that 1984-spec PC was already the fourth computer I'd bought for music. (We won't talk about the three Commodore-64's that came before that!) I walked away from PCs back in the GigaSampler / Pentium4 / XP era, and breathed a sigh of relief. (That shit was janky as hell.)

When it comes to the joy of successfully configuring a new system, believe me - the thrill is gone.

If I hadn't found a Mac Pro cylinder on Craigslist for cheap six miles from my house, there's an Apple store one mile further down the road (and four more within 30 miles) and they're open on Sundays - and they have Mac Pro cylinders, Mac Minis, and iMacs in stock and ready to rock. No NewEgg, no PC Part Picker, no Amazon, no DAW builders needed. Tell the gremlin what you want, swipe the Amex, and be out the door in minutes.

A future-proof Windows box? I don't really believe that, but it doesn't matter because that's just not an issue for me. I'm using six-year-old Xeon machines and they kick all the ass I need them to kick. I still use some Macs that are 10-15 years old for non-frontline uses, and when they finally become unneeded I give 'em away. In 35 years and dozens of Macs I've had exactly one hardware failure (the short-lived liquid-cooling system on that one model of the G5) - and it was fixed, free of charge and on a no-appointment, walk-in, while-you-wait basis, at that same Apple store seven miles away.

And when that new, massively overpriced, 28-core Mac Pro drops you just know what I'm gonna do.

Not everyone has the same needs and priorities that I do. And that's fine. But for me there's no other way - certainly no easier way. Macs have been the engine behind a lifetime of records, tours, film and television scores for me, and I've never really had any reason to complain. Or switch.

And THAT'S why I chuckle at the inherent assumptions in the assertions made in the Melda team's "advice". It seems like what they're really saying is, "WE'RE having problems trying to make sure you DON'T have problems." Tough tacos. Discontinue support for the MacOS platform if you can't hack what Apple throws at you. We'll be fine. See ya.

What they describe as what "some users experience" seems more like what some "over-burdened developers experience" - but it has never been MY experience - at all.


----------



## EvilDragon

charlieclouser said:


> For one-rig people, or those who have the time and patience to figure out which chipset works with which motherboard and how to get Thunderbolt working... maybe.



Both of these are complete non-issues, Charlie. Depending on which CPU you want, you usually have one or max two chipsets that support it. TB has been working just fiiiiine on W10 for a few years now, mobo manufacturers state in specs if it's supported on their mobos directly or via extension card. I've been using RME UFX+ on TB2 on my AsRock Z170 mobo for some time now without a single hitch.

Also didn't have to install any AV, built in Defender does the job well. You don't really need a separate AV program these days, unless you're going to "interesting" places on the Internet.


----------



## EvilDragon

brek said:


> You know what I can't do on my Windows machine? Run more than one audio application at a time



Can do that just fine over here. Reaper and FL Studio running simultaneously through ASIO, and with internet browser alongside (that one via WASAPI). By default, though, audio devices using WASAPI work in "exclusive" mode, and you gotta disable that manually.


----------



## EvilDragon

charlieclouser said:


> If there's a PC case that has sixteen front-mounted hot-swap 2.5" drive bays plus four front-mounted 3.5" bays, and doesn't have a fan louder than a Volkswagen, I haven't seen it.




Fractal Design has silent cases with additional sound-proofing foam, they're excellent. You can combine this with Icy Docks that enable hot-swapping SSDs, cramming up to 8 of them in a single 5.25" front bay of the case. I have two of those docks (four 2.5" slots per) for 8x hot-swappable SSDs.





__





Anybody using a PCIe NVMe SSD?


Interesting... so having for example, a CPU with RAM/SSD built into it, in order to reduce distances, would be faster. So the Samsung 960 Pro seems to have about 2 or 3 times the random reads of a standard SSD. My computer does 'crackle' while DFDing, and I'm using a 48w laptop CPU from 3 years...




vi-control.net


----------



## jcrosby

charlieclouser said:


> But some of us DO need a computer same day - even the next day is too late. We literally were getting set up for a tracking session that would last for two weeks without a day to spare, with people flown in from the UK who had a hard departure date, cartage showing up with a truck full of drums, drum techs and percussionists arriving, spending thousands a day (not including the studio), and during setup we decided "It would be easier if we had another rig". So, not having time to spare, I threw money at the problem and it was solved by lunchtime.
> 
> And what's this fantasy about a "Frankenstein setup"? Who doesn't have cables and shit coming out of their DAW machine? What rig fits entirely inside a PC case, and anyway - why would that matter? Who doesn't have synths, speakers, and effects, and why isn't THAT a "Frankenstein setup"? People keep going on about "all the external shit you need", as if their rig has no cables coming out the back. But I WANT my peripherals as "external shit". I have entire rooms full of external shit. I'm not running a desktop operation with a PC tower on the floor under an Ikea desk, with only an RME card and a pair of speakers - this is multiple rigs, with each rig having multiple computers, and I need standardization and simple exchangeability of any component from rig to rig or room to room. It's not "I've finally assembled my ultimate DAW dream machine" - it's "Grab a ProTools rig and come with me."
> 
> The PC tower hasn't been built that would hold a meaningful collection of the peripherals I need. My main DAW has 8x 4tb sample SSDs plus 4x audio drives, the boot drive, and four 3.5" docks for spinning backup drives - and I WANT the SSDs in the BlackMagic MultiDocks so that I can swap them and move them between rigs as needed. Stuffing them inside a PC case would be a big step backwards. No component or peripheral that I would want to use is available ONLY as a PCIe card, but most ARE available ONLY as Thunderbolt devices. So what would I do with a PC tower with sixteen drive bays and nine PCIe slots? I'd have eight empty PCIe slots and have to leave the lid off so I can grab drives as needed. If there's a PC case that has sixteen front-mounted hot-swap 2.5" drive bays plus four front-mounted 3.5" bays, and doesn't have a fan louder than a Volkswagen, I haven't seen it. Plus, with the MultiDocks I can have them mounted away from the computer so I don't have to bend over the racks to grab drives - or I can plug one of the 4-drive docks into a different computer in seconds. And the huge LED activity lights on the front are easy to see out of the corner of my eye and that's very useful to me. (And the Mac Pro cylinders and Mac Minis are dead silent - no machine room needed anymore.) My audio rig spews 64 channels via MADI to a separate ProTools stem recorder, AND has 64 more i/o in analog, AES, and ADAT to talk to all my synths and outboard hardware. No way does that fit inside a PC tower. And, yes, I've had RME HDSP cards. They're not enough, and their breakout cables definitely qualify as Frankenstein material.
> 
> Then again, if I did want a truly un-Frankenstein rig, I could just copy any cue done on my big rig over to my 2012 MacBook Pro i7 and run it off the internal speakers. And I've frequently done just that, with the biggest cues from the SAW movies that have 200+ instances of EXS, 60+ audio tracks, 14 convolution reverbs, and dozens of soft synths - and they barely hit 50% on CPU. On a seven-year-old laptop. No iLok, no dongles, no nothing.
> 
> When I switched to the cylinders five years ago, my silver Mac Pro towers were absolutely full, with four SSD drives in the bays plus more stuffed in there hanging off a SATA card, UAD cards, audio cards, and every port and bay was full. I've been running out of slots since the NuBus era, and had (and trashed) many expansion chassis boxes over the years. Thunderbolt eliminated ALL of this. New peripheral? Plug it in, it works. The audio interfaces I want to use (MOTU AVB) are Thunderbolt. The UAD boxes I use are Thunderbolt. The MultiDocks are Thunderbolt. Nothing I want to use is even available as a PCIe card anymore (except UAD Octo, but I think the Thunderbolt version even came first.)
> 
> Look, I know the Windows stuff can be cheaper in some situations. And at the risk of sounding like a total douche, I just don't care how much this stuff costs. It's all expendables, consumables, and deductible... like gaffer tape. You use it up and move on. When it comes to computers, I want what I want, when I want it, and I don't need to have long conversations with some DAW builder half my age about "which processor best suits my needs".
> 
> I'm 56 years old and I've been using Macs since 1985 and PCs since 1984 (IBM PC/XT with 640k RAM, two floppies, DOS 3.1, Roland MPU-401 and Roger Powell's Texture software) - and that 1984-spec PC was already the fourth computer I'd bought for music. (We won't talk about the three Commodore-64's that came before that!) I walked away from PCs back in the GigaSampler / Pentium4 / XP era, and breathed a sigh of relief. (That shit was janky as hell.)
> 
> When it comes to the joy of successfully configuring a new system, believe me - the thrill is gone.
> 
> If I hadn't found a Mac Pro cylinder on Craigslist for cheap six miles from my house, there's an Apple store one mile further down the road (and four more within 30 miles) and they're open on Sundays - and they have Mac Pro cylinders, Mac Minis, and iMacs in stock and ready to rock. No NewEgg, no PC Part Picker, no Amazon, no DAW builders needed. Tell the gremlin what you want, swipe the Amex, and be out the door in minutes.
> 
> A future-proof Windows box? I don't really believe that, but it doesn't matter because that's just not an issue for me. I'm using six-year-old Xeon machines and they kick all the ass I need them to kick. I still use some Macs that are 10-15 years old for non-frontline uses, and when they finally become unneeded I give 'em away. In 35 years and dozens of Macs I've had exactly one hardware failure (the short-lived liquid-cooling system on that one model of the G5) - and it was fixed, free of charge and on a no-appointment, walk-in, while-you-wait basis, at that same Apple store seven miles away.
> 
> And when that new, massively overpriced, 28-core Mac Pro drops you just know what I'm gonna do.
> 
> Not everyone has the same needs and priorities that I do. And that's fine. But for me there's no other way - certainly no easier way. Macs have been the engine behind a lifetime of records, tours, film and television scores for me, and I've never really had any reason to complain. Or switch.
> 
> And THAT'S why I chuckle at the inherent assumptions in the assertions made in the Melda team's "advice". It seems like what they're really saying is, "WE'RE having problems trying to make sure you DON'T have problems." Tough tacos. Discontinue support for the MacOS platform if you can't hack what Apple throws at you. We'll be fine. See ya.
> 
> What they describe as what "some users experience" seems more like what some "over-burdened developers experience" - but it has never been MY experience - at all.



I don't think the complaint here is about price though. Few, if any mac users in this thread have cited price as the thorn in their side so far...

OSX/macOS clearly serves you well and as I sad in my initial post that's more than cool.. (I'm a Logic *FREAK* truth be told...)

What I don't understand however is why the Logic development team seem to consistently move forward, while the macOS development team seem to consistently move backward. I think this is a fair question considering Logic's entire house of cards rests on the operating system; which Apple seems more than content on breaking periodically.

The other thing that's leaves me with mixed messages is this...

Apple's about to release its most powerful machine to date, a machine almost perfectly suited to DAW users... And yet (at least to me), the OS seems to be moving in an opposite direction. So much so that almost every plugin/DAW developer I rely on has issued warnings against it... Not to mention the obvious hardware compatibility issues.. It's like the two software teams have never compared notes despite one depending on the other...

Sine the OS is going to inevitably supersede the (proprietary) macOS software I love, I'm gonna at least remain skeptical by _sleeping with an eye open,_ by not assuming the two teams' priorities are on the same page...


----------



## Geoff Grace

I've always enjoyed Herbie Hancock's "Hang Up Your Hang Ups," but I never really thought much about the title until I read this thread.

Whatever works, more power to you.

Best,

Geoff


----------



## ChristianM

I no longer use Melda plug-ins that are ugly and impractical. In addition, even disabled, they eat CPU ...
I believe that Melda has confessed her incompetence to make plug-ins "Audio Unit" and it is possible that AU3 scares her more and that this is the cause of this statement totally misplaced.


----------



## charlieclouser

EvilDragon said:


> Both of these are complete non-issues, Charlie. Depending on which CPU you want, you usually have one or max two chipsets that support it. TB has been working just fiiiiine on W10 for a few years now, mobo manufacturers state in specs if it's supported on their mobos directly or via extension card. I've been using RME UFX+ on TB2 on my AsRock Z170 mobo for some time now without a single hitch.
> 
> Also didn't have to install any AV, built in Defender does the job well. You don't really need a separate AV program these days, unless you're going to "interesting" places on the Internet.



Yeah, that's all fine. But I don't care or even want to even know which chipset or motherboard I'm using. To me that's like buying a car one piece at a time - the chassis at one shop, the engine at another, the transmission just down the street, and ordering the seats from Germany and the wheels from Japan - all the while hoping they didn't ship me wheels with the 4x43mm bolt pattern instead of the 4x50mm bolt pattern I need.

I just want to get in and out of the dealership in as little time as possible, turn the key, drop the hammer, and drive away - FAST.

I still remember when I first got a look at the mentality I now embrace. I was working at the Sam Ash store on 48th street around 1985 (the only real job I ever had), and as I walked up to the still-locked store one morning, a very impatient dude was waiting out front, tapping on the window, and I had to squeeze past him while security told him, "We'll be open in five minutes man, be patient." When they unlocked the door at 10:01am, he burst in, strode up to the counter, and said, "I need a MIDI patch bay."

Now, in those days, I would study the ads and reviews in Keyboard Magazine for months before I made such a life-altering decision as which 8x8 MIDI patch bay to buy. I mean, it's like $400 after all!

So I said to him, "Well, the most popular is the JL Cooper MSB+, which is the quickest and easiest to operate, but has an external AC adaptor, which some folks don't like, but we also have the Yamaha MJC-8, which is a little more confusing to operate, but does have an internal power supply so there's no flimsy AC adaptor, and we also have...."

He cut me off mid-sentence, and said, "I don't care. Bring me whichever one will take the least amount of time to put onto the counter in front of me."

So I grabbed an MSB+ for him, and as I took his Amex card, I couldn't believe that someone would make such an important decision so hastily. I mean, seriously, who DOES that? Then I looked at the name on the Amex card.

Mike Post.

That's who does that.

He had been up all night on a session at Right Track across the street, and needed to get that MIDI patch bay like right NOW so he could get back to work and finish whichever of the zillion tv scores he was doing. Even back then, I knew who Mike Post was - I knew he was a heavy hitter who had a lot of shit figured OUT.

And now, 30 years on, he still needs a shopping cart to haul away all the BMI awards he gets every year, and they name frickin' college campuses after him.

And that's when I realized that in some situations you just need the gear to take up as little of your mental CPU as possible - and I definitely wanted to be in those situations, the ones where the most important part of your gear is that it fucks with you the least, and you have to think about it as little as possible. Where the music is so much more important than the gear, that by comparison it just doesn't matter which MIDI patch bay you buy.

So, for me, Macs are like Mike Post's MIDI patch bays. They are the closest to my hand, and they fuck with me the least.


----------



## EvilDragon

charlieclouser said:


> But I don't care or even want to even know which chipset or motherboard I'm using.



That's where dedicated DAW builders come through


----------



## Denkii

> A quick turnaround like that isn't really an option with any platform besides MacOS.


You mean other than e.g. I don't know...windows?

Mac's are convenient at best and UX comes down to personal preference. But strictly speaking you can do the exact same with a windows machine.
It'll also be cheaper and offer a better performance per money spent.


----------



## charlieclouser

EvilDragon said:


> That's where dedicated DAW builders come through



Yeah but the machines they build don't run Logic. 

And I'm not going the Hackintosh route - I actually inherited a Power Computing Mac clone machine at one point in the mid 1990's for some reason (it was built like crap too), and I was there when Apple slammed the door on clones the first time - and I'm betting it will happen again.


----------



## gamma-ut

I'd be willing to bet that the changes made for Catalina will probably shut down the Hackintosh route. Read-only OS partition _and_ notarisation? That's not good news for clone production.

One day, I'll probably take a longer look at Linux for music production as I'd rather not deal with Windows. However, until then, I'm far more likely to dump Melda's products than the Mac. I bought into the TotalBundle some years ago and it's been a fantastic deal so far but there are other tools and the effects are not the kind of things you slap onto a slave PC to run there.

People talk about Windows users subsidising OS X updates - but the reality is that a developer is shutting off a significant chunk of a paying market by not dealing with them. 

However, I have some sympathy with the point that Apple's lack of transparency hurts them. A clearer roadmap of what's going to get culled later on would help stop these sudden "we've just discovered our stuff doesn't work" emails on each OS launch.


----------



## Dietz

dcoscina said:


> windows fanatics


Really? :-D


----------



## Vik

To me, Apple isn't Apple anymore. It isn't the Think Different-Company it was, it isn't mainly a computer company, the OS isn't way ahead of Windows the way it used to be, it isn't the clear choice for creative tasks like music, desktop publishing etc. OTOH, my iPads, iPhones etc have done what I expect them to do, and much more. The same is true for High Sierra.

The reason I'm still with Apple is because of Logic and my large iTunes library. But the last 5 to 10 years, the Logic development has changed as well. The development has slowed down in the areas that are most important to me (composition, MIDI editing), and when Logic finally got Expression Maps and the ability to unload VI tracks from memory, Logic got these functions years (how many? 10 years?) after Cubase. I don't know why it took the so long, and even today, it seems that Apple's Articulation ID solution needs extra products to behave the way most of us want it to.

In general, other phones and tablets are good too, and Windows apparently has become a lot better. So in a way I probably wouldn't mind using Windows (have never tried using it), but I'm so used to Logic after all these years (version 1) that a switch to another DAW would be difficult. I bought both Cubase Avid has Pro Tools+ Sibelius, Steinberg has Cubase+ Dorico, Apple has Logic and a built in score editor that certainly hasn't received the attention it IMO should have had from Apple. In a way, Logic is today closer to become that DAW/score editor hybrid we 'all' want, but Avid and Steinberg is clearly ahead of Apple when it comes to the score part.

I don't really agree with the Mac Pro development either, or: IMO It's a big mistake to not offer a model between the Mac Mini and Mac Pro, and of course it frustrates me that in order to use new Logic versions, I sometimes need to use new OS versions, and that means that I need to keep buing new Macs or (whenever possible) upgrade some of it's hardware. 

Apple is more about market share these days and sales numbers, and the strategy works. In many ways, Apple has become very similar to what Microsoft was. Even when using iTunes, they *often* try to 'trick me' into using Apple Music instead. For instance, the present some songs I can preview and may like, and then I get a messages that I need start using Music (again) In order to hear it, or perform a new manual search for the same piece in iTunes. I dislike people and corporations who jump into my world and to sell me something.

In other words, I'm not the Apple/Logic fanboy I used to be, but still/probably don't have the motivation needed to leave Apple and Logic. Not because they are irreplaceable - but just because it would require so much time and work. My guess is that this is true for many other Apple users as well.

In a way I have considered ditching Apple and Logic several times, but for that to happen, at least one of the other DAWs would have to become a lot more Logic-like (context menus everywhere, good help system, key commands for almost everything etc), and I doubt that this will happen in the near future. I also doubt that Avid/Steinberg has come far in terms of developing a pro DAW + pro Score editor combo. But I'm sure they are working on it – and I'm pretty sure that Apple isn't working on it.


----------



## Saxer

charlieclouser said:


> Yeah but the machines they build don't run Logic.


That's exactly it! I need Logic, it's my main instrument. Who needs Melda?


----------



## Vik

gamma-ut said:


> I'd be willing to bet that the changes made for Catalina will probably shut down the Hackintosh route. Read-only OS partition _and_ notarisation? That's not good news for clone production.


What is notarisation?
Most likely, Apple will do something to shut down the hackintosh route; it could happen through the OS, through the coming Macs, but probably by through changes in both the OS and the Mac hardware.


----------



## gamma-ut

"Mac apps, installer packages, and kernel extensions that are signed with Developer ID must also be notarized by Apple in order to run on macOS Catalina. This will help give users more confidence that the software they download and run, no matter where they get it from, is not malware by showing a more streamlined Gatekeeper interface."









Notarization Requirement for Mac Software - Latest News - Apple Developer


Mac apps, installer packages, and kernel extensions that are signed with Developer ID must also be notarized by Apple in order to run on macOS Catalina. This will help give users more confidence that the software they download and run, no matter where they get it from, is not malware by showing...




developer.apple.com





Basically, Apple has to countersign any software that runs on Mac OS. A good way to shut down unauthorised spares such as graphics cards and processor boards is to have them coded individually so that only software that is signed by Apple and validated for a particular machine can be used. Notarisation as it stands doesn't do that final step but as you point out, it's not far from closing off the platform completely.


----------



## chocobitz825

I'd rather stab myself in the foot and eat it than go back to windows.

There is obviously no right answer and people have different perspectives. If you want customization and you're a spec junky, there is no satisfying option from mac at this time. If you like tinkering with your system, swapping out hardware and whatnot, a PC is your way to go, and you dont necessarily need to use windows for that. 

My thing is, swapping out gear and customizing is a hobby, not my job. My job is to get music done, and not spend hours or days trying to work through driver and update issues. Like recently, I had a windows driven tablet that decided to update three times in the week, each time inexplicably taking 4+ hours to do the update, and then after coming back online, somehow the screen started picking up ghost touches and the physical volume buttons on the device had been changed from volume, to print screen and task manager. Searching around, I found a post from 2014 saying that sometimes updates overnight/impact other drivers and create these issues. That has NEVER happened to me on a mac. Many frustrating things happen on macs, but most of the time, they're not the things that keep me from doing my job, or things that break down the fundamental use of the device I'm using. 

Catalina is a bold move from Apple, and likely a tone-deaf one that is totally common for what they've been doing for the last 4-5 years. I don't think they made the wrong choice, but I think they fucked the release because as usual, they're making moves expecting developers to just fall in line. Their problem has been the same with ios and watchOS. Sometimes these new features don't encourage developers to help them sell their new concepts. I appreciate the increased security and performance they mean to bring to the MacOS, but I don't know who's to blame when they announced in April that this massive change is coming, and by November developers are bombing out emails telling users to wait because they're not ready with compatibility. I imagine by the end of next year, most of this will blow over and we'll just forget how much of a disaster it was for both sides. Still, since my job is to make music, and for that, I just want simplicity and stability, I'll stick to Mac until it no longer does those things for me.


----------



## charlieclouser

Denkii said:


> You mean other than e.g. I don't know...windows?
> 
> Mac's are convenient at best and UX comes down to personal preference. But strictly speaking you can do the exact same with a windows machine.
> It'll also be cheaper and offer a better performance per money spent.



You can't do the exact same thing with a Windows machine - if what you do is run Logic. 

Which I do.


----------



## chocobitz825

Melda says..
"OSX is less targeted by hackers than Windows, because there are about 1/10th the number of users, but both systems are pretty well protected."

the article is condescending and makes me feel far less pity for the developer side. If the apple market was so small and insignificant, these developers could drop MacOS support today and be done with it, but I suspect the market share is significant, and they don't have confidence that users would switch. 

Even as an apple user, I'll say it, if they really mean it, stop making updates for MacOS. Either Apple will reconsider, users will switch to PC, or developers will STFU and accept the way things are.


----------



## Denkii

charlieclouser said:


> You can't do the exact same thing with a Windows machine - if what you do is run Logic.
> 
> Which I do.


That's true but the quote originated from the "I set a Mac up in some hours and was good to go" part. Same with windows.


----------



## Alex Fraser

On the transition to 64bit: This isn't news to any developer and the transition has been coming like a train, clearly flagged by Apple. I'm running High Sierra (two versions behind the latest) and when I try to install a 32 bit app, I get a warning from the OS suggesting the app should be updated. It shouldn't be news to anyone.

I *do* understand why developers wait until the final OS release to move with the changes but I really don't buy the "Evil Apple moving the goalposts again and don't understand us" argument. I've been hearing it for years now.


----------



## ProfoundSilence

The misinformation is ridiculous, you don't need to lie, exaggerate, or misrepresent Windows or PCs just because you like logic or Apple products

People stop putting firewire on chipsets many generations ago, but unlike Mac it's just a PCI Express slot that you can move to any modern rig by just pulling it out of your old one

That is as dumb as saying that you can't use a mouse because it didn't come with one

If you noticed I made no mention towards Apple products being good or bad oh, I simply ask that you not make ridiculously misguided statements about PC. But now that you've decided to take it personally to the point that you've got to badmouth windows and PC, wasn't the most recent MacBook the one that got rid of its own proprietary port? I could be mistaken, clearly you are the Mac expert


----------



## ProfoundSilence

Apple's new MacBook Pro kills off most of the ports you probably need


Apple just introduced a shiny, super thin new MacBook Pro. But for what was birthed, a lot of widely-held standards had to die. Today, Apple removed the MagSafe 2 charging port type, they stripped away the HDMI port, they ripped out the SD card slot, they shuttered the Thunderbolt 2 ports (which...




www.google.com





Apparently this doesn't even have a USB port

I use a USB to interface and many many mobile composers do as well

So your little theory about being able to just pick up an Apple product and it have everything you need apparently is no longer relevant


----------



## Morning Coffee

One thing about Macs that can be good or bad (depending on how you look at it), is that they have always had a small range of computers, a closed ecosystem (when compared to the many, many choices you have with Windows based machines and manufacturers.) So even though you are getting a smaller range of computers to choose from, they are built to a certain spec by just one manufacturer, Apple.

So I would be more confident in buying a Mac because I see their limited range as a positive thing and less of a gamble, because this could possibly make the user experience less prone to problems. It sort of reminds me of the Big Mac from McDonalds. I can buy a Big Mac here in Australia, or America, or somewhere in Europe, and I could be fairly confident in knowing what to expect, e.g it will taste like a Big Mac! (sorry, feeling a bit peckish!)

I just wish Apple didn't change their OS X versions so often. And their pricing, well, that is another story.


----------



## chocobitz825

ProfoundSilence said:


> Apple's new MacBook Pro kills off most of the ports you probably need
> 
> 
> Apple just introduced a shiny, super thin new MacBook Pro. But for what was birthed, a lot of widely-held standards had to die. Today, Apple removed the MagSafe 2 charging port type, they stripped away the HDMI port, they ripped out the SD card slot, they shuttered the Thunderbolt 2 ports (which...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.google.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Apparently this doesn't even have a USB port
> 
> I use a USB to interface and many many mobile composers do as well
> 
> So your little theory about being able to just pick up an Apple product and it have everything you need apparently is no longer relevant



I would argue that most users use more USB ports than are available on any standard laptop device. No doubt many users are already using USB hubs, and part of the change in ports was not just about USB-C but about thunderbolt 3. Increased speed, ability to daisy chain and make devices smaller. If most users were already using USB hubs, it was not a devastating change for many people. For myself, the change to USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 was mostly painless because I had switched most of my USB devices to Thunderbot 2 the generation prior. Legacy ports are the lamest issue to take a stand on. eventually, they will be phased out, and this idea that every laptop or desktop should come with every port ever made is pretty ridiculous. At some point, you're ignoring performance gains from new devices, just because you're stubbornly anchored to the tech you're used to.


----------



## Mornats

chocobitz825 said:


> My job is to get music done, and not spend hours or days trying to work through driver and update issues.



Isn't this Catalina thing a massive update issue for MacOS though? Just saying that these things aren't restricted to Windows any more!

There are insightful posts by many on here that have helped me understand the need for Apple's closed, limited option hardware stance for some people. I can totally see how that's an advantage especially for pros who, as Charlie said, need the hardware right now to do a job and need to know what to expect. That's something I never really appreciated until now.

However, I think it's important to understand that Windows PCs don't have to be about swapping and configuring all of the time. You can build once and leave it and use it, just like a Mac! But you can of course upgrade whenever you like and not have to wait until Apple release a spec that either rocks it, or "will have to do".

All that aside, how to the creative pros here feel about Apple's direction in general? Digital artists and musicians have been a core group of creatives and a good solid user base for Apple, especially before Macs became as mainstream as they are now. Are they leaving you guys (I say you guys as I'm not a pro by a long shot) out in the cold? Or is just Apple moving with (or ahead) of the times?


----------



## ProfoundSilence

chocobitz825 said:


> I would argue that most users use more USB ports than are available on any standard laptop device. No doubt many users are already using USB hubs, and part of the change in ports was not just about USB-C but about thunderbolt 3. Increased speed, ability to daisy chain and make devices smaller. If most users were already using USB hubs, it was not a devastating change for many people. For myself, the change to USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 was mostly painless because I had switched most of my USB devices to Thunderbot 2 the generation prior. Legacy ports are the lamest issue to take a stand on. eventually, they will be phased out, and this idea that every laptop or desktop should come with every port ever made is pretty ridiculous. At some point, you're ignoring performance gains from new devices, just because you're stubbornly anchored to the tech you're used to.



I'll be honest, thought this was more obvious than it was. I'm parodying the ridiculous comment from another user suggesting some chipsets not having 1394 ports natively was some sort of death sentence... that one would have to be willfully ignorant to use that as a reason not to purchase one. 

I'm well aware that apple has proprietary cables to connect peripherals to the macbook - but using the same level of ignorance I'm just pretending you cant connect usb devices with an obvious work around. 

that's why I used the USB port as an example, because no developer in their right mind would release a laptop without a usb port.


----------



## chocobitz825

Mornats said:


> Isn't this Catalina thing a massive update issue for MacOS though? Just saying that these things aren't restricted to Windows any more!
> 
> There are insightful posts by many on here that have helped me understand the need for Apple's closed, limited option hardware stance for some people. I can totally see how that's an advantage especially for pros who, as Charlie said, need the hardware right now to do a job and need to know what to expect. That's something I never really appreciated until now.
> 
> However, I think it's important to understand that Windows PCs don't have to be about swapping and configuring all of the time. You can build once and leave it and use it, just like a Mac! But you can of course upgrade whenever you like and not have to wait until Apple release a spec that either rocks it, or "will have to do".
> 
> All that aside, how to the creative pros here feel about Apple's direction in general? Digital artists and musicians have been a core group of creatives and a good solid user base for Apple, especially before Macs became as mainstream as they are now. Are they leaving you guys (I say you guys as I'm not a pro by a long shot) out in the cold? Or is just Apple moving with (or ahead) of the times?




The level of consideration is totally different. Building my own PC means I need to consider the pieces, their compatibility with each other and keep up to date on the updated drivers for the various parts because they were not built together. Each piece is its own potential point of failure I need to consider. This is a non-issue for some people, and not as a big a deal to people who might be used to it. For me, that's not the case. If my mac dies, I have a backup, and I can just drop my whole system onto a new one with no major reason to worry about different parts or driver issues. When my system updates, nothing internally should fail in the mac. Software compatibility is a different issue and no platform is free from that. 

It is true though, Apple has stopped focusing on making a device for professionals, and instead is making the most broad device possible. It means its functional for most people, but not optimized for anyone. My iMac Pro is a sufficient work horse for my music, and troubleshooting weird hardware issues is something I rarely have to do. So for that, I'm grateful.


----------



## chocobitz825

ProfoundSilence said:


> I'll be honest, thought this was more obvious than it was. I'm parodying the ridiculous comment from another user suggesting some chipsets not having 1394 ports natively was some sort of death sentence... that one would have to be willfully ignorant to use that as a reason not to purchase one.
> 
> I'm well aware that apple has proprietary cables to connect peripherals to the macbook - but using the same level of ignorance I'm just pretending you cant connect usb devices with an obvious work around.
> 
> that's why I used the USB port as an example, because no developer in their right mind would release a laptop without a usb port.



nope not obvious, and I have heard many a similar serious rant about macs and usb ports. such an exhausting rivalry. Just use the system that works for you, right?


----------



## ProfoundSilence

chocobitz825 said:


> nope not obvious, and I have heard many a similar serious rant about macs and usb ports. such an exhausting rivalry. Just use the system that works for you, right?


yeah like I said. honestly I thought it was obvious and after I reread that it's too easy to just assume I'm grandpa level tech knowledge. 

exactly my point, there's no need to play this look the other way game with mac vs pc. That's why I popped into the thread yo address a user that came in knives out in a quite ridiculous slandering. 

I dont have an opinion on mac. I know both companies abuse your privacy, both are happy to make money off of you. Apple ecosystem comes with tradeoffs, and you pay a premium for it. 

I've often been fascinated with logic but dont want to invest in an apple product to use it. When I built my rig it would have been impossible at any price point because the mac pro couldn't hold the 128 gb anyways. I did consider it a few times, just because of the jet engine looking case lol


----------



## jcrosby

chocobitz825 said:


> I don't know who's to blame when they announced in April that this massive change is coming, and by November developers are bombing out emails telling users to wait because they're not ready with compatibility. I imagine by the end of next year, most of this will blow over and we'll just forget how much of a disaster it was for both sides. Still, since my job is to make music, and for that, I just want simplicity and stability, I'll stick to Mac until it no longer does those things for me.



Developers have to develop on a *BETA* of the OS. Meaning new bugs can show up during any point of development before the OS releases.

From what I've read on MR many developers were somewhat on schedule until the final version of the beta, where Apple severely broke things. Apple then went ahead and released Catalina as is instead of resolving the issue first.... Development is never as back and white as _'they've had since April, May, or June'_...

I personally find Vojecth's last paragraph poignant:

_*So the real question is, do you want the developers of your DAW and plugins to spend their days trying to fix the problems arising from system upgrades, or to improve their own software products, making them more functional, more powerful, faster, stable and easier to use? *_


And... According to their newsletter this morning they did not have the intention of dropping macOS, just offering some deserved criticism and a different perspective...


----------



## EvilDragon

chocobitz825 said:


> At some point, you're ignoring performance gains from new devices



Not really when they thermal throttle like mofos.


----------



## chocobitz825

jcrosby said:


> Developers have to develop on a *BETA* of the OS. From what I've read many developers were somewhat on schedule, and the final version of the beta severely broke things. Apple then went ahead and released Catalina like this.... Development is not as back and white...
> 
> I personally find Vojecth's last paragraph poignant:
> 
> _So the real question is, do you want the developers of your DAW and plugins to spend their days trying to fix the problems arising from system upgrades, or to improve their own software products, making them more functional, more powerful, faster, stable and easier to use? If it's the latter one, then the only solution seems to switch to Windows. The only one, who can make a difference is you, the customer._
> 
> 
> And... According to their newsletter this morning they did not have the intention of dropping macOS, just offering criticism and a different perspective where IMO it's rightfully deserved,,,



Of course. I don't develop for macOS so I'm not sure what the issue of the notarization was, but it looks like most have not addressed that issue. That particular issue was talked about in April. I have yet to see what issues developers are saying broke their software.

As you said, development is not black and white, so to that same point, this idea that upgrading their software to match the standard of the platform is somehow not their job, or is distracting is also a bit hyperbolic. If the user is the main consideration, the user's experience, stability, and security should matter as well. These are necessary changes to keep up on that platform and do exactly what they say they should be doing;

_"...to improve their own software products, making them more functional, more powerful, faster, stable and easier to use?"_

They're not being abused, just because MacOS decided to be stricter about their user experience.

If Melda feels confident enough to flat out say "switch to windows" to their users, I think its also fair to say to developers "stop developing for mac". Developers have a lot of power there to force Apple to change or simplify their workload by dropping MacOS support to send a message.



EvilDragon said:


> Not really when they thermal throttle like mofos.



lol I meant peripherals but yeah, that's always one people like to bring up, despite it being mostly resolved in a software update with a minimal performance impact.


----------



## jcrosby

chocobitz825 said:


> If Melda feels confident enough to flat out say "switch to windows" to their users, I think its also fair to say to developers "stop developing for mac". Developers have a lot of power there to force Apple to change or simplify their workload by dropping MacOS support to send a message.
> 
> 
> 
> lol I meant peripherals but yeah, that's always one people like to bring up, despite it being mostly resolved in a software update with a minimal performance impact.


I won't be surprised if this is only the first of several developer emails with a similar tone...


----------



## chocobitz825

jcrosby said:


> I won't be surprised if this is only the first of several developer emails with a similar tone...



wouldn't be the first time. iOS had that countless times over.


----------



## jononotbono

charlieclouser said:


> Then I ordered lunch.



What did you have? haha!


----------



## ProfoundSilence

melda didn't flat out tell its users to switch either as far as I am aware.


----------



## chocobitz825

ProfoundSilence said:


> melda didn't flat out tell its users to switch either as far as I am aware.



_"So the real question is, do you want the developers of your DAW and plugins to spend their days trying to fix the problems arising from system upgrades, or to improve their own software products, making them more functional, more powerful, faster, stable and easier to use? *If it's the latter one, then the only solution seems to switch to Windows*. The only one, who can make a difference is you, the customer."_


----------



## Vik

chocobitz825 said:


> do you want the developers of your DAW and plugins to spend their days trying to fix the problems arising from system upgrades, or to improve their own software products, making them more functional, more powerful, faster, stable and easier to use? *If it's the latter one, then the only solution seems to switch to Windows*.


If developing only for one operating system automatically would equal "improve their own software products, making them more functional, more powerful, faster, stable and easier to use" and not "spend their days trying to fix the problems arising from system upgrades". But I'm pretty sur the Logic team also has to fix problems coming from Apple's OS updates. Developing for only one OS doesn't mean that there will be tons of bugs either, which all need to be addressed, even if both the OS team and the DAW team are hired by the same company. So convincing all DAW developers switch to Windows, or all DAW users to use Windows wouldn't equal an always fast and stable system.


----------



## gsilbers

jcrosby said:


> There's a few things I've seen and they're not small changes to the OS. The biggest I'm aware of being:
> 
> 1. The OS is now read only. I'm assuming this means developers have to completely rewrite where some files were previously installed. (I really don't know for sure though.)
> 
> 2. Kernel Extension/kexts are being replaced by a completely new format Apple calls Systems Extensions. Many 3rd party drivers are deployed as Kexts... (This would include things like say Loopback or Audio Hijack, probably SW SystemWide, etc... Not to mention the obvious stuff like some audio hardware.)
> 
> Apparently installing new kexts will require a restart before functional.
> (Replacing the "it just works" notion with It just works after you restart your machine.)
> 
> The biggest concern about this is that this will most likely be the last OS to allow kexts, meaning a complete re-write of drivers or software that previously deployed any kind of kernel extension is I'm assuming mandatory.
> 
> Other stuff. (Most of which frankly I don't understand all that well):
> 
> You OS is now split into two volumes.
> 
> More notifications/prompts before you can run your new software. (You might want to read about this below... Sounds like a headache to me)
> 
> Developers must notarize the software before it can run. The short version? If it isn't in the app store it has to go through an Apple notarization process before it'll run in macOS. (This seems to encourage the long time suspicion that Apple wants to move all software purchases to the App Store, which would ice the cake for me...)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Studio One 4 on Mojave and Catalina - Notarization, Hardened Runtime, and how it affects 3rd-party plug-ins
> 
> 
> Notarization and Hardened Runtime: With the release of Mac OS 10.14 (Mojave), Apple released "notarization" as well as "Hardened Runtime." This is a way for Mac OS to identify ...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> support.presonus.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> macOS Catalina - Why It Might Take Software Developers Some Time To Be Compatible With macOS 10.15 | Production Expert
> 
> 
> In our recent article, over 30 pro audio developers have issued statements advising users not to upgrade to macOS Catalina. As a result of extensive research, we have discovered at least two reasons why it might be some time before the software we use will become macOS Catalina compatible and it has
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.pro-tools-expert.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> macOS 10.15 Catalina: 7 Big Security Surprises To be Aware Of
> 
> 
> Apple have announced big security changes to macOS 10.15 Catalina. How will they affect the enterprise? Find out today with our early-bird take on what's new!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.sentinelone.com



Oh that’s seems a lot of work. I get the frustration now. But at least people can stay in Mojave for at least 5 years imo until slowly apps upgrade.

This at the same time makes thing That if everything goes through the app stores, the reasoning is charging developers a cut every time someone buys an app. So if cubasefor Mac was 600 then it will go up 30%.

the post iPhone era for Apple is services so this plus maybe adding subsription models seems that’s where they are aiming.
maybe all audio developers in AES will get together and say; screw this. If cubase, ableton, reaper, presonus all drop support then apple might have to change a few things.

I didn’t understand the kext thing and seems a system root level thing so if it’s a complete re write if the app I can see where developers can get not only frustrated but start finding ways to only offer subscription model to use the software.


----------



## Tim_Wells

charlieclouser said:


> You can't do the exact same thing with a Windows machine - if what you do is run Logic.


Yeah... who's responsible for that? Oh, that's right... Apple.

I say this as a former Windows based Logic user, who had the rug pulled out from under him back in 2002. I guess I could have spent 2 grand on a new Mac back then. But instead, I switched to a Windows based DAW. A lot cheaper and a lot less hassle.


----------



## chocobitz825

jcrosby said:


> There's a few things I've seen and they're not small changes to the OS. The biggest I'm aware of being:
> 
> 1. The OS is now read only. I'm assuming this means developers have to completely rewrite where some files were previously installed. (I really don't know for sure though.)
> 
> 2. Kernel Extension/kexts are being replaced by a completely new format Apple calls Systems Extensions. Many 3rd party drivers are deployed as Kexts... (This would include things like say Loopback or Audio Hijack, probably SW SystemWide, etc... Not to mention the obvious stuff like some audio hardware.)
> 
> Apparently installing new kexts will require a restart before functional.
> (Replacing the "it just works" notion with It just works after you restart your machine.)
> 
> The biggest concern about this is that this will most likely be the last OS to allow kexts, meaning a complete re-write of drivers or software that previously deployed any kind of kernel extension is I'm assuming mandatory.
> 
> Other stuff. (Most of which frankly I don't understand all that well):
> 
> You OS is now split into two volumes.
> 
> More notifications/prompts before you can run your new software. (You might want to read about this below... Sounds like a headache to me)
> 
> Developers must notarize the software before it can run. The short version? If it isn't in the app store it has to go through an Apple notarization process before it'll run in macOS. (This seems to encourage the long time suspicion that Apple wants to move all software purchases to the App Store, which would ice the cake for me...)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Studio One 4 on Mojave and Catalina - Notarization, Hardened Runtime, and how it affects 3rd-party plug-ins
> 
> 
> Notarization and Hardened Runtime: With the release of Mac OS 10.14 (Mojave), Apple released "notarization" as well as "Hardened Runtime." This is a way for Mac OS to identify ...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> support.presonus.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> macOS Catalina - Why It Might Take Software Developers Some Time To Be Compatible With macOS 10.15 | Production Expert
> 
> 
> In our recent article, over 30 pro audio developers have issued statements advising users not to upgrade to macOS Catalina. As a result of extensive research, we have discovered at least two reasons why it might be some time before the software we use will become macOS Catalina compatible and it has
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.pro-tools-expert.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> macOS 10.15 Catalina: 7 Big Security Surprises To be Aware Of
> 
> 
> Apple have announced big security changes to macOS 10.15 Catalina. How will they affect the enterprise? Find out today with our early-bird take on what's new!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.sentinelone.com




Ok, so a review of the articles lists some things that seem pretty beneficial to the end user. Read only oration first the OS means no overwriting vital files or random user or software initiated processes messing up core files for the OS.

The requirement to have all relevant and necessary files in the software bundle is also great and makes sense given the OS files are read only now. I’m still trying to figure out how to delete record of some ancient plugin that got locked into native instruments’ authorization software but the file is buried in some root folder. It’s good to have a streamlined process for software, especially the uninstall process.

Yes this can break old software and maybe in a way more blunt than people are used to, but unsupported software is bound to become unusable/obsolete eventually. Of course it’s not ideal, but it is inevitable. I haven’t installed catalina on my music production device so I can’t tell how much this impacts already installed software. All I’ve seen from my MacBook is that a lot of developers failed to get their installers updated and notarized. I’d heard some people had very few problems with their active software, but some subscription type softwares and software updates were dead on Catalina.

Also, the notarization process does not require the installer be in the App Store, nor does it seem to imply that’s the purpose of the process. If I recall the developers ID needs to be notarized as a trusted ID. 

I don’t know. None of this seems like Apple trolling users, and I think these system changes will ultimately make a better user experience once we get through the transition.


----------



## dzilizzi

I will start this statement with the fact that I've generally been a PC person. The career that feeds me and pays for my toys requires it. 

That said, the thing that stuck out for me in Charlie's story was that he picked up a 2013 Mac. Not a new one. When I finally had the money to buy a Mac a few years ago, or so I thought, I found most of the current ones didn't come with enough RAM. Or SSD space. And they soldered it all in. The fact that it only had one USB and one thunderbolt did concern me as a quick check online didn't show a lot of thunderbolt options for enclosures, which made my current external drive collection useless. So I passed. 

And I just picked up a really inexpensive 2012 Mac Mini (plus some RAM) and may try making a Hackintosh. 

But Windows has had similar problems. Just maybe not as obvious as Apple. Laptops come with only 2 USB ports. At least you can daisy chain thunderbolt. And I didn't upgrade to 10 until this year. Everything was very happy on 7. I do think having the newest thing does not seem to be a good thing with computers anymore. Even my job waited to update to 10 just this last summer.


----------



## dcoscina

Here's something that's bound to fan the flames on this: the guys whose music I listen to and appreciate the most are composers in Hollywood and even concert hall who use Macs. Perhaps, like Charlie, they aren't getting off on system specs but are more concerned about actually writing good music. Novel concept eh?

Obviously that's a very provocative statement and really only half hearted. The guys who I really respect used pencil, manuscript and piano (Mahler, Shostakovich, Debussy, VW, Stravinsky, John Williams etc, etc). But if I were to reflect on those current composers who DO use technology, I do like the ones that happen to use Macs (John Adams, Powell, Desplat, Wallfisch, and the list can go on and on and on).

I suppose I'm reacting to this reverse elitism of some (not all) Windows/PC advocates who brand Mac users as stupid or sheep or whatever. Ok, perhaps I'm not up on my bus speeds, and chipsets, but my counterpoint is pretty decent and my advanced harmony is also on point. Oh and when I have downtime I study conductor's scores and attend Toronto Symphony concerts to better understand how a REAL orchestra works which I find helps my sampled orchestra renderings.

I don't really care if someone prefers Windows. I get tons of customers who use FL Studio on PC and that's fine- whatever makes them write the music they hear in their head. But the pendulum has turned and I find there's this odd drive by some to convert me and my evil Mac ways to PC much like those religious folks who knock on my front door once in a blue moon.

For the record, I applied to Apple not long ago and attended a group interview. It was eye opening. That culture does NOT support pros. It's all about phones, ipads and Apple watches. The store manager admitted he knew very little about Pro audio so all of my questions fell upon deaf ears. I walked out of their rather disgusted in the current corporate culture. Moral of the story: I use Macs because they offer my a certain transparency when it comes to composing so I can focus on melody, harmony, rhythm and orchestration. I don't agree with the way the CEO is running their business but as long as they keep making Macs (I just bought a 6 core cylinder last year and love it) I will work in that ecosystem.

I really don't care if someone has a PC that's faster and cheaper than mine. The acid test is whether their music is good..... 

And like we say in the martial arts world "there's always someone faster, bigger and stronger than you are...so try to stay humble"


----------



## dzilizzi

Well, the specs do matter in a way. You have to have a decent CPU and enough RAM no matter what machine you have. And I think that is part of the frustration with the current Apple management is they haven't been making products that provide it. It has been good for music users that the old machines are still working until Apple finally got around to making this new version. And it is for people for whom money is not an issue. Unfortunately, not everyone in the music industry makes the big bucks. I am concerned they won't sell enough to make the CEO happy and it may be the end of Apple supporting the music industry.


----------



## dcoscina

dzilizzi said:


> Well, the specs do matter in a way. You have to have a decent CPU and enough RAM no matter what machine you have. And I think that is part of the frustration with the current Apple management is they haven't been making products that provide it. It has been good for music users that the old machines are still working until Apple finally got around to making this new version. And it is for people for whom money is not an issue. Unfortunately, not everyone in the music industry makes the big bucks. I am concerned they won't sell enough to make the CEO happy and it may be the end of Apple supporting the music industry.


sorry but that's a bit inaccurate. I delivered a game score that had up to 60 tracks of individual Kontakt instances that involved a lot of heavy orchestral work on a Macbook Air i7 2.2ghz processor with only 8gb of ram. And the only reason I ever had to freeze anything was when I added some Uhe Repro-5 to the mix for the low end which drove the CPU batty. It wasn't ideal of course but my MP 3,1 was having issues and I was on a deadlline. Of course the MB isn't a slouch but is far from super powerful (dual core, 8gb RAM ceiling). I was able to get what I think was a good track count before I had to start rendering. Of course, I come from an era when we did everything on notation paper and with limited real orchestral resources so I learned to create density through contrapuntal textures rather than doubling everything all to hell....


----------



## dzilizzi

I've been taking classes at the local community college and we have new iMacs with 8GB RAM. I was helping another student who was making an 9 minute long background track for a play of office sounds. She had 7 tracks and Pro Tools crashed during the bounce multiple times. I had her bounce 3 tracks at a time to make it work. And, well, it is Pro Tools. Pro Tools can crash any computer. As I said once on the PT forum, to me, PT is the best - when it works. Unfortunately, that is not as often unless you have a really powerful computer. 

Were you using Logic?


----------



## Sarah Mancuso

gamma-ut said:


> I'd be willing to bet that the changes made for Catalina will probably shut down the Hackintosh route. Read-only OS partition _and_ notarisation? That's not good news for clone production.


Nah, folks have been doing successful Catalina hackintosh builds since the beta releases. No trouble there that I'm aware of  Even the T2 chip isn't an issue, given that Apple is still selling iMacs that don't contain one.

If/when Apple does make the long-rumored switch from Intel x64 to their own custom CPUs, _that _would put a damper on things. But a hackintosh from 2019 would still be useful for however many more years as an official Apple-branded Mac with the same type of processor within it.

For the sake of everyone currently buying into the new Mac Pro and the rest of their current Intel x64-based lineup, I hope that the x64-based computers Apple is currently charging top dollar for will continue to be well-supported for years to come, and won't too quickly become second-class citizens if a new architecture is introduced soon. Whatever Apple does there, though, hackintosh users will be in exactly the same boat.


----------



## Crowe

As an ex-mac user who got fucked over by Apple constantly before switching over to building my own PC, I have no clue where the hate against maintaining your hardware comes from.

I choose what strings to put on my guitar. I know the ins and outs of my hardware.
I choose what synths I want to be using and how they work. I know the ins and outs of my hardware.
I choose my processor, harddisk, RAM, graphics card and audio peripherals, and have parts in reserve if anything ever breaks down. I know the ins and outs of my hardware.

I can change out my processor in a jiffy. I couldn't even open up my last Mac.

Not wanting to know about your hardware and software and how to maintain them is not a virtue.


----------



## brenneisen

charlieclouser said:


> You can't do the exact same thing with a Windows machine - if what you do is run Logic.



of course you can, you're just being silly in using Logic X, use Logic 5 instead


----------



## dcoscina

dzilizzi said:


> I've been taking classes at the local community college and we have new iMacs with 8GB RAM. I was helping another student who was making an 9 minute long background track for a play of office sounds. She had 7 tracks and Pro Tools crashed during the bounce multiple times. I had her bounce 3 tracks at a time to make it work. And, well, it is Pro Tools. Pro Tools can crash any computer. As I said once on the PT forum, to me, PT is the best - when it works. Unfortunately, that is not as often unless you have a really powerful computer.
> 
> Were you using Logic?


Yes I was indeed using Logic. Cubase 9 (at the time) was sort of cutting it however. I used to use Pro Tools for MIDI stuff as well but had to house all my VIs in VEPRO for it not to crap out. Same went for DP. Lately I've been mostly using LPX because of the aggressive updates or else Cubase 10 because I love the workflow.


----------



## dcoscina

Shiirai said:


> As an ex-mac user who got fucked over by Apple constantly before switching over to building my own PC, I have no clue where the hate against maintaining your hardware comes from.
> 
> I choose what strings to put on my guitar. I know the ins and outs of my hardware.
> I choose what synths I want to be using and how they work. I know the ins and outs of my hardware.
> I choose my processor, harddisk, RAM, graphics card and audio peripherals, and have parts in reserve if anything ever breaks down. I know the ins and outs of my hardware.
> 
> I can change out my processor in a jiffy. I couldn't even open up my last Mac.
> 
> Not wanting to know about your hardware and software and how to maintain them is not a virtue.


Which is why I bought the 6,1 cylinder over the iMac last year when faced with having to finally upgrade from my 2008 3,1. And during that time, I got a LOT of use out of it and enough monies from ads and such that paid for it. I never had a PC for more than 2 years before I had to upgrade (unless we are talking Windows 3.1 in the '90s when I used Mastertracks Pro and Encore from 1996 to 2002. Then I used Sonar for a while and finally settled into Mac OS in 2005 where I've not wanted to budge from since. Just a preference and it lets me do what I need it to do. 

And the MP 6,1 is totally upgradable from the ram, the SSd, the GPUs and the processor. I bought the 6 core but will upgrade to the 12 core should I need it.


----------



## Daily Patcher

What a goofy way to stir up the internet into rehashing the same old debate. I couldn’t care less what platform a dev thinks I should use. Have no plans to touch Melda stuff anyways; though it’s almost impressive how user unfriendly those plugins are (like Windows hehehe). Also the dev requires you to download their entire catalogue of plugins just to get a single one.


----------



## Sarah Mancuso

Shiirai said:


> As an ex-mac user who got fucked over by Apple constantly before switching over to building my own PC, I have no clue where the hate against maintaining your hardware comes from.
> 
> I choose what strings to put on my guitar. I know the ins and outs of my hardware.
> I choose what synths I want to be using and how they work. I know the ins and outs of my hardware.
> I choose my processor, harddisk, RAM, graphics card and audio peripherals, and have parts in reserve if anything ever breaks down. I know the ins and outs of my hardware.
> 
> I can change out my processor in a jiffy. I couldn't even open up my last Mac.
> 
> Not wanting to know about your hardware and software and how to maintain them is not a virtue.


Yeah, one of the things that pushed me towards building my own Macs was the problems resultant from Apple's locked-down approach. I grew up using Macs and have found my own builds to be no more troublesome than any of the prebuilt Apple-designed hardware I've owned. They've arguably been _less _troublesome for me, because they're not a closed mystery box.

Most memorably, I had an iMac whose video card started frequently outputting random garbage onscreen, possibly due to overheating issues as a result of the enclosed design. Because it was soldered to the logic board and couldn't be swapped out separately, replacing it cost me over $600 from Apple, which was a serious problem as a college student without a lot of money to throw around. And then the replacement failed in the same way (which makes me suspect a design failure), so I just gave up and had to live with it putting random junk pixels onscreen when it felt like it.

As an aside, paying $1200 to buy a nearly-decade-old secondhand computer is unthinkable to me. It might work well enough now, but it's not going to have remotely the kind of lifespan as a new machine. Most of us are not so fortunate as to be able to toss that kind of money out on something without an expectation that its usefulness will last long-term.


----------



## C.R. Rivera

"But Windows has had similar problems. Just maybe not as obvious as Apple. Laptops come with only 2 USB ports. "

I have a 7 year old i3 Samsung Laptop that cost under $400, not for music making, and which has 3 USB ports, an ethernet port, 2 headphone jacks, etc., etc.....have laptops degraded that much in 7 years?


----------



## dzilizzi

I've wanted to try Logic for years, but the cost to get in has stopped me. And, reading these complaint threads has given me the impetus to go out and buy a used mac mini for about $250. It is i7 and I upgraded the RAM from 4 to 16 very easily. I am watching videos trying to get up the courage to change out the 5400 RPM HDD to an SSD. And maybe add a second drive? And then try making a hackintosh. I have to admit, I don't think I would bother buying a used 2012 PC. (Though my 2011 PC works just fine)


----------



## dzilizzi

C.R. Rivera said:


> "But Windows has had similar problems. Just maybe not as obvious as Apple. Laptops come with only 2 USB ports. "
> 
> I have a 7 year old i3 Samsung Laptop that cost under $400, not for music making, and which has 3 USB ports, an ethernet port, 2 headphone jacks, etc., etc.....have laptops degraded that much in 7 years?


Yes. You are lucky if you get 2 USB ports. They do usually come with a single combo headphone/mic jack, an hdmi port, and an ethernet port. And the USB ports don't support big hubs. Well, not if you want to use USB 3.


----------



## Mornats

All the Windows laptops at my work (around 1000) have four USB ports. There are so many Windows laptops available and so many different configurations I don't think you can generalise like that at all.


----------



## jamwerks

Your $1500 might have been better spent on :

I7 9900k
Gigabyte B250 MB
64 gb ram
SSD 2tb
Corsair 750W power supply
Radeon RX 580 Video card

Comes to $1,546.69 at NewEgg. New, and surely 4-5 times more powerful than that old Mac !


----------



## dzilizzi

Mornats said:


> All the Windows laptops at my work (around 1000) have four USB ports. There are so many Windows laptops available and so many different configurations I don't think you can generalise like that at all.


Unfortunately, not in the $400 range. But you are correct, you can get them. But I have noticed, generally, they are less and less. Most people use bluetooth devices that connect directly. Unfortunately, that's who manufacturers tend to build for.


----------



## Alex Fraser

The PC vs Mac debate is always misunderstood from both sides. Generally, the PC folk are into specs, options and customisation and never understand why Mac users would forfeit this for "something shiny."

On the other side, Mac users are rarely into that stuff (Hackintosh and 5.1 fans aside) and just want a computer they essentially don't have to think about. They don't understand the enthusiasm for specs, configurations and the like.

This is a sweeping generalisation but I reckon it cuts straight to the heart of it. As a Mac user, I'm not entirely sure what's inside the "shiny, overpriced box" in front of me.


----------



## Dewdman42

jcrosby said:


> Studio One 4 on Mojave and Catalina - Notarization, Hardened Runtime, and how it affects 3rd-party plug-ins
> 
> 
> Notarization and Hardened Runtime: With the release of Mac OS 10.14 (Mojave), Apple released "notarization" as well as "Hardened Runtime." This is a way for Mac OS to identify ...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> support.presonus.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> macOS Catalina - Why It Might Take Software Developers Some Time To Be Compatible With macOS 10.15 | Production Expert
> 
> 
> In our recent article, over 30 pro audio developers have issued statements advising users not to upgrade to macOS Catalina. As a result of extensive research, we have discovered at least two reasons why it might be some time before the software we use will become macOS Catalina compatible and it has
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.pro-tools-expert.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> macOS 10.15 Catalina: 7 Big Security Surprises To be Aware Of
> 
> 
> Apple have announced big security changes to macOS 10.15 Catalina. How will they affect the enterprise? Find out today with our early-bird take on what's new!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.sentinelone.com



Thanks for these articles. This are HUGE changes for OSX. The increased security is probably a good thing in general, but I do have to say that gatekeeper and SIP (which I leave disabled), has caused more grief for me then it has probably solved. So.. while I get that they are trying to make OSX more impervious to ransomeware attacks and what not...its also going to block certain functionality and make me jump through hoops in the future. Myself, I'm staying on Mojave for absolutely as long as I possibly can. The changes Apple is bringing forth now in Catalina and the next version are definitely interesting, but they are also fairly large architectural changes i terms of how system files are locked up on a read only partition, KEXT's are going away, etc..

and they will impose an increasing amount of Apple-big-brother control over what can run where on your mac. Sorry, but I don't like that at all. After a few years, they will shake it all out I'm sure so we can talk again in a couple of years.. honestly after reading these articles I have zero interest in Catalina or the next version and maybe the version after that. Its mojave or bust for me...and we'll see how it all shakes out in 3 years down the road...

Some general observations, The deprecation of KEXT is huge! That is going to effect Hackintosh community in the long run you can be sure. The audio community is also going to be hugely effected. It will adapt to the new architecture over time, but as pointed out in the articles, older software and older devices are toast, they will stop working on OSX soon due to this change, if they have any custom KEXT involved. Manufacturers will be forced to re-architect some of their stuff or it will cease to work, and some stuff will simply not be justified to spend development resources...so will thus stop working. This is not the first time Apple has dropped a nuclear bomb change...and probably not the last time either...but this is going to be a big deal.

The Notarization thing also kind of a big deal. What about open source solutions? etc..

I do think Apple is going to lock down the OS so that basically it will only run on their supported platforms...and only apps that have been entirely approved by Apple will be able to run on it regardless of whether it was purchased through the App Store or not...and you won't be able to write your own KEXT anymore, you'll have to use this new systems extension api and ask the locked down OS to do things for you, which it may or may not allow. This is all very very huge news, with pros and cons...and me personally I will avoid it like the plague by staying on Mojave for as long as I can until the smoke clears...and it will be 3 years IMHO until the smoke is completely cleared.

Perhaps OSX will be more secure from malware, but it will also be controlled and limited in terms of what can run on it and in some cases that is going to disable old software, or constrain certain productivity tools and add ons, etc. Eventually people will figure out solutions or just get used to the new crippled system as good enough, but I predict very rough seas for the next couple years.


----------



## Mornats

dzilizzi said:


> Unfortunately, not in the $400 range. But you are correct, you can get them. But I have noticed, generally, they are less and less. Most people use bluetooth devices that connect directly. Unfortunately, that's who manufacturers tend to build for.



Fair point! Ironically, it's the copying of Apple's drive for thinner and thinner devices that has possibly made Windows laptop makers to drop ports. Or possibly it's driven by a consumer shift to buying laptops for style/thinness for web/mail/social media and not so much for productivity. I suspect that's where Apple is shifting their focus too.

By the way, in the UK we have scan.co.uk who make pro audio PCs and laptops so it's possible to buy a pre-made laptop or desktop that's optimised for audio.


----------



## vitocorleone123

Alex Fraser said:


> The PC vs Mac debate is always misunderstood from both sides. Generally, the PC folk are into specs, options and customisation and never understand why Mac users would forfeit this for "something shiny."
> 
> On the other side, Mac users are rarely into that stuff (Hackintosh and 5.1 fans aside) and just want a computer they essentially don't have to think about. They don't understand the enthusiasm for specs, configurations and the like.
> 
> This is a sweeping generalisation but I reckon it cuts straight to the heart of it. As a Mac user, I'm not entirely sure what's inside the "shiny, overpriced box" in front of me.



Pretty good, broad generalization. I use both platforms professionally- though for UX design, not audio. I understand people who just want to buy a quality product and have it work immediately- historically, Apple has been better at that. I understand people who love tech specs, too. There’s also a value user, like me at this point, that wants control over what’s in my computer and get the most for my money - so that it just works... and works great.

Both Apple and Microsoft make life hard for the users. Apple has slowly been getting worse, and Microsoft slowly better. Both are about the same now, with different strengths and weaknesses. It’s all trade-offs, and no right or wrong answer - pick your poison 😀


----------



## jcrosby

chocobitz825 said:


> Ok, so a review of the articles lists some things that seem pretty beneficial to the end user. Read only oration first the OS means no overwriting vital files or random user or software initiated processes messing up core files for the OS.
> 
> The requirement to have all relevant and necessary files in the software bundle is also great and makes sense given the OS files are read only now. I’m still trying to figure out how to delete record of some ancient plugin that got locked into native instruments’ authorization software but the file is buried in some root folder. It’s good to have a streamlined process for software, especially the uninstall process.
> 
> Yes this can break old software and maybe in a way more blunt than people are used to, but unsupported software is bound to become unusable/obsolete eventually. Of course it’s not ideal, but it is inevitable. I haven’t installed catalina on my music production device so I can’t tell how much this impacts already installed software. All I’ve seen from my MacBook is that a lot of developers failed to get their installers updated and notarized. I’d heard some people had very few problems with their active software, but some subscription type softwares and software updates were dead on Catalina.
> 
> Also, the notarization process does not require the installer be in the App Store, nor does it seem to imply that’s the purpose of the process. If I recall the developers ID needs to be notarized as a trusted ID.
> 
> I don’t know. None of this seems like Apple trolling users, and I think these system changes will ultimately make a better user experience once we get through the transition.


It's easier to say it's a small change if your looking at it from a _theoretical_ perspective. Why not update that machine to Catalina and let everyone know.


----------



## José Herring

I'm a PC user. I'm eyeing the new Mac pro though.

I think the statement made by Melda is extremely irresponsible. Okay, so you're having a hard time adjusting to Catalina. Okay, so what? Figure it out. That's the business you're in. It's tech service business that has to keep up with the new changes of the tech giants. Apple went in a way that was unexpected. Deal with it. Or, just tell your clients that you are switching to PC only. But guess what. When windows 11 comes out, Melda will have to deal with that too.

So to dis an entire platform just because a company can't adjust is just bad business.

I own a few Melda plugins. I love their synth but there isn't anything they make that isn't replaceable by something else. Their creative use of Multiband processing is cool. But, nothing that Mac users can't live with out. So basically that statement they published is stating that they are willing to throw away business so that they can vent their frustration. Unprofessional conduct.


----------



## chocobitz825

jcrosby said:


> It's easier to say it's a small change if your looking at it from a _theoretical_ perspective. Why not update that machine to Catalina and let everyone know.



I’m not sure what your point is. We already know most devs aren’t ready for Catalina yet. I already updated a spare MacBook to Catalina. Most 3rd party installers don’t work. Since I wiped the computer before installing it, I can’t say yet what impact it has on pre-installed plugins and software. I can take some time this weekend and see what else might be problematic but for now with so many developer IDs not being notarized, updates and installers seem dead in the water until they get notarized.





__





Apple Developer Documentation







developer.apple.com





Apple clearly lays out the requirements and process for getting current and previous builds notarized. It would help if devs clearly stated how much of this process didn’t work for them and what hurdles they’re facing, because on the surface Apple seems to have built a reasonable path for getting this done. If that’s not true, I’d believe devs if they clearly stated why this isn’t working rather than just saying they don’t like the new rules.


----------



## charlieclouser

josejherring said:


> I'm a PC user. I'm eyeing the new Mac pro though.
> 
> I think the statement made by Melda is extremely irresponsible. Okay, so you're having a hard time adjusting to Catalina. Okay, so what? Figure it out.


 
Yeah, that post from Melda seemed more like a "venting" or "rant" than what you'd usually see from a developer. But, fair enough - I'm not surprised that some developers are feeling the pain of what Apple's throwing their way, maybe it's just that at the larger ones the folks who are the public face of the company aren't the ones in the trenches dealing with compatibility - they just shove the problem at their coding team and say, "handle it and get ready to push an update by January".

Interestingly, it seems that the Melda folks have noticed that they may have poked a stick into a hornet's nest, as I just got an email from them saying:

---------

Dear customer,

the previous newsletter caused a little confusion among the OSX users. Please note that we are NOT going to stop supporting OSX platform. However we wanted to point out there are certain problems on OSX and there is an alternative.

We are sorry for the confusion.

---------

So... yeah.

I ain't switching tho.


----------



## dgburns

Well now that Melda is still OSX, let me just say they make killer plugins, imho.


----------



## JamieLang

You all know I use both platforms...and I've been telling people for years they need to start migrating away from OSX--for good reason....but, I will also say that this developer has shown how little they know about hardware and operating systems and how audio systems work in their rant. They're not unique that way--code monkeys seem to have no grasp on operating systems beyond the small language of API calls they make in their code. In a past life, I managed projects with developers....it's truly stunning how little they know. 

If anyone is thinking "as long as you pay as much as you do for your Apple"....you'll get a good performing machine, with respect to VIs....or that ANYONE should install "ASIO4All" as anything more than a shit cake temporary band aid....holy crap, that's terrible advice. 

AND....it's no big deal to switch. As someone said this earlier, I would disagree: we ALL want a machine we don't have to think about.


----------



## kitekrazy

No one is safe from the (d)evolving OS. 

As for Melda stuff I'm a fanboy. 

So does this Catalina crush the dreams of those who want to dabble on the Mac side by getting those older Mac cheese graters?


----------



## chocobitz825

Shiirai said:


> As an ex-mac user who got fucked over by Apple constantly before switching over to building my own PC, I have no clue where the hate against maintaining your hardware comes from.
> 
> I choose what strings to put on my guitar. I know the ins and outs of my hardware.
> I choose what synths I want to be using and how they work. I know the ins and outs of my hardware.
> I choose my processor, harddisk, RAM, graphics card and audio peripherals, and have parts in reserve if anything ever breaks down. I know the ins and outs of my hardware.
> 
> I can change out my processor in a jiffy. I couldn't even open up my last Mac.
> 
> Not wanting to know about your hardware and software and how to maintain them is not a virtue.



Major misconception that just because some of us choose not to think about those things somehow means we don’t know about them. So as a touring musician, I don’t tune up and restoring my guitars every show. I hire a guitar tech to do it. Not because I can’t, but because my time is better spent doing other things. It’s the same with my computer. I have built computer and done my own repairs, and it’s fun and entertaining but it is not something I need to be doing. If I want to focus on the things I should be doing, it’s making and performing music. 

People keep saying you can build bigger and better for cheaper. no doubt true. You can build just as stable a device if you just get compatible parts and build with the right balance in mind. No doubt, but that’s something a mac user doesn't have to think about. Macs aren’t optimized but neither are they underpowered. They’re not cheap, but if you can afford it as a business device and make money through that business, that cost is mostly irrelevant. 

As was eloquently said earlier


----------



## chocobitz825

Shiirai said:


> As an ex-mac user who got fucked over by Apple constantly before switching over to building my own PC, I have no clue where the hate against maintaining your hardware comes from.
> 
> I choose what strings to put on my guitar. I know the ins and outs of my hardware.
> I choose what synths I want to be using and how they work. I know the ins and outs of my hardware.
> I choose my processor, harddisk, RAM, graphics card and audio peripherals, and have parts in reserve if anything ever breaks down. I know the ins and outs of my hardware.
> 
> I can change out my processor in a jiffy. I couldn't even open up my last Mac.
> 
> Not wanting to know about your hardware and software and how to maintain them is not a virtue.



Major misconception that just because some of us choose not to think about those things somehow means we don’t know about them. So as a touring musician, I don’t tune up and restring or repair my guitars every show. I hire a guitar tech to do it. Not because I can’t, but because my time is better spent doing other things. It’s the same with my computer. I have built computer and done my own repairs, and it’s fun and entertaining but it is not something I need to be doing. If I want to focus on the things I should be doing, it’s making and performing music. 

People keep saying you can build bigger and better for cheaper. no doubt true. You can build just as stable a device if you just get compatible parts and build with the right balance in mind. No doubt, but that’s something a mac user doesn't have to think about. Macs aren’t optimized but neither are they underpowered. They’re not cheap, but if you can afford it as a business device and make money through that business, that cost is mostly irrelevant. 
It’s time vs money. Perceived peace of mind vs. perceived inconvenience. In my experience windows devices have always cost me more time....

As was eloquently said earlier ....



charlieclouser said:


> Time is money, and I can always make more money - but I can't make more time.


----------



## ProfoundSilence

I'm okay with developers being honest. I know I got a load of emails from developers referencing the last update, some more laced with frustration than others. 

I still disagree that they made a statement to switch, they said they would continue support and made a strong suggestion. "maybe it's time to switch" is not the same as "switch to windows". 

just some useful info, if you're trying to get a laptop for mobile workstation, sager and similiar companies are a terrific choice for getting our rather odd requirements. 

you could get multiple SSD, fast processor and tons of ram without spending a ton on a gpu just to get a fast processor.


----------



## Leon Portelance

I don’t use anything but Macs. I hate windows!


----------



## EvilDragon

Tell us how you *really* feel!


----------



## José Herring

Leon Portelance said:


> I don’t use anything but Macs. I hate windows!


Ever consider how Windows feels about you?


----------



## jcrosby

The GS post from Metric Halo below is really informative for people who don't understand that Catalina is more than just a simple upgrade.

The thread explains the impending shitstorm coming for many mac audio users in the form of older hardware failing to work simply because Apple decided to abandon its own API, kernel extensions, etc...

The short version is Metric Halo has been *MAC ONLY* for essentially its entire product history... This is more than _a disgruntled developer blowing off steam, _instead a hardware manufacturer being honest about the challenges they face post-Mojave, by forced deprecation by Apple... Just a little something to chew on...)










Gearspace.com - View Single Post - Metric Halo 3D Is Here


Post 14271550 -Forum for professional and amateur recording engineers to share techniques and advice.



www.gearslutz.com


----------



## JeffvR

dcoscina said:


> Here's something that's bound to fan the flames on this: the guys whose music I listen to and appreciate the most are composers in Hollywood and even concert hall who use Macs. Perhaps, like Charlie, they aren't getting off on system specs but are more concerned about actually writing good music. Novel concept eh?
> 
> Obviously that's a very provocative statement and really only half hearted. The guys who I really respect used pencil, manuscript and piano (Mahler, Shostakovich, Debussy, VW, Stravinsky, John Williams etc, etc). But if I were to reflect on those current composers who DO use technology, I do like the ones that happen to use Macs (John Adams, Powell, Desplat, Wallfisch, and the list can go on and on and on).
> 
> I suppose I'm reacting to this reverse elitism of some (not all) Windows/PC advocates who brand Mac users as stupid or sheep or whatever. Ok, perhaps I'm not up on my bus speeds, and chipsets, but my counterpoint is pretty decent and my advanced harmony is also on point. Oh and when I have downtime I study conductor's scores and attend Toronto Symphony concerts to better understand how a REAL orchestra works which I find helps my sampled orchestra renderings.
> 
> I don't really care if someone prefers Windows. I get tons of customers who use FL Studio on PC and that's fine- whatever makes them write the music they hear in their head. But the pendulum has turned and I find there's this odd drive by some to convert me and my evil Mac ways to PC much like those religious folks who knock on my front door once in a blue moon.
> 
> For the record, I applied to Apple not long ago and attended a group interview. It was eye opening. That culture does NOT support pros. It's all about phones, ipads and Apple watches. The store manager admitted he knew very little about Pro audio so all of my questions fell upon deaf ears. I walked out of their rather disgusted in the current corporate culture. Moral of the story: I use Macs because they offer my a certain transparency when it comes to composing so I can focus on melody, harmony, rhythm and orchestration. I don't agree with the way the CEO is running their business but as long as they keep making Macs (I just bought a 6 core cylinder last year and love it) I will work in that ecosystem.
> 
> I really don't care if someone has a PC that's faster and cheaper than mine. The acid test is whether their music is good.....
> 
> And like we say in the martial arts world "there's always someone faster, bigger and stronger than you are...so try to stay humble"


I think the reason a lot of pro composers still choose Apple is because of some kind of tradition, using stuff they know, using Logic etc. In the past it was more reliable and suited for creatives. In their cases, money spend on a machine isn't important. For most people it is important. For me personally, spending €5000 more for the same(ish) hardware but a different OS doesn't justify the cost. HZ, Junkie XL, Trevor Morris, John Paesano and probably many others are using PC. Not that it matters, but they had their reasons to switch from Mac to PC.


----------



## chocobitz825

jcrosby said:


> The GS post from Metric Halo below is really informative for people who don't understand that Catalina is more than just a simple upgrade. .The thread explains the impending *shitstorm* coming for many mac audio users in the form of older hardware failing to work simply because Apple decided to abandon its own API, kernel extensions, etc... Not to pine over Metric Halo... ...
> 
> The short version is Metric Halo has been *MAC ONLY* for essentially its entire product history pre-Mojave...
> 
> This is more than _a disgruntled developer blowing off steam, _instead a hardware manufacturer being honest about the challenges they face post-Mojave, by forced deprecation by Apple despite being loyal to Apple previously... Just a little something to chew on...)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Gearspace.com - View Single Post - Metric Halo 3D Is Here
> 
> 
> Post 14271550 -Forum for professional and amateur recording engineers to share techniques and advice.
> 
> 
> 
> www.gearslutz.com



You seem heavily invested in one particular goal for this conversation. I personally can’t comment on that case because I’m not using 20 year old tech...


It’s ok though. It’s all very simple.

We’re all right, and everyone else is wrong!


----------



## jcrosby

chocobitz825 said:


> You seem heavily invested in one particular goal for this conversation. I personally can’t comment on that case because I’m not using 20 year old tech...
> 
> 
> It’s ok though. It’s all very simple.
> 
> We’re all right, and everyone else is wrong!



Rebutting with information doesn't equate to saying someone is wrong or right. It's an open-ended conversation... If you see this as binary that comes down to your perception, just because we don't see the same thing doesn't mean *either of us* is right or wrong... That also doesn't mean I shouldn't respond if I find information that has a different angle or conflicts with yours, (or anyone else's) beliefs.

Considering the information I posted is form a hardware manufacturer that's made a career out of developing mac audio interfaces; not to mention an effort to explain the complex and uncomfortable factors about why their hardware does or doesn't work in Catalina; yeah, I feel its relevant information...


----------



## chocobitz825

jcrosby said:


> Although I've rebutted where I think it's relevant I haven't stated anyone is wrong. It's an open-ended conversation. If you see it as a binary discussion that's on you...



Your position seems extremely focused on the preconceived narrative that Catalina will destroy music for Mac users and that everyone is moving abandoning the platform. Even the case of Mio is questionable and would require more research because for as much FireWire talk I see, they still have more recent fear with USB-C right?

Future-proof tech is extremely vague a concept these days. Just because people can keep something for a decade doesn’t mean they do, or should. I feel this way every time someone talks about computers without SD card readers, ignoring the limitations of read/write speeds of SD cards and the inevitable increase in size of data that we use now that fueled changes to faster data transfer methods. 

I don’t know. I said it before. I can understand frustration but this is the same doom and gloom rhetoric people make every major change, and still they tend to shut up, get it in and forget the controversy in the end. If they REALLY mean it this time, I hope they drop MacOS support and force
Apples hand and the industry’s. Because let’s face it, this conversation always ends up being less about what’s actually happening and instead just becomes a tribalism turf war between Windows users, MacOS users, and Linux users who think we’re all idiots for anyways =P


----------



## jcrosby

chocobitz825 said:


> Your position seems extremely focused on the preconceived narrative that Catalina will destroy music for Mac users and that everyone is moving abandoning the platform. Even the case of Mio is questionable and would require more research because for as much FireWire talk I see, they still have more recent fear with USB-C right?
> 
> Future-proof tech is extremely vague a concept these days. Just because people can keep something for a decade doesn’t mean they do, or should. I feel this way every time someone talks about computers without SD card readers, ignoring the limitations of read/write speeds of SD cards and the inevitable increase in size of data that we use now that fueled changes to faster data transfer methods.
> 
> I don’t know. I said it before. I can understand frustration but this is the same doom and gloom rhetoric people make every major change, and still they tend to shut up, get it in and forget the controversy in the end. If they REALLY mean it this time, I hope they drop MacOS support and force
> Apples hand and the industry’s. Because let’s face it, this conversation always ends up being less about what’s actually happening and instead just becomes a tribalism turf war between Windows users, MacOS users, and Linux users who think we’re all idiots for anyways =P



MH have USB-C ports on their recent board update available for every audio interface they've ever sold, one of which I run on both a hackintosh, and two MacBook pros, (and previously a cheesegrater) I haven't had a single issue with any of them so not sure where you're getting that.

As far as I can tell you're just looking for an argument though. That's fine, but I'm not the guy to give one to you since I started this thread is an open ended discussion just to see what others think... Maybe even learn something...

Considering I haven't installed Catalina this makes me somewhat hypocritical, and I'm fine copping to that... As someone who relies on my machines to earn a living and sees huge red flags with Catalina however, I think this is a useful conversation. It really is as simple as that.


----------



## Geoff Grace

I wonder how Catalina's support of iOS apps will affect the process of making music on the platform. There are some nice (and inexpensive) iOS synths from Moog, Korg, and others. It would be great to have easier access to those natively in a Mac DAW.

Best,

Geoff


----------



## chocobitz825

jcrosby said:


> MH have USB-C ports on their recent board update available for every audio interface they've ever sold, one of which I run on both a hackintosh, and two MacBook pros, (and previously a cheesegrater) I haven't had a single issue with any of them so not sure where you're getting that.
> 
> As far as I can tell you're just looking for an argument though. That's fine, but I'm not the guy to give one to you since I started this thread is an open ended discussion just to see what others think... Maybe even learn something...
> 
> Considering I haven't installed Catalina this makes me somewhat hypocritical, and I'm fine copping to that... As someone who relies on my machines to earn a living and sees huge red flags with Catalina however, I think this is a useful conversation. It really is as simple as that.



Actually, no I’m trying to resolve an argument but hell, tone on the internet is always easily mistaken. 

Fair enough. I think we’ve all had a lot of back and forth about Windows and Mac. So yeah, getting down to catalina. It’s a fine OS update but I’ll have to try and install more stuff to see how well it works or try and migrate an old backup that had my music production stuff on it to gauge the damage. Still really the problem is not with the user experience of Catalina. As an OS for general use it’s fine. The question is what developers will choose to buck and support it. If they don’t, we Mac users are screwed because the developers deem it not worth upgrading. How much hardware functionality is lost really depends on other users testing their various hardware to see, because no one user can make a claim that covers everyone’s use case. Right now, all I can say is the biggest problem is the lack of notarized installers that make new installs and upgrades impossible.


----------



## EvilDragon

chocobitz825 said:


> Just because people can keep something for a decade doesn’t mean they do, or should.



Why should people suddenly stop using their 10+ years old RME interfaces that still work perfectly fine?



chocobitz825 said:


> ignoring the limitations of read/write speeds of SD cards



SDXC exists.


----------



## chocobitz825

EvilDragon said:


> Why should people suddenly stop using their 10+ years old RME interfaces that still work perfectly fine?
> 
> SDXC exists.



why should any platform guarantee support for 10+-year-old gear? What percentage of total OS users of that platform is actually impacted by such a change? Is the goal of making a "safer" and more stable OS experience worth the potential users and developers that get pushed out because of these changes? I feel like these are the relevant questions. Honestly, I would be interested to know how many actual users these impact, rather than what theories of potential change might do to hypothetical users. 

I mean, just in the case of 10-year-old gear that works fine. If it was a 10+-year-old car we're talking about, would it be unreasonable to find out that parts and support for that car have decreased or otherwise been phased out by the maker and other services that support the maintenance of such vehicles? Would it be unreasonable to find that current trends and standards are made with new innovations and changes in mind, rather than prioritizing someone's10-year-old preferred vehicle?

and you're right, the SD market has expanded to higher capacities and write speeds. Its use in mobile and mobile gaming is increasing. Is it obsolete? no, but is it a necessity of laptop/desktop users in general? I don't know. Again, Macs are general use devices, and I imagine other than visual media professionals, many users are using their smartphones without sd cards to take their media.

If there's anything I can concede here, its that Apple, being both a computer and mobile device maker is probably more influenced by the trends of mobile devices than Microsoft. I don't foresee it meaning the end of support for music professionals, but a lot might change with the focus on what the new majority of music professionals prefer. We'll have to wait and see.


----------



## jamwerks

Leon Portelance said:


> I don’t use anything but Macs. I hate windows!


How can you hate it if you don't know it?


----------



## Alex Fraser

chocobitz825 said:


> why should any platform guarantee support for 10+-year-old gear? What percentage of total OS users of that platform is actually impacted by such a change? Is the goal of making a "safer" and more stable OS experience worth the potential users and developers that get pushed out because of these changes? I feel like these are the relevant questions. Honestly, I would be interested to know how many actual users these impact, rather than what theories of potential change might do to hypothetical users.



Yep.
It's also worth mentioning (and always seems to be ignored) that the needs of serious audio pros, like those on this forum, really aren't the top priority for Apple. Most Apple musicians are happy with a cheap USB I/O device that runs on Core Audio and simply don't have the large collection of software and hardware that many of us have.

The security, code re-writes and all the rest of it is for the benefit of the general Apple population who like things to "just work" without any thought. These are the people that Apple has to keep onside, not so much hardcore audio folk.

It's unfortunate that audio providers and musicians get caught up in the process but this really isn't a new thing for Apple. Security, stability and integration have always been the priority.

Everyone is entitled to their own position on this. It's at the very heart of the Mac vs PC debate. But let's not get too annoyed at Apple's "last straw" or "latest big upset" - they've worked this way for years. Also, we've got the move from Intel to Arm processors coming next...


----------



## EvilDragon

chocobitz825 said:


> why should any platform guarantee support for 10+-year-old gear?



Because backwards compatibility is a nice thing. Microsoft understands it (and their clients absolutely depend on it).


----------



## ProfoundSilence

jamwerks said:


> How can you hate it if you don't know it?


emotions man, ya feel me? 

really though watching people go out of their way to disagree is silly. 

"just because you can have something for 10 years doesn't mean you have to keep it"

"sO yUr SaYiNg tHrOw iT oUt?"


----------



## chocobitz825

ProfoundSilence said:


> emotions man, ya feel me?
> 
> really though watching people go out of their way to disagree is silly.
> 
> "just because you can have something for 10 years doesn't mean you have to keep it"
> 
> "sO yUr SaYiNg tHrOw iT oUt?"



if someone came to you and said they like their Nokia 3360 cell phone, but they feel like carriers should still sell the phone, its accessories, support the phone, and develop new updates for the phone so that it can operate alongside the current line of smartphones what would you say? I think most people would say "give it up and get a smartphone already", and most companies would say "we appreciate your passion for the product, but we have a new line of phones that have new functions, work just as reliably and will likely give you a superior experience if you give it a try." on the backend, many companies also don't want to keep around old technicians for outdated tech, and don't see the value in training people to service and develop for outdated tech. 

Windows allows for backward compatibility and there is a bunch of trade-offs for that. it's not wrong to have backward compatibility but its also not a necessity from any perspective. "If it ain't broke don't fix it" is a fine motto, but so is "if it can be done better, do better"


----------



## dgburns

Ironic to hear all the ‘Mac is not made for pro’s’ cause it seems to me the new mac pro IS. New OS concerns aside.

What this all means is more work for Dev’s to port over and of course some old fav software will not make the leap and get EOL’d.(nothing new here)

But to the point of PC’s, I built 4 from scratch and use them as slaves. Went well, and no real issues. Truth is, it really isn’t that hard, especially for someone with a bit of tech knowledge.

Windows SEEMS to have an advantage in that they consider backwards compatibility more when changing OS, but then again they serve a big business user base who would revolt if they ran with Apple’s approach, imho.

Atleast we have choices. Better then no choice.


----------



## Alex Fraser

dgburns said:


> Ironic to hear all the ‘Mac is not made for pro’s’ cause it seems to me the new mac pro IS. New OS concerns aside.


Sure, but what percentage of the Mac user base will be using one? Not many I reckon, and by design too.



dgburns said:


> Atleast we have choices. Better then no choice.


I couldn't agree more.


----------



## chocobitz825

just to update. so far, studio one, and native instruments programs have installed properly with no problems. Working on getting plugins installed next.

No luck with Toontracks programs like superior drummer. I've heard slate bundle has problems. I'm about to try and install plugin alliance. I'll also try sonarworks to see if that has been impacted as well.

EDIT: Sonarworks supports Catalina. No problem.
UPDATE 2: Superior Drummer 2.0 installed, updating to 3.0. Nothing massive broken yet. Toontrack EZ-Keys won't install, but meh. I don't think even toontracks put much priority on that product.
UPDATE 3: iLok, slate, and some IK Multimedia stuff installed without a problem. Perhaps its a difference in programmers per program but EZKeys doesn't work for toontrack Superior Drummer does. Modo Bass works for IK Multimedia, but the MODO Drums don't.


----------



## wst3

As a former developer my perspective may be slightly different... the void between MS and Apple centered (centers) on two key points:
1) Control - Apple controls every aspect of both hardware and software, and they require developers to meet a not insignificant hurdle to be included at the party. If they decide to protect parts of the file system to prevent intrusions they do so and there is no way around it (at least not that I am aware). They even built a "middleware" piece for the niche that is music production, Core Audio is brilliant, probably not finished yet, but even so, MS should follow suit.
2) Compatibility - MS goes to ridiculous lengths to insure that you can run old software, and if they had exercised control over hardware that would probably also be the case. It costs them a lot. It slows their innovation. Apple, on the other hand, prefers newer/faster/better, and will sacrifice old sacred cows in an instant.

That first part means that Apple has a good shot at "it just works" and MS doesn't have a prayer. If something breaks in Windows it could be anything, if something breaks in Mac OS it probably happened at Apple.

Neither approach is inherently wrong - or right. It was a business decision made eons ago, for reasons that probably no longer hold, but it is what it is, and we can only vote with our wallets, and neither company is going to lose any sleep if all the musicians in the world switch to Linux tomorrow.

The second part is a little trickier, but it would be difficult to suggest that one is better. I have no clue why these decisions were made (they did not consult me) but I can see strengths and weaknesses in both.

As a developer, if I were starting out today I would probably focus on Windows. MS is ever so slightly more developer friendly, MS depends on third party developers, so they have to play nice, or at least a little bit nicer than Apple. If I were established in both camps I'd stay there. If I were established in Apple I'd have to seriously consider adding MS to my repertoire.

Aside - as a developer I focused on Unix systems - they made sense to me, they were far easier for development, and I was naive enough to believe that the rest of the world would come to its senses. How naive? I was also a Commodore certified developer - can't even remember what the program was called, but they were far easier to work with, provided better documentation, and generally stayed out of your way. Which caused problems from time to time. But they were also smart enough to recognize a good thing when it smacked them - Carnegie Mellon University developed a MIDI Driver (this was before computer audio production was a reality) that was truly universal, and covered all the developer requests, mutil-client, multi-device, ridiculously well behaved - and Commodore adopted it as their standard.

But I digress...

As a consumer none of that really matters - or at least it should not be at the top of the list. Consumers should choose the tools they like, and choose the platform that supports them - or supports me and my work preferences.

Charlie wants to be able to buy a second hand machine and have it up and running before lunch. You can do that with a Mac, it would be a bit more effort with Windows. Or rather you need to know a lot less about the nuts and bolts to make it happen with a Mac. A perfectly legitimate yardstick, and if you doubt that just look at his credits. (Love the story about Mike Post - one of my heroes!)

Me? I'm using Windows for everything but the really esoteric stuff, and I have very little time for that these days, and most of the research oriented tools have been ported to both Mac OS and Windows, so my Linux box gets very little love.

I ended up on Windows because after Commodore went bye-bye I was hesitant to invest time into a new platform that might go away. Apple was struggling, and I really feared being orphaned again. The real deal maker for me was when I discovered that almost all my tools were being ported to Windows, not Mac. And all my music tool developer friends were squarely in the MS camp. 

There remain a couple tools I do not have access to, and for which I may yet buy a Mac Mini. But the majority of my tools are developed on Windows, so Windows it is. Even DP, which was a major attraction for a long time, has been ported to Windows - it's still rough around the edges, but it is getting better.

And then there is my background - which probably had some influence as well. I've never purchased a studio computer, I've built them all, partly to save money, partly to know what's going on inside the case. It has become far easier to do so, in the mid 1990s it was a chore.

I like both platforms - if time and money were not factors I'd have both in the studio. But since I live in my real world I am sticking it out with MS & Windows 10. The studio computer today is faster and more stable than any that preceded it. The life cycle has grown longer. It's what works for me. (now I would still dearly love to see a Core Audio like layer in Windows - but that probably won't happen.)


----------



## DAW PLUS

chocobitz825 said:


> _"So the real question is, do you want the developers of your DAW and plugins to spend their days trying to fix the problems arising from system upgrades, or to improve their own software products, making them more functional, more powerful, faster, stable and easier to use? *If it's the latter one, then the only solution seems to switch to Windows*. The only one, who can make a difference is you, the customer."_


In all fairness, you forgot to quote the part of Melda's statement which is utmost relevant here:



Melda said:


> If you are satisfied with your Apple platform and you like to put the Apple stickers everywhere you go , please stop reading now. This article is only for those thinking about a change.


----------



## gsilbers

Alex Fraser said:


> Sure, but what percentage of the Mac user base will be using one? Not many I reckon, and by design too.
> 
> 
> I couldn't agree more.




I kinda of agree. Mainly because imo that new mac pro is going after a different market... which is align to appels big picture. They have invested billions on making new tv shows. which seems its to compete with other tech offerings. but as someone who has worked in hollywood for the big studios, i can tell you there is a far bigger reason not easily noticeable. It wasnt until the keynote apple said the price of the new mac pro (whioch we thought was crazy) and that its still less than the HP z series. That EXACTLY the one that all the video editors and file render farms use to make all the hollywood content thats sent around the globe. There is a large market in hollywood post prodcution and distribution tech where every machine that needs to render a pro res file needs to buy a license. these machines also do AI QC and render thousands of large format files. These companies are amberfin, digital rapids and so on. These machines are still more expensive than the mac pro. The studio i worked at bought 25 cheese grate 5,1 machines when apple announced the cylinder. full of ram and largest specs. that was back then at 3-5k a pop. ni biggie compared to what they get in return. So if the new mac pro makes it on every post prodcution studio, every editor, every render farm, every 3d animator and every high end rerecording mixer then that would be enough for apple ot make a lot of dough. speciually if they tell everyone in the prodcution and post prodcution chain of their shows to use the macs. We all thinking about expensive macs mainly cuz we compare it to intels i7/i9 stuff.. which in fairness its good enough for us, photoshop editor, small youtube channel etc.


----------



## chocobitz825

DAW PLUS said:


> In all fairness, you forgot to quote the part of Melda's statement which is utmost relevant here:



you mean the condescending beginning that implies people don't have actual reasons for using mac other than some shallow need to impress people with an apple logo? 

it's a shit post.


----------



## chocobitz825

gsilbers said:


> I kinda of agree. Mainly because imo that new mac pro is going after a different market... which is align to appels big picture. They have invested billions on making new tv shows. which seems its to compete with other tech offerings. but as someone who has worked in hollywood for the big studios, i can tell you there is a far bigger reason not easily noticeable. It wasnt until the keynote apple said the price of the new mac pro (whioch we thought was crazy) and that its still less than the HP z series. That EXACTLY the one that all the video editors and file render farms use to make all the hollywood content thats sent around the globe. There is a large market in hollywood post prodcution and distribution tech where every machine that needs to render a pro res file needs to buy a license. these machines also do AI QC and render thousands of large format files. These companies are amberfin, digital rapids and so on. These machines are still more expensive than the mac pro. The studio i worked at bought 25 cheese grate 5,1 machines when apple announced the cylinder. full of ram and largest specs. that was back then at 3-5k a pop. ni biggie compared to what they get in return. So if the new mac pro makes it on every post prodcution studio, every editor, every render farm, every 3d animator and every high end rerecording mixer then that would be enough for apple ot make a lot of dough. speciually if they tell everyone in the prodcution and post prodcution chain of their shows to use the macs. We all thinking about expensive macs mainly cuz we compare it to intels i7/i9 stuff.. which in fairness its good enough for us, photoshop editor, small youtube channel etc.



This brings up another inconvenient consideration. The state of the music market may also be an influence in some of this. The Movie industry is HUGE money...and the music industry, while still large, is not at all stable as it once was, and there's still no major boom for apple to really jump on. I mean streaming has decreased some of the needs of music creators and the mixing/mastering process. Really though, if you consider the majority of "creators" right now, its visual media, and gaming. Could be another reason why the total package plan for apple is shifting that way.


----------



## gsilbers

chocobitz825 said:


> you mean the condescending beginning that implies people don't have actual reasons for using mac other than some shallow need to impress people with an apple logo?
> 
> it's a shit post.




true. we all know you dont need shiny stuff. you just need 90s era graphics and thats good enough. even if you cant tell whats where.





So Melda means shit in spanish btw.


----------



## EvilDragon

wst3 said:


> As a former developer my perspective may be slightly different...



Thank you for your thoughts. I think you've probably made the most balanced post in this thread!


----------



## gsilbers

chocobitz825 said:


> This brings up another inconvenient consideration. The state of the music market may also be an influence in some of this. The Movie industry is HUGE money...and the music industry, while still large, is not at all stable as it once was, and there's still no major boom for apple to really jump on. I mean streaming has decreased some of the needs of music creators and the mixing/mastering process. Really though, if you consider the majority of "creators" right now, its visual media, and gaming. Could be another reason why the total package plan for apple is shifting that way.




majorty might be subjective. true everyone can now have an iphone camera and be creators. 
but still, every show on tv, every movie, every tv commercial, every news show etc.. needs to be multiplied by at least 30 for all the different lanaguges, locals and so on. hollywoods back end its incredibly lucrative. you woudlnt believe how much. so in context yes there are more other types of creators but pricing the mac pro higher for that hollywood crowd will be more than enough that they dont need to go after small content prodcuers... with that said, once editors start seeing micheal bay edit on a mac pro or hans zimmer sees the new re-recording stages using the new mac pros, and he buys one and we all see hans loading 1tb of samples onto one mac pro, many will go jumping through credit card hoops to get one.


----------



## gsilbers

maybe microsoft will launch a new desktop machine since they are doing laptops. now that would be apple to apples comparison.. :emoji_drum:


----------



## DAW PLUS

As a Windows based workstation manufacturer, please read my post knowing I am utmost biased...

In my opinion this whole thread has gone in the wrong direction, i.e. a classic Mac vs PC pissing contest.
This is not what Melda was about, nor what other developers who have issues with Catalina mean.

This is about a frustration from developers to be tied to Apple's directions and changes and that it takes up massive resources which put a burden on development. While many developers are ahppy with coding for Apple platforms, some are not. Whether you care about that or not is not the issue, it rather is a vent and an explanation from those developers.

You as a user always have a choice, and to praise Melda here (I never had contact with them nor have I ever installed anything from them), the sentence I quoted above shows that this is about developer views to support a possible switch.

This is not about Hackintosh, about workstation/PC pricing, not about peripheral compatibility nor about $$/GFLOPS. We all can decide what OS we prefer (Charlie is very clear about his choice and I absolutely agree with his personal choices, which may not be valid for others (like me)). Also can we decide ourselves whether we want to buy a turnkey solution, build something ourselves, buy an iMac or something mobile, or whether we want to produce on a smart watch.

No matter what Apple or Microsoft do, they will always make choices which we don't agree with. I strongly prefer Windows for many reasons, but that does not mean MS is my favorite company.

That being said, I agree with many things Melda posted, actually I rarely see anything posted with which I agree so much. I just don't comment on the part of Apple development, as despite the 2 iMacs my wife has at home (she is definitely the better half...) I don't closely follow all details from Apple.

My suggestion is to choose or stick to whatever you feel good with, no need to defend your choice either. Both platforms have their strengths and weaknesses and both allow professionals to have a rock solid experience.

Now, back to work. Or to the after work beer, like me here in Germany.


----------



## lumcas

You might find this thread very interesting, Apple "language police" suggest mac developers how to communicate Catalina incompatibilities. Not surprising, unfortunately. I'm on a mac platform over 20 years and it makes me sad. Seriously considering jumping the ship at this point...









KVR Forum: Catalina: Apple turns macOS into a closed platform; many audio-devs warned from the upgrade - DSP and Plug-in Development Forum


KVR Audio Forum - Catalina: Apple turns macOS into a closed platform; many audio-devs warned from the upgrade - DSP and Plug-in Development Forum




www.kvraudio.com


----------



## EvilDragon

DAW PLUS said:


> Or to the after work beer, like me here in Germany.




🍻


----------



## DAW PLUS

gsilbers said:


> maybe microsoft will launch a new desktop machine since they are doing laptops. now that would be apple to apples comparison.. :emoji_drum:


They would be just one of many vendors, possibly at a different price point. They already made an iMac type system which never hit the European market, but I am not sure whether it was actually sold in the USA.


----------



## ValiumDuPeuple

Except for those who need to buy a new computer that blocks older OS, we have to understand that this kind of problem is also mainly caused by stupid consuming habits.
Just stop updating your mac os when you actually DON'T NEED to! Consumers have power, asleep.
Sorry this is nothing new, but it's kind of driving me crazy.


----------



## DAW PLUS

chocobitz825 said:


> you mean the condescending beginning that implies people don't have actual reasons for using mac other than some shallow need to impress people with an apple logo?
> 
> it's a shit post.


The sticker remark can be taken as condescending, although I rather see it as trying to be funny. I don't see anything condescending in the opening statement.


----------



## gsilbers

ValiumDuPeuple said:


> Except for those who need to buy a new computer that blocks older OS, we have to understand that this kind of problem is also mainly caused by stupid consuming habits.
> Just stop updating your mac os when you actually DON'T NEED to! Consumers have power, asleep.
> Sorry this is nothing new, but it's kind of driving me crazy.



thats been the overall theme with big tech companies. ubers could just dont drive for uber. poeple could use less invasive social media and so on. sadly it doesnt work like that. what works is having more competition. if there was a real alternative to windows and mac then apple would bend more to what consumers want rather than dictating how to consume it. i think that new competition will come from china and japan in the future and it would of been nice for microsoft to have a mobil OS but so far we are kkinda stuck with apple and microsoft at the moment. in context its still amazing being able to use these DAWs and systems.. but we get some fo this forced upgrade crap sometimes.


----------



## gsilbers

lumcas said:


> You might find this thread very interesting, Apple "language police" suggest mac developers how to communicate Catalina incompatibilities. Not surprising, unfortunately. I'm on a mac platform over 20 years and it makes me sad. Seriously considering jumping the ship at this point...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> KVR Forum: Catalina: Apple turns macOS into a closed platform; many audio-devs warned from the upgrade - DSP and Plug-in Development Forum
> 
> 
> KVR Audio Forum - Catalina: Apple turns macOS into a closed platform; many audio-devs warned from the upgrade - DSP and Plug-in Development Forum
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.kvraudio.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> [/QUOT
> .



daaamnnn..


----------



## Drundfunk

charlieclouser said:


> What a laugh. For one-rig people, or those who have the time and patience to figure out which chipset works with which motherboard and how to get Thunderbolt working... maybe.
> 
> But for the last two weeks I needed to track hours of multitrack drum recordings at 96k, and on the morning we were setting up I decided that I wanted a spare rig to do it with. In a total of three hours I'd found a used Mac Pro cylinder on Craigslist, drove to pick it up, grabbed a pair of MOTU 1248's at Banjo Center, brought it all home, wiped the computer, installed MacOS, installed ProTools, configured the MOTU AVB rig with an interface in the control room and another in the live room on the other end of 150 feet of Cat5 cable, set up multiple monitor mixes for the talent in the live room, and we started recording without any hitches or confusion at all.
> 
> Then I ordered lunch.
> 
> A quick turnaround like that isn't really an option with any platform besides MacOS.
> 
> I didn't have to install any antivirus or utility software - just MacOS, the iLok driver, MOTU AVB drivers, and ProTools. I didn't need to adjust any system settings - I left WiFi and Bluetooth turned on and browsed the internet while recording hours of 16 channel audio at 96k to the boot drive and simultaneously synchronizing files to a pair of Samsung T5 SSDs.
> 
> Although they probably exist, I don't personally know anybody who's "tired of compatibility problems or the lack of functional software choices (???)". As for "value per $" that spare Mac Pro 6-core cost $1500 and needed nothing to be up and recording in a couple of hours - the interfaces cost more than the computer did! The money we were spending per hour on talent, drum techs, engineers, etc. eclipses the paltry few hundred $$$ I could have saved by ordering a Windows machine one chip at a time from Amazon and assembling it like some kind of Lego kit.
> 
> Time is money, and I can always make more money - but I can't make more time.
> 
> Maybe having more users switch to Windows will make Melda's job as developers easier, but it sure wouldn't make my job any easier!


And I always thought Hollywood professionals just have spare rigs laying around anyway. What would you have done if there wasn't an offer on Craigslist? Or the seller was at home earliest on monday? Just curious.


----------



## dzilizzi

chocobitz825 said:


> why should any platform guarantee support for 10+-year-old gear? What percentage of total OS users of that platform is actually impacted by such a change? Is the goal of making a "safer" and more stable OS experience worth the potential users and developers that get pushed out because of these changes? I feel like these are the relevant questions. Honestly, I would be interested to know how many actual users these impact, rather than what theories of potential change might do to hypothetical users.
> 
> I mean, just in the case of 10-year-old gear that works fine. If it was a 10+-year-old car we're talking about, would it be unreasonable to find out that parts and support for that car have decreased or otherwise been phased out by the maker and other services that support the maintenance of such vehicles? Would it be unreasonable to find that current trends and standards are made with new innovations and changes in mind, rather than prioritizing someone's10-year-old preferred vehicle?
> 
> and you're right, the SD market has expanded to higher capacities and write speeds. Its use in mobile and mobile gaming is increasing. Is it obsolete? no, but is it a necessity of laptop/desktop users in general? I don't know. Again, Macs are general use devices, and I imagine other than visual media professionals, many users are using their smartphones without sd cards to take their media.
> 
> If there's anything I can concede here, its that Apple, being both a computer and mobile device maker is probably more influenced by the trends of mobile devices than Microsoft. I don't foresee it meaning the end of support for music professionals, but a lot might change with the focus on what the new majority of music professionals prefer. We'll have to wait and see.


As a general use device, an SD card reader can be important. My SLR camera uses SD cards. I guess I could plug in the camera, but it is easier to use a card reader. I guess I'm thinking of the other creative types who love Apple tend to be photographers and graphic designers. 

Truthfully, I'm not sure what the big issue is, unless Apple quits supporting the old OS. just don't upgrade. I guess the new computers may be an issue? It reminds me of when I got my HP laptop with 8.1 installed. The HP forum is amazing at finding the drivers to older OS's so I was able to install 7 on it until my programs worked. For years I've heard Apple users talk about freezing their machines. I guess the only bad part is when a new product comes out that won't run on your OS, you will get to save money?


----------



## chocobitz825

gsilbers said:


> thats been the overall theme with big tech companies. ubers could just dont drive for uber. poeple could use less invasive social media and so on. sadly it doesnt work like that. what works is having more competition. if there was a real alternative to windows and mac then apple would bend more to what consumers want rather than dictating how to consume it. i think that new competition will come from china and japan in the future and it would of been nice for microsoft to have a mobil OS but so far we are kkinda stuck with apple and microsoft at the moment. in context its still amazing being able to use these DAWs and systems.. but we get some fo this forced upgrade crap sometimes.



this is what I'm waiting for. It's exhausting to hear people complain about how much they don't like the platform's they're using to make a living. If it's so bad stop, and stop throwing the user in the middle as if our choice to buy one side or the other is the reason their job is hard. I'd love a functional third option. Hell I'd love anything that could provide the peace of mind I get from apple, but without the frustrating shit they've been doing the last 4-5 years with introducing and then dropping gimmicky tech features that developers never picked up on. Give me an OS that doesn't frustrate me as a user, with as much power and features as a PC, and we're talking. For now, windows is not my bag.

Point is the platform and the developers need to court us, the customers. We buy the products, and that's our support. We're not obligated to take a side to make the job easier for the people we're buying from whether it is apple or devs. If the new iPhone sucks, I'm not buying it. If none of the apps I need are on apple anymore, I can't stay on apple devices. That would motivate me to change. "Catalina is hard to program for" doesn't matter to me, because Catalina as an OS, works really well for me, and surprisingly a lot of the stuff I use for music works fine...so the developers cries of foul play aren't hitting me.


----------



## dcoscina

chocobitz825 said:


> you mean the condescending beginning that implies people don't have actual reasons for using mac other than some shallow need to impress people with an apple logo?
> 
> it's a shit post.


Yeah I got that vibe too. I don't use their software and obviously won't be in the future.


----------



## robgb

After twenty years of using PC rigs, I switched to Mac for a reason and haven't regretted it. I love Melda plugins, but maybe they're simply put off by the fact that Catalina drops 32-bit support. I've been 64-bit for a few years now, so I don't really give a shit.


----------



## InLight-Tone

I switched to Mac earlier this year after being on Windows since Windows first began. I flirted with it by running it in VMWare to see if I wanted to switch and then switch I did.

My reasons are pretty much in line with what is written here, so I'll post the link:
Why I Hate Windows...


----------



## chocobitz825

InLight-Tone said:


> I switched to Mac earlier this year after being on Windows since Windows first began. I flirted with it by running it in VMWare to see if I wanted to switch and then switch I did.
> 
> My reasons are pretty much in line with what is written here, so I'll post the link:
> Why I Hate Windows...



Can’t believe I read that whole thing. Reminded me of one of the biggest reasons I can’t do windows. Multilingual support for Asian languages. Windows is TERRIBLE for that. Everything else spot on.


----------



## dzilizzi

chocobitz825 said:


> Can’t believe I read that whole thing. Reminded me of one of the biggest reasons I can’t do windows. Multilingual support for Asian languages. Windows is TERRIBLE for that. Everything else spot on.


Now that I think about it, why do two US companies seem to control the majority of the OS's the world uses? I'm kind of surprised there isn't at least an Asian based one. I didn't get much past the keyboard language part in the anti-Windows rant. I mean explanation.


----------



## charlieclouser

Drundfunk said:


> And I always thought Hollywood professionals just have spare rigs laying around anyway. What would you have done if there wasn't an offer on Craigslist? Or the seller was at home earliest on monday? Just curious.



If I hadn't found a quickie on Craigslist I'd have gone to the Apple store seven miles down the road and paid full pop, but they don't have any cylinders physically in the store because they're reducing stock on hand in anticipation of the Cheese Greater's arrival. I could have grabbed a Mac Mini there, which would work fine as well, but it's always simpler and easier for me to just have a duplicate of the same machine that's already in use for that same purpose somewhere in the building.

There's also a place called usedmac.com that is actually based near me, and they have stacks of machines and parts going all the way back to G4 towers ready to go, but it's a little further away and they really prefer to ship as opposed to serving walk-in customers. They want a few hundred more than Craigslist dude wanted, but still a 6-core is only around $2k from them. They've got Mac Pro 5.1 towers with the 3.46 CPU upgrade at around $1,200 for those that want to stay with the silver boxes though.

I also know a couple guys who flip macs as a side hustle near me (found them when I wanted exact duplicates of my old 12-core silver towers), but on a whim I thought I'd just check Craigslist first and boom - found one just down the road. 

It was nice to find a machine nearby, since it was closer and quicker than any of the other options. As soon as the tracking session was over it became a little superfluous, although it is handy having another "floater" machine that isn't already allocated to some mission-critical purpose I guess. I suppose I could always re-flip it.


----------



## richard kurek

robgb said:


> After twenty years of using PC rigs, I switched to Mac for a reason and haven't regretted it. I love Melda plugins, but maybe they're simply put off by the fact that Catalina drops 32-bit support. I've been 64-bit for a few years now, so I don't really give a shit.


yup i upgraded to catalina no issues with music software just a few old apps i rarely use are gone


----------



## C.R. Rivera

gsilbers said:


> true. we all know you dont need shiny stuff. you just need 90s era graphics and thats good enough. even if you cant tell whats where.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So Melda means shit in spanish btw.


Seriously, you need to get out of the studio and get some fresh air: "Mierda" is the Spanish for shit. I guess that reflects more on education experience of some people.


----------



## Dewdman42

robgb said:


> After twenty years of using PC rigs, I switched to Mac for a reason and haven't regretted it. I love Melda plugins, but maybe they're simply put off by the fact that Catalina drops 32-bit support. I've been 64-bit for a few years now, so I don't really give a shit.



dropping 32bit is the least of the difficult growing pains ahead, though it will be for some also. I see much bigger problems ahead when they drop kext kernel driver support for good, it’s halfway there in Catalina and they are saying by the next version kext will be completely gone. The read only boot partition is not a terrible idea at all but it will break some things too until everyone conforms to it. And the notarization requirement is I’m pretty sure what most Devs are wrestling with now. In the past if you wanted to sell your app in the App Store it had to meet certain requirements including how it’s built and architected. in mojave they added notarization as an optional feature where even non Apple store apps can be notarized by Apple, which means Apple runs some scans on it looking for code they don’t like. If it passes then the app is signed and notarized. In Catalina that is now mandatory. Now on the surface that might seem simple enough but we don’t know what Apple is scanning for. I would guess Apple scanned melda stuff and decided it was too dangerous to notarize and now he must build his software differently in order to pass their notarization scan.

the controversial part about The notarization requirement is that it’s still possible to overwrite a known binary after it’s installed so the hackers will still find a way in even though Apple is inconveniencing users and developers with more security lockdown.

that being said, ransomware is a horrific problem now and Apple is trying to protect the average consumer just a little more then before and I have to give them kudos for that.


----------



## jcrosby

chocobitz825 said:


> Actually, no I’m trying to resolve an argument but hell, tone on the internet is always easily mistaken.
> 
> Fair enough. I think we’ve all had a lot of back and forth about Windows and Mac. So yeah, getting down to catalina. It’s a fine OS update but I’ll have to try and install more stuff to see how well it works or try and migrate an old backup that had my music production stuff on it to gauge the damage. Still really the problem is not with the user experience of Catalina. As an OS for general use it’s fine. The question is what developers will choose to buck and support it. If they don’t, we Mac users are screwed because the developers deem it not worth upgrading. How much hardware functionality is lost really depends on other users testing their various hardware to see, because no one user can make a claim that covers everyone’s use case. Right now, all I can say is the biggest problem is the lack of notarized installers that make new installs and upgrades impossible.


Definitely hear that... That's really the point of me posting this since initially I wasn't sure if they were considering dropping macos support. If other developers do wind up releasing any statements that'd worry me for sure.

As I said on a previous page, to me it looks like there's total disconnection between departments at Apple.

On one hand the Logic team keep pushing Logic forward, (10.4.5 was the best update to Logic I've seen since adding articulations), on the other hand the OS seems like it's moving in the complete opposite direction... Each version resembling ios more and more... More notifications, more undeletable garbage applications, etc...

Basically Apple's larger vision is that the mac user_ is_ the iOS user; not the mac user may be an ios user, or logic user, or photshop user, etc...

And considering Apple unveiled their most powerful machine yet in June, a machine users have been craving for years now, then pair it with an OS that so far appears to be a thumb in the eye to those craving it... That looks more like Apple being so internally disconnected or mismanaged that they couldn't even ensure Catalina brought some allure to the new machine... So far at least, it looks like there are as many people are out off by it as there are on the fence about it...

Finally, the guy who designed all of Apple's most iconic products just bounced... If I put all of that together it sure looks like something's askew in Cupertino...


----------



## David Kudell

I take almost a full year to upgrade my OS. I barely just upgraded to Mojave. It'll be another year before I upgrade to Catalina.

Nobody needs the latest OS update. Your computer worked just fine before it.


----------



## dgburns

I want the new mac pro. But hot damn, it’s gonna hurt. 

ouch (credit card pain)


----------



## jcrosby

lumcas said:


> You might find this thread very interesting, Apple "language police" suggest mac developers how to communicate Catalina incompatibilities. Not surprising, unfortunately. I'm on a mac platform over 20 years and it makes me sad. Seriously considering jumping the ship at this point...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> KVR Forum: Catalina: Apple turns macOS into a closed platform; many audio-devs warned from the upgrade - DSP and Plug-in Development Forum
> 
> 
> KVR Audio Forum - Catalina: Apple turns macOS into a closed platform; many audio-devs warned from the upgrade - DSP and Plug-in Development Forum
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.kvraudio.com



Wow, thanks for posting this. One more check in the developers ceasing mac development column... (Tone2)


----------



## robgb

dgburns said:


> I want the new mac pro. But hot damn, it’s gonna hurt.
> 
> ouch (credit card pain)


I love Macs, but the new Mac Pro is not even close to being worth 6 grand.


----------



## dzilizzi

David Kudell said:


> I take almost a full year to upgrade my OS. I barely just upgraded to Mojave. It'll be another year before I upgrade to Catalina.
> 
> Nobody needs the latest OS update. Your computer worked just fine before it.


That works as long as you aren't planning on buying a new computer. Or have to buy because you accidentally knocked over your drink on it. Sigh. 

So, I'm wondering how that will work if they are trying to get the Hollywood users but making it difficult for companies to get their products through the process. Though I'm going to guess most of the programs they use are 64 bit, they are probably not newer ones and the equipment may also be older (if it works, why change - and the reason MS is so big on backwards compatibility) Should be interesting to see how it works out for Apple. If they don't sel enough to make it worthwhile, will they drop it?


----------



## chocobitz825

dzilizzi said:


> That works as long as you aren't planning on buying a new computer. Or have to buy because you accidentally knocked over your drink on it. Sigh.
> 
> So, I'm wondering how that will work if they are trying to get the Hollywood users but making it difficult for companies to get their products through the process. Though I'm going to guess most of the programs they use are 64 bit, they are probably not newer ones and the equipment may also be older (if it works, why change - and the reason MS is so big on backwards compatibility) Should be interesting to see how it works out for Apple. If they don't sel enough to make it worthwhile, will they drop it?



I think this is the constant risk they take at apple. They force these changes and the industry has to choose if they want to follow. So this move to 64 bit is another line in the sand. Do we follow or protest for 32 bit?


----------



## dzilizzi

chocobitz825 said:


> I think this is the constant risk they take at apple. They force these changes and the industry has to choose if they want to follow. So this move to 64 bit is another line in the sand. Do we follow or protest for 32 bit?


When Cubase and Studio One started blacklisting 32 bit plugins, I found it didn't bother me much. The main ones that weren't updated were free ones that I really didn't use anymore. Most DAWs come with sufficiently good effects that I don't need the free ones even if I hadn't bought much better ones. I think the kext thing is going to be much worse. I do think they had a bit of a right to complain if Apple dramatically change from the beta without not enough notice. Especially when you have to rewrite everything. I just know I never have had to WUP - well when PT changed to AAX. But it wasn't called WUP then. It was just an upgrade. But I hear Mac users complain regularly. And? I just updated to W10 from 7. I don't see the need to update until you have to unless it adds some great extras. The issue is for anyone wanted to buy one of these new computers.


----------



## Dewdman42

Yea me personally I will be on Mojave until LogicPro says otherwise. I like to have the very latest LogicPro so when Apple finally basically says I need to have some new version of OSX in order to keep up to date with LogicPro, that is when I will consider it. And its not a given that I will choose Mac at that point, but I hope that I can. I'm in the process of learning Cubase now... which might be my future on a PC...but there are a lot of reasons why I really like having OSX unix on my desktop..and I really really don't want to have to go back to windows registry hell...but... we'll just have to wait and see..personally I think its 2-2 years out when the rubber will hit the road.


----------



## artomatic

A Mac user here since Mac IIci in 1990. Since Lion, I've made it a practice to wait a few months before upgrading to the latest OS. This way, I avoid being a beta tester. 
Yes, the mandatory 64 bit requirement is a bit of a bummer for some but I guess it's a move that's inevitable.


----------



## kitekrazy

Dewdman42 said:


> Yea me personally I will be on Mojave until LogicPro says otherwise. I like to have the very latest LogicPro so when Apple finally basically says I need to have some new version of OSX in order to keep up to date with LogicPro, that is when I will consider it. And its not a given that I will choose Mac at that point, but I hope that I can. I'm in the process of learning Cubase now... which might be my future on a PC...but there are a lot of reasons why I really like having OSX unix on my desktop..and I really really don't want to have to go back to windows registry hell...but... we'll just have to wait and see..personally I think its 2-2 years out when the rubber will hit the road.



As I said before no one is safe from the (d)evolving OS. Windows 10 users fear what the latest upgrade will break. Most of the time for me it screws up my home network, shared drives, ect. I'd rather go back to buying an OS upgrade with some service packs. When you give an OS upgrade for free I doubt you have your most competent developers working on it. System Restore and True Image have been my best friends of late.


----------



## Alex Fraser

Lots of unnecessary hand wringing in this thread. First up, Catalina is as powerful (or even more so) than any previous version of Mac OS. Apple isn’t dumbing down the software - it’s more akin to a giant houseclean with an eye on the future. 

Give it a few months and all our favourite companies will have found solutions to the new technical hurdles. There might be some fringe cases, sure, but the Mac music market is way too large for anyone to abandon on principle.

To get the best handle on what’s happening with Catalina, IMO the specialist Mac sites are a better bet. The general tech sites are playing “Catalina is broken” for clicks.


----------



## chocobitz825

Alex Fraser said:


> Lots of unnecessary hand wringing in this thread. First up, Catalina is as powerful (or even more so) than any previous version of Mac OS. Apple isn’t dumbing down the software - it’s more akin to a giant houseclean with an eye on the future.
> 
> Give it a few months and all our favourite companies will have found solutions to the new technical hurdles. There might be some fringe cases, sure, but the Mac music market is way too large for anyone to abandon on principle.
> 
> To get the best handle on what’s happening with Catalina, IMO the specialist Mac sites are a better bet. The general tech sites are playing “Catalina is broken” for clicks.



Catalina runs great. If you’re lucky to not lose much of your normal plugins, there’s really nothing to regret. It’s fast, and has great new features. Has me considering using 2016 MacBook again.


----------



## jcrosby

chocobitz825 said:


> I think this is the constant risk they take at apple. They force these changes and the industry has to choose if they want to follow. So this move to 64 bit is another line in the sand. Do we follow or protest for 32 bit?


I don't use 32 bit plugins anymore either. There are a few other apps I use like translator, but Translator's never worked properly anyway so I avoid it as often as possible...

The problem is that there many many hardware devices that rely on 32 bit code to interface with macos in the form of drivers, console software, etc... Although many will be updated many won't... It's the casualness Apple's willing to break working hardware by dropping kernel extensions that concerns me.

Also if you read the thread someone linked from the Tone2 developer who explained notarization, (and just stopped developing for mac as of Catalina); just because something works now doesn't mean it will work in the very near future for a couple reasons...

Most importantly he states that Apple has flagged OpenGL as officially *deprecated* in Catalina. He then says _"A massive number of plugins rely on OpenGL... Especially those with a resizble GUI._"
(See *point 7 *in the excerpt below...)

And... Apparently Apple lifted the notarization requirement temporarily, but as Catalina updates it will be put back in place, meaning there are plugins that may appear to be fine currently, but won't show up as incompatible until Apple re-imposes notarization in a Catalina update. (See *point 5* below.)

And...* Point 8 *isn't a huge deal but it is a nuisance... I'm also assuming this means the '_shell script hack_' he describes will no longer work in 10.15 since this sounds exactly like the kind of script that Apple won't allow in notarization... And yet... plugin validation is still broken inside the OS... Apple hasn't been great about fixing bugs as of late.

_*"Facts about Catalina:*


1) Apple did drop 32 bit support. All 32 bit plugins and every other 32 bit software has stopped working. It is also not longer possible to use a bit-bridge.

2) Old song projects which use 32 old bit plugins can not longer be loaded.

3) With Catalina Apple introduced 'software notarisation'. Apple advertises that this technology should enhance security, however it is easy to bypass for hackers.

4) By default *it is now not longer possible to install older software which is not notarized or signed*

5) *Existing software, especially plugins which are not code-signed and are currently still working because of a 'grace period' might soon stop working. It is currently unknown when this grace period will end.

6) *With Catalina MacOS is not longer an open platform. The notarisation gives Apple the complete control over all software which is running on their systems. If they do not like a developer or product they can simply discontinue the development contract (costs $99 per year) and the developer is not longer able to distribute software on this platform.


Further facts:

7) *Apple tagged OpenGL as 'deprecated'* and introduced 'Metal'. *A massive number of plugins (espcially those with a resizeable GUI) use it*. *It is currently unknown when OpenGL will be dropped completely and the plugins will stop to operate.*

8.) *The Audiounit validation is buggy since several years now. It is not been fixed by Apple. As a result plugins are not detected by Logic.* The user first has to reboot the computer or the developer has to include a hack (a shell script which forces a restart of the validator) to the installer."_


----------



## SupremeFist

As a long-time Mac user I'm less bothered about the under the hood changes in Catalina (the big audio devs will work with it) than I am about the fact that Catalina really offers nothing new/exciting to me as a Mac user, and is more a way of upselling iPhone owners to the Mac platform. (I loathe iOS and use Android phones.) 

Realistically too, the audio side of things is small beans for Apple. On the other hand they lost a HUGE segment of the video market overnight when they first released the dumbed-down Final Cut Pro X. So the new Mac Pro is aimed at taking back that market share, and it's just a nice side-effect for us that they're saying oh yeah hey this will also be good for audio (viz, updating Logic to allow for 1,000 audio tracks).


----------



## ManicMiner

My opinion is that Melda might be responding to a lot of support calls from people who are finding their plugins are not working well under Catalina, and that means time and money spent on updating their plugins (of which there are numerous).
So it may be just someone at Melda who is frustrated at this and blowing off steam.
Thats my guess anyway.


----------



## sourcefor

Keep in mind that Logic only costs $199 and while windows computers maybe cheaper they charge for OS upgrades where Apple does NOT! I haven't paid for a logic upgrade EVER! Look, I have been a bit disillusioned by APPLE as of late but I know Logic better than other software and it just seems easier to use than most so it's hard to switch! I say just use what you need to use APPLES or Oranges (no pun intended)! And I hate that they keep changing things like the phone, the laptop ports , etc. But until people put a dent in their (APPLE's)bottom line it will remain the same! Horses for courses!


----------



## Monkey Man

jcrosby said:


> _*"Facts about Catalina:*
> 
> 
> 2) Old song projects which use 32 old bit plugins can not longer be loaded._


Surely the projects themselves would still be loaded, but sans the plugins in question, which shouldn't even be present in a Catalina installation?

If not, this'd be a disaster for me and many others. I'd have to go through hundreds of unfinished projects on my old machine before buying a new cheese grater (and selling the old one - money is tight), remove the plugins I anticipate not working in Catalina (no margin for error here either), resave them and hope to Hell they load once I've upgraded my machine with no ability to go back and resave songs that still won't load.

I'd have thought that a DAW would simply load a project and skip plugins the OS won't allow it to read. Also, if plugins that have issues aren't installed, which, if they're 32-bit you'd expect that they won't be, why wouldn't a project load - the "dud" plugins aren't even there, and unless I'm mistaken, the projects themselves would only contain parameter data for the plugins, not the plugins themselves.

Some clarification on whether or not old projects will load will be greatly appreciated, guys and gals. Thank you!


----------



## Living Fossil

gsilbers said:


> true. we all know you dont need shiny stuff. you just need 90s era graphics and thats good enough. even if you cant tell whats where.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So Melda means shit in spanish btw.



Seriously? You want to go the "Melda is shit" route by posting some screenshots out of context???
The Melda plug ins have a learning curve that requires the ability to read and understand some basic instructions (that are given inside of the plug in). And you have to figure out that in order to edit the settings you have to go for the "edit" menu. With an IQ above 85 it's no big deal.

The owner of Melda is kind of eccentric for sure, but
1) he does fantastic plug ins
2) he has the guts to speak out his concerns.

That's kind of important.
Personally, i don't want to leave the Apple route.
But i think if developers communicate their concerns , it's a good thing, because it may have an effect on decisions of companies which finally leads to compromises that are beneficial for us users.
Having the backbone to speak out frankly may be an antiquated concept, but I'm glad if there are people who do so.


----------



## Dewdman42

jcrosby said:


> Most importantly he states that Apple has flagged OpenGL as officially *deprecated* in Catalina. He then says _"A massive number of plugins rely on OpenGL... Especially those with a resizble GUI._"
> (See *point 7 *in the excerpt below...)



This too? Wow. Are you sure its going to be completely gone or is it just that OSX will not be using it, but apps could continue using it if they want? I would guess the latter.



> And... Apparently Apple lifted the notarization requirement temporarily, but as Catalina updates it will be put back in place



Yes I read that somewhere too.




> And...* Point 8 *isn't a huge deal but it is a nuisance... I'm also assuming this means the '_shell script hack_' he describes will no longer work


does anyone know what the shell script hack is to reset things so that new installed plugins will show up without reboot?


----------



## ProfoundSilence

apple thinks Open GL is dated? Ohh my....


----------



## jcrosby

Monkey Man said:


> Surely the projects themselves would still be loaded, but sans the plugins in question, which shouldn't even be present in a Catalina installation?
> 
> If not, this'd be a disaster for me and many others. I'd have to go through hundreds of unfinished projects on my old machine before buying a new cheese grater (and selling the old one - money is tight), remove the plugins I anticipate not working in Catalina (no margin for error here either), resave them and hope to Hell they load once I've upgraded my machine with no ability to go back and resave songs that still won't load.
> 
> I'd have thought that a DAW would simply load a project and skip plugins the OS won't allow it to read. Also, if plugins that have issues aren't installed, which, if they're 32-bit you'd expect that they won't be, why wouldn't a project load - the "dud" plugins aren't even there, and unless I'm mistaken, the projects themselves would only contain parameter data for the plugins, not the plugins themselves.
> 
> Some clarification on whether or not old projects will load will be greatly appreciated, guys and gals. Thank you!


I'm assuming it's just plugins not loading but don't know for sure...


----------



## jcrosby

Dewdman42 said:


> does anyone know what the shell script hack is to reset things so that new installed plugins will show up without reboot?


I think he means a script deployed in the installer, but I did read somewhere you can force a refresh of the AU cache. Not sure how to do it but pretty sure I bookmarked this recently.. If I find the bookmark I'll post..


----------



## Olfirf

Living Fossil said:


> Seriously? You want to go the "Melda is shit" route by posting some screenshots out of context???
> The Melda plug ins have a learning curve that requires the ability to read and understand some basic instructions (that are given inside of the plug in). And you have to figure out that in order to edit the settings you have to go for the "edit" menu. With an IQ above 85 it's no big deal.
> 
> The owner of Melda is kind of eccentric for sure, but
> 1) he does fantastic plug ins
> 2) he has the guts to speak out his concerns.
> 
> That's kind of important.
> Personally, i don't want to leave the Apple route.
> But i think if developers communicate their concerns , it's a good thing, because it may have an effect on decisions of companies which finally leads to compromises that are beneficial for us users.
> Having the backbone to speak out frankly may be an antiquated concept, but I'm glad if there are people who do so.


Exactly! The way I see it, this developer tells you this: I can use the time I have on improving my plugins to make them greater, but if Apple chooses to again and again change its game, there is only so much time left for me to really improve anything. Microsoft just doesn't do that nearly as often and that is why I prefer to develop for Windows 10.
Nothing to say against innovation and at some time, I suppose, it is necessary to force all developers to do the next step. A good example for that would be the lack of plugins that would make VST3 versions available. But these leaps have to be cautiously planned and changing up the game almost every year surely is gonna piss off developers, rightfully so!
So, not changing up everything without taking the work of the developers into consideration is certainly not in our interest, as well. It might not be as obvious, but with the necessary brains I am sure every one here will be able to see that ...
It will show in either a lack of innovation of existing plugins or increasing prices of upgrades and sales. The money for all of those adaptions to the next OS has to come from somewhere ...
I am still on macOS myself and I am not yet so far to leave it, as I surely see some reasons to prefer it over Windows. But I would never defend its reputation despite the company obviously acting against my interest! Sorry for bringing up the annoying word, but that is what fan boys do ...


----------



## gsilbers

Living Fossil said:


> Seriously? You want to go the "Melda is shit" route by posting some screenshots out of context???
> The Melda plug ins have a learning curve that requires the ability to read and understand some basic instructions (that are given inside of the plug in). And you have to figure out that in order to edit the settings you have to go for the "edit" menu. With an IQ above 85 it's no big deal.
> 
> The owner of Melda is kind of eccentric for sure, but
> 1) he does fantastic plug ins
> 2) he has the guts to speak out his concerns.
> 
> That's kind of important.
> Personally, i don't want to leave the Apple route.
> But i think if developers communicate their concerns , it's a good thing, because it may have an effect on decisions of companies which finally leads to compromises that are beneficial for us users.
> Having the backbone to speak out frankly may be an antiquated concept, but I'm glad if there are people who do so.



oh don’t get me wrong on my jokes.

I like Melda plugins but hate the look still use em all the time .
And I hate how big tech is forcing us to have to adapt to them cuz there is no competition or lack of will on consumer demand. Or lack of government oversight, which is slowly coming.


----------



## gsilbers

Monkey Man said:


> Surely the projects themselves would still be loaded, but sans the plugins in question, which shouldn't even be present in a Catalina installation?
> 
> If not, this'd be a disaster for me and many others. I'd have to go through hundreds of unfinished projects on my old machine before buying a new cheese grater (and selling the old one - money is tight), remove the plugins I anticipate not working in Catalina (no margin for error here either), resave them and hope to Hell they load once I've upgraded my machine with no ability to go back and resave songs that still won't load.
> 
> I'd have thought that a DAW would simply load a project and skip plugins the OS won't allow it to read. Also, if plugins that have issues aren't installed, which, if they're 32-bit you'd expect that they won't be, why wouldn't a project load - the "dud" plugins aren't even there, and unless I'm mistaken, the projects themselves would only contain parameter data for the plugins, not the plugins themselves.
> 
> Some clarification on whether or not old projects will load will be greatly appreciated, guys and gals. Thank you!



Seems w apple it happens every few years. One of the Logic updates didn’t let me load old project. No reason, just says cannotnopen project. Couldn’t figure it out. Same was on the universal binary days and I’m guessing a transition to full 64 bit will be the same. Catalina might be a few years away for most and while we wait slowly many developers will catch up, come up with new products and one day say: you need Catalina and up to use this update/new product. And we will have to obey or be left behind.. or switch to oddly enough, more stable platform loke windows


----------



## Drundfunk

charlieclouser said:


> If I hadn't found a quickie on Craigslist I'd have gone to the Apple store seven miles down the road and paid full pop, but they don't have any cylinders physically in the store because they're reducing stock on hand in anticipation of the Cheese Greater's arrival. I could have grabbed a Mac Mini there, which would work fine as well, but it's always simpler and easier for me to just have a duplicate of the same machine that's already in use for that same purpose somewhere in the building.
> 
> There's also a place called usedmac.com that is actually based near me, and they have stacks of machines and parts going all the way back to G4 towers ready to go, but it's a little further away and they really prefer to ship as opposed to serving walk-in customers. They want a few hundred more than Craigslist dude wanted, but still a 6-core is only around $2k from them. They've got Mac Pro 5.1 towers with the 3.46 CPU upgrade at around $1,200 for those that want to stay with the silver boxes though.
> 
> I also know a couple guys who flip macs as a side hustle near me (found them when I wanted exact duplicates of my old 12-core silver towers), but on a whim I thought I'd just check Craigslist first and boom - found one just down the road.
> 
> It was nice to find a machine nearby, since it was closer and quicker than any of the other options. As soon as the tracking session was over it became a little superfluous, although it is handy having another "floater" machine that isn't already allocated to some mission-critical purpose I guess. I suppose I could always re-flip it.


Thanks Charlie. Really interesting. LA seems to have a good infrastructure for this kind of stuff. Well being a megacity probably helps a lot.


----------



## dzilizzi

Monkey Man said:


> Surely the projects themselves would still be loaded, but sans the plugins in question, which shouldn't even be present in a Catalina installation?
> 
> If not, this'd be a disaster for me and many others. I'd have to go through hundreds of unfinished projects on my old machine before buying a new cheese grater (and selling the old one - money is tight), remove the plugins I anticipate not working in Catalina (no margin for error here either), resave them and hope to Hell they load once I've upgraded my machine with no ability to go back and resave songs that still won't load.
> 
> I'd have thought that a DAW would simply load a project and skip plugins the OS won't allow it to read. Also, if plugins that have issues aren't installed, which, if they're 32-bit you'd expect that they won't be, why wouldn't a project load - the "dud" plugins aren't even there, and unless I'm mistaken, the projects themselves would only contain parameter data for the plugins, not the plugins themselves.
> 
> Some clarification on whether or not old projects will load will be greatly appreciated, guys and gals. Thank you!


Could depend on your DAW. Some crash if there are too many errors loading. Others just disable the plugins. The big problem might be if it was created in a 32 bit DAW, not so much if you were using 32 bit plugs. This came up in a discussion about using subscription services and probably should apply to Apple users as well with lack of backwards compatibility. Always bounce stems when you finish/are happy with tracks. Its easier to port them to a new DAW/computer if you do. I wish I had done it a long time ago.


----------



## Sarah Mancuso

Apple's official deprecation of OpenGL comes after many years of not updating their extremely outdated implementation of it, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it disappear entirely at some point.


----------



## EvilDragon

I wonder if Catalina will actually be the final nail in the coffin for Kore 2 users on Mac. Disabling SIP still allows Kore 2 to be properly installed along with its driver and everything even on Mojave. However I'm not sure if the driver (which would be a kext) is 32-bit or 64-bit. If it's 32-bit...


Meanwhile... Kore 2 still plods along perfectly fine over here on W10. And I'm pretty convinced it'll continue to do so for a long time to come.


----------



## chillbot

EvilDragon said:


> Why should people suddenly stop using their 10+ years old RME interfaces that still work perfectly fine?


Oh man my three MOTU 2408s are getting up near almost twice that old. Think I just had to swap out the original PCI card for a PCIe card about 15 years ago. Knock on wood!


----------



## Dewdman42

the kext thing next year is going to tick off a lot of people imho.

they are trying to sandbox the Mac like an iPad. To me that is dumbing down the device. Not good for sophisticated power users. We shall see how it all plays out over the next couple years.


----------



## gsilbers

Dewdman42 said:


> dropping 32bit is the least of the difficult growing pains ahead, though it will be for some also. I see much bigger problems ahead when they drop kext kernel driver support for good, it’s halfway there in Catalina and they are saying by the next version kext will be completely gone. The read only boot partition is not a terrible idea at all but it will break some things too until everyone conforms to it. And the notarization requirement is I’m pretty sure what most Devs are wrestling with now. In the past if you wanted to sell your app in the App Store it had to meet certain requirements including how it’s built and architected. in mojave they added notarization as an optional feature where even non Apple store apps can be notarized by Apple, which means Apple runs some scans on it looking for code they don’t like. If it passes then the app is signed and notarized. In Catalina that is now mandatory. Now on the surface that might seem simple enough but we don’t know what Apple is scanning for. I would guess Apple scanned melda stuff and decided it was too dangerous to notarize and now he must build his software differently in order to pass their notarization scan.
> 
> the controversial part about The notarization requirement is that it’s still possible to overwrite a known binary after it’s installed so the hackers will still find a way in even though Apple is inconveniencing users and developers with more security lockdown.
> 
> that being said, ransomware is a horrific problem now and Apple is trying to protect the average consumer just a little more then before and I have to give them kudos for that.




the security thing has always been a double edge sword since ever. just look at chinas policies. or the new real Id in the us. anytime the argument is more security there is aways a potencial for abuse or a side reason not being said which might not be so bad for many. ask any chinese person about censorship and they coudnt care less cuz there is ton of work and billions have risen from poverty. except for that dude infront of the tanks.. he's screwed. same with these imo, more security but at the same time it means developers have to use the $99 annual developers fee (maybe). or slowly move all apps to its store for securoty. which makes sense, less risk of virus from a bad app somewhere, but at the same time, its been ok so far without it so suddenly is an issue now that iphones sales have come down and apple pushing into services to get that $$$. 
so i dont blame developers being pissed, we are kinda stuck with apple as consumers as well. they decided to go intel from powerpc and we had to endure and had little option. same arguemnt in general with tech. specially that crap that NI pulled with the AVX for better performance on massive x.. that crap is bs imo cuz much powerful synths dont need it. but most poeple are in windows anyways so it doesnt affect most.


----------



## charlieclouser

Drundfunk said:


> Thanks Charlie. Really interesting. LA seems to have a good infrastructure for this kind of stuff. Well being a megacity probably helps a lot.



Yes, LA is crazy that way. There's just so many entertainment and creative industry studios, companies, and freelancers here that there's always a ton of the gear we use changing hands, along with the various support services like people who buy and sell used computers, install acoustic treatment in home studios, etc. 

With around 35 million people between San Diego and Santa Barbara, southern California has nearly the same population as Australia (!!!), but it's so spread out that there's very few areas that feel like "the city" in the way that New York City does.


----------



## jmauz

Ah what a wonderful topic for the keyboard jockeys to get into the weeds...thanks for the light reading, I needed a break from work.

FWIW, I recently went from a hybrid setup to all MacOS. Why? I was tired of dealing with usability annoyances that comes with Windblows. MacOS is just easier to use, period. And this is coming from a guy who spent a decade as a Windblow user before switching to MacOS. 

Keep in mind I build all of my hardware and I can get MacOS (yes, including Catalina) to work easily with my involved configurations. In fact, every iteration of MacOS makes Hackintoshing easier. 

Ok back to work. Happy gardening!


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Okay, here's the opinion everyone has been waiting ten pages for.

1. Catalina isn't even a nice tourist destination. If I need to run Catalina-only software one day next century, I'll put it on a new machine. In the meantime I can spend all the money I'd have had to spend updating 32-bit software on really good drugs that will put me in a delirious state in which I feel like I have to waste money updating everything.

2. Advertisers don't like people my age because we supposedly don't switch brands. Well, I don't care what brand of shaving cream or soap or shampoo I use. But while I like my Windows sample slaves, I like working on Macs a lot more, i.e. I'm set in my ways when it comes to having worked on them literally all day long for 34 years.

Furthermore, I've never had an issue on a Mac that I couldn't recover from, while I have had issues on Windows that even genuine experts couldn't help me figure out.

Ergo I'm not really interested in what *any* company feels about platforms.

Okay, gotta go buy a tent to set up on the sidewalk outside the Apple Store to be first in line for the 2020 iPhone XZ Extreme Pro Deluxe With 5G.


----------



## ProfoundSilence

gsilbers said:


> I hate how big tech is forcing us to have to adapt to them cuz there is no competition or lack of will on consumer demand. Or lack of government oversight, which is slowly coming.



because the government is less big and less less competition? a national government is by definition a monopoly

1 *: *exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action 
2 *: *exclusive possession or control
3 *: *a commodity controlled by one party 

although it arguably doesn't really fit the 3rd version well due to the fact that there aren't many countries viewing this forum that suffer from an actual dictatorship of any kind. The term party is not being used in the context of political "parties". 

this thread is an example of the market doing what market does best, which is when Mac does something bad, windows gets more market share. When Windows does something bad, apple gets more market share. The worse the both get - the more appealing 3rd party Linux distros become. Quite resembles US politics, coincidently.


----------



## chocobitz825

ProfoundSilence said:


> because the government is less big and less less competition? a national government is by definition a monopoly
> 
> 1 *: *exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action
> 2 *: *exclusive possession or control
> 3 *: *a commodity controlled by one party
> 
> although it arguably doesn't really fit the 3rd version well due to the fact that there aren't many countries viewing this forum that suffer from an actual dictatorship of any kind. The term party is not being used in the context of political "parties".
> 
> this thread is an example of the market doing what market does best, which is when Mac does something bad, windows gets more market share. When Windows does something bad, apple gets more market share. The worse the both get - the more appealing 3rd party Linux distros become. Quite resembles US politics, coincidently.



If only someone would spearhead an OS package aimed primarily at music production. None of the unnecessary stuff. Just a beast made for making music.


----------



## Dewdman42

its been attempted in the past, but never got anywhere. There is just way too much work involved in building and supporting an operating system to have one that focused on one user group. For example BeOS.


----------



## ProfoundSilence

chocobitz825 said:


> If only someone would spearhead an OS package aimed primarily at music production. None of the unnecessary stuff. Just a beast made for making music.


then it would have to run on PC


----------



## Quasar

Someday the music content creators of the world will decide "enough is enough" in terms of Apple's lack of repairability and upgradablity, their obscene prices and their predatory obsolescence. Artists and engineers will revolt en masse, abandoning the platform...

... Then the Apple execs will realize, realize that this made such an imperceptible impact on their profit margins that it's not even worth noticing.


----------



## chocobitz825

ProfoundSilence said:


> then it would have to run on PC



If it provided the equivalent experience I get from Mac, I’d switch without hesitation. Honestly I wish DAW developers had incentive to make optimized rigs. Something portable enough with an OS experience built around the DAW. It’s a loose dream that doesn’t really fit everyone’s use case, but it’d be great to just have everything work how you need.


----------



## danbo

FWIW I'm a software engineer who has been professionally working on UNIX, Win and Mac for 25 years (Mac for 15). 

For development Linux used to be the king decades ago, but was overtaken by Windows for the last 10 or 15 years. *Mac development was always a PITA*, so that's nothing new. Well not entirely, being POSIX (UNIX compatible) made it wonderful to work in for many reasons (like Linux), but the Apple development doesn't compare to others, with it's inversion of control and toolchain. 

As a user Mac's have always won. 

Anyhow I've been forced to slowly move off the Mac platform, which used to be my system of choice. Apple is so successful they just don't care anymore, between hardware that is even more specialized and priced to the sky, to inventing everything in house (like going Metal instead of OpenGL/CL). Anyhow, my mac usage has shrunk to a little island of just Logic. I hated to do it but they forced it on me - *death by a thousand cuts*. Everything else now is on other platforms (3D modeling is Linux/Blender, development is all Windows). My Macs - a 2009 Pro and a 2013 cylinder I paid too much for, have got to last me. When they die I'll switch to Windows on some other DAW, which I hate to do, unless in the unlikely event that Apple has an attitude change.


----------



## stonzthro

charlieclouser said:


> With around 35 million people between San Diego and Santa Barbara, southern California has nearly the same population as Australia (!!!), but it's so spread out that there's very few areas that feel like "the city" in the way that New York City does.



Always love your comments Charlie, but I have to point out that the total population of CA is about 36 million, with SoCal weighing in between 22-24 million - still a sizable group of people!

Maybe I missed it, but the article didn't seem to give any solid reasons as to why one should abandon Mac and Catalina other than the aged "You'll get a more powerful computer" argument. Did it say something like "Audio software will run worse than ever on Catalina because of some code blockers", or "Apple is limiting code options and no one is interested in developing for Mac users anymore"? Seems like more of an opinion piece sans demonstrative evidence. Please correct if I missed anything!


----------



## charlieclouser

Oops. Slipped a digit. Australia = 25 million, Cali = 36 million, SoCal = 24 million. Ish.


----------



## jononotbono

Alex Fraser said:


> Sure, but what percentage of the Mac user base will be using one?



Have no idea about official figures but the studio I work at are ordering many of them on day of release. I suspect many professionals around the world will be ordering them. I personally can't wait to use one!


----------



## dflood

Well, if it comes down to a choice between Melda and Mac, I think I’ll stick with Mac. Lots of other apps have declared themselves Catalina compatible, well in advance of the release. Did they have some inside knowledge or did they just respect their Mac customers more than say, Native Instruments, which is consistently months late in declaring compatibility every bloody year? Even my quirky unicorn programs like Band-in-a Box managed to get a Catalina compatible update out before the release. I’m not aware of the technical details, and Apple may well have screwed some developers at the last minute, but if it’s just the 32-bit thing, this has been known for years.

That said, I’ll be waiting quite a while before updating, at least until NI eventually gives the all-clear. I’m also going to take some time to bid a proper farewell to some old 32 bit apps that have been mostly taking up space. If their developers haven’t offered a 64 bit update by now, I guess it’s the end of the line for us.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

ProfoundSilence said:


> because the government is less big and less less competition? a national government is by definition a monopoly
> 
> 1 *: *exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action
> 2 *: *exclusive possession or control
> 3 *: *a commodity controlled by one party
> 
> although it arguably doesn't really fit the 3rd version well due to the fact that there aren't many countries viewing this forum that suffer from an actual dictatorship of any kind. The term party is not being used in the context of political "parties".
> 
> this thread is an example of the market doing what market does best, which is when Mac does something bad, windows gets more market share. When Windows does something bad, apple gets more market share. The worse the both get - the more appealing 3rd party Linux distros become. Quite resembles US politics, coincidently.



No.

If you want to have a discussion about *patents*, which are government-granted monopolies (do a search for "Dean Baker patent monopoly" and you'll get a good explanation), that's another matter - and one for the OT Politics section.

But a government is not a monopoly and a computer is not an ideology. This is no more an analogy for US politics than my toilet is an analogy for a dot matrix printer.


----------



## chocobitz825

dflood said:


> Well, if it comes down to a choice between Melda and Mac, I think I’ll stick with Mac. Lots of other apps have declared themselves Catalina compatible, well in advance of the release. Did they have some inside knowledge or did they just respect their Mac customers more than say, Native Instruments, which is consistently months late in declaring compatibility every bloody year? Even my quirky unicorn programs like Band-in-a Box managed to get a Catalina compatible update out before the release. I’m not aware of the technical details, and Apple may well have screwed some developers at the last minute, but if it’s just the 32-bit thing, this has been known for years.
> 
> That said, I’ll be waiting quite a while before updating, at least until NI eventually gives the all-clear. I’m also going to take some time to bid a proper farewell to some old 32 bit apps that have been mostly taking up space. If their developers haven’t offered a 64 bit update by now, I guess it’s the end of the line for us.



I used to work for a company that ran its entire operation off of some proprietary software that it had used for 10+ years. Over the years, different programmers and teams had just been piling up code and adding things to fix bugs or add new features, but it was such a mess that it became complicated to do any drastic changes without breaking the software. then the idea of updating and building a new system from scratch became too time-consuming and expensive to be considered, so the company's innovation suffered and customers had to suffer through a patchwork system throttled by their lack of organization in development. I have to wonder if similar is happening here. 

I've been able to install a lot of izotope on Catalina. I was able to install BIAS AMP 2, but not BIAS FX or PEDAL, and some IK Multimedia things but not all. I wonder if some of these programs were done by different programmers and teams in different ways that are not all compatible with the new requirements of Catalina, and if that's what's contributing to the chaos for some developers. Its no doubt a mess if you have to go through your catalog and find out which programs are compliant and which aren't.


----------



## mscp

There is a dogma behind computer choices. That’s the fact. Even AVID has a list of PCs they suggest buying in case you don’t want to spend 30/45 mins building one. I am one who has become so frustrated with Macs and their latest OSs that moved on to Windows and been happier since - except for the UI (still fugly). But of course the dogma will exist unless Apple really derails hard and forces even the die-hard deniers to consider alternatives.

Nonsensical arguments include pricing, ease of finding parts, assembly complexity, crashing, antivirus, and firewall issues. My windows is online all the time and I don’t have any third party antivirus installed. I also don’t go to dodgy sites and neither should those who use Macs. I only turn the wifi off when I need to use VEP.

One word: Dogma.


----------



## ProfoundSilence

Nick Batzdorf said:


> my toilet is an analogy for a dot matrix printer.


Certain foods cause me to create similar sounds at the toilet to be fair


----------



## dzilizzi

I think it's the having to rewrite from scratch some of these programs that is annoying them. And I think it is probably harder on the one or two man operations where they basically lose money rewriting this stuff. And it may not be Catalina that is so much the problem but that even if they rewrite it for Catalina, if the use OpenGL, they are going to have to rewrite it again for the next upgrade. You know. Next year. 

It's funny because the only big Apple fan in my family is my sister. And all she does is surf the web, write emails, listen to music and watch movies with her computer. I guess I don't get why they need to change the OS so much every year that developers have to fix their programs? I think of them more as a hardware company, I guess. From the user perspective, it doesn't really seem to have changed much. (Not talking Logic of course)


----------



## mscp

dzilizzi said:


> I guess I don't get why they need to change the OS so much every year that developers have to fix their programs?



think headphone jack, magsafe, etc... your answer lies there - transpose it to the software realm.


----------



## MisteR

Mac user since 128k dumb system. I usually wait a good year before updating, sometimes I skip a version. I'm fine with High Sierra for now. It bricked my nice Canon scanner. After a little research, turns out Canon and Epson can't be expected to update drivers with only two or three people on staff. Things are really hard for them. And, you know, no one in the graphics industry uses macs so why should they bother? So I hauled my old cheese grater up from the damp dusty basment where it's been sitting for five years and set up a scan station. Booted right up. Did some scanning. Man that thing is loud. Anywho. Looking forward to the native Ipad sync thingy in Catalina.


----------



## InLight-Tone

I'm a recent Mac convert, (this year), after having used Windows since it began, and flirted heavily with Linux as well wanting to change the corruption in the world by myself (wasted LIFE). I have come to the conclusion to MANY of the points in this well written article as to my experiences of Windows VS Mac. I don't care what they cost, the OS is worth every penny IMO. Can't wait for the Pro:

Why I Hate Windows...


----------



## Dewdman42

dzilizzi said:


> I think it's the having to rewrite from scratch some of these programs that is annoying them. And I think it is probably harder on the one or two man operations where they basically lose money rewriting this stuff. And it may not be Catalina that is so much the problem but that even if they rewrite it for Catalina, if the use OpenGL, they are going to have to rewrite it again for the next upgrade. You know. Next year.



Extremely costly for them. Actually to us, because in order to pay for their time to do that they are going to have to come out with an update to their software that has less new features for the same price. So we pay for it ultimately.



> It's funny because the only big Apple fan in my family is my sister. And all she does is surf the web, write emails, listen to music and watch movies with her computer. I guess I don't get why they need to change the OS so much every year that developers have to fix their programs? I think of them more as a hardware company, I guess. From the user perspective, it doesn't really seem to have changed much. (Not talking Logic of course)



I personally don't think Apple needs to handle it the way they do, there are lots of other ways to bring out innovative new capabilities without having to always cut the legs out from under everyone using the old stuff before. This is a pattern with Apple though going back decades. They feel entitled to do so, and they will continue to do so. It was one thing when it was Steve Jobs pushing some ingenious innovative new thing out there, but those days are gone.

As to why the new changes.. Well I personally think they are doing away with KEXT so that they can absolutely control everything that we are running on our mac. Why would they want to do that? Because they want to sell us services, content, and want to control the pipeline absolutely. Also the elimination of KEXT is quite likely to end a lot of hackintosh use in my opinion. There will be a few motherboards that don't need custom KEXT hacks and may keep working for a while, but many existing hackintoshes will stop working completely, and the ones that do work...it will be that much easier for Apple to plug those holes. Like for one thing its quite likely my 5,1 MacPro, which as of now can do a hack install of Catalina if desired, may not be able to run Catalina and beyond completely without KEXT hacks. So the 5,1 really will be deprecated and much more difficult to hack around it. I don't want to say impossible, almost nothing is impossible but if it gets hard enough to hack, then people won't bother anymore.

Apple can much more easily plug those kinds of holes when the boot partition is read only and custom KEXT's don't work. They are most definitely going to be locking down on that. That's why they are doing it. They aren't going to make your sister's life any easier whatsoever. Hopefully the vast majority of people in her shoes won't really miss anything either though... She'll never know the difference between a KEXT based driver and the new systems extension API.

The notarization API will help protect her from getting ransomware


----------



## chocobitz825

Dewdman42 said:


> Extremely costly for them. Actually to us, because in order to pay for their time to do that they are going to have to come out with an update to their software that has less new features for the same price. So we pay for it ultimately.
> 
> 
> 
> I personally don't think Apple needs to handle it the way they do, there are lots of other ways to bring out innovative new capabilities without having to always cut the legs out from under everyone using the old stuff before. This is a pattern with Apple though going back decades. They feel entitled to do so, and they will continue to do so.
> 
> As to why the new changes.. Well I personally think they are doing away with KEXT so that they can absolutely control everything that we are running on our mac. Why would they want to do that? Because they want to sell us services, content, and want to control the pipeline absolutely. Also the elimination of KEXT is quite likely to end a lot of hackintosh use in my opinion. There will be a few motherboards that don't need custom KEXT hacks and may keep working for a while, but many existing hackintoshes will stop working completely, and the ones that do work...it will be that much easier for Apple to plug those holes. Like for one thing its quite likely my 5,1 MacPro, which as of now can do a hack install of Catalina if desired, may not be able to run Catalina and beyond completely without KEXT hacks. So the 5,1 really will be deprecated and much more difficult to hack around it. I don't want to say impossible, almost nothing is impossible but if it gets hard enough to hack, then people won't bother anymore.
> 
> Apple can much more easily plug those kinds of holes when the boot partition is read only and custom KEXT's don't work. They are most definitely going to be locking down on that. That's why they are doing it. They aren't going to make your sister's life any easier whatsoever. Hopefully the vast majority of people in her shoes won't really miss anything either though... She'll never know the difference between a KEXT based driver and the new systems extension API.
> 
> The notarization API will help protect her from getting ransomware



I wonder how many (if at all a factor) of the new productivity/connectivity/continuity features are factors in the need for increased security.


----------



## Dewdman42

The new productivity features have nothing to do with what is aggravating Melda and causing most of my software programs to send me emails telling me not to upgrade to Catalina yet.


----------



## dzilizzi

It is always very annoying to me that Apple seems to not want me to change to it. I was thinking of getting a MacBook Pro about 3 or 4 years ago when I started having extra spending money. Logic looked interesting. Was going to even pay the crazy prices. But that was when I found they were soldering the SSD to the motherboard, they cut back the number of USB/thunderbolt ports, and a thunderbolt hub was almost impossible to find for under $100. The fact I can't change out my drive really bothers me. I can live with not being able to upgrade the CPU or RAM. 

So, reading a lot of these discussions made me decide to look into a turning my two year old self-built computer into a hackintosh. But now I am wondering if it is worth it? Then again, I don't need to use the most current OS. I was initially under the impression Apple forced upgrades similar to Windows 10 based on discussionson other forums. But then I was told it's not true. 

It kind of sucks that they don't use the same file structure as Windows. I will either have to duplicate a lot of my Kontakt libraries or cut them down if I try this experiment. Because my laptop is Windows.


----------



## Dewdman42

You can always try to make a hackintosh for the fun of it, but don't depend on it just yet, in my opinion. Also, if you really want to build a hack its usually important to get a "blessed" motherboard that is known to be easy to do it. But if you have an old computer with nothing else to do and time to spend on it, then why not, you can check out OSX and see what all the fuss is about. If you're reasonably happy on windows, I'd personally stay there right now for your primary computer. In a couple years look at it again. Regarding MacBook's, I would not touch another one of those with a ten foot pole. 

For me its really simple, I'm using my 5,1 Mac Pro for as long as i can and will enjoy OSX Mojave and LogicPro to the fullest for as long as I can. I will not buy another mac until they come out with something comparable to this. There is not one single Apple computer model in production today that I would even remotely consider buying...and this is coming from a guy that loves OSX and hates Windows, but nonetheless, I won't touch the hardware they've been putting out for the past five years. IN order for me to buy another mac, they have to come out with something like my 5,1, only better and no more than $5,000. Or I'd settle for used one for no more than $3000. Barring that, I will either build a hackintosh down the road or regretfully switch to windows. But its entirely possible that in a couple years the hackintosh approach may be severely hampered by these architectural changes. I could always run Mojave on a hackintosh for a bit longer then the 5,1 can last...due to being able to get something with AVX and faster single core performance...ok. But it will only be 2-3 years max before LogicPro requires Catalina and beyond to stay current with it.. so... That's the direction Apple is going..it doesn't look good frankly...but still I will wait and see... I would not head towards Apple from Windows right now, other than experimentation... In a couple years we can talk again.


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## Monkey Man

dzilizzi said:


> Could depend on your DAW. Some crash if there are too many errors loading. Others just disable the plugins. The big problem might be if it was created in a 32 bit DAW, not so much if you were using 32 bit plugs. This came up in a discussion about using subscription services and probably should apply to Apple users as well with lack of backwards compatibility. Always bounce stems when you finish/are happy with tracks. Its easier to port them to a new DAW/computer if you do. I wish I had done it a long time ago.


Thanks mate.

I still don't understand why loading a project created in a 32-bit DAW might not load into a 64-bit DAW (same one, obviously) in Catalina. AFAIK, it's only the parameter settings of plugins that're stored in the file. Same goes for all other settings of the project; the various algorithms / modules of code that create the DAW's environment and allow it to run are all stored in the (in this case) 64-bit version of the updated app itself.

If I'm missing a potential stumbling block, I'm keen to hear about it 'cause, as I said earlier, it's gonna be a Helluva lot of work to resave all these old unfinished projects. Hardly any have any audio, so no option to just drag those in; they're mostly MIDI driving external ROMplers and whatnot, with FX plugins on mixer channels.



jcrosby said:


> I'm assuming it's just plugins not loading but don't know for sure...


That's what I'm hoping, mate; thank you for responding.

I'd like to think that the author of that article was kinda-peeved and maybe grinding some sort of an axe. Then again, there's always the click-bait factor...


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## Alex Fraser

Dewdman42 said:


> You can always try to make a hackintosh for the fun of it, but don't depend on it just yet, in my opinion. Also, if you really want to build a hack its usually important to get a "blessed" motherboard that is known to be easy to do it. But if you have an old computer with nothing else to do and time to spend on it, then why not, you can check out OSX and see what all the fuss is about. If you're reasonably happy on windows, I'd personally stay there right now for your primary computer. In a couple years look at it again. Regarding MacBook's, I would not touch another one of those with a ten foot pole.
> 
> For me its really simple, I'm using my 5,1 Mac Pro for as long as i can and will enjoy OSX Mojave and LogicPro to the fullest for as long as I can. I will not buy another mac until they come out with something comparable to this. There is not one single Apple computer model in production today that I would even remotely consider buying...and this is coming from a guy that loves OSX and hates Windows, but nonetheless, I won't touch the hardware they've been putting out for the past five years. IN order for me to buy another mac, they have to come out with something like my 5,1, only better and no more than $5,000. Or I'd settle for used one for no more than $3000. Barring that, I will either build a hackintosh down the road or regretfully switch to windows. But its entirely possible that in a couple years the hackintosh approach may be severely hampered by these architectural changes. I could always run Mojave on a hackintosh for a bit longer then the 5,1 can last...due to being able to get something with AVX and faster single core performance...ok. But it will only be 2-3 years max before LogicPro requires Catalina and beyond to stay current with it.. so... That's the direction Apple is going..it doesn't look good frankly...but still I will wait and see... I would not head towards Apple from Windows right now, other than experimentation... In a couple years we can talk again.


I always enjoy your informative posts on Apple stuff, Dewdman. I will miss them though - it’s time to accept that your future is Windows.. 😉


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## Monkey Man




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## GtrString

Maybe this is a developer frustration thing? Im happy with Catalina on my office mac and my iPad pro (haven’t upgraded my studio mac just yet due to developers compatibility work). But Catalina is rock solid and performs well.

Can’t imagine being swayed back to Microsoft products anytime soon (ever). Life is too short.


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## kitekrazy

There has been some migration of PT users going to Windows.

It seems those who have older software like Live 9 and Finale 25 would have to upgrade software. I guess this is where the real costs will be. 

The wonderful thing about audio forums is it removes the delusion Linux users from the debate.


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## dgburns

So basically if Apple didn’t charge so much, or change so much crap in the OS, this thread would not exist.


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## dzilizzi

Well it used to be PT was much more stable on Macs, but in the last couple years it has been pretty even. PT hardly ever crashes on me now. Part of that is because I have a computer that actually supports it. I think the problem I have when looking at Macs is thinking I need the same specs I would need for a Windows computer. Because they do lock down the system, they can make the OS more efficient. So where 16 GB of RAM is barely sufficient in a Windows computer to run a DAW, it is more usable in a Mac.


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## Pier

I've been using Windows since 3.1 and macOS since Panther. I started making music with Cubase and Windows 2000, studied sound engineering with Pro Tools and G5s, but switched to Logic in 2007 and finally to Live around 2011 or so. I have been using macOS for most of my computing life in the past 12 years (except for gaming where macs are crap). I make my living building software and I consider myself an expert macOS user.

A couple of weeks ago I was considering getting a new machine for music production since I wanted to decouple my daw machine from my 5K iMac that I use for work. In part because Apple forces you to upgrade macOS if you want the latest Xcode version and in part because iMacs have shit cooling and are not designed for sustained CPU work like audio.

I didn't want another iMac 5K and it didn't make sense to invest in an iMac Pro for a hobby. The upcoming Mac Pros look phenomenal but again these are way too expensive for a hobby. Since the Apple laptops are a disaster right now my only option was an i7 Mac Mini with an eGPU (the integrated Intel GPU is not enough to run 4K 60Hz without audio stutters) which would put me around $2200. But while the i7 Mini has plenty of CPU power for my use case, thermals are terrible (less performance and more fan noise) and other than the RAM everything is soldered on.

I also didn't want another hackintosh. I built my first one in 2010 and since then I've built about a dozen hackintoshes for me and friends over the years. It's very easy to get 80% of the Mac experience but that last 20% can be a big headache.

I ended up trying Ableton Live on my gaming Windows machine with my Audient audio interface... and to my surpise it was fine. Latency was as good as in my 5K iMac at the same buffer size. Audio was perfectly stable. Performance was a bit lower but that was expected since the CPU on my 5K iMac (i5 7600K) is about 30% faster than the i5 6500 on the gaming machine.

So after much deliberation I decided to build a Ryzen machine for daw and gaming. For about $1500 I will have a machine that will be 3-4 times more powerful than my 5K iMac and 2 times more powerful than the i7 Mac Mini CPU wise (yes you read that right). And since I have complete control of the hardware I've picked silent components and this machine will run cooler at max CPU performance than my iMac 5K runs at idle (about 50ºC). Yep.

Windows is certainly uglier than macOS but for opening a single app or a game it is perfectly fine. In fact I'd argue used like a workstation it's better than macOS. Hardware wise a desktop Windows machine is a much better investment than any mac, even the upcoming Mac Pro. Not because of performance but because you can select/upgrade/customize/replace components with total freedom at a much better price.

People in this thread have argued that people choose Windows because of specs and whatnot but IMO the attractive of Windows is hardware flexibility. As much as I love macOS the Mac hardware situation is simply ridiculous and has been for many years now.

Edit: Ooops I meant to say "3-4 times more powerful than the 5K iMac".


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## chocobitz825

Pier Bover said:


> I've been using Windows since 3.1 and macOS since Panther. I started making music with Cubase and Windows 2000, studied sound engineering with Pro Tools and G5s, but switched to Logic in 2007 and finally to Live around 2011 or so. I have been using macOS for most of my computing life in the past 12 years (except for gaming where macs are crap). I make my living building software and I consider myself an expert macOS user.
> 
> A couple of weeks ago I was considering getting a new machine for music production since I wanted to decouple my daw machine from my 5K iMac that I use for work. In part because Apple forces you to upgrade macOS if you want the latest Xcode version and in part because iMacs have shit cooling and are not designed for sustained CPU work like audio.
> 
> I didn't want another iMac 5K and it didn't make sense to invest in an iMac Pro for a hobby. The upcoming Mac Pros look phenomenal but again these are way too expensive for a hobby. Since the Apple laptops are a disaster right now my only option was an i7 Mac Mini with an eGPU (the integrated Intel GPU is not enough to run 4K 60Hz without audio stutters) which would put me around $2200. But while the i7 Mini has plenty of CPU power for my use case, thermals are terrible (less performance and more fan noise) and other than the RAM everything is soldered on.
> 
> I also didn't want another hackintosh. I built my first one in 2010 and since then I've built about a dozen hackintoshes for me and friends over the years. It's very easy to get 80% of the Mac experience but that last 20% can be a big headache.
> 
> I ended up trying Ableton Live on my gaming Windows machine with my Audient audio interface... and to my surpise it was fine. Latency was as good as in my 5K iMac at the same buffer size. Audio was perfectly stable. Performance was a bit lower but that was expected since the CPU on my 5K iMac (i5 7600K) is about 30% faster than the i5 6500 on the gaming machine.
> 
> So after much deliberation I decided to build a Ryzen machine for daw and gaming. For about $1500 I will have a machine that will be 3-4 times more powerful than the i7 Mac Mini (yes you read that right). And since I have complete control of the hardware I've picked silent components and this machine will run cooler at max CPU performance than my iMac 5K runs at idle (about 50ºC). Yep.
> 
> Windows is certainly uglier than macOS but for opening a single app or a game it is perfectly fine. In fact I'd argue used like a workstation it's better than macOS. Hardware wise a desktop Windows machine is a much better investment than any mac, even the upcoming Mac Pro. Not because of performance but because you can select/upgrade/customize/replace components with total freedom at a much better price.
> 
> People in this thread have argued that people choose Windows because of specs and whatnot but IMO the attractive of Windows is hardware flexibility. As much as I love macOS the Mac hardware situation is simply ridiculous and has been for many years now.



This is likely why these conversations go nowhere. Windows users are often talking about hardware and cost, and macOS users are talking about software/OS experience. Neither one is really better than the other, as much as its just a matter of preference and priority. Glad you found the system that works for you in the end.


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## Nick Batzdorf

chocobitz825 said:


> This is likely why these conversations go nowhere. Windows users are often talking about hardware and cost, and macOS users are talking about software/OS experience. Neither one is really better than the other, as much as its just a matter of preference and priority. Glad you found the system that works for you in the end.



And neither is going away.

But I still say that even now with Steve Jobs gone, macOS has a sense of fun about it that I don't get from Windows.


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## dzilizzi

My first computer was a TRS-80 running PC-DOS. In some ways, it was easy to use. I just wrote bat files to launch my programs. I was in school and it was a glorified word processor. When all you have is a blinking dot, any OS is a more pleasant experience. But I think it wasn't until 7 that Windows really passed iOS for ease of use. 

And then they introduced 8. What a step backwards. 10 is okay. But Microsoft started doing the same thing that is killing Apple as a computer maker - they think we want our computers to be a bigger tablet. With a keyboard. It's not something I understand because I use my tablet for different things than my computer. And maybe if my iPad let me plug in a 101 keyboard and a mouse? I might use it instead of a computer. Because even laptop keyboards suck. And the ones for tablets are a joke.


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## dflood

Pier Bover said:


> People in this thread have argued that people choose Windows because of specs and whatnot but IMO the attractive of Windows is hardware flexibility. As much as I love macOS the Mac hardware situation is simply ridiculous and has been for many years now.



Thanks for that thoughtful post, and I’d be interested in the specs on your quiet Ryzen build if you would care to share them.

However, even as a now retired hobbyist, I’d still rather throw my money at the problem than my time (within reason). I have simply spent too many years fighting with PCs and yelling “F_CK!” out the window. I know things have improved in the past decade, but I still feel pretty burned about all that time I will never get back. What I really want to do is make music. I face the same dilemma in my my other hobby: woodworking. I could spend all my time building the perfect workshop and outfitting it with all sorts of custom made jigs and tools, or I can actually build things that make it out of the shop and into the world. Neither path is wrong, whatever brings you the most joy, although it’s a much different calculation if you have to make a living.

I’m not sure why Apple even cares about power users (and many would argue they don’t!). We make up such a tiny portion of their market. Most of their customers, and certainly everyone that I know that isn’t into music production, video, or graphic design, don’t even need to buy additional software once they get a Mac. So I’m not sure what the ‘value proposition’ is for Apple, other than maybe the prestige of claiming to be ground breakers, category leaders, etc.. I imagine a small but plucky group within Apple fighting to maintain relevance in the high end application world. The commitment to the new Mac Pro, however outrageously priced, seems to be some evidence of that.

Anyway, as a Mac user, I’m happy that Microsoft and Linux are still out there, still improving and competing, and that there are plenty of viable hardware options in case Apple ever takes a complete wrong turn. It’s good to have choices!


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## charlieclouser

dflood said:


> I’m not sure why Apple even cares about power users (and many would argue they don’t!). We make up such a tiny portion of their market. Most of their customers, and certainly everyone that I know that isn’t into music production, video, or graphic design, don’t even need to buy additional software once they get a Mac. So I’m not sure what the ‘value proposition’ is for Apple, other than maybe the prestige of claiming to be ground breakers, category leaders, etc.. I imagine a small but plucky group within Apple fighting to maintain relevance in the high end application world. The commitment to the new Mac Pro, however outrageously priced, seems to be some evidence of that.



I think the reality is closer to the opposite of there being a tiny minority at Apple who is trying to keep the high-end flame alive. They know very well that high-end users are important as "influencers" to younger, less affluent, aspirational customers.

I'm not sure what the internal Apple term for it is, but you can think if it like the "halo effect" in automotive manufacturing, which is a big part of why Ford chose to make the $400,000 GT recently - a car that cost them ridiculous cash to develop and build, and will never sell enough units to generate a profit for Ford (some journalists even speculate that Ford loses money when the costs of the entire program and ongoing support are tallied up.) Even though production was limited to just a couple thousand units, and had to be largely outsourced to MultiMatic as opposed to taking place on the line at Ford, the fact that the public knows about their outrageous, world-beating supercar effort makes the more accessible vehicles like the Mustang more attractive. The thinking is that if Ford can build a car that will beat Ferrari at LeMans, then their street cars are probably getting some of that technology too.

And it works. Has done so for decades.

When we're talking about Apple and their high-end products like the new Mac Pro, it will be (and always has been) the situation that aspiring musicians / creatives will see Macs in use in big studios or by the artists whose work they admire. Even though the aspirationals may not plunk down for a massive ProTools rig and a 28-core Mac Pro right off the bat (or ever), they may be more likely to get a MacBook because then they'll be operating in the same universe, speaking the same language, as the professionals they aspire to be, or just want to work with. And once Apple's got their hooks into you with that first MacBook or iPhone, you're more likely to buy more Apple hardware as the years go by.

The fact that the software tools like Logic provide such huge power at such a low price is another enticement for young 'uns to go that way. Simplicity and ease-of-use of the UI and advanced software tools makes them feel like they're getting further, faster. And they are. By keeping these barriers to entry low, Apple makes their ecosystem an attractive choice for beginners who want to feel like catching up to the professionals is not such an outrageous pipe dream.

Back in 1986 or so when I was actually trained at Apple to be qualified to sell Macs at the Sam Ash store in Manhattan (the first music retailer to be allowed to do so), this was made very clear to us, even though we were "civilians" and not under Apple NDA - it wasn't a secret at al. In fact, it was explicitly stated to us that Apple's business model going forward was to eventually offer ALL of their software for free or at a "token" price point. Most software, including operating systems, would be free but would ONLY run on Apple hardware, and their most high-end software would be sold at a price that massively undercut the competition and could be considered a very minor expense for a professional.

Hence, thirty years on we get MacOS for free, and Logic with all the plugins and sounds is only $199.

This approach has two effects - it provides the users with a "bonus" to make up for the high price of the hardware and the perception of an "Apple tax", and the low price of tools like Logic would all but eliminate competition from software developers who could not compete on price because they did not have their development costs subsidized by revenue from sales of expensive Apple hardware.

Seems like it's working exactly as stated thirty-odd years ago.


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## Dewdman42

All of that would be fine, except that the direction they are going now, with all of their focus on selling hardware, is to make crap consumer oriented hardware, aside from the massively overpriced new MacPro. 

Just as soon as they come out with some interesting hardware that is more in line with the 5,1 and 6,1 MacPros, but modernized for the year 2020, all faith will be restored for many, but until then, it seems to me that Apple has lost their way, severely, on the path you just laid out. Even the 6,1 MacPro was not widely accepted as ok, it was widely regarded by many people (not all), to be a bad direction change compared to the Cheesegrater legacy. It is marginally more powerful then the 5,1, and some people have gone to it because its the best currently available, but for many people, the cheese graters have kept running for a reason. Everything else Apple has produced since then has been subpar for true power users. The new macPro is the first time in more than 5 years they've finally taken a stab at a power machine...but they went way to the stratosphere with it in terms of price...so... they have still left the vast majority of us hanging in the wind without a solution. Most of us do not make a living at the top of the industry like you do where its perfectly justifiable to purchase new $5000 macs on a whim, even just to satisfy a project or something. That's great for you, I'm sure you will love the new MacPro. But aside from that Apple has most definitely NOT lived up to the paradigm you just outlined...with free software and best of breed hardware. Their consumer and prosumer hardware is hardly best of class anymore. Quite the opposite. Its oriented towards aesthetics, compactness, simple stuff that most consumers use because they don't actually need any more then that.


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## Dewdman42

I do however think that OSX as an operating system is best in class, ironically... the thing they give away for free....


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## charlieclouser

Well, almost nobody needs the big Mac Pro. I probably don't either. My 2013 cylinders rarely get beyond 50% CPU use on even my biggest cues, and those same cues run just fine on my 2012 MacBook Pro with an i7 and 512 SSD. 

How many studio pics do you see where they've got a MacBook sitting dead-center, running the whole room? So many rock and pop artists use MacBooks to run their entire writing and production process (and even their live shows) that it's a ubiquitous presence on those InstaBook and FacePages. Easy to identify with that big Apple logo on the back too.

I don't want to run my world from a laptop for ergonomic reasons, but it does work. I had to do a presentation to some film composition students in Australia, and I just copied some cues to my MacBook straight across from my big rig, and since they were just Logic projects that used entirely EXS, stock synths, and audio, the only plugin I had to authorize on the laptop was Waves L3-LL (my stem limiter). The cues were entirely self-contained in a single folder, with all of the audio files, the instruments and samples needed by EXS, video files, even the impulse responses needed for Space Designer automatically saved into that folder. One drag-n-drop later and I was listening to my cues playing out of the internal speakers on the MacBook. When I got to Aus, I plugged into their system with a single Mini-DisplayPort > HDMI cable (!) and audio came out of the PA system in their performance hall and my screen was on their projector. To be honest, I was a little surprised how quick and easy it was. No external drives, no audio interface even. Just the laptop and a cable. Crazy.

So even a seven-year-old laptop had the juice to do what I needed. Maybe the newest MacBooks aren't five times more powerful, but they actually don't need to be for most people (including me). The only reason I still use the old 2012 MacBook is because it still works just fine and is plenty powerful - I've never had any issue of any kind with it and I do like the matte screen. I've never plugged anything into the FW800 port, Cat5 jack, or SD card slot, and I've only used the CD drive two or three times - so I won't miss those options now that they're gone on the newest MacBooks.

Apple definitely harvests analytics from their user base that tells them exactly how many people use which ports and how often etc., so when they remove a port or CD drive it's because they know that hardly anybody was using that stuff anyway. They're not just making it up as they go along, deciding to remove features and ports for economic or marketing reasons - everything they do is based on exhaustive analysis of the usage patterns of their customers. They knew I wan't using that CD drive anyway!


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## mscp

Here’s why I switched to PCs:

1.I use PT and Cubase - both cross platform.
2. I don’t like Logic. Never did. TDLR.
3. My Mac hardware have been subpar since 2011...but I kept believing in it until my patience reached its limit in 2017 with all the “soldered on” conundrum. I’ll not buy a Mac Pro. There’s nothing special inside. Also TDLR.
4. I like the fact my rig is now truly modular.
5. MacOS is consistently turning into iOS and is as stable as any of my windows machines.
6. The industry really doesn’t care about it. They care MOSTLY whether you use PT or not. Nobody I know turned down a job because a PC was being used.

It all boils down to what you want. REALLY.


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## Dewdman42

If I wasn't in love with OSX, I would have switched over the PC a long time ago. Its quite possible I will again, but I'm hoping Apple still come through with a better solution in the next couple years, so holding out to see. In the end, if they don't, I will definitely switch, but regrettably because I just really hated windows when I had to work on it in the past for many different reasons, as a software developer as well as end user and musician. Went through the whole Mac-to-PC-then-back-to-Mac-then-PC-again-then-back-Mac...several times already. MacIntel has by far been the best platform for music and everything else I do...in terms of the operating system itself.

The stuff being introduced with Catalina will eventually pan out and everything will be fine..it will again be a glorious best in class operating system to work on...but the already limited hardware choices may become even more limited, that is my main concern...and the thing Apple will need to address for me to stay on this platform in 2023. We shall see what happens between now and then, I hope they deliver something because I want to stay on OSX..but its not looking good right now...and though I will miss OSX severely....the need for prosumer hardware is enough of a requirement for what we do that they will leave me no choice but to go PC again....


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## gsilbers

ProfoundSilence said:


> because the government is less big and less less competition? a national government is by definition a monopoly
> 
> 1 *: *exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action
> 2 *: *exclusive possession or control
> 3 *: *a commodity controlled by one party
> 
> although it arguably doesn't really fit the 3rd version well due to the fact that there aren't many countries viewing this forum that suffer from an actual dictatorship of any kind. The term party is not being used in the context of political "parties".
> 
> this thread is an example of the market doing what market does best, which is when Mac does something bad, windows gets more market share. When Windows does something bad, apple gets more market share. The worse the both get - the more appealing 3rd party Linux distros become. Quite resembles US politics, coincidently.



My side of it doesn’t mean more government just better rules. Just as child labor laws passed and are federal rules because companies where being dicks back in the early 20th century.

Uber not considering full time drivers employees and saying it’s just a platform when they turn around w grossly profits and pays billions on self driving tech. I don’t say government should be involved other than adding some rules helping drivers out.
In macs case yes, but also apple semi forcing people to use their platform to use iPhones or only safari or Facebook owning all the social media out there and so on. Yes free market but some rules so it doesn’t become monopolies or oligopolies that at the end help out free market competion . and these rules are not anything new. It was the same with telephones, electricity, oil and so forth. Plenty of similar cases came in the early 20th century when all sort of inventions change society. There are a ton of ways to do it and it’s a fine balance to making sure there is free market, not stifle competition and create ways for newcomers can also compete. 
and those for example could like Europe is doing w the gdpr and the right to be forgotten andThe hacking etc.. stuff that just making sure the big tech doesn’t abuse. Everything is so concentrated to so few companies in tech that’s hard to argue Rules that would affect any other companies the same way. Plus, all... absolutely all of the tech apple, Facebook Netflix google is using to generate massive profits was all thanks to government and our taxes paying for all that research.


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## gsilbers

charlieclouser said:


> , and those same cues run just fine on my 2012 MacBook Pro with an i7 and 512 SSD.
> !



Whaaaaaa?!?! 
I have the same and it’s sucking too much cpu w just a few tracks. I need to check into this :/

But yeah, the benchmarks are crazy good on the new laptops and Mac mini. For composing at least.


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## gsilbers

Dewdman42 said:


> If I wasn't in love with OSX, I would have switched over the PC a long time ago. Its quite possible I will again, but I'm hoping Apple still come through with a better solution in the next couple years, so holding out to see. In the end, if they don't, I will definitely switch, but regrettably because I just really hated windows when I had to work on it in the past for many different reasons, as a software developer as well as end user and musician. Went through the whole Mac-to-PC-then-back-to-Mac-then-PC-again-then-back-Mac...several times already. MacIntel has by far been the best platform for music and everything else I do...in terms of the operating system itself.
> 
> The stuff being introduced with Catalina will eventually pan out and everything will be fine..it will again be a glorious best in class operating system to work on...but the already limited hardware choices may become even more limited, that is my main concern...and the thing Apple will need to address for me to stay on this platform in 2023. We shall see what happens between now and then, I hope they deliver something because I want to stay on OSX..but its not looking good right now...and though I will miss OSX severely....the need for prosumer hardware is enough of a requirement for what we do that they will leave me no choice but to go PC again....



I’ve been reading several post here and in fb groups about guys upgrading to Catalina and everything seems fine for most stuff. Seems it might be the installer if anyone want to install for example waves but if you had Mojave w waves then waves will load up fine... or something like it. And I do agree mac osx is to me far easier for music. But I mainly use logic


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## dzilizzi

Apple has had the reputation for making great hardware. Only problem with that is most customers will keep the products longer if they are still working. You can't stay in business if your customers don't upgrade regularly. They get iPhone users to update annually buy selling them more on the cool new things it can do. But now they aren't coming up with much that is really cooler than last years phone. And they aren't as well made. It is a normal market pattern until some amazing new technology comes out and changes it all again. I'm not sure if this current "new" stuff is different enough from the old stuff other than they finally updated from 7 years ago. (When was the last cheesegrater?) People will buy because they have to more than they are really excited to, I think. But then maybe if it were a few thousand less, I would be wrong. 

I just don't think Tim Cook is the man Steve Jobs was. Steve Jobs was innovative and still could make a great product at a sellable price for a profit. I'm just not as impressed.


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## gsilbers

dzilizzi said:


> Apple has had the reputation for making great hardware. Only problem with that is most customers will keep the products longer if they are still working. You can't stay in business if your customers don't upgrade regularly. They get iPhone users to update annually buy selling them more on the cool new things it can do. But now they aren't coming up with much that is really cooler than last years phone. And they aren't as well made. It is a normal market pattern until some amazing new technology comes out and changes it all again. I'm not sure if this current "new" stuff is different enough from the old stuff other than they finally updated from 7 years ago. (When was the last cheesegrater?) People will buy because they have to more than they are really excited to, I think. But then maybe if it were a few thousand less, I would be wrong.
> 
> I just don't think Tim Cook is the man Steve Jobs was. Steve Jobs was innovative and still could make a great product at a sellable price for a profit. I'm just not as impressed.



True. I have the iPhone X and decided to pay off the last 2 months in advance to finish Paying for it... I was told if I do then I wouldn’t be eligible for the new iPhone when it came out. so I was today years old when I found out that the iPhone is basically like a new car lease where every year I could just trade up for the new model and Paying a monthly fee. That why it’s a new sept event every year for a new model. So people can trade up for fall or Xmas.
To us is silly... but I had several colleagues at work who did this and I didn’t know why or how. I couldn’t care less about someone’s new gadget. But saw lately how people where not doing the upgrade.

withe the drop in sales Tim Cook seems to have been focusing on the pro market. Calling things pro and new Mac Pro so hopefully it’s good forus.. and from what it seems, forcing all developers to go through their developer service.
now that ivy is gone and his more slim philosophy, hopefully those new 16 inch Macbook pro will be geared towards the pro marketS. Just make it thicker but with more ports!


----------



## mscp

Louis Rossmann on Youtube. Watch it. Those things happen a LOT.


----------



## Pier

dflood said:


> Thanks for that thoughtful post, and I’d be interested in the specs on your quiet Ryzen build if you would care to share them.
> 
> However, even as a now retired hobbyist, I’d still rather throw my money at the problem than my time (within reason). I have simply spent too many years fighting with PCs and yelling “F_CK!” out the window. I know things have improved in the past decade, but I still feel pretty burned about all that time I will never get back. What I really want to do is make music. I face the same dilemma in my my other hobby: woodworking. I could spend all my time building the perfect workshop and outfitting it with all sorts of custom made jigs and tools, or I can actually build things that make it out of the shop and into the world. Neither path is wrong, whatever brings you the most joy, although it’s a much different calculation if you have to make a living.
> 
> I’m not sure why Apple even cares about power users (and many would argue they don’t!). We make up such a tiny portion of their market. Most of their customers, and certainly everyone that I know that isn’t into music production, video, or graphic design, don’t even need to buy additional software once they get a Mac. So I’m not sure what the ‘value proposition’ is for Apple, other than maybe the prestige of claiming to be ground breakers, category leaders, etc.. I imagine a small but plucky group within Apple fighting to maintain relevance in the high end application world. The commitment to the new Mac Pro, however outrageously priced, seems to be some evidence of that.
> 
> Anyway, as a Mac user, I’m happy that Microsoft and Linux are still out there, still improving and competing, and that there are plenty of viable hardware options in case Apple ever takes a complete wrong turn. It’s good to have choices!



Sure, I will share my specs in a couple of days after I've received all the components and done some tests with Ableton.

As for the idea that Windows requires a lot of maintenance I don't think I agree. I like building PCs, but that takes 1-2 hours max. In my experience Windows 10 is as stable and maintenance free as macOS, as long as you have good hardware and don't install whatever crap you find online (specially stuff from torrents if you know what I mean).

I imagine it's different with Window laptops since those usually come with a lot of bloat. I'm only speaking about custom built towers.


----------



## Andrew Aversa

Logic has consistently been the biggest headache for us as developers. It seems to have more bugs with Kontakt (and hence our instruments) than every other DAW combined. I cannot even begin to describe how big of a PITA it is. Also, when it comes to compatibility issues, there are way more people running older, unsupported versions of OSX. This is also a headache because _we_ can't do anything about Apple and NI constantly dropping support for older versions...


----------



## Pier

chocobitz825 said:


> This is likely why these conversations go nowhere. Windows users are often talking about hardware and cost, and macOS users are talking about software/OS experience. Neither one is really better than the other, as much as its just a matter of preference and priority. Glad you found the system that works for you in the end.



As a user I do prefer macOS over Windows by a mile. If there was a desktop Mac with good thermals, modular components, and not costing +$7000 that's where I'd be (I live in Mexico and Apple adds an extra 20% to all its products). There is a huge market for that segment which Apple is ignoring and is being filled by creatives moving to Windows or building a hackintosh.


----------



## chocobitz825

gsilbers said:


> I’ve been reading several post here and in fb groups about guys upgrading to Catalina and everything seems fine for most stuff. Seems it might be the installer if anyone want to install for example waves but if you had Mojave w waves then waves will load up fine... or something like it. And I do agree mac osx is to me far easier for music. But I mainly use logic



I almost wish I hadn't wiped my MacBook clean before upgrading, but I had a lot of junk on it and wanted to start fresh. Still having a pretty consistent experience. I can't say I've run into anyone soft that doesn't completely work. Since I'm installing new its really just kind of random. Every company I've tried so far has some plugins that install properly, and some that are flagged as not notarized. It's not at all a disaster, but I haven't tested hardware yet.


----------



## dzilizzi

I'm wondering how many that went through were given a temporary pass by Apple. At least I understood that they were loosening the requirements temporarily. Probably for those who almost passed the process? I don't know, only making assumptions based on what would be logical to make it easier on customers so as not to annoy them too much?


----------



## chocobitz825

Pier Bover said:


> As a user I do prefer macOS over Windows by a mile. If there was a desktop Mac with good thermals, modular components, and not costing +$7000 that's where I'd be (I live in Mexico and Apple adds an extra 20% to all its products). There is a huge market for that segment which Apple is ignoring and is being filled by creatives moving to Windows or building a hackintosh.



Yeah, I get every complaint about hardware from apple, which is why we can only be thankful that its a tightly controlled experience. It's not their strong point anymore, and the optimizations they make on the OS end to make it run as well as it does help a lot. I have a 2016 MacBook pro that runs great other than the shit butterfly keys I'm getting repaired this week. I got maxed-out iMac Pro and its fantastic. No doubt there are more powerful PCs for much cheaper, but it's my business workhorse and I've already made my money back with it. Since there are no perfect options, and I am touring a lot, I think I'll have to settle on a Mac Mini moving forward instead of getting a new MacBook. It's enough to get the job done. All of it is so much easier since switching most of my peripherals to thunderbolt 3/USB-C. The best part is if I ever have issues with the MacBook on the road, its an easy fix. No searching for parts, or waiting for someone to service it. I can just take it in and get it fixed, or swapped out for a new one. That's everything to me on the road.


----------



## Pier

chocobitz825 said:


> Yeah, I get every complaint about hardware from apple, which is why we can only be thankful that its a tightly controlled experience. It's not their strong point anymore, and the optimizations they make on the OS end to make it run as well as it does help a lot. I have a 2016 MacBook pro that runs great other than the shit butterfly keys I'm getting repaired this week. I got maxed-out iMac Pro and its fantastic. No doubt there are more powerful PCs for much cheaper, but it's my business workhorse and I've already made my money back with it. Since there are no perfect options, and I am touring a lot, I think I'll have to settle on a Mac Mini moving forward instead of getting a new MacBook. It's enough to get the job done. All of it is so much easier since switching most of my peripherals to thunderbolt 3/USB-C. The best part is if I ever have issues with the MacBook on the road, its an easy fix. No searching for parts, or waiting for someone to service it. I can just take it in and get it fixed, or swapped out for a new one. That's everything to me on the road.



I don't make a living with audio anymore, but if I did I would have no problem getting one of the upcoming Mac Pros.

The iMac Pro never made much sense to me. It's certainly fast and powerful, but it's still an all-in-one which cannot be repaired easily or upgraded. And once it's done, it's done. You can't use the gorgeous 5K display or other parts into a new machine. To me a pro machine should be like a Land Rover. Easy to open and fix and ready to get dirty and go in the mud every day. That was what the tower Mac Pros used to be and that's why a lot of people are still using those and skipped the trashcan. The iMac Pro seems more like an upgraded SUV than a Land Rover.

I imagine you live in the US, in the rest of the world Apple repairs are never as fast or convenient.

FYI if you do get the Mini do not use a 4K monitor as the GPU cannot handle much load and that will impact the audio performance. See these links:





https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=233038


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Dewdman42 said:


> is to make crap consumer oriented hardware



Really? I wouldn't say their hardware is crap at all - with the exception of that shitty keyboard they had a couple of years ago and since replaced.

Now, for a while they didn't have a Mac in their lineup that worked for me, which forced me to the used market when I needed to upgrade. And I agree with Synthetic (Jeff L) that the iMac Pro in a case would be perfect. But their stuff isn't crap.

Besides, you and I are consumers just like everyone else!


----------



## chocobitz825

Pier Bover said:


> I don't make a living with audio anymore, but if I did I would have no problem getting one of the upcoming Mac Pros.
> 
> The iMac Pro never made much sense to me. It's certainly fast and powerful, but it's still an all-in-one which cannot be repaired easily or upgraded. And once it's done, it's done. You can't use the gorgeous 5K display or other parts into a new machine. To me a pro machine should be like a Land Rover. Easy to open and fix and ready to get dirty and go in the mud every day. That was what the tower Mac Pros used to be and that's why a lot of people are still using those and skipped the trashcan. The iMac Pro seems more like an upgraded SUV than a Land Rover.
> 
> I imagine you live in the US, in the rest of the world Apple repairs are never as fast or convenient.
> 
> FYI if you do get the Mini do not use a 4K monitor as the GPU cannot handle much load and that will impact the audio performance. See these links:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=233038




Thanks for the tip!

I'm in Japan, and its mostly easy getting work down for apple products. 

I totally agree with you about the iMac. I had a need to upgrade my machine and it was the only option available at the time, since the Mac Pro was still in limbo at that time. I don't regret it, and it is eventually going to be a waste of hardware if it fails, but I've also found that I tend to collect old devices and I really should start selling these things or trading them in/recycling them when I'm done with them. I mean...the old thunderbolt display. It was useful, but now it's just taking up space. So for now, since I've paid it off with my business, I'm gonna use it for as long as it makes sense to, and then when its time to move on, I will.


----------



## JEPA

What is going to happen to free software and open source development in regards Catalina?


----------



## Leon Portelance

josejherring said:


> Ever consider how Windows feels about you?



i don‘t really care.


----------



## dzilizzi

JEPA said:


> What is going to happen to free software and open source development in regards Catalina?


I'm thinking those developers who already pay the $99 per year for paid software will continue to provide free stuff if they did before. Otherwise, many will probably quit, as there is no reason to make free stuff that costs money and where you have to jump through hoops to get it out.


----------



## JEPA

dzilizzi said:


> I'm thinking those developers who already pay the $99 per year for paid software will continue to provide free stuff if they did before. Otherwise, many will probably quit, as there is no reason to make free stuff that costs money and where you have to jump through hoops to get it out.


Detriment of an ecosystem. ..


----------



## Andrew Aversa

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Really? I wouldn't say their hardware is crap at all - with the exception of that shitty keyboard they had a couple of years ago and since replaced.
> 
> Now, for a while they didn't have a Mac in their lineup that worked for me, which forced me to the used market when I needed to upgrade. And I agree with Synthetic (Jeff L) that the iMac Pro in a case would be perfect. But their stuff isn't crap.
> 
> Besides, you and I are consumers just like everyone else!



The quality of Mac laptops has taken a huge nosedive recently. They are riddled with issues ranging from keyboard reliability (class action lawsuit for butterfly keyboards) to thermal throttling (or subpar performance) due to poor cooling. Not to mention Apple's anti-consumer decisions to make them almost impossible to upgrade or repair yourself. These are widely reported on. 

There are also deeper, more fundamental issues with circuitry and construction. Louis Rossman, who runs a very popular independent Apple repair shop, extensively documents his repairs on a YouTube channel (with 1 million subscribers) and has found countless engineering flaws as a result. He is perhaps the most qualified person to speak on them, because he can see - year to year, model by model - what devices have the most issues, and what issues crop up again and again.

Aside from actual hardware defects and flaws, there are also intentional design decisions so bad that they should be considered flaws. For example, removing USB-A, ethernet, HDMI, DisplayPort (etc) ports, or getting rid of the incredible MagSafe power connector that has probably saved my wife's old MacBook Air about 100 times.

"Crap" might be a strong word. But the issues I'm talking about here should absolutely not exist in top-of-the-line, premium, luxury-priced products.


----------



## dzilizzi

It reminds me of my work computer. They have it so locked down, for good reason (especially considering some of my coworkers lack of computer literacy), but at times I end up using my personal computer to do basic research for work because I can't go to basic websites without requesting permission. And last week, I couldn't save a word document because suddenly my docs folders was read only. This is a new computer, which I'm starting to think has something majorly wrong with it. But we also just switched to Windows 10, so it may be software based. 

I'm mentioning this because it looks like this is the direction MacOS is heading in. (And Windows also, though they appear to be backing off a bit) I think they may have good intentions, but not everyone visits bad websites and opens attachments on emails from people they don't know. Maybe they need a less locked down version?


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

zircon_st said:


> The quality of Mac laptops has taken a huge nosedive recently



Okay, I'll take your word for it.

What I can say is that my early 2014 11" MacBook Air is wonderful. But that was before the new keyboards - it still has the one that couldn't be improved.


----------



## ProfoundSilence

dzilizzi said:


> It reminds me of my work computer. They have it so locked down, for good reason (especially considering some of my coworkers lack of computer literacy), but at times I end up using my personal computer to do basic research for work because I can't go to basic websites without requesting permission. And last week, I couldn't save a word document because suddenly my docs folders was read only. This is a new computer, which I'm starting to think has something majorly wrong with it. But we also just switched to Windows 10, so it may be software based.
> 
> I'm mentioning this because it looks like this is the direction MacOS is heading in. (And Windows also, though they appear to be backing off a bit) I think they may have good intentions, but not everyone visits bad websites and opens attachments on emails from people they don't know. Maybe they need a less locked down version?


it's not the software malfunctioning, just a poor IT department trying to limit non work activities but causing more harm than good.


----------



## DAW PLUS

sourcefor said:


> Keep in mind that Logic only costs $199 and while windows computers maybe cheaper they charge for OS upgrades where Apple does NOT! I haven't paid for a logic upgrade EVER! Look, I have been a bit disillusioned by APPLE as of late but I know Logic better than other software and it just seems easier to use than most so it's hard to switch! I say just use what you need to use APPLES or Oranges (no pun intended)! And I hate that they keep changing things like the phone, the laptop ports , etc. But until people put a dent in their (APPLE's)bottom line it will remain the same! Horses for courses!


An XP license lasted for over a decade, so does W7 and now W10 is a continuous license being upgraded all the time without costs. I don't think the 100$ for a transferable license is really bothering many people. But then again, I am not a fan of comparing Macs and PCs using pricing in the first place. It is all about what floats your boat, although price/performance does play a role for many.


----------



## DAW PLUS

Phil81 said:


> think headphone jack, magsafe, etc... your answer lies there - transpose it to the software realm.


I never understood why they got rid of Magsafe. It is the best invention Apple ever made. I still have a (jobless) 2003 Powerbook with a diagonal power supply connector to remind me of it....


----------



## DAW PLUS

charlieclouser said:


> I think the reality is closer to the opposite of there being a tiny minority at Apple who is trying to keep the high-end flame alive. They know very well that high-end users are important as "influencers" to younger, less affluent, aspirational customers.
> 
> I'm not sure what the internal Apple term for it is, but you can think if it like the "halo effect" in automotive manufacturing, which is a big part of why Ford chose to make the $400,000 GT recently - a car that cost them ridiculous cash to develop and build, and will never sell enough units to generate a profit for Ford (some journalists even speculate that Ford loses money when the costs of the entire program and ongoing support are tallied up.) Even though production was limited to just a couple thousand units, and had to be largely outsourced to MultiMatic as opposed to taking place on the line at Ford, the fact that the public knows about their outrageous, world-beating supercar effort makes the more accessible vehicles like the Mustang more attractive. The thinking is that if Ford can build a car that will beat Ferrari at LeMans, then their street cars are probably getting some of that technology too.
> 
> And it works. Has done so for decades.
> 
> When we're talking about Apple and their high-end products like the new Mac Pro, it will be (and always has been) the situation that aspiring musicians / creatives will see Macs in use in big studios or by the artists whose work they admire. Even though the aspirationals may not plunk down for a massive ProTools rig and a 28-core Mac Pro right off the bat (or ever), they may be more likely to get a MacBook because then they'll be operating in the same universe, speaking the same language, as the professionals they aspire to be, or just want to work with. And once Apple's got their hooks into you with that first MacBook or iPhone, you're more likely to buy more Apple hardware as the years go by.
> 
> The fact that the software tools like Logic provide such huge power at such a low price is another enticement for young 'uns to go that way. Simplicity and ease-of-use of the UI and advanced software tools makes them feel like they're getting further, faster. And they are. By keeping these barriers to entry low, Apple makes their ecosystem an attractive choice for beginners who want to feel like catching up to the professionals is not such an outrageous pipe dream.
> 
> Back in 1986 or so when I was actually trained at Apple to be qualified to sell Macs at the Sam Ash store in Manhattan (the first music retailer to be allowed to do so), this was made very clear to us, even though we were "civilians" and not under Apple NDA - it wasn't a secret at al. In fact, it was explicitly stated to us that Apple's business model going forward was to eventually offer ALL of their software for free or at a "token" price point. Most software, including operating systems, would be free but would ONLY run on Apple hardware, and their most high-end software would be sold at a price that massively undercut the competition and could be considered a very minor expense for a professional.
> 
> Hence, thirty years on we get MacOS for free, and Logic with all the plugins and sounds is only $199.
> 
> This approach has two effects - it provides the users with a "bonus" to make up for the high price of the hardware and the perception of an "Apple tax", and the low price of tools like Logic would all but eliminate competition from software developers who could not compete on price because they did not have their development costs subsidized by revenue from sales of expensive Apple hardware.
> 
> Seems like it's working exactly as stated thirty-odd years ago.


IMO Apple indeed has used the MacPro as a "Formula 1" type product to show off how far their tech can stretch and how professionals work with it. Compared to laptops, tablets, phones and even iMacs the profit is probably hardly worth it, but it has a great marketing value.


----------



## chocobitz825

DAW PLUS said:


> I never understood why they got rid of Magsafe. It is the best invention Apple ever made. I still have a (jobless) 2003 Powerbook with a diagonal power supply connector to remind me of it....



usb-c/Thunderbolt 3 is the reason i believe


----------



## EvilDragon

Magic Mouse is ergonomically crap. It really is.


----------



## Pier

JEPA said:


> What is going to happen to free software and open source development in regards Catalina?



Nothing. You can still install and open non notarized 64bits software with right click and "open".


----------



## Pier

EvilDragon said:


> Magic Mouse is ergonomically crap. It really is.



Yep. Also pretty heavy and the click noise is too loud.

Not sure why but Apple mice have always been terrible.


----------



## dzilizzi

ProfoundSilence said:


> it's not the software malfunctioning, just a poor IT department trying to limit non work activities but causing more harm than good.


Well, it is also I work from home or in the field using a VPN connection. Or on a virtual desktop. They used to allow a lot more leeway but I think people took advantage of it and were not smart. One bad virus gets in can cause a lot of work stoppage. 

So in the case of viruses, one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch.


----------



## dzilizzi

Pier Bover said:


> Yep. Also pretty heavy and the click noise is too loud.
> 
> Not sure why but Apple mice have always been terrible.


Generally, any mouse from a computer manufacturer has been pretty bad. So it's not just Apple. I never use the stock mice. I always buy a nice colorful Logitech wireless one.


----------



## PeterKorcek

From *developer* point of view (I am doing Windows desktop apps in C#) I understand if update cycle breaks down things that the developer constantly needs to attend to. Compare it to Microsoft backward compatibility - I can install my WPF app on Windows 7, 8, 10 without any problem and it works fine. Now, they even let WPF apps to be packaged and distributed from Microsoft store, but that is another story :-D

From *user* point of view, I completely understand the appeal Mac has for people - I have MacBook Pro 2013, and it never had 1 single crash, it is the best laptop I had. I have had iPhones and they are best phones I had. However, my desktop is custom built PC, that is still very powerful, still going strong. From Mac pro desktops, there could be sort of a mid-tier option. I am a bit afraid of all-in-one design (iMac, iMac Pro - repairs, cooling, expandability, etc), new Mac pro is quite an overkill on the other hand :-D


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

EvilDragon said:


> Magic Mouse is ergonomically crap. It really is.



I couldn't disagree more. It's great.

And with BetterTouchTool (truly magnificent utility that lets you program multitouch gestures) it becomes even better.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Pier Bover said:


> Yep. Also pretty heavy and the click noise is too loud.
> 
> Not sure why but Apple mice have always been terrible.



I have no idea what the hell you people are talking about.

In addition to having excellent ergonomics, the Magic Mouse is also the most reliable mouse I've ever used.


----------



## EvilDragon

It's really crap ergonomically when compared to something like Logitech MX Master which literally blends with your hand. But also many other mice. Hell, even my old cheap Genius was ergonomically sound. Apple's mouse simply isn't good, and it costs ridiculously too much for what it is. There are many who agree.

Also: WTF!








That's pretty stupid, lemme not use a harsher word because it does exist for shit like this.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

dzilizzi said:


> Generally, any mouse from a computer manufacturer has been pretty bad. So it's not just Apple. I never use the stock mice. I always buy a nice colorful Logitech wireless one.



And lots of people love trackballs, which I think suck.

But you know, there's a difference between something not fitting your body and saying it's total shite for everyone!

(Which dzlizzi isn't saying here, but I disagree that it's pretty bad.)


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

EvilDragon said:


> It's really crap ergonomically when compared to something like Logitech MX Master. But also many other mice.



No, the Logitech is total crap and anyone who likes it sucks whale dingus and should be put in prison for all of eternity and then sent to hell for damnation and stuff.

Anyone who doesn't love the Magic Mouse is the worst person ever.


----------



## EvilDragon

Oh I see some buttons were pushed.  Well, I am evil after all, so IDGAF 


(Also I didn't say it's shit for everyone. However, I know a LOT of Mac users who say it's quite shit, too. So there you have it.)


----------



## dzilizzi

Nick Batzdorf said:


> And lots of people love trackballs, which I think suck.
> 
> But you know, there's a difference between something not fitting your body and saying it's total shite for everyone!
> 
> (Which dzlizzi isn't saying here, but I disagree that it's pretty bad.)


LOL! They work. They feel cheap. At least the ones I've gotten from Dell, HP and Lenovo. And the "wire" is usually too stiff so it gets caught on things and you can't move your mouse smoothly. Now Apple wired mice actually have had decent wires on the ones I've used. Just sometimes too short. Though I expect they are not thinking someone is going to push the keyboard away and use a musical keyboard with the mouse.


----------



## dzilizzi

Nick Batzdorf said:


> No, the Logitech is total crap and anyone who likes it sucks whale dingus and should be put in prison for all of eternity and then sent to hell for damnation and stuff.
> 
> Anyone who doesn't love the Magic Mouse is the worst person ever.


But they come in pretty colors! And cool designs. Not boring white. Ugly boring white. Just Yuk.


----------



## charlieclouser

DAW PLUS said:


> IMO Apple indeed has used the MacPro as a "Formula 1" type product to show off how far their tech can stretch and how professionals work with it. Compared to laptops, tablets, phones and even iMacs the profit is probably hardly worth it, but it has a great marketing value.



Yup. I'm sure the ROI from the development of the new Mac Pro vs the sales numbers they'll see from that line are nothing compared to what they see from consumer products like iPhones, MacBooks, etc.


----------



## Ivan M.

Leon Portelance said:


> I don’t use anything but Macs. I hate windows!



I hate both


----------



## tmhuud

EvilDragon said:


> Magic Mouse is ergonomically crap. It really is.



It really is. Hurt my hand so bad I had to buy side add ons to extend its width.


----------



## Pier

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I have no idea what the hell you people are talking about.
> 
> In addition to having excellent ergonomics, the Magic Mouse is also the most reliable mouse I've ever used.



The Magic Mouse 2 weights about 100 grams but my wired gaming mouse weights around 80 grams. The Magic Mouse 1 was even worse as it used 2 batteries IIRC. The click noise was also much worse.

As for the ergonomics there are companies selling accessories to make it more comfortable:









MagicGrips - for Magic Mouse 1 & 2


Makes Magic Mouse way more comfortable. Widens & relaxes your grip. Creates big concave surfaces to place your fingers. Great for all hand sizes, especially nice for medium & large hands. Fit's Magic Mouse 1 & 2. Ambidextrous. Solid silicone rubber + removable 3M adhesive. Bonus: XL thumb grip...




www.elevationlab.com













MMFixed - Your Magic Mouse, But Comfortable


A quick and comfortable solution to the poor ergonomics of the Magic Mouse 1 and 2. Cheap, convenient, and FREE SHIPPING in the US!




mmfixed.com





Maybe you do not care about these things but a lot of people do.


----------



## jbuhler

EvilDragon said:


> It's really crap ergonomically when compared to something like Logitech MX Master which literally blends with your hand. But also many other mice. Hell, even my old cheap Genius was ergonomically sound. Apple's mouse simply isn't good, and it costs ridiculously too much for what it is. There are many who agree.
> 
> Also: WTF!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That's pretty stupid, lemme not use a harsher word because it does exist for shit like this.


Yes, this recharging situation is the worst thing about the wireless magic mouse. Ergonomically it's better than any other Apple mouse I've had. I wouldn't say it's terrible but I wouldn't say it's great either.


----------



## Ivan M.

Had a chance to use that mouse, but could never adjust to it, nor did I want to, so I just use a normal one. That thing is more about looks, than function.


----------



## SupremeFist

Logitech MX Master is the best mouse. Facts!


----------



## tmhuud

Ah yes. i use the magic grips. no more pain. well... I have pain from other things, lol, bike accidents broken fingers in martial arts, skiers thumb, etc and arthritis now.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Oh well.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

EvilDragon said:


> Oh I see some buttons were pushed.  Well, I am evil after all, so IDGAF
> 
> 
> (Also I didn't say it's shit for everyone. However, I know a LOT of Mac users who say it's quite shit, too. So there you have it.)



It doesn't have any buttons to push

Anyway, I know far more Mac users who say it's not quite shit. And they are experts on shit.


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## Nick Batzdorf

On a trip to New York a few years ago, we encountered a guy shouting out his window to another guy in the street:

"You're shit."

"No. YOU'RE shit."

"NO! YOU ARE SHIT!"

"No! You're SHIT!"

This went on for quite a while!


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## Nick Batzdorf

tmhuud said:


> Ah yes. i use the magic grips. no more pain. well... I have pain from other things, lol, bike accidents broken fingers in martial arts, skiers thumb, etc and arthritis now.



That's cheating, Terry! No fair claiming skier's thumbsies and karate accidents!


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## jcrosby

Just in case there are any hackintoshers in the thread...
(I'm *not suggesting building one is for everyone*. Hence the 'just in case' bit !!)


*Looks like a Mac, built like a Hac*.... $199 for the classic 5,1 grating, $279 for the nMP style.

The case below, (Dune Case Pro) launched today. Its backing goal was reached in under 5 hours. $85,000+ reached since 10 AM this morning  And the campaign runs for another month...

Clearly the demand for a configurable but realistically priced alternative to the nMP is there.
Info for anyone interested below the video...





Indiegogo backing/order page:

*EDIT:* Indiegogo pages don't link on here. You can link directly from their site below.
https://www.dunecase.com/


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## JEPA

jcrosby said:


> Just in case there are any hackintoshers in the thread...
> (No, I'm *not suggesting building one is for everyone*. Hence the '*just in case' bit !!*)
> 
> 
> *Looks like a Mac, built like a Hac*....
> 
> The case below, (Dune Case Pro) launched today. Its backing goal was reached in under 5 hours. $71,000+ reached since 10 AM  And the campaign runs for another month...
> 
> Clearly the demand for a configurable but realistically priced alternative to the nMP is massive.
> Info for anyone interested below the video...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Indiegogo backing/order page:
> 
> *EDIT:* Indiegogo pages don't link on here. You can link directly from their site below.
> https://www.dunecase.com/



My goodness! thx for this! Aren't they becoming legal issues from Apple?


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## jcrosby

JEPA said:


> My goodness! thx for this! Aren't they becoming legal issues from Apple?



Possibly. However Huwawei came damn near to cloning the 'look' of the MacBook. (Security issues aside of course!!). It also makes me think of Strat and Tele copies... there's a million of them... Seems like there's enough of a grey area where they _might_ have a leg to stand on.

Aside from the exterior it would be hard to argue it's a 1:1 clone, as this fits mITX, ITX, ATX, mATX, and eATX, whereas Apple's case only fits Apple parts so the interior is completely different... Literally nothing like the inside of the nMP... Either way the guy has balls for testing the waters...

So who knows, but considering you could buy *five* *of these* for the cost of *one* *Apple monitor* *stand* I figured WTF I'll roll the dice.


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