16 ms·

Apple's Relationship with Pro Music Needs Mending

162 points by xwvvvvwx 10y ago

pragmar 10y ago
Software updates in general are just getting sloppy, this isn't limited to Apple. The Windows 10 anniversary update had issues as well. Makes me long for the old MS service pack model.
- 72deluxe 10y ago
  That's something I never thought I would see someone say! But it's true! At least you could install updates when you wanted, not when your remote masters in Redmond decided.
__jal 10y ago
Yep. I've been increasingly disappointed in Apple's OS X releases. Not even considering this upgrade for a point release, at least. And they're doing a very good job of promoting third party replacements for their own apps... For a while, I thought they were chasing IOS marketshare hard, and would come back to fixing the desktop. But I'm beginning to wonder if that isn't the intent; I'm sure the 30k-foot-view financials says OS X is now the second-class product. The problem is that OS X is the generative platform. Writers and programmers and musicians and designers and artists use Macs to produce. And a lot of these folks (me included) are getting restless. I'll be fine - honestly, I only own one OS X box today, and my main personal desktop is Linux. I'd be annoyed for a while if I had to switch to a Linux laptop, but vim is portable, and if they continue to baby-proof the OS at the expense of automation and traditional Unix tools, it will be less annoying that staying put. If the plan is to bring iOS to the point where, say, Ableton and Pro Tools runs sufficiently well there, then they better get on that before the OS where those tools do run rots out from under them. And if that isn't the plan, I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be very curious to know what it is.
- javajosh 10y ago
  The problem is that OS X is the generative platform If your "only iOS matters" hypothesis is correct than Apple only cares about generative OSX for generating iOS apps. That means keeping XCode working at all costs, and they can safely ignore every other use. I suspect that they understand that apart from students using Pages to write papers, MS and Google own the office productivity space. The only remaining code to write are highly proprietary front-ends and the occasional mega-backend.
  - delinka 10y ago
    Have you seen Swift Playgrounds for iOS? I wonder, seriously, if that's not the start of Apple's attempt to put software dev on iOS. No, it's certainly not capable now, but in five years?
    - 72deluxe 10y ago
      Please no!!! iOS is like a toy compared to macOS.
- jseliger 10y ago
  I think the simpler answer is that Apple stopped caring about "pro" apps/users quite a while ago and that it is unlikely to start again in the near future. Video people have moved to Adobe Premier on Windows; photography people have ditched the depreciated Aperture for Lightroom (maybe supplemented with Dark Table); and now music people will have their turn.
  - brusch64 10y ago
    I was pretty surprised, when I found out that Tom Holkenborg (Junkie XL, Composer of the film music for the new Mad Max movie) was using a Windows PC in his studio. Maybe more and more are moving from Apple hardware back to Windows hardware. Altough you still see most of the people using MacBooks for their live acts.
    - brusch64 10y ago
      This was the video I was talking about: Template setup and workstation layout with Junkie XL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB1twfL5b28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB1twfL5b28
    - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
      I've been really torn about upgrading my music computer. On the one hand I hugely prefer macOS over Windows. But macOS now has regular showstopper bugs that simply shouldn't be there - like the issue with AU validation, and a bug in Yosemite that made it impossible to connect more than a small number of USB devices. Also, the Mac Pro is so poorly specified it's competing with it's own predecessors. It makes more sense to buy an ancient "cheesegrater" 5,1 Pro and upgrade it with a new processor than to buy the new Darth Waste Bin model - not just because of the basic spec and performance, but because the new Pro has no PCIe slots, some popular high-end music hardware comes on PCIe cards, and adding an external PCIe/Thunderbolt card cage doubles the cost. Windows actually has a broader range of VSTs available than macOS. So I'm not surprised pro users are switching to Windows. I don't love the idea, but if Apple can't offer the performance the market needs, users have no choice but to switch.
readymade 10y ago
I do think, as one of the commenters on the original thread suggests, that some of the blame lies with the often latent relationship audio software companies have with Apple's release cycle. Ideally QA begins while the OS update is still in beta. This varies quite a bit from company to company, but it's not something to sweep under the rug. The news of audio drop out issues (poison to live performers) persisting through multiple major versions is horrifying though.
- wwweston 10y ago
  > Ideally QA begins while the OS update is still in beta. Would help a lot if (a) Apple had longer lead times to actually get things right internally before they went to beta and (b) beta cycles were a bit longer and (c) companies didn't have to do this every damn year. On the other side... what are the benefits of having yearly regimented releases again?
  - eridius 10y ago
    > what are the benefits of having yearly regimented releases again? It's what consumers expect. If Apple ditched the yearly upgrade model there'd probably be a shitstorm of bad PR and people complaining about how it's not just their hardware offerings that are getting out of date, now the OS is too.
eddieh 10y ago
I feel like this article is FUD. Nearly every professional audio interface for Mac, iPhone, or iPad has a 1/4" stereo headphone output for real studio monitor headphones. No pro is concerned that they lost the 1/8" output for bargain headphones on their iPhone. Any iMac or MacBook Pro from the last 5 years is sufficient for any pro audio workflow. A Mac Pro is still sufficient and is way overkill. A lot of people can be pretty productive on an iPad too. New Macs are coming, Apple isn't abandoning the Mac. I just updated to macOS Sierra and all my pro audio equipment has either kept working as is or the manufacturer released a driver update within days of the macOS Sierra release.
- readymade 10y ago
  You'd be surprised how many people play live with 1/8" jacks. It's also a useful backup when someone spills beer on your RME Fireface.
  - eddieh 10y ago
    You're right, I would be surprised.
- wwweston 10y ago
  If the article were just about the headphone jack, maybe you'd have a point. Maybe not, though. For one thing "pro audio workflow" isn't the limits of concern here. 1/4" mono ain't exactly a dream interface from an audio engineering POV (ground? what ground?), but it's sure a popular one and a lot of musicians don't know/care. If iOS devices are now instruments, just because producers/sound guys might spend hundreds on their headphones (and I have) doesn't mean there aren't going to be would-be performers using what came with the device. Or that there shouldn't be. But the article is not just about the headphone jack, there's an additional half-dozen considerations that you haven't said anything to address other than "works for me." I can assure you that this is not everyone's experience.
- wrigby 10y ago
  > Any iMac or MacBook Pro from the last 5 years is sufficient for any pro audio workflow. Just a few days ago, Pro Tools popped up the annoying "A CPU Overload Has Occurred" dialog box while I was working on a mix. Mid-2015 rMBP, 2.5 GHz. It was a pretty simple session, too - nothing that breaks any rules, like reverbs on inserts. 12 or so tracks and three stereo effects (on their own busses). I'm amazed every day at how much capability my MBP puts into my hands, but it is not without limitations. To say it's sufficient for any pro audio workflow is a bit of a stretch.
wwweston 10y ago
I can't give this a big enough amen. Ten years ago there was simply no question in my mind that apple hardware + OS X was the right choice for audio/music production (not to mention a relatively hassle free Unix workstation for developers + some desktop software usage). Twenty years ago? Still Apple. Over the last 3-4 years, however, I've come to the conclusion that my next purchase needs to be something else if for no other reason than to clearly understand the alternatives. This is key: > The bad news: Apple still can’t seem to keep third parties synced up with its now annual release cadence. In a now yearly ritual, Apple has broken plug-in validation for its own Audio Unit format. Open question: why? Why is this now a regular feature of updating an operating system for a format that has basically remained unchanged for years? Why shouldn’t desktop upgrades be the kind of no-brainer mobile upgrades are. I have a hard time avoiding at least one of two conclusions: (a) Apple either now lacks the necessary talent to do the quality of work they sustained with OS X for a while (b) they fundamentally simply do not care at an institutional level (And if it were really only about Audio Units, that'd be one thing. But it's not.)
- beedogs 10y ago
  I also have a feeling it's a hardware/software combination. All the post-Haswell Macbooks (from 2013 onwards) seem to fare much, much worse for audio applications than the ones produced prior to the switch. I recently got rid of a late 2013 Retina MBP in favour of a late 2012 15" RMBP, and the difference in audio performance is astounding. No dropouts anymore, all my plugins work again, and Ableton is once again usable. I was hoping for a difference in performance but I was amazed at how much better the older one performed, with identical memory and SSD disk. And that's not the only issue I had with the 13" Haswell RMBP. Often it would lose its entire USB chain (which includes the built-in trackpad and keyboard!) which would require me to remote into it to shut it down. Thunderbolt wasn't much better, with frequent network dropouts over a gigabit tb adapter. The poor thing barely worked out of the box and it didn't get much better. I don't know what happened specifically with Haswell, but it seems like Apple and Intel haven't really been working to ensure it's a stable platform. It's a mess.
  - willtim 10y ago
droopyEyelids 10y ago
People make a big deal of Apple's failure to update their computer line up, but I belive they're missing the point that we're hitting the wall with technology that matters in a laptop form factor. Apple was the first for all the big impact technologies of the recent years: ultra high def displays, new hard drive technolgies, and the latest wifi standards. But what do you want now? A new processor? They're only delivering slight marginal improvements in the i5/i7 mobile range. More RAM? Yeah, apple could offer 32GB models, but that's not relevant to the music industry. Everything else is about as good as it gets. There just aren't laptop scale improvements in technology as of late.
- addicted 10y ago
  This is contradicted by the fact that it isn't legally possible to do any sort of VR work using Apple's lineup of computers. But you may have hit upon the real disconnect. Apple is waiting for new shiny features, while Pros simply want things that make it easier (and in the case of VR, possible) to do their jobs. Edit: I meant VR, not 3D.
  - sjwright 10y ago
    I don't think it's a contradiction. VR is not a big-impact technology, it is a geek-driven technology. What Apple does well is technologies that can be deployed to mainstream consumers in a way that has (or can be marketed as having) real world benefits to normal people. VR might eventually become mainstream, but in the foreseeable future it will be a niche at best. Perhaps useful in a few narrow verticals (e.g, architecture, engineering and product design).
  - greyhat 10y ago
    Very curious to know more about legal (licensing?) problems doing VR work on Apple computers. I tried to search but didn't find anything that seemed related. Is it specific to Oculus and Vive hardware? I know of other companies who literally use Apple notebooks as the monitor for their VR rigs.
  - eridius 10y ago
    What do you mean by "legally possible"?
paulcole 10y ago
The average person just doesn't care. Like it or not, Apple makes products for average people who want a somewhat affordable status symbol.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  Just stop with the status symbol crap. I didn't buy a mac to be like everyone else. I bought it because the hardware is solid. For example the keyboard doesn't flex a half inch like nearly every plastic piece of crap windows laptop out there.
  - Inconel 10y ago
    You may not have bought a Mac to be like everyone else but that doesn't necessarily mean that many others aren't buying Apple products at least partially due to brand status and social signaling. Edit: I don't mind the downvotes if I have said something stupid but could I get some clarification here? I'm typing this on a MacBook so I clearly like Apple products but it seems like branding and marketing are fairly important to Apple, otherwise they probably wouldn't spend billions of dollars on ad campaigns.
    - striking 10y ago
      In my view (though I did not downvote you) I felt you brought little to a conversation about tools for professionals. Sure, Apple doesn't make good pro tools anymore, but the interesting part is the anymore. It used to be that they made incredible workstations with really interesting gear, capturing a sort of "pro consumer" market. Maybe your point was that the financials are no longer there to support pro gear or creativity or even OS X as a whole because phones make them more money. If it was, though, you didn't express it. And I agree with the fact that many people are buying them because they're simply status symbols, but many more people buy them because they see it as the easiest choice. Your (average, run-of-the-mill) grandma's not going to be able to choose one of many Android phones unless her grandson tells her which one to pick. At that point she might just walk into an Apple store and out with a new phone. If that was part of your point, you also didn't express that. So I think you're losing points because your points aren't all too accurate or visible (at least from my point of view) and because, even if they were, they have very little to do about the deprecation of Apple's tooling for semi-/pro users.
niels_olson 10y ago
I write this from a Surface Pro, leaving a retina macboook and an ipad pro in my bag: really glad to hear someone in a core Apple industry putting together a solid case for "Apple: please vector some engineering talent to macOS, now". The masses follow the makers. The makers are dissatisfied. Pay attention.
addicted 10y ago
I don't get how any professional can trust Apple after the past few years. If as a pro, you aren't at the very least actively looking for alternatives to Apple products you are doing your future self a huge disservice. After using nothing but Apple products for a decade, I am being forced to wean myself off them, because I cannot depend on Apple for the tools of my trade. What they've done with their Pro hardware is ridiculous. Even if they release the greatest computers ever released for Pros in a month, their history over the past few years makes them completely unreliable. Final Cut Pro, Aperture, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, Mac Pro, XServe, OSX Server, form, in one way or another at least a majority of their pro offerings, for any useful definition of the word Pro, and Apple's behavior with these products have ranged from dumbing down, to neglect, to straight up abandonment. And it's not just pro users, but also "prosumers". iPhoto, Mail, Calendar, iWork all been dumbed down to the point of not being able to serve any prosumer needs. Apple provides experience and value to consumers that seems far beyond their competitors but their actions towards pro users couldn't have been more clear in their intent. Lip service with an occasional teaser to keep you hooked.
- bane 10y ago
  Apple needs to be very careful, by effectively abandoning the pro creatives market, their products start to look more and more like expensive toys and convenience products. Supporting pro-level consumers, they made their offerings indispensable at work and thus more convenient for users at home.
  - addicted 10y ago
    It's possible, but as the whole Samsung recall debacle showed, Apple is still heads and shoulders ahead of their competitors in serving the consumer market. The entire consumer Eco system, including support, 3rd party integration, 3rd party apps, first party apps, and hardware, just seems significantly ahead of any competitor. I find it hard to see how a loss of the pro market will affect their ability to sell hundreds of billions of dollars of iOS devices every year. Which, of course, worries me even more about the future of Apple in the professional space.
cageface 10y ago
For whatever reason, Apple seems to be struggling across the board when it comes to software engineering. They are slow to execute new features and when they do they are often buggy. With each release cycle they fall farther and farther behind their competition. I'm having a hard time thinking of any Apple applications that are better than their competition. I don't know if they're having trouble attracting top talent or if there's something off in their culture but they need to fix it. Swift is a good foundation to build on but it won't be enough on its own. They're lucky Microsoft has been asleep at the wheel for the last few years or actively shooting itself in the foot (Windows 8). But MS seems to be getting its act together lately.
- tallanvor 10y ago
  The answer is pretty simple: Apple is a hardware company. As much as they'd like to claim otherwise, their software is simply there to support hardware sales. Microsoft had an identity crisis for a number of years where they weren't quite sure where they should go, but their move back to being a platform (with regards to Azure) and making sure that the rest of their lines support that work is starting to pay off. Of course, they do need to tighten things up, especially around Windows... That division in particular seems to be trying to move too quickly and it's showing.
  - FussyZeus 10y ago
    I don't think it's that cut and dry, Apple's always been a hardware company but they've had excellent software to match their excellent hardware. I'd argue the hardware is still more or less on point, it's the software that's been struggling lately. Even as a relatively new developer to the Apple space, in the time I've worked in iOS/OSX the quality has taken a stark dip in terms of stability and functionality, and seems to coincide with Jobs no longer being at the company. I think having one guy who is in a position to yell at literally anyone for doing less then stellar work is an asset no company appreciates until it's gone, and we all know that Tim Cook is in no fashion at all a Steve Jobs, he can't put people to task like that.
    - 10y ago
gallerytungsten 10y ago
An article from the recording world, with a similar perspective: http://tapeop.com/columns/end-rant/115/ http://tapeop.com/columns/end-rant/115/
- makomk 10y ago
  From the article: "It's important for professionals to be able to choose when and how they upgrade their software tools. With macOS, this is getting more and more difficult to do, and this is the main reason I want to leave the Mac ecosystem." Of course, this is even more true of Windows 10, where Microsoft have decided they want to force updates on users on their chosen schedule - and of course just like with macOS, newer hardware can't run older versions of Windows. Have we reached the point where no major OS is suitable for actual, productive creative use?
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    OS X is still marginally better than the alternatives, but it's becoming increasingly flaky, and Apple's hardware support is a year or two short of a mass exodus to other platforms. Win 10 is abhorrent in so many it's impossible to list them all. But it's increasingly usable and mostly stable. Some pro users can live with the horror. Others can't. Linux is still a hobbyist, experimenter, and IT infrastructure OS. It's good at all the above, and it's being used for some creative pro applications. But it's not a straightforward option for anyone who just wants to get on with paid professional creative work. It would be interesting if one of the main audio sequencers appeared on Linux. Bitwig is already there. But if (say) Ableton Live switched, it would start a mass stampede away from macOS. Unfortunately Linux fragmentation makes that unlikely. So - no, we do not currently have a rock solid no-nonsense OS for professional use, and it's looking less and likely that we'll have one any time soon. This is ridiculous in 2016. But here we are.
macawfish 10y ago
I was a heavy Logic 9 user. I've been into producing for 18 years or so now, since I was a kid, a die-hard Mac user. I've been through Digital Performer, Cubase and Logic Pro. Apple was holding it down with the pro software after they bought Emagic. It's kinda sad to see that the situation has deteriorated to this level. Well, I started getting fed up with Apple ~6 years ago now. After my hard drive crashed, I moved to to producing on exclusively on Linux as a personal, mental and spiritual challenge. This was very difficult in 2011. As much as I wanted Ardour to be what I wanted it to be, the only thing that was stable enough to get stuff done on was QTractor... Since then, Linux has gotten waayyyy better for music production. KXStudio is excellent. (don't waste time on Ubuntu Studio, it's not configured well). There are plenty of amazing LV2 and LADSPA plugins, and even some good VST plugins like TAL NoizeMaker. Ardour is great if you're lucky to get a stable build. As far as "mainstream pro" music production on linux... it's maybe not quite there yet for a general audience, but if you're a producer/composer/independent artist with some technical patience, Linux audio production is completely amazing. It's a whole different paradigm with plenty of room for professionals. The fact that Jack is totally modular from the get-go is extremely powerful. It means that stuff can be combined in all kinds of ways. (check this thing out if you haven't already: http://moddevices.com/ http://moddevices.com/ ) And honestly, Bitwig has completely switched up the whole situation. Right now I'm running Bitwig on Arch and it's beastly. The only thing I miss from Logic are those excellent MIDI editing tools, non-destructive quantize. I'm also missing my favorite LV2 plugins (ZynAddSubFX). But Bitwig has plenty of synths and a fully modular system for creating endless sounds, so I'm set. Don't need or want Apple at this point. I'm good :)
- bo1024 10y ago
  As an amateur music dabbler, that's great to hear. I tried Linux in 2011 or so (Ardour maybe?) and gave up, got a Macbook and Logic Pro. But the idea of moving back to Linux full-time on more powerful and repairable hardware is very appealing.
  - macawfish 10y ago
    Check Bitwig or Reaper (recommended by some people in a different comment) if you want something more stable. And yeah, KXStudio has great tools for configuring and managing Jack with Pulseaudio. You can install it on top of Ubuntu via it's deb repository. Lately I've been using Arch. Arch's audio packages are also very well configured. There's even a Bitwig package in the AUR. That's how I installed Bitwig :) It's the best of both worlds.
dharma1 10y ago
I dunno. Logic is still my favourite DAW. Everything still works, I can even use my 15 year old Emagic AMT midi inteface with it. I wish they would sort out the AU validation though. I don't use Apple headphones or Apple Music - not sure if they have much to do with "Pro Music", whatever that is.
KaiserPro 10y ago
They did the same for the VFX industry, actively stopping the leading compositing software to go and do other things. However at least Jobs told the collected heads of the VFX houses to go fuck themselves in person.
pavlov 10y ago
Apple's relationship with pro-anything is collapsing. I write Mac software for a YC company in the pro video space. Our new product started deployments a couple of months back, and a major source of problems has been the Apple platform -- both hardware and software. It's so bad that we're actively working to move off the Mac completely. (I've spent 15 years doing Mac software, so this is a big deal for me.) Apple doesn't have pro hardware anymore. The 2013 Mac Pro is a complete failure, maybe the worst computer they've ever made. We deployed a dozen Mac Pros, and four of them suffer from a GPU overheating problem that's widespread but little talked about -- Apple has been replacing Mac Pros quietly for years. The original Mac Pro was a great computer for the pro market: lots of extensibility, high-quality cooling system. The new Mac Pro removed all that and offers no benefit to users like us. It's really more like a cylindrical rebirth of the infamous Power Mac G4 Cube. The same heat problems apply to their laptops. Many MBP models with NVIDIA graphics end up needing yearly motherboard replacements, which Apple is providing through a special replacement program. (My previous MacBook Pro has had this done three times.) Apple's drive towards ever-thinner and ideally fanless computers like the 12" MacBook suggests that this trend isn't going to change. I'm afraid the next MacBook Pro will be the "worst of both worlds", a combination of traits from the 12" MacBook and the Mac Pro. Meanwhile on the software front, macOS has become an unstable and unpredictable platform for high-performance media applications. The emphasis on power saving, sandboxing and relentlessly throttling down userspace applications has made it quite hard to ensure that all our processes keep ticking along as they should. Working around macOS features designed for fanless laptops is such a waste of time when our deployment environment would ideally be a rackmount old-style Mac Pro. Looks like there's going to be lots of Windows 10 in my future :(
- bo1024 10y ago
  It would be an amazing thing for the world if professional-software developers like you began to target Linux (as well).
  - Keyframe 10y ago
    I work in TV and film and use all three operating systems daily! I go where apps go. OS itself rarely matters since all I usually see is an application itself. Linux and MacOS (well, basically anything GNU-based) offers a lot more flexibility and automation. Not that Windows cannot do it, but that my colleagues and myself are more used to ye olde *nix. Windows, on the other hand, just works! Sorry, couldn't resist. I use MacOS, these days, mostly for writing (occasional coding) and on the go editing on macbook. Nice example of what you've mentioned is Fade In Pro http://www.fadeinpro.com/ http://www.fadeinpro.com/ which filled vacuum left by impotent Final Draft (this is changing now with FD 10 slightly). It's just GREAT that you can use the same application in all three environments. In case of Fade In Pro you don't even have to buy separate licenses.
amelius 10y ago
I'm wondering how one could produce "pro music" on an OS which is not real-time in the first place (?) For people who happen to not know what a real-time OS is, see [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_operating_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_operating_system
- dharma1 10y ago
  Here's a bit more on that - the article is old, but still very good. http://www.rossbencina.com/code/real-time-audio-programming-101-time-waits-for-nothing http://www.rossbencina.com/code/real-time-audio-programming-...
- sangnoir 10y ago
  > I'm wondering how one could produce "pro music" on an OS which is not real-time in the first place I'm not sure if your question is serious or not,but just in case it is: you can listen to poorer quality 'preview' while editing and render the final, full-quality audio in slower than realtime.
  - amelius 10y ago
    In a live performance situation, where the software generates effects (based on live input), you really have to do everything in real-time. Also, in a recording situation, I could imagine that the artists want live feedback. That said, you could use tricks, like making the output reverb whenever there's a buffer underrun.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  One reason a lot of people stuck with MacOS 9 for a long time after OS X came out was due to the cooperative multitasking of OS 9 - music software could monopolize the CPU as much as it wanted. They solve it in modern times by just having fast enough hardware with a bunch of slack for whatever crap might come along in the background, and allowing for a couple ms of buffer. Multicore helps.
mtw 10y ago
If it wasn't for iOS dev, i would have switched to a Win10 laptop a long time ago
applecore 10y ago
It's hard for Apple Inc. to care about anything else when 70% of revenue and 90% of profits comes from their flagship product, the iPhone.
the_duke 10y ago
Why would Apple really care about the "Pro" market? It's tiny in comparison to the consumer market. And the revenue for Macbooks is on par with iPad, and less than a third of the iPhone. They have not been a priority for Apple for many years now.
- coredog64 10y ago
  They have a closed development ecosystem, so diminished quality there will eventually show up in their flagship iOS market.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  The Halo effect
- soundwave106 10y ago
  Apparently in 2008 the market for computer music software was $425 million (https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-market-size-for-music-software-products-DAWs-plugins-virtual-instruments-loop-libraries-etc); https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-market-size-for-music-softwa... I can't Google anything more recent but I would say that, while not pure consumer before, it's not completely niche. Also, one of the advantages of developing pro art products is that they can be siphoned into consumer products or fun "freebies". The audio engine in Logic Pro for instance is the same as what is used in Garageband. With everyone taking photos and video on their phones these days there's probably even more opportunity in those areas.
72deluxe 10y ago
I'm waiting for the break in FireWire drivers as afflicts all my audio interfaces every OS update. It's infuriating that the same piece of audio hardware suddenly stops working with a new OS, yet if I reboot my MacBook Pro into Windows it still works great.
S_A_P 10y ago
This article is conflating consumer audio and pro audio. Most of the points made in this article != pro audio concerns. I DO NOT CARE that the 1/8" jack is missing from the new iPhone and that has nothing to do with pro audio. I never looked to apple to make studio reference headphones and if I ever used them, it would be to check a mix to make sure that the music sounded ok with the typical users headphones. Ive used various mac/windows based music platforms over the years since around 1997 and still think Mac is the better platform for audio. Heres why: 1) ios/osx has a baked in low latency audio framework in Core Audio which means even on board audio can run at < 10ms round trip latency 2) Logic is still the most solid DAW Ive ever used 3) Windows has yet to offer a compelling Audio experience with out serious hardware. I will agree that the new mac pro was a big step backwards from the previous version. I had an 8 core mac pro from 2008 and that was the perfect music pc. Im sure the new one is fine, but I dont care about the aesthetics of the computer as long as I can depend on it to record a session and not fail. The Native Instruments issues dont really surprise me and in my experience with that company their software quality ranges from buggy to mediocre (Komplete 1-8) to the point were I could not find a compelling reason to continue using their software. I could certainly understand a company acting defensive and blaming the OS manufacturer when they are flooded with bug reports. To that I would also offer a counterpoints of Propellerheads Reason. Their software is consistently bug free and solid performing. So it does not seem to really be a "Mac" problem. I currently use a universal audio apollo 8 and that also performs solidly via the lightning interface at near real time latency. Point being, its possible to make solid software for mac. Anyway, I don't think that the mac is perfect for audio, and the situation may be worse for video, it sounds like the new mac pro is a dud for pro users, which is disappointing.
- unprepare 10y ago
  >Logic is still the most solid DAW Ive ever used ProTools? its pretty much the industry standard and it also supports your point that its unlikely to be the OS at fault - since most studios i've been in are running mac pros and protools without any issues. Though protools requires some external hardware iirc
- 6stringmerc 10y ago
  As a semi-pro I tend to disagree with your reasons why Mac is better because 1) Tons of USB 3.0 audio interfaces work with Windows plug & play with <10ms latency (Focusrite comes to mind, Sweetwater lists a ton) that can be paired with any reasonable spec Windows laptop to be just as good and probably for less money [a], 2) Ableton Live and/or Reaper have been extremely solid in ways that yes Logic & ProTools also are solid, but this is a tie to me, and 3) Serious hardware goes back to #1 in that Windows actually has plenty of options that, let's be honest, a real serious Mac-based musician would invest in anyway. The gold standard UAD used to be Mac only but it's on USB 3.0 now so that kind of evens the field. I grew up with Macs, but when I learned how to manipulate PCs and, to the best of my ability, overcome a lot of the inherent issues. A lot has been budget oriented. VSTs and the like don't run on Mac, that cuts off an entire community! [a] Also there's ASIO4ALL which runs on a high grade machine pretty dang well - not Core Audio perfect, but it's surprisingly good in my experieince. Just needs like an i5, 8GB RAM and a decent HD (works great with SSDs).
renaudg 10y ago
I'm one of the commenters on the original thread, and I'm surprised that people here aren't discussing the other elephant in the room : pro audio software developers being exceptionally reluctant to take advantage of Apple's Developer Preview program, much more so than your average dev. My original comment below : "...this reveals a deeper, more cultural problem at Apple. The inability to ship OS builds to developers in time for them to adapt..." I'm a developer and sorry but... no. The first developer preview of Sierra has been available since June 13th. That's 3 full months, and indeed you must have noticed most developers of non-audio apps have spent the summer shipping updates. Yet somehow in the audio world, all hell breaks loose come September each year, it seems plug-in developers only start looking at the new OS the same day as their customers, and they scramble to make panicked "DO NOT UPGRADE YET !" statements. Not being ready on day 1 is unfortunate, not having started working on it is simply unprofessional, sorry. But the worst part is that they manage to get away with it, because most of their customers (musicians are notoriously conservative with their computers) nod in approval and go "yeah yeah don't worry, I'm still on MacOS-from-8-years-ago anyway. F* Apple always breaking stuff" (just look at the forums if you don't believe me) It simply doesn't have to be this way in most cases, and this is the real issue you should be talking about IMHO.
- willtim 10y ago
  To be fair to them, a developer preview is not the final shipping product, so it would not offer any guarantees anyway. It's better for them to test once the final code ships and educate their customers not to instantly upgrade just because Apple recommends it.
  - mortenjorck 10y ago
    In edge cases, yes, certain would-be compatibility issues on Apple's side will get worked out before release. But that's part of why beta programs exist in the first place - vendors are supposed to test their products with the beta OS, and file bugs as they encounter them! You make it sound as if Apple is re-architecting the audio system with each beta update. But all that happens long before an OS hits beta: Apple's betas are by and large feature-frozen. There's simply no excuse for a major vendor like Steinberg or Native Instruments to delay testing until there are literally computers already shipping that will not reliably run their software.
makecheck 10y ago
Hardware and software both suffer, and both seem to come from a sense of “well we’re just gonna do it this way now, having put no thought into it at all, and you have to deal with it”. For instance, there was absolutely zero reason to release an “update” to GarageBand that outright removed a substantial number of features and destroyed backward-compatibility (I don’t think I had a single song that even SOUNDED THE SAME after opening it in the “improved” version; many settings were just thrown out, or hard to find because they were just moved for no good reason). This is just plain stupid management: inept decision-making that shows a complete lack of respect for the financial and time investments made by previous customers. And hardware decisions have felt the same. Not only was the Mac Pro not what Pros really needed but even the damn web site for the thing made it impossible to really understand what the machine could actually do. I didn’t want to sit through animations and fancy scrolling just to find a data sheet. You have to have end-to-end, seamless understanding of what you’re trying to do in an endeavor, and this is clueless behavior. And one last factor makes me wonder: when Apple does so well in the stock market, what does that do to employees? It probably doesn’t take a lot of massive profit from stocks to make people reconsider their jobs; I figure there have to be a few new millionaires who just decided to leave, causing perhaps entirely new teams to take over some projects.
hasbroslasher 10y ago
Yep, it's scary. I'm a loyal Logic user (10 years) and a "pro" musician. I started getting worried when Pro X came out. The weird prosumer approach, their poor attempts at beating NI at synths, it all had me worried. Logic used to be fairly bare-bones by comparison but I never had to deal with the kind of bullshit Pro X has thrown at me: whole projects developing strange audio glitches for no apparent reason, constant missing audio files (even on newer tracks), meaningless warnings, system overloads on simple tracks, crashes, you name it. Maybe I was less bitchy when I was 20, but damn, it seems that things have gone downhill. That doesn't even start on the hardware: $1200 for a computer with sub-optimal hardware pains the engineer in me, especially when the thing breaks every couple of years and has to go to the sandboxed repair store to get fixed. Like many others in this thread, I leaving for Linux next time and I guess I'll make due with whatever they have.
GreggThurman 10y ago
Sorry to hear about your problems, but it was inevitable. Back in 1997 I commented on the AOL Apple Forum that Apple should dump the creative community in favor of the larger consumer market. At the time the creative market represented about 1.5% of total computer usage. Mac market share was 2%, but only in the US. Everywhere else it was non-existent. Not that I had anything to do with it (I didn't) Apple did just that, and today its the world's largest, most profitable tech company. Beyond computers, Apple manufactures iPhones, iPads, Beats headsets, Ear Buds and Air Buds, Apple Watches, and Apple TV. Apple also offers on demand movies, TV and music, not to mention books and news. Twenty years ago you couldn't open a Mac catalog without be deluged by creative programs and accessories Adobe was a big deal, today not so much. Most people recognize Adobe as the developer of a crap media player I want to thank you very much for supporting Apple back in the day. I did too, with a 27 person electronics and software development (Linux) firm. It was hard back then because field support was virtually non-existent (unless you did graphics). Frankly, the creative industry's need for specialized softwares and extremely powerful computers makes me wonder if you and Apple haven't come to a fork in the road, where each goes their own way. I wish you the very best.
Tmedia 10y ago
Too much whining here. Mac Pro Garbage Can sucks. We knew it on day one and know it today. iMac 5K is a great machine. If you think Mac OS is bad, try Windows. We did and we we went back. After a few false starts, final Cut Pro X is clearly the way of the future. It reduces our production time by 25%. El Capitan was stable on all of our machines. We are still testing Sierra and don't expect to deploy for a good while.
sarahjoshua 10y ago
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isarat 10y ago
This is absolutely a sad news and points towards the sad state of Mac for pro users. The investment on Apple desktop hardware is super expensive and often we end up with under powered hardware but macOS works well. These are for a regular user but pro users wants more. I recollect Oculus comment on why they stay away from Mac. There are lot of consolidations happens to make the devices seamlessly getting connected but unlike iOS walled ecosystem, Mac has a large third party developers heavily invested on the platform. They're sadly left here without anything!

162 points by xwvvvvwx 10y ago

Software updates in general are just getting sloppy, this isn't limited to Apple. The Windows 10 anniversary update had issues as well. Makes me long for the old MS service pack model.

72deluxe 10y ago
That's something I never thought I would see someone say! But it's true! At least you could install updates when you wanted, not when your remote masters in Redmond decided.

__jal 10y ago

Yep. I've been increasingly disappointed in Apple's OS X releases. Not even considering this upgrade for a point release, at least. And they're doing a very good job of promoting third party replacements for their own apps... For a while, I thought they were chasing IOS marketshare hard, and would come back to fixing the desktop. But I'm beginning to wonder if that isn't the intent; I'm sure the 30k-foot-view financials says OS X is now the second-class product. The problem is that OS X is the generative platform. Writers and programmers and musicians and designers and artists use Macs to produce. And a lot of these folks (me included) are getting restless. I'll be fine - honestly, I only own one OS X box today, and my main personal desktop is Linux. I'd be annoyed for a while if I had to switch to a Linux laptop, but vim is portable, and if they continue to baby-proof the OS at the expense of automation and traditional Unix tools, it will be less annoying that staying put. If the plan is to bring iOS to the point where, say, Ableton and Pro Tools runs sufficiently well there, then they better get on that before the OS where those tools do run rots out from under them. And if that isn't the plan, I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be very curious to know what it is.

javajosh 10y ago
The problem is that OS X is the generative platform If your "only iOS matters" hypothesis is correct than Apple only cares about generative OSX for generating iOS apps. That means keeping XCode working at all costs, and they can safely ignore every other use. I suspect that they understand that apart from students using Pages to write papers, MS and Google own the office productivity space. The only remaining code to write are highly proprietary front-ends and the occasional mega-backend.
- delinka 10y ago
  Have you seen Swift Playgrounds for iOS? I wonder, seriously, if that's not the start of Apple's attempt to put software dev on iOS. No, it's certainly not capable now, but in five years?
  - 72deluxe 10y ago
    Please no!!! iOS is like a toy compared to macOS.
jseliger 10y ago
I think the simpler answer is that Apple stopped caring about "pro" apps/users quite a while ago and that it is unlikely to start again in the near future. Video people have moved to Adobe Premier on Windows; photography people have ditched the depreciated Aperture for Lightroom (maybe supplemented with Dark Table); and now music people will have their turn.
- brusch64 10y ago
  I was pretty surprised, when I found out that Tom Holkenborg (Junkie XL, Composer of the film music for the new Mad Max movie) was using a Windows PC in his studio. Maybe more and more are moving from Apple hardware back to Windows hardware. Altough you still see most of the people using MacBooks for their live acts.
  - brusch64 10y ago
    This was the video I was talking about: Template setup and workstation layout with Junkie XL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB1twfL5b28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB1twfL5b28
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    I've been really torn about upgrading my music computer. On the one hand I hugely prefer macOS over Windows. But macOS now has regular showstopper bugs that simply shouldn't be there - like the issue with AU validation, and a bug in Yosemite that made it impossible to connect more than a small number of USB devices. Also, the Mac Pro is so poorly specified it's competing with it's own predecessors. It makes more sense to buy an ancient "cheesegrater" 5,1 Pro and upgrade it with a new processor than to buy the new Darth Waste Bin model - not just because of the basic spec and performance, but because the new Pro has no PCIe slots, some popular high-end music hardware comes on PCIe cards, and adding an external PCIe/Thunderbolt card cage doubles the cost. Windows actually has a broader range of VSTs available than macOS. So I'm not surprised pro users are switching to Windows. I don't love the idea, but if Apple can't offer the performance the market needs, users have no choice but to switch.

readymade 10y ago

I do think, as one of the commenters on the original thread suggests, that some of the blame lies with the often latent relationship audio software companies have with Apple's release cycle. Ideally QA begins while the OS update is still in beta. This varies quite a bit from company to company, but it's not something to sweep under the rug. The news of audio drop out issues (poison to live performers) persisting through multiple major versions is horrifying though.

wwweston 10y ago
> Ideally QA begins while the OS update is still in beta. Would help a lot if (a) Apple had longer lead times to actually get things right internally before they went to beta and (b) beta cycles were a bit longer and (c) companies didn't have to do this every damn year. On the other side... what are the benefits of having yearly regimented releases again?
- eridius 10y ago
  > what are the benefits of having yearly regimented releases again? It's what consumers expect. If Apple ditched the yearly upgrade model there'd probably be a shitstorm of bad PR and people complaining about how it's not just their hardware offerings that are getting out of date, now the OS is too.

eddieh 10y ago

I feel like this article is FUD. Nearly every professional audio interface for Mac, iPhone, or iPad has a 1/4" stereo headphone output for real studio monitor headphones. No pro is concerned that they lost the 1/8" output for bargain headphones on their iPhone. Any iMac or MacBook Pro from the last 5 years is sufficient for any pro audio workflow. A Mac Pro is still sufficient and is way overkill. A lot of people can be pretty productive on an iPad too. New Macs are coming, Apple isn't abandoning the Mac. I just updated to macOS Sierra and all my pro audio equipment has either kept working as is or the manufacturer released a driver update within days of the macOS Sierra release.

readymade 10y ago
You'd be surprised how many people play live with 1/8" jacks. It's also a useful backup when someone spills beer on your RME Fireface.
- eddieh 10y ago
  You're right, I would be surprised.
wwweston 10y ago
If the article were just about the headphone jack, maybe you'd have a point. Maybe not, though. For one thing "pro audio workflow" isn't the limits of concern here. 1/4" mono ain't exactly a dream interface from an audio engineering POV (ground? what ground?), but it's sure a popular one and a lot of musicians don't know/care. If iOS devices are now instruments, just because producers/sound guys might spend hundreds on their headphones (and I have) doesn't mean there aren't going to be would-be performers using what came with the device. Or that there shouldn't be. But the article is not just about the headphone jack, there's an additional half-dozen considerations that you haven't said anything to address other than "works for me." I can assure you that this is not everyone's experience.
wrigby 10y ago
> Any iMac or MacBook Pro from the last 5 years is sufficient for any pro audio workflow. Just a few days ago, Pro Tools popped up the annoying "A CPU Overload Has Occurred" dialog box while I was working on a mix. Mid-2015 rMBP, 2.5 GHz. It was a pretty simple session, too - nothing that breaks any rules, like reverbs on inserts. 12 or so tracks and three stereo effects (on their own busses). I'm amazed every day at how much capability my MBP puts into my hands, but it is not without limitations. To say it's sufficient for any pro audio workflow is a bit of a stretch.

wwweston 10y ago

I can't give this a big enough amen. Ten years ago there was simply no question in my mind that apple hardware + OS X was the right choice for audio/music production (not to mention a relatively hassle free Unix workstation for developers + some desktop software usage). Twenty years ago? Still Apple. Over the last 3-4 years, however, I've come to the conclusion that my next purchase needs to be something else if for no other reason than to clearly understand the alternatives. This is key: > The bad news: Apple still can’t seem to keep third parties synced up with its now annual release cadence. In a now yearly ritual, Apple has broken plug-in validation for its own Audio Unit format. Open question: why? Why is this now a regular feature of updating an operating system for a format that has basically remained unchanged for years? Why shouldn’t desktop upgrades be the kind of no-brainer mobile upgrades are. I have a hard time avoiding at least one of two conclusions: (a) Apple either now lacks the necessary talent to do the quality of work they sustained with OS X for a while (b) they fundamentally simply do not care at an institutional level (And if it were really only about Audio Units, that'd be one thing. But it's not.)

beedogs 10y ago
I also have a feeling it's a hardware/software combination. All the post-Haswell Macbooks (from 2013 onwards) seem to fare much, much worse for audio applications than the ones produced prior to the switch. I recently got rid of a late 2013 Retina MBP in favour of a late 2012 15" RMBP, and the difference in audio performance is astounding. No dropouts anymore, all my plugins work again, and Ableton is once again usable. I was hoping for a difference in performance but I was amazed at how much better the older one performed, with identical memory and SSD disk. And that's not the only issue I had with the 13" Haswell RMBP. Often it would lose its entire USB chain (which includes the built-in trackpad and keyboard!) which would require me to remote into it to shut it down. Thunderbolt wasn't much better, with frequent network dropouts over a gigabit tb adapter. The poor thing barely worked out of the box and it didn't get much better. I don't know what happened specifically with Haswell, but it seems like Apple and Intel haven't really been working to ensure it's a stable platform. It's a mess.
- willtim 10y ago

droopyEyelids 10y ago

People make a big deal of Apple's failure to update their computer line up, but I belive they're missing the point that we're hitting the wall with technology that matters in a laptop form factor. Apple was the first for all the big impact technologies of the recent years: ultra high def displays, new hard drive technolgies, and the latest wifi standards. But what do you want now? A new processor? They're only delivering slight marginal improvements in the i5/i7 mobile range. More RAM? Yeah, apple could offer 32GB models, but that's not relevant to the music industry. Everything else is about as good as it gets. There just aren't laptop scale improvements in technology as of late.

addicted 10y ago
This is contradicted by the fact that it isn't legally possible to do any sort of VR work using Apple's lineup of computers. But you may have hit upon the real disconnect. Apple is waiting for new shiny features, while Pros simply want things that make it easier (and in the case of VR, possible) to do their jobs. Edit: I meant VR, not 3D.
- sjwright 10y ago
  I don't think it's a contradiction. VR is not a big-impact technology, it is a geek-driven technology. What Apple does well is technologies that can be deployed to mainstream consumers in a way that has (or can be marketed as having) real world benefits to normal people. VR might eventually become mainstream, but in the foreseeable future it will be a niche at best. Perhaps useful in a few narrow verticals (e.g, architecture, engineering and product design).
- greyhat 10y ago
  Very curious to know more about legal (licensing?) problems doing VR work on Apple computers. I tried to search but didn't find anything that seemed related. Is it specific to Oculus and Vive hardware? I know of other companies who literally use Apple notebooks as the monitor for their VR rigs.
- eridius 10y ago
  What do you mean by "legally possible"?

paulcole 10y ago

The average person just doesn't care. Like it or not, Apple makes products for average people who want a somewhat affordable status symbol.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago
Just stop with the status symbol crap. I didn't buy a mac to be like everyone else. I bought it because the hardware is solid. For example the keyboard doesn't flex a half inch like nearly every plastic piece of crap windows laptop out there.
- Inconel 10y ago
  You may not have bought a Mac to be like everyone else but that doesn't necessarily mean that many others aren't buying Apple products at least partially due to brand status and social signaling. Edit: I don't mind the downvotes if I have said something stupid but could I get some clarification here? I'm typing this on a MacBook so I clearly like Apple products but it seems like branding and marketing are fairly important to Apple, otherwise they probably wouldn't spend billions of dollars on ad campaigns.
  - striking 10y ago
    In my view (though I did not downvote you) I felt you brought little to a conversation about tools for professionals. Sure, Apple doesn't make good pro tools anymore, but the interesting part is the anymore. It used to be that they made incredible workstations with really interesting gear, capturing a sort of "pro consumer" market. Maybe your point was that the financials are no longer there to support pro gear or creativity or even OS X as a whole because phones make them more money. If it was, though, you didn't express it. And I agree with the fact that many people are buying them because they're simply status symbols, but many more people buy them because they see it as the easiest choice. Your (average, run-of-the-mill) grandma's not going to be able to choose one of many Android phones unless her grandson tells her which one to pick. At that point she might just walk into an Apple store and out with a new phone. If that was part of your point, you also didn't express that. So I think you're losing points because your points aren't all too accurate or visible (at least from my point of view) and because, even if they were, they have very little to do about the deprecation of Apple's tooling for semi-/pro users.

niels_olson 10y ago

I write this from a Surface Pro, leaving a retina macboook and an ipad pro in my bag: really glad to hear someone in a core Apple industry putting together a solid case for "Apple: please vector some engineering talent to macOS, now". The masses follow the makers. The makers are dissatisfied. Pay attention.

addicted 10y ago

I don't get how any professional can trust Apple after the past few years. If as a pro, you aren't at the very least actively looking for alternatives to Apple products you are doing your future self a huge disservice. After using nothing but Apple products for a decade, I am being forced to wean myself off them, because I cannot depend on Apple for the tools of my trade. What they've done with their Pro hardware is ridiculous. Even if they release the greatest computers ever released for Pros in a month, their history over the past few years makes them completely unreliable. Final Cut Pro, Aperture, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, Mac Pro, XServe, OSX Server, form, in one way or another at least a majority of their pro offerings, for any useful definition of the word Pro, and Apple's behavior with these products have ranged from dumbing down, to neglect, to straight up abandonment. And it's not just pro users, but also "prosumers". iPhoto, Mail, Calendar, iWork all been dumbed down to the point of not being able to serve any prosumer needs. Apple provides experience and value to consumers that seems far beyond their competitors but their actions towards pro users couldn't have been more clear in their intent. Lip service with an occasional teaser to keep you hooked.

bane 10y ago
Apple needs to be very careful, by effectively abandoning the pro creatives market, their products start to look more and more like expensive toys and convenience products. Supporting pro-level consumers, they made their offerings indispensable at work and thus more convenient for users at home.
- addicted 10y ago
  It's possible, but as the whole Samsung recall debacle showed, Apple is still heads and shoulders ahead of their competitors in serving the consumer market. The entire consumer Eco system, including support, 3rd party integration, 3rd party apps, first party apps, and hardware, just seems significantly ahead of any competitor. I find it hard to see how a loss of the pro market will affect their ability to sell hundreds of billions of dollars of iOS devices every year. Which, of course, worries me even more about the future of Apple in the professional space.

cageface 10y ago

For whatever reason, Apple seems to be struggling across the board when it comes to software engineering. They are slow to execute new features and when they do they are often buggy. With each release cycle they fall farther and farther behind their competition. I'm having a hard time thinking of any Apple applications that are better than their competition. I don't know if they're having trouble attracting top talent or if there's something off in their culture but they need to fix it. Swift is a good foundation to build on but it won't be enough on its own. They're lucky Microsoft has been asleep at the wheel for the last few years or actively shooting itself in the foot (Windows 8). But MS seems to be getting its act together lately.

tallanvor 10y ago
The answer is pretty simple: Apple is a hardware company. As much as they'd like to claim otherwise, their software is simply there to support hardware sales. Microsoft had an identity crisis for a number of years where they weren't quite sure where they should go, but their move back to being a platform (with regards to Azure) and making sure that the rest of their lines support that work is starting to pay off. Of course, they do need to tighten things up, especially around Windows... That division in particular seems to be trying to move too quickly and it's showing.
- FussyZeus 10y ago
  I don't think it's that cut and dry, Apple's always been a hardware company but they've had excellent software to match their excellent hardware. I'd argue the hardware is still more or less on point, it's the software that's been struggling lately. Even as a relatively new developer to the Apple space, in the time I've worked in iOS/OSX the quality has taken a stark dip in terms of stability and functionality, and seems to coincide with Jobs no longer being at the company. I think having one guy who is in a position to yell at literally anyone for doing less then stellar work is an asset no company appreciates until it's gone, and we all know that Tim Cook is in no fashion at all a Steve Jobs, he can't put people to task like that.
  - 10y ago

gallerytungsten 10y ago

An article from the recording world, with a similar perspective: http://tapeop.com/columns/end-rant/115/ http://tapeop.com/columns/end-rant/115/

makomk 10y ago
From the article: "It's important for professionals to be able to choose when and how they upgrade their software tools. With macOS, this is getting more and more difficult to do, and this is the main reason I want to leave the Mac ecosystem." Of course, this is even more true of Windows 10, where Microsoft have decided they want to force updates on users on their chosen schedule - and of course just like with macOS, newer hardware can't run older versions of Windows. Have we reached the point where no major OS is suitable for actual, productive creative use?
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  OS X is still marginally better than the alternatives, but it's becoming increasingly flaky, and Apple's hardware support is a year or two short of a mass exodus to other platforms. Win 10 is abhorrent in so many it's impossible to list them all. But it's increasingly usable and mostly stable. Some pro users can live with the horror. Others can't. Linux is still a hobbyist, experimenter, and IT infrastructure OS. It's good at all the above, and it's being used for some creative pro applications. But it's not a straightforward option for anyone who just wants to get on with paid professional creative work. It would be interesting if one of the main audio sequencers appeared on Linux. Bitwig is already there. But if (say) Ableton Live switched, it would start a mass stampede away from macOS. Unfortunately Linux fragmentation makes that unlikely. So - no, we do not currently have a rock solid no-nonsense OS for professional use, and it's looking less and likely that we'll have one any time soon. This is ridiculous in 2016. But here we are.

macawfish 10y ago

I was a heavy Logic 9 user. I've been into producing for 18 years or so now, since I was a kid, a die-hard Mac user. I've been through Digital Performer, Cubase and Logic Pro. Apple was holding it down with the pro software after they bought Emagic. It's kinda sad to see that the situation has deteriorated to this level. Well, I started getting fed up with Apple ~6 years ago now. After my hard drive crashed, I moved to to producing on exclusively on Linux as a personal, mental and spiritual challenge. This was very difficult in 2011. As much as I wanted Ardour to be what I wanted it to be, the only thing that was stable enough to get stuff done on was QTractor... Since then, Linux has gotten waayyyy better for music production. KXStudio is excellent. (don't waste time on Ubuntu Studio, it's not configured well). There are plenty of amazing LV2 and LADSPA plugins, and even some good VST plugins like TAL NoizeMaker. Ardour is great if you're lucky to get a stable build. As far as "mainstream pro" music production on linux... it's maybe not quite there yet for a general audience, but if you're a producer/composer/independent artist with some technical patience, Linux audio production is completely amazing. It's a whole different paradigm with plenty of room for professionals. The fact that Jack is totally modular from the get-go is extremely powerful. It means that stuff can be combined in all kinds of ways. (check this thing out if you haven't already: http://moddevices.com/ http://moddevices.com/ ) And honestly, Bitwig has completely switched up the whole situation. Right now I'm running Bitwig on Arch and it's beastly. The only thing I miss from Logic are those excellent MIDI editing tools, non-destructive quantize. I'm also missing my favorite LV2 plugins (ZynAddSubFX). But Bitwig has plenty of synths and a fully modular system for creating endless sounds, so I'm set. Don't need or want Apple at this point. I'm good :)

bo1024 10y ago
As an amateur music dabbler, that's great to hear. I tried Linux in 2011 or so (Ardour maybe?) and gave up, got a Macbook and Logic Pro. But the idea of moving back to Linux full-time on more powerful and repairable hardware is very appealing.
- macawfish 10y ago
  Check Bitwig or Reaper (recommended by some people in a different comment) if you want something more stable. And yeah, KXStudio has great tools for configuring and managing Jack with Pulseaudio. You can install it on top of Ubuntu via it's deb repository. Lately I've been using Arch. Arch's audio packages are also very well configured. There's even a Bitwig package in the AUR. That's how I installed Bitwig :) It's the best of both worlds.

dharma1 10y ago

I dunno. Logic is still my favourite DAW. Everything still works, I can even use my 15 year old Emagic AMT midi inteface with it. I wish they would sort out the AU validation though. I don't use Apple headphones or Apple Music - not sure if they have much to do with "Pro Music", whatever that is.

KaiserPro 10y ago

They did the same for the VFX industry, actively stopping the leading compositing software to go and do other things. However at least Jobs told the collected heads of the VFX houses to go fuck themselves in person.

pavlov 10y ago

Apple's relationship with pro-anything is collapsing. I write Mac software for a YC company in the pro video space. Our new product started deployments a couple of months back, and a major source of problems has been the Apple platform -- both hardware and software. It's so bad that we're actively working to move off the Mac completely. (I've spent 15 years doing Mac software, so this is a big deal for me.) Apple doesn't have pro hardware anymore. The 2013 Mac Pro is a complete failure, maybe the worst computer they've ever made. We deployed a dozen Mac Pros, and four of them suffer from a GPU overheating problem that's widespread but little talked about -- Apple has been replacing Mac Pros quietly for years. The original Mac Pro was a great computer for the pro market: lots of extensibility, high-quality cooling system. The new Mac Pro removed all that and offers no benefit to users like us. It's really more like a cylindrical rebirth of the infamous Power Mac G4 Cube. The same heat problems apply to their laptops. Many MBP models with NVIDIA graphics end up needing yearly motherboard replacements, which Apple is providing through a special replacement program. (My previous MacBook Pro has had this done three times.) Apple's drive towards ever-thinner and ideally fanless computers like the 12" MacBook suggests that this trend isn't going to change. I'm afraid the next MacBook Pro will be the "worst of both worlds", a combination of traits from the 12" MacBook and the Mac Pro. Meanwhile on the software front, macOS has become an unstable and unpredictable platform for high-performance media applications. The emphasis on power saving, sandboxing and relentlessly throttling down userspace applications has made it quite hard to ensure that all our processes keep ticking along as they should. Working around macOS features designed for fanless laptops is such a waste of time when our deployment environment would ideally be a rackmount old-style Mac Pro. Looks like there's going to be lots of Windows 10 in my future :(

bo1024 10y ago
It would be an amazing thing for the world if professional-software developers like you began to target Linux (as well).
- Keyframe 10y ago
  I work in TV and film and use all three operating systems daily! I go where apps go. OS itself rarely matters since all I usually see is an application itself. Linux and MacOS (well, basically anything GNU-based) offers a lot more flexibility and automation. Not that Windows cannot do it, but that my colleagues and myself are more used to ye olde *nix. Windows, on the other hand, just works! Sorry, couldn't resist. I use MacOS, these days, mostly for writing (occasional coding) and on the go editing on macbook. Nice example of what you've mentioned is Fade In Pro http://www.fadeinpro.com/ http://www.fadeinpro.com/ which filled vacuum left by impotent Final Draft (this is changing now with FD 10 slightly). It's just GREAT that you can use the same application in all three environments. In case of Fade In Pro you don't even have to buy separate licenses.

amelius 10y ago

I'm wondering how one could produce "pro music" on an OS which is not real-time in the first place (?) For people who happen to not know what a real-time OS is, see [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_operating_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_operating_system

dharma1 10y ago
Here's a bit more on that - the article is old, but still very good. http://www.rossbencina.com/code/real-time-audio-programming-101-time-waits-for-nothing http://www.rossbencina.com/code/real-time-audio-programming-...
sangnoir 10y ago
> I'm wondering how one could produce "pro music" on an OS which is not real-time in the first place I'm not sure if your question is serious or not,but just in case it is: you can listen to poorer quality 'preview' while editing and render the final, full-quality audio in slower than realtime.
- amelius 10y ago
  In a live performance situation, where the software generates effects (based on live input), you really have to do everything in real-time. Also, in a recording situation, I could imagine that the artists want live feedback. That said, you could use tricks, like making the output reverb whenever there's a buffer underrun.
kalleboo 10y ago
One reason a lot of people stuck with MacOS 9 for a long time after OS X came out was due to the cooperative multitasking of OS 9 - music software could monopolize the CPU as much as it wanted. They solve it in modern times by just having fast enough hardware with a bunch of slack for whatever crap might come along in the background, and allowing for a couple ms of buffer. Multicore helps.

mtw 10y ago

If it wasn't for iOS dev, i would have switched to a Win10 laptop a long time ago

applecore 10y ago

It's hard for Apple Inc. to care about anything else when 70% of revenue and 90% of profits comes from their flagship product, the iPhone.

the_duke 10y ago

Why would Apple really care about the "Pro" market? It's tiny in comparison to the consumer market. And the revenue for Macbooks is on par with iPad, and less than a third of the iPhone. They have not been a priority for Apple for many years now.

coredog64 10y ago
They have a closed development ecosystem, so diminished quality there will eventually show up in their flagship iOS market.
kalleboo 10y ago
The Halo effect
soundwave106 10y ago
Apparently in 2008 the market for computer music software was $425 million (https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-market-size-for-music-software-products-DAWs-plugins-virtual-instruments-loop-libraries-etc); https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-market-size-for-music-softwa... I can't Google anything more recent but I would say that, while not pure consumer before, it's not completely niche. Also, one of the advantages of developing pro art products is that they can be siphoned into consumer products or fun "freebies". The audio engine in Logic Pro for instance is the same as what is used in Garageband. With everyone taking photos and video on their phones these days there's probably even more opportunity in those areas.

72deluxe 10y ago

I'm waiting for the break in FireWire drivers as afflicts all my audio interfaces every OS update. It's infuriating that the same piece of audio hardware suddenly stops working with a new OS, yet if I reboot my MacBook Pro into Windows it still works great.

S_A_P 10y ago

This article is conflating consumer audio and pro audio. Most of the points made in this article != pro audio concerns. I DO NOT CARE that the 1/8" jack is missing from the new iPhone and that has nothing to do with pro audio. I never looked to apple to make studio reference headphones and if I ever used them, it would be to check a mix to make sure that the music sounded ok with the typical users headphones. Ive used various mac/windows based music platforms over the years since around 1997 and still think Mac is the better platform for audio. Heres why: 1) ios/osx has a baked in low latency audio framework in Core Audio which means even on board audio can run at < 10ms round trip latency 2) Logic is still the most solid DAW Ive ever used 3) Windows has yet to offer a compelling Audio experience with out serious hardware. I will agree that the new mac pro was a big step backwards from the previous version. I had an 8 core mac pro from 2008 and that was the perfect music pc. Im sure the new one is fine, but I dont care about the aesthetics of the computer as long as I can depend on it to record a session and not fail. The Native Instruments issues dont really surprise me and in my experience with that company their software quality ranges from buggy to mediocre (Komplete 1-8) to the point were I could not find a compelling reason to continue using their software. I could certainly understand a company acting defensive and blaming the OS manufacturer when they are flooded with bug reports. To that I would also offer a counterpoints of Propellerheads Reason. Their software is consistently bug free and solid performing. So it does not seem to really be a "Mac" problem. I currently use a universal audio apollo 8 and that also performs solidly via the lightning interface at near real time latency. Point being, its possible to make solid software for mac. Anyway, I don't think that the mac is perfect for audio, and the situation may be worse for video, it sounds like the new mac pro is a dud for pro users, which is disappointing.

unprepare 10y ago
>Logic is still the most solid DAW Ive ever used ProTools? its pretty much the industry standard and it also supports your point that its unlikely to be the OS at fault - since most studios i've been in are running mac pros and protools without any issues. Though protools requires some external hardware iirc
6stringmerc 10y ago
As a semi-pro I tend to disagree with your reasons why Mac is better because 1) Tons of USB 3.0 audio interfaces work with Windows plug & play with <10ms latency (Focusrite comes to mind, Sweetwater lists a ton) that can be paired with any reasonable spec Windows laptop to be just as good and probably for less money [a], 2) Ableton Live and/or Reaper have been extremely solid in ways that yes Logic & ProTools also are solid, but this is a tie to me, and 3) Serious hardware goes back to #1 in that Windows actually has plenty of options that, let's be honest, a real serious Mac-based musician would invest in anyway. The gold standard UAD used to be Mac only but it's on USB 3.0 now so that kind of evens the field. I grew up with Macs, but when I learned how to manipulate PCs and, to the best of my ability, overcome a lot of the inherent issues. A lot has been budget oriented. VSTs and the like don't run on Mac, that cuts off an entire community! [a] Also there's ASIO4ALL which runs on a high grade machine pretty dang well - not Core Audio perfect, but it's surprisingly good in my experieince. Just needs like an i5, 8GB RAM and a decent HD (works great with SSDs).

renaudg 10y ago

I'm one of the commenters on the original thread, and I'm surprised that people here aren't discussing the other elephant in the room : pro audio software developers being exceptionally reluctant to take advantage of Apple's Developer Preview program, much more so than your average dev. My original comment below : "...this reveals a deeper, more cultural problem at Apple. The inability to ship OS builds to developers in time for them to adapt..." I'm a developer and sorry but... no. The first developer preview of Sierra has been available since June 13th. That's 3 full months, and indeed you must have noticed most developers of non-audio apps have spent the summer shipping updates. Yet somehow in the audio world, all hell breaks loose come September each year, it seems plug-in developers only start looking at the new OS the same day as their customers, and they scramble to make panicked "DO NOT UPGRADE YET !" statements. Not being ready on day 1 is unfortunate, not having started working on it is simply unprofessional, sorry. But the worst part is that they manage to get away with it, because most of their customers (musicians are notoriously conservative with their computers) nod in approval and go "yeah yeah don't worry, I'm still on MacOS-from-8-years-ago anyway. F* Apple always breaking stuff" (just look at the forums if you don't believe me) It simply doesn't have to be this way in most cases, and this is the real issue you should be talking about IMHO.

willtim 10y ago
To be fair to them, a developer preview is not the final shipping product, so it would not offer any guarantees anyway. It's better for them to test once the final code ships and educate their customers not to instantly upgrade just because Apple recommends it.
- mortenjorck 10y ago
  In edge cases, yes, certain would-be compatibility issues on Apple's side will get worked out before release. But that's part of why beta programs exist in the first place - vendors are supposed to test their products with the beta OS, and file bugs as they encounter them! You make it sound as if Apple is re-architecting the audio system with each beta update. But all that happens long before an OS hits beta: Apple's betas are by and large feature-frozen. There's simply no excuse for a major vendor like Steinberg or Native Instruments to delay testing until there are literally computers already shipping that will not reliably run their software.

makecheck 10y ago

Hardware and software both suffer, and both seem to come from a sense of “well we’re just gonna do it this way now, having put no thought into it at all, and you have to deal with it”. For instance, there was absolutely zero reason to release an “update” to GarageBand that outright removed a substantial number of features and destroyed backward-compatibility (I don’t think I had a single song that even SOUNDED THE SAME after opening it in the “improved” version; many settings were just thrown out, or hard to find because they were just moved for no good reason). This is just plain stupid management: inept decision-making that shows a complete lack of respect for the financial and time investments made by previous customers. And hardware decisions have felt the same. Not only was the Mac Pro not what Pros really needed but even the damn web site for the thing made it impossible to really understand what the machine could actually do. I didn’t want to sit through animations and fancy scrolling just to find a data sheet. You have to have end-to-end, seamless understanding of what you’re trying to do in an endeavor, and this is clueless behavior. And one last factor makes me wonder: when Apple does so well in the stock market, what does that do to employees? It probably doesn’t take a lot of massive profit from stocks to make people reconsider their jobs; I figure there have to be a few new millionaires who just decided to leave, causing perhaps entirely new teams to take over some projects.

hasbroslasher 10y ago

Yep, it's scary. I'm a loyal Logic user (10 years) and a "pro" musician. I started getting worried when Pro X came out. The weird prosumer approach, their poor attempts at beating NI at synths, it all had me worried. Logic used to be fairly bare-bones by comparison but I never had to deal with the kind of bullshit Pro X has thrown at me: whole projects developing strange audio glitches for no apparent reason, constant missing audio files (even on newer tracks), meaningless warnings, system overloads on simple tracks, crashes, you name it. Maybe I was less bitchy when I was 20, but damn, it seems that things have gone downhill. That doesn't even start on the hardware: $1200 for a computer with sub-optimal hardware pains the engineer in me, especially when the thing breaks every couple of years and has to go to the sandboxed repair store to get fixed. Like many others in this thread, I leaving for Linux next time and I guess I'll make due with whatever they have.

GreggThurman 10y ago

Sorry to hear about your problems, but it was inevitable. Back in 1997 I commented on the AOL Apple Forum that Apple should dump the creative community in favor of the larger consumer market. At the time the creative market represented about 1.5% of total computer usage. Mac market share was 2%, but only in the US. Everywhere else it was non-existent. Not that I had anything to do with it (I didn't) Apple did just that, and today its the world's largest, most profitable tech company. Beyond computers, Apple manufactures iPhones, iPads, Beats headsets, Ear Buds and Air Buds, Apple Watches, and Apple TV. Apple also offers on demand movies, TV and music, not to mention books and news. Twenty years ago you couldn't open a Mac catalog without be deluged by creative programs and accessories Adobe was a big deal, today not so much. Most people recognize Adobe as the developer of a crap media player I want to thank you very much for supporting Apple back in the day. I did too, with a 27 person electronics and software development (Linux) firm. It was hard back then because field support was virtually non-existent (unless you did graphics). Frankly, the creative industry's need for specialized softwares and extremely powerful computers makes me wonder if you and Apple haven't come to a fork in the road, where each goes their own way. I wish you the very best.

Tmedia 10y ago

Too much whining here. Mac Pro Garbage Can sucks. We knew it on day one and know it today. iMac 5K is a great machine. If you think Mac OS is bad, try Windows. We did and we we went back. After a few false starts, final Cut Pro X is clearly the way of the future. It reduces our production time by 25%. El Capitan was stable on all of our machines. We are still testing Sierra and don't expect to deploy for a good while.

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isarat 10y ago

This is absolutely a sad news and points towards the sad state of Mac for pro users. The investment on Apple desktop hardware is super expensive and often we end up with under powered hardware but macOS works well. These are for a regular user but pro users wants more. I recollect Oculus comment on why they stay away from Mac. There are lot of consolidations happens to make the devices seamlessly getting connected but unlike iOS walled ecosystem, Mac has a large third party developers heavily invested on the platform. They're sadly left here without anything!