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I own Apple Logic and thus I'm grateful for the continuous updates. On the other hand, I'm mystified why Apple continues its investment in this audio program.

by jasode 6y ago

I own Apple Logic and thus I'm grateful for the continuous updates. On the other hand, I'm mystified why Apple continues its investment in this audio program. Yes, when Steve Jobs bought Logic from Emagic in 2002, it made strategic sense to fortify Apple's "software portfolio" to make Mac hardware more attractive. But that was before the surprising massive success of iPhones in 2007. Now, it seems like sales of Logic would be a insignificant rounding error in Apple's revenue. If Mac software portfolio was that big a deal, I'm not sure why they discontinued Aperture instead of Logic. It seems like there's a bigger market of customers that would catalog and modify photos rather than record music. Intuit sold off Quicken to a private equity firm and yet Apple continues to own and develop Logic. I like Apple's stewardship of Logic but I can't understand its strategic value to today's Apple. Anybody have any thoughts on what Logic does for Apple that Aperture didn't? EDIT to several replies about "enhancing brand image": That's plausible but AVID Pro Tools is even more prestigious than Logic and AVID's market cap is only $250 million[0]. Apple could acquire AVID easily with their ~$200 billion cash on hand to "strengthen Apple's brand among the professionals". People have been speculating this possible acquisition for years but I don't think it will happen. So not sure what Logic does for Apple that AVID Pro Tools doesn't. [0] https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/avid https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/avid

dangus 6y ago
It is simple, it continues to keep professional people with large budgets on the Mac. These creative people are often influential to others (an example of this is a music artist I follow on Instagram who basically constantly posts their mobile studio setup that involves a MacBook Pro - free advertising of the most valuable type, organic). Compare Logic’s cost with a $800/year ProTools subscription and suddenly you might not really mind the fact that the SSD in your new Mac is overpriced. With that price difference it would be illogical to ever move to software that can run on Windows.
earthnail 6y ago
It’s great for their brand. Apple has always used musicians to brand itself as a creative brand. Musicians are way more visible as creatives than photographers. Becoming a rock star is a thing, becoming a rock star photographer is... uhm... yeah well no, not the same as a real rock star.
- ueueshitashita 6y ago
  > Becoming a rock star is a thing Not really in 2020.
  - p_l 6y ago
    It's the perception. It might not be "rock" star anymore, but genericised "music superstar", yes. Like many other things involved in this decision, it's the perception that matters, not facts.
    - ueueshitashita 6y ago
      > It might not be "rock" star anymore That's the point, the "rock" stars aren't making any money in the industry like other pop acts anymore - they're mostly doing their own thing on Patreon and streaming on Twitch.
      - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
        If they're recording music, they can certainly still use Logic to do it, and Apple wants to give them reasons to keep doing so. It's hard not to notice that Apple has been courting YouTubers really heavily over the last few years.
      - p_l 6y ago
        It's not about whether they make money. It's about whether the end result is that the brand gets associated with the idea of "cool creative". It's a common theme in many areas of Apple after Jobs return, including the whole Apple Store design.
  - rosstex 6y ago
    Yeah, it's all about that neo-soul, 90's R&B rebirth jazz fusion wave that we're blessed to be riding.
    - shlom22 6y ago
petard 6y ago
Maybe a mix of marketing value and organizational inertia? Music software allows you to do the famous musician uses Mac sell which Aperture does not. People probably can name you their favorite musician but not so much photographer.
vmception 6y ago
For decades creatives and even non-creatives were able to be convinced that "Macs were better for audio, video, photography" without any analysis of benchmarks, hardware differences, performance. This thought pattern transcended the PowerPC processor, to the off-the-shelf Intel processors that the competitors used, to the ARM processors the mobile devices used. Apple continuing that perception with at least software updates can continue to cement their hegemony amongst the minds of people. They're also good machines without the fluff! But merely showing support for that perception can help retain the premium pricing when even artists across the entire socioeconomic spectrum (heavily weighted to one side) will still prioritize getting Apple devices over other expenses, or at least aspire to and talk about those dreams.
- billjings 6y ago
  In my experience, musicians and other creative types care first and formost about getting results. So that means they need a toolchain that is flexible and rich enough to yield great results. Performance is a factor there, inasmuch as it constrains results. The toolchain part is pretty broad: this includes OS services (audio routing!), outboard hardware, DAWs and video editors, and third party plugins. When comparing macOS vs. Windows for audio, macOS wins for most people on those axes. Apple wins on OS services (audio routing is super annoying on windows) and on outboard hardware (USB3 works okay, but Thunderbolt is better, and it's a pain to get configured on a Windows machine). DAWs is mostly a wash with the exception of Logic, and third party plugins is a total wash. Even given that, Logic plays a strategic role in that ecosystem for Apple. As the more expensive option, Apple always runs the risk of being the secondary platform for application authors. Without Logic, other DAW vendors could be free to neglect their offerings on Mac. That ecosystem is healthy right now, but Logic is a key hedge. Oh, and lock-in is a big thing, too. Logic users may be a minority, but they're firmly locked into the Mac in a way that Reaper users aren't. Video is different. Many video creatives have made the switch to windows. There were two key reasons they have jumped: 1. Hardware. The Mac Pro was neglected for years, and third party graphics card support has always been better on Windows. Performance isn't paramount, but it does matter. 2. Final Cut Pro X. This completely changed the editing model from under a lot of pros, requiring them to completely rethink their workflows. Since this happened at the same time that hardware support was really bad, a lot of pros thought, "Well, if I'm going to have to rethink my workflow anyway..." It loosened lock-in at a time when the other parts of the platform were pretty weak.
whatok 6y ago
It doesn't really make much sense from a $ perspective and really only serves as a lesser (and rapidly diminishing) halo effect for the rest of the brand. Logic is one of those programs that keeps people on Macs. I'm sure I don't need to explain this to a Logic owner but audio engineering and production was strictly a Mac-only affair in the past and that has rapidly changed over the past decade. Macs have gotten increasingly difficult to work with due to constant OS updates breaking everything and have only gotten more expensive with less options for actual professional users who need real I/Os. Keeping Logic fresh is important to keep people from switching as everything else they do on a more macro level is pushing people in that direction. Someone somewhere in Apple decided that holding onto this market was worth it for probably solely the halo effect. I can't think of any other reason and makes no sense from a strictly financial perspective.
- WalterSear 6y ago
  > I'm sure I don't need to explain this to a Logic owner but audio engineering and production was strictly a Mac-only affair in the past and that has rapidly changed over the past decade. Strictly? Not at all. The crown was lost a lot earlier - around the time that digidesign started offering non-hardware versions, and for the same reasons.
  - whatok 6y ago
    Sure, probably a bit earlier but the vast majority of [i]real professionals[/i] were stuck with Macs. Pro Tools M-Powered for example had to have been a minuscule portion of overall Pro Tools market and people still used that on Macs. Not having a real desktop solution for a long period of time was the last nail for a good portion of users.
    - WalterSear 6y ago
      It wasn't people following Protools: it was Protools chasing the chasing markets that had already started to leave.
      - 6y ago
freepor 6y ago
One thing that’s always been very important to Apple’s marketing is the sense that the coolest people in the world use Macs. The positioning has always been “Well that CEO has a PC but that artist with a lot of sexual partners uses a Mac.” Logic is part of the portfolio to preserve that image by having as many musicians as possible using Apple hardware and software.
neutronicus 6y ago
Once the DJs start using Windows, they'll stop buying iPhones, and once the DJs stop buying iPhones, the people who go to clubs will stop buying iPhones, and once the people who go to clubs stop buying iPhones so will everyone else.
crazygringo 6y ago
To be more specific, and in response to your reply: Together with Final Cut Pro, Apple wants to have Mac-only exclusive software that is aimed specifically at cool creative professionals to build up the image that trendy creatives use Macs (and you therefore have no choice but to use a Mac, otherwise you won't have the software you need). Aperture couldn't really compete with Adobe's whole workflow (since Apple didn't have a full-fledged Photoshop competitor). But also, movies and music are "sexier" in a way. AVID Pro Tools works on Windows so it doesn't do anything for Apple. The whole point is awesome software that works only on Macs. The day that every single program creatives use runs as Windows as well as Macs, is the day it becomes a lot harder for a lot of people to justify buying a Mac. It's that simple. (So it's certainly not about any profit from the software directly, and it's also not just a marketing "halo".)
- jasode 6y ago
  >But yeah, AVID Pro Tools works on Windows so it doesn't do anything for Apple. Before Apple bought it, Emagic's Logic ran on both Windows and Mac. After Apple acquired Logic, they immediately discontinued the Windows version. Can't Apple hypothetically run the same playbook and discontinue Pro Tools for Windows?
  - timthorn 6y ago
    Not only that - the next version of Logic was due imminently, with the engineering work done. It was at that moment that I grew a strong dislike of Apple, having been a real cheerleader for most of the Macintosh's existence.
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    Oh wow, I didn't know that. I mean, that seems like a pretty shitty thing to do to an existing userbase. I guess they could, but risk generating a lot of ill will. I'm curious how discontinuing Logic was received. Seems very risky.
    - WalterSear 6y ago
purerandomness 6y ago
The Windows port was discontinued the same day Emagic was sold to Apple. I always assumed that the goal was to strengthen the Apple brand and signal that it's a more suitable system for creative work.
jrochkind1 6y ago
I'd think it must be to sell laptops, not to sell Logic. Now, do they need to do this to sell laptops, does it actually sell significant laptops, are there more people that buy a Mac laptop for Logic than who bought or would have a Mac laptop for Aperture? I dunno. It's also possible they miscalculated with Aperture. Or may be miscalculating now with Logic. Apple can make mistakes or behave irrationally too. But it's gotta be to sell laptops. (Which is consistent with not charging for the upgrade; it's not about revenue from the software at all). And there are definitely at least some people buying a Mac laptop for Logic. (In a world with decreasing laptop sales in general, as many move phone/tablet only). Now, with what you say about iPhones... I keep worrying that Apple will decide they don't really care about selling laptops after all someday...
ksec 6y ago
Came here to ask the same question and so far none of the answer seems convincing to me. It would have made a little more sense if they had released this update as Logic Pro 11 and charges some upgrade fees. Instead it is free. To put it into perspective, Logic Pro X user has been getting free update for nearly 7 years running! I think one possible reason / theory is that the resource allocated to Logic is so small ( by today's Apple standard ) none of the management bother about it, and it is not running in direct competition to any of their own Apps ( Aperture with Photos ) or their close allies's ( Adobe ). So the name Logic dont even pops up into management radar and the team decide to keep working on it. And compared to Final Cut Pro or Aperture against its competitors, I think Logic is doing very well for musicians in many professional market. ( And they are the ones willing to buy Mac Pro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNrG2mwt4Uo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNrG2mwt4Uo. And in the later video, turns out literally most of his audio kits are ridiculously expensive. And Mac Pro isn't even considered expensive at all. )
- pier25 6y ago
  Don't worry, Apple gets their money back on the hardware.
  - cma 6y ago
    Bingo
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  >the resource allocated to Logic is so small ( by today's Apple standard ) none of the management bother about it I'm not really buying that because they've killed plenty of other things which would also be tiny investments in the grand scheme of Apple. Aperture, Shake and Motion come to mind. Find it very strange they updated it at this point and really starting to wonder if the reason it still exists isn't something as stupid as by having an offering in the pro-audio space it gives executives more excuse to hang around with famous musicians. I mean it's pretty obvious Cook is celebrity obsessed.
  - 6y ago
salimmadjd 6y ago
When Apple vs. PC wars first started, PC won because of software. It’s a lesson Steve learned which is probably still guides their thinking. This is why there is numbers, keynotes, Pages, etc. Apple still wants to empower the creative community with Finalcut Logic. To ensure if you’re a creator there is a software to support you on the Mac platform.
freeqaz 6y ago
I agree with this and it makes me chuckle to think about how much Google has distorted outer world view. A tech company isn’t nuking their legacy software!? I’m shocked!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pier25 6y ago
My guess is that Apple knows a lot of people need to keep on buying macs to use Logic and Final Cut. Look at the price of Logic compared to other DAWs. Apple is almost giving it away for free. It only costs $200 but in contrast comparable DAWs cost many times that. Ableton Live Suite costs $750. Nuendo costs $1000. Etc. AFAIK Aperture never had such a hardcore following and didn't offer such a unique product. The photography market is clearly dominated by Adobe anyway.
- slezyr 6y ago
  Bitwig 400$, expensive, but closer to the goal and it seems that it provides more content.
  - pier25 6y ago
    Bitwig is amazing, specially now with The Grid. But it's still the underdog. If it becomes more popular I'm sure the price will go up at some point.
    - whatok 6y ago
      I wouldn't really compare the two. They target much different markets.
      - pier25 6y ago
        True, and neither is Ableton Live, but look at all the new features in Logic blatantly copied from Live.
        whatok 6y ago
        It's definitely a good way to branch out on their current user base and probably makes a lot more sense for people starting out to buy Logic than base Ableton. Ableton Suite just doesn't seem like a great value vs Logic unless you absolutely need something in Ableton.
C1sc0cat 6y ago
Selling the super high end Mac pros into the audio industry probably
phlakaton 6y ago
I don't ask questions; I just gratefully take the cheap Logic updates as they come!
gbjw 6y ago
It's the same reason Apple invests so heavily in Pages, Keynote and Numbers (all free apps on three different platforms). They believe that building software internally (taking hardware into account) leads to a better user experience, and sparks an intangible 'joy' when using their products--a sense of completeness that transcends software and hardware. This was the core of Jobs' philosophy and I think still drives the entire company.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Apple invests heavily in iWork? That's news to me. Occasionally it'll see a couple new features (it's gotten better at that recently) but there was a long period between 2009 and 2017 or so that it was just worse than the iWork suite it replaced.
  - gbjw 6y ago
    You're right--'heavily' relative to their purchase price ($0).
danpalmer 6y ago
Other responses have made great points about why it's worth something, but I'll take another tack: I don't think it costs Apple much to do this. How much does it cost to keep Logic around? There's engineering/product/design costs, marketing, and training/selling costs in store. The training probably pays for itself and not many staff at Apple Stores are trained anyway. There's very little marketing, so it's entirely possible there is no dedicated marketing resource for Logic. As for the product/engineering/design, it's well known that Apple is pretty lean on these sorts of things and often has far smaller teams than outsiders expect. I could see this easily being no more than a team of 5 at this point, maybe less. It obviously took a lot more to get it to this point, but with very few features over the last ~5 years, it's possible that it's been iterated enough to just be easy to maintain in its current form (assuming no major changes). All in maintenance team budget could be <$2m/year (not including store training in this). Apple probably spent that on door handles in the new HQ, and I can see Logic being as important a "halo" project as the HQ door handles.
- briandear 6y ago
  > As for the product/engineering/design, it's well known that Apple is pretty lean on these sorts of things and often has far smaller teams than outsiders expect. I could see this easily being no more than a team of 5 at this point, maybe less. You are wrong by several orders of magnitude.
  - danpalmer 6y ago
    I could well be, but do you have any more information/hypotheses about why they need 50-500 people working on Logic?
thdrdt 6y ago
Thinking about a Mac Pro market I came to the conclusion [1] it might be for the audio market. If this is true I can imagine that Logic is still important for Apple. [1] Lack of Nvidia support means 3D/CAD and video/FX users will choose other brands.
culturestate 6y ago
> I can't understand its strategic value to today's Apple I've long had the same question about Claris. At least Logic fits in to Apple's brand thesis; FileMaker would make way more sense at Microsoft or Oracle.
robenkleene 6y ago
The answer to the Aperture question is easy: Apple decided those are more popular features and largely rolled those features into Photos.app. Even Adobe generally agrees, Lightroom CC is more of a competitor for Photos.app (both are entirely cloud-based) than Lightroom Classic (which is focused on the offline features that professionals generally need).
- robertoandred 6y ago
  Photos in no way requires any cloud connection.
poof_he_is_gone 6y ago
In addition to what others have mentioned, it is also the step up from their free and cross platform Garage Band application. It is an easy way to build lock-in on those stepping up from novice/hobby users into a professional daw without losing control of the soft-synth voice control from one platform to the next.
- robenkleene 6y ago
  Logic is not just a step up from GarageBand, GarageBand is Logic re-skinned, if you use GarageBand and import into Logic, you can see how all the simpler instruments in GarageBand were created by configuring the more complex Logic instruments. Logic is probably integral to GarageBand not just as being the same code base, but as the creative tool in which the GarageBand instruments are designed and prototyped.
robenkleene 6y ago
The reason Apple keeps Logic is they generally have a strategy of trickling down features from big pro apps to smaller consumer apps. Logic -> GarageBand, Final Cut -> iMovie, Xcode -> Swift Playgrounds. The AVID idea doesn’t make much sense as Logic and Final Cut are already integrated into their product lines. I think there’s a certain amount of truth to the brand prestige argument, but I think the more important point is that these capabilities are actually core to Apple's product strategy, they just manifest themselves in unintuitive ways. E.g., Apple's AUv3 strategy would never have worked without GarageBand and GarageBand is Logic.
- mm89 6y ago
  In this case, many of the features appear to be improvements upon features originally introduced in Garageband iOS, so the features are trickling backwards consumer -> pro.
smcphile 6y ago
> Anybody have any thoughts on what Logic does for Apple that Aperture didn't? I'm not familiar with Aperture. According to Wikipedia it and iPhotos were abandoned to the benefit of Photos. Not knowing why Apple made this choice, I don't know if doing something equivalent with Logic would make sense. I do know Logic. It's a well respected DAW and some musicians do buy a Mac just to be able to use Logic. Also, DAWs take a long time term to learn well, so when the time comes for a Logic user to upgrade or replace an old machine, they'll probably buy a new Mac. (More convenient, less hassle.) All this of course helps Mac sales. And while Mac sales might not be much these days compared to iPhone and iPad sales, the margins on Macs are still high, so why shouldn't Apple continue to sell Macs?
- mortenjorck 6y ago
  > I do know Logic. It's a well respected DAW and some musicians do buy a Mac just to be able to use Logic. I think you just hit on the test Apple has historically used to decide which pro software to continue developing and which to discontinue. Logic and Final Cut are both decades-old industry standards that demonstrably sell Mac hardware. Aperture, though? It was too new to have the installed base of either. It debuted around the same time as Lightroom, and as competitive as it may have been, I have a hard time imagining a Windows user in the 2000s specifically eyeing it as a reason to switch to Mac.
cptskippy 6y ago
Is it possible they keep it around as a pet project for developers whom they wish to keep on staff?
- surfpel 6y ago
  Doubtful since there’s never really a shortage of things to work on
  - recursive 6y ago
    There might be a shortage of cool fun things to work on though.
gdubs 6y ago
Anecdotally — I have a lot of friends and colleagues in the music industry — I wouldn’t say Pro Tools is more prestigious. It seems pretty split on people’s preferences and old habits die hard, but a LOT of top composers and producers use Logic.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Avid has pissed off a lot of users by being greedy while not providing a reliable product. PT was pretty much the industry standard ten years ago, but since then there's been a lot of churn to other DAWs - primarily Logic and Cubase, although a lot of dance/rap newcomers use Live and FL Studio. Bottom line is the resources Apple needs to devote to its media products are barely a rounding error, and the rewards are increased traction with professionals and a few extra hardware sales, especially at the high end. It's a conservative strategy, and not a terrible one. The disappointing part is that it could have been part of a consistent product plan ten years ago. Now there's always the worry that Apple will lose interest again for another 5-10 years.
  - gdubs 6y ago
    This is just my random thoughts, but it would seem like Apple learned a lesson with the Mac Pro that they're not looking to repeat. The other advantage of creating high-end tools in-house is that it moves hardware, which remains a huge part of Apple's bottom line.
SeanLuke 6y ago
> That's plausible but AVID Pro Tools is even more prestigious than Logic and AVID's market cap is only $250 million[0]. In no universe is Pro Tools more prestigious than any of its competition. I think Pro Tools is viewed as The Thing That All Studio PHB Managers Purchased At Some Point So It's Reasonable For Studio Techs to Be Trained For. Kind of the "nobody ever got fired for picking IBM" of the music industry. In my opinion, AVID does not have a reputation for making innovative products. See what happened when they acquired Sibelius (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI). My limited experience with the industry suggests that Ableton, Bitwig, and Logic are the Cool Tools for Producing Music, that Cubase (Steinberg) is particularly popular with composers, that FL Studio is the cool low-cost leader among students, and that Reason is The Outsider. Notice which software is not in this list.
- kitotik 6y ago
  There’s also the legacy of pro tools and logic. For many years pro tools was the only game in town for serious non-linear audio editing, and did not support midi at all. Around the same time period Logic was the only game in town for serious midi work and didn’t support audio at all.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  Pro Tools is seen as the serious tool while the other DAWs you mention are toys for electronic music producers
  - qppo 6y ago
    They're different product categories entirely these days. The other DAWs aren't "toys" and in fact do a lot of things significantly better than Pro Tools. Pro Tools as a product only makes sense at scale, with multiple people in the workflow in different locations. Same story for Media Composer compared to other NLEs.
    - rorykoehler 6y ago
      I know they aren't "toys" but when I tell the Ableton crowd I use Pro Tools the common response is what one of respect for using more professional tools. I know it's mostly perception at this stage however this is from people who've been releasing music and touring with large crowds.
jchrisa 6y ago
Logic is better than ProTools (not encumbered by legacy implementation). It is also the basis for GarageBand on Mac and iOS.
SllX 6y ago
I think killing off Aperture was as much a strategic focusing move as anything else. Prior to developing the current Photos app (Mac and iOS share a codebase), Apple was developing and maintaining Mac iPhotos, iOS iPhotos, Aperture and the old iOS Photos app (Pictures? I don’t even remember). Reducing it all to one cross platform codebase allowed them to make the bundled app a bit more full featured, double down on a few headline mass market features like photos sync and theoretically add more features that are missing from Aperture over time. That said, they’ll probably never duplicate it all, probably don’t want to duplicate it all and they seem to have focused more of their photography effort on iPhone computational photography. Not to mention when Aperture was first released, Pixelmator, Acorn and Lightroom didn’t exist (on the market at least) yet. Contrast with Logic where there still isn’t a lot like it and part of how you get to be a billion dollar business is by maintaining those hundred million dollar businesses. There’s a lot more YouTubers, DJs and Podcasters out there now, not just musicians and one thing they all have in common is they’re all dealing with audio production.
deleted 6y ago
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iamEAP 6y ago
It's interesting to see so much commentary (on HN and elsewhere) about Apple having lost its way with "pro" users from a hardware perspective (touchbar, butterfly mechanism, lack of a desktop tower)... But not see this as its attempt to avoid the same criticism from a software perspective. I suspect they continue to invest (at least some) into their "pro" software because they have a loyal user-base that they don't want to tick off in the same way they did with their hardware business.
smithza 6y ago
Taking a step back from objective pros and cons or other traits of individual DAWs, the fact that so _many_ producers and YouTube stars use Logic suggests its' value. This more from a populism standpoint, but there is assurance that a great crowd of users could help a single user when an issue arises. This is like the metrics SW engineers keep tabs on for language popularity. More questions in Stack Overflow and number of lines registered in GitHub suggest a language's value separate from, but suggestive of, objective traits.
wuliwong 6y ago
I think without knowing how much it costs Apple to maintain and update Logic it's hard to know. How do I way value versus cost without knowing costs? As far as Logic vs Avid; Logic locks a user into the Apple ecosystem, that is one difference.
- kitotik 6y ago
  If you don’t think Avid / Pro Tools relies / relied on lock-in as much as Apple you weren’t paying attention. It was tied to hardware dsp boxes and iLok dongles for a long time. Pro tools first big “unlocking” came when they bought m-audio and then would allow a crippled version of PT to run if you owned certain m-audio hardware.
  - wuliwong 6y ago
    That's not what I meant. The question was asking what does Logic do _for Apple_ specifically. Logic is Apple only, that's the difference I was referring to.
rock_artist 6y ago
> People have been speculating this possible acquisition for years but I don't think it will happen. So not sure what Logic does for Apple that AVID Pro Tools doesn't. Might be a little ot. But Apple did actually acquired many top visionaries and developers from Avid to Logic team many years ago.
batmansmk 6y ago
1 - It makes money. 2 - The team is in place, and they are good at it. 3 - They bring internal feedback about latency, driver reliability etc, that makes the platform an excellent one for artists 4 - It is exclusive - so why get Windows when you can get more options on Mac?
musicale 6y ago
> So not sure what Logic does for Apple that AVID Pro Tools doesn't. Logic (besides being one of my favorite DAWs, supporting poly pressure and MPE, etc.) also forms the basis for GarageBand (and MainStage, which I also like.) GarageBand is a fantastic and widely used program; personally I consider it a "killer app" that makes iPads (and iPhones and Macs) incredibly useful in music education, recording, and performance. The live loops view actually showed up on iOS GarageBand before being added to Logic.
bwanab 6y ago
I own Logic, so I too and happy about the updates. I use Logic every day and since my preference is making music, I don't really have any reason to want to spend the time to learn another DAW. So, by keeping Logic reasonably up-to-date compared to other DAWs, Apple retains my Mac loyalty. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
coliveira 6y ago
With logic Pro, the money is not made in the software, but in hardware. Users of Logic Pro will buy thousands of dollars of Apple hardware to support music creation with the software.
throwphoton 6y ago
I'll tell you this much - if there were a good alternative to Logic that ran on Linux, I'd stop buying MacBook Pros. But I can't adjust to any other workflow, so I bought a new MacBook this year.
- acomjean 6y ago
  Bitwig isn’t bad. I know a couple people using it on Linux that have good things to say. It seems with live loops a change in workflow is coming to you
zitterbewegung 6y ago
Teach a person how to make a song and they might buy your hardware. Teach a person how to make a song in Logic Pro X and they must buy your hardware. (so that their workflow doesn't get impacted)
chrisstanchak 6y ago
I'm sure the thinking is similar to this: https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/e7703c0a95907363504064a57152de692487ce1e/d567c/images/posts/2017/disney-master-plan.jpg https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/e7703c0a95907363504064...
philip1209 6y ago
The stock photos with the monitor, iMac Pro, iPad Pro, and iPhone 11 easily contain $15k worth of Apple products. If this $200 software can attract people with that budget, it's a win for them. Unlike much programming, audio and video production seems to still need powerful local computers.
cactus2093 6y ago
I wonder if Apple discontinued aperture because the number of potential users is so high? Everyone who buys an iPhone is a photographer, and their consumer solution for them is the photos app. They want to dumb everything down and make it more streamlined, so all your photos just sync via the photos app to icloud and there’s no work involved like cataloging or organizing. You can make all your basic exposure and color edits right in the camera or photos app. Positioning aperture alongside final cut and logic, as the power tool for cool creative professionals, would confuse that because of how big photography is for the iPhone. Edit: also come to think of it, aperture was almost exclusively a tool for managing your photos shot on a dslr. Apple just wants everything to be “shot on iPhone” now so you shouldn’t need that type of legacy workflow.
fulldecent2 6y ago
Aperture did not have a monthly subscription that's why it was dropped. Photos has a monthly subscription and Music has one, that's why those were kept. News has a subscription. They are working on Chess and Dictionary to get subscriptions too. But if you open the about menu, you'll see these have been updated in 15+ years, so it has not been much of a cost to maintain those.
newdoctrine 6y ago
Apple doesn’t sell a service for 10.99/month to look at the photos you and others edited. They sell a service for you to listen to the music you made on software you already paid to license. Logic is also used as a front end like abelton/fl studio before a finishing software like protools is used for mixing in final workflows in my experience. Major label recordings are filled with sounds made in logic, sequenced in abelton, mixed in protools then finished in sequoia or something else. Apple has a bad rep for not supporting creative professionals, but they support when it benefits them like every other business. Logic has massive professional marketshare, it would be like Crescent stopping production on adjustable wrenches, because craftsman makes them anyway and it isn’t really making a dent in the bottom line. It’s one of the archetypal UX of a DAW and the expectation of good sounding stock instruments kinda came from them. I also hate when I have to use logic and would love if it went away, but that ain’t happening!!

by jasode 6y ago

dangus 6y ago

It is simple, it continues to keep professional people with large budgets on the Mac. These creative people are often influential to others (an example of this is a music artist I follow on Instagram who basically constantly posts their mobile studio setup that involves a MacBook Pro - free advertising of the most valuable type, organic). Compare Logic’s cost with a $800/year ProTools subscription and suddenly you might not really mind the fact that the SSD in your new Mac is overpriced. With that price difference it would be illogical to ever move to software that can run on Windows.

earthnail 6y ago

It’s great for their brand. Apple has always used musicians to brand itself as a creative brand. Musicians are way more visible as creatives than photographers. Becoming a rock star is a thing, becoming a rock star photographer is... uhm... yeah well no, not the same as a real rock star.

ueueshitashita 6y ago
> Becoming a rock star is a thing Not really in 2020.
- p_l 6y ago
  It's the perception. It might not be "rock" star anymore, but genericised "music superstar", yes. Like many other things involved in this decision, it's the perception that matters, not facts.
  - ueueshitashita 6y ago
    > It might not be "rock" star anymore That's the point, the "rock" stars aren't making any money in the industry like other pop acts anymore - they're mostly doing their own thing on Patreon and streaming on Twitch.
    - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
      If they're recording music, they can certainly still use Logic to do it, and Apple wants to give them reasons to keep doing so. It's hard not to notice that Apple has been courting YouTubers really heavily over the last few years.
    - p_l 6y ago
      It's not about whether they make money. It's about whether the end result is that the brand gets associated with the idea of "cool creative". It's a common theme in many areas of Apple after Jobs return, including the whole Apple Store design.
- rosstex 6y ago
  Yeah, it's all about that neo-soul, 90's R&B rebirth jazz fusion wave that we're blessed to be riding.
  - shlom22 6y ago

petard 6y ago

Maybe a mix of marketing value and organizational inertia? Music software allows you to do the famous musician uses Mac sell which Aperture does not. People probably can name you their favorite musician but not so much photographer.

vmception 6y ago

For decades creatives and even non-creatives were able to be convinced that "Macs were better for audio, video, photography" without any analysis of benchmarks, hardware differences, performance. This thought pattern transcended the PowerPC processor, to the off-the-shelf Intel processors that the competitors used, to the ARM processors the mobile devices used. Apple continuing that perception with at least software updates can continue to cement their hegemony amongst the minds of people. They're also good machines without the fluff! But merely showing support for that perception can help retain the premium pricing when even artists across the entire socioeconomic spectrum (heavily weighted to one side) will still prioritize getting Apple devices over other expenses, or at least aspire to and talk about those dreams.

billjings 6y ago
In my experience, musicians and other creative types care first and formost about getting results. So that means they need a toolchain that is flexible and rich enough to yield great results. Performance is a factor there, inasmuch as it constrains results. The toolchain part is pretty broad: this includes OS services (audio routing!), outboard hardware, DAWs and video editors, and third party plugins. When comparing macOS vs. Windows for audio, macOS wins for most people on those axes. Apple wins on OS services (audio routing is super annoying on windows) and on outboard hardware (USB3 works okay, but Thunderbolt is better, and it's a pain to get configured on a Windows machine). DAWs is mostly a wash with the exception of Logic, and third party plugins is a total wash. Even given that, Logic plays a strategic role in that ecosystem for Apple. As the more expensive option, Apple always runs the risk of being the secondary platform for application authors. Without Logic, other DAW vendors could be free to neglect their offerings on Mac. That ecosystem is healthy right now, but Logic is a key hedge. Oh, and lock-in is a big thing, too. Logic users may be a minority, but they're firmly locked into the Mac in a way that Reaper users aren't. Video is different. Many video creatives have made the switch to windows. There were two key reasons they have jumped: 1. Hardware. The Mac Pro was neglected for years, and third party graphics card support has always been better on Windows. Performance isn't paramount, but it does matter. 2. Final Cut Pro X. This completely changed the editing model from under a lot of pros, requiring them to completely rethink their workflows. Since this happened at the same time that hardware support was really bad, a lot of pros thought, "Well, if I'm going to have to rethink my workflow anyway..." It loosened lock-in at a time when the other parts of the platform were pretty weak.

whatok 6y ago

It doesn't really make much sense from a $ perspective and really only serves as a lesser (and rapidly diminishing) halo effect for the rest of the brand. Logic is one of those programs that keeps people on Macs. I'm sure I don't need to explain this to a Logic owner but audio engineering and production was strictly a Mac-only affair in the past and that has rapidly changed over the past decade. Macs have gotten increasingly difficult to work with due to constant OS updates breaking everything and have only gotten more expensive with less options for actual professional users who need real I/Os. Keeping Logic fresh is important to keep people from switching as everything else they do on a more macro level is pushing people in that direction. Someone somewhere in Apple decided that holding onto this market was worth it for probably solely the halo effect. I can't think of any other reason and makes no sense from a strictly financial perspective.

WalterSear 6y ago
> I'm sure I don't need to explain this to a Logic owner but audio engineering and production was strictly a Mac-only affair in the past and that has rapidly changed over the past decade. Strictly? Not at all. The crown was lost a lot earlier - around the time that digidesign started offering non-hardware versions, and for the same reasons.
- whatok 6y ago
  Sure, probably a bit earlier but the vast majority of [i]real professionals[/i] were stuck with Macs. Pro Tools M-Powered for example had to have been a minuscule portion of overall Pro Tools market and people still used that on Macs. Not having a real desktop solution for a long period of time was the last nail for a good portion of users.
  - WalterSear 6y ago
    It wasn't people following Protools: it was Protools chasing the chasing markets that had already started to leave.
    - 6y ago

freepor 6y ago

One thing that’s always been very important to Apple’s marketing is the sense that the coolest people in the world use Macs. The positioning has always been “Well that CEO has a PC but that artist with a lot of sexual partners uses a Mac.” Logic is part of the portfolio to preserve that image by having as many musicians as possible using Apple hardware and software.

neutronicus 6y ago

Once the DJs start using Windows, they'll stop buying iPhones, and once the DJs stop buying iPhones, the people who go to clubs will stop buying iPhones, and once the people who go to clubs stop buying iPhones so will everyone else.

crazygringo 6y ago

To be more specific, and in response to your reply: Together with Final Cut Pro, Apple wants to have Mac-only exclusive software that is aimed specifically at cool creative professionals to build up the image that trendy creatives use Macs (and you therefore have no choice but to use a Mac, otherwise you won't have the software you need). Aperture couldn't really compete with Adobe's whole workflow (since Apple didn't have a full-fledged Photoshop competitor). But also, movies and music are "sexier" in a way. AVID Pro Tools works on Windows so it doesn't do anything for Apple. The whole point is awesome software that works only on Macs. The day that every single program creatives use runs as Windows as well as Macs, is the day it becomes a lot harder for a lot of people to justify buying a Mac. It's that simple. (So it's certainly not about any profit from the software directly, and it's also not just a marketing "halo".)

jasode 6y ago
>But yeah, AVID Pro Tools works on Windows so it doesn't do anything for Apple. Before Apple bought it, Emagic's Logic ran on both Windows and Mac. After Apple acquired Logic, they immediately discontinued the Windows version. Can't Apple hypothetically run the same playbook and discontinue Pro Tools for Windows?
- timthorn 6y ago
  Not only that - the next version of Logic was due imminently, with the engineering work done. It was at that moment that I grew a strong dislike of Apple, having been a real cheerleader for most of the Macintosh's existence.
- crazygringo 6y ago
  Oh wow, I didn't know that. I mean, that seems like a pretty shitty thing to do to an existing userbase. I guess they could, but risk generating a lot of ill will. I'm curious how discontinuing Logic was received. Seems very risky.
  - WalterSear 6y ago

purerandomness 6y ago

The Windows port was discontinued the same day Emagic was sold to Apple. I always assumed that the goal was to strengthen the Apple brand and signal that it's a more suitable system for creative work.

jrochkind1 6y ago

I'd think it must be to sell laptops, not to sell Logic. Now, do they need to do this to sell laptops, does it actually sell significant laptops, are there more people that buy a Mac laptop for Logic than who bought or would have a Mac laptop for Aperture? I dunno. It's also possible they miscalculated with Aperture. Or may be miscalculating now with Logic. Apple can make mistakes or behave irrationally too. But it's gotta be to sell laptops. (Which is consistent with not charging for the upgrade; it's not about revenue from the software at all). And there are definitely at least some people buying a Mac laptop for Logic. (In a world with decreasing laptop sales in general, as many move phone/tablet only). Now, with what you say about iPhones... I keep worrying that Apple will decide they don't really care about selling laptops after all someday...

ksec 6y ago

Came here to ask the same question and so far none of the answer seems convincing to me. It would have made a little more sense if they had released this update as Logic Pro 11 and charges some upgrade fees. Instead it is free. To put it into perspective, Logic Pro X user has been getting free update for nearly 7 years running! I think one possible reason / theory is that the resource allocated to Logic is so small ( by today's Apple standard ) none of the management bother about it, and it is not running in direct competition to any of their own Apps ( Aperture with Photos ) or their close allies's ( Adobe ). So the name Logic dont even pops up into management radar and the team decide to keep working on it. And compared to Final Cut Pro or Aperture against its competitors, I think Logic is doing very well for musicians in many professional market. ( And they are the ones willing to buy Mac Pro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNrG2mwt4Uo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNrG2mwt4Uo. And in the later video, turns out literally most of his audio kits are ridiculously expensive. And Mac Pro isn't even considered expensive at all. )

pier25 6y ago
Don't worry, Apple gets their money back on the hardware.
- cma 6y ago
  Bingo
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
>the resource allocated to Logic is so small ( by today's Apple standard ) none of the management bother about it I'm not really buying that because they've killed plenty of other things which would also be tiny investments in the grand scheme of Apple. Aperture, Shake and Motion come to mind. Find it very strange they updated it at this point and really starting to wonder if the reason it still exists isn't something as stupid as by having an offering in the pro-audio space it gives executives more excuse to hang around with famous musicians. I mean it's pretty obvious Cook is celebrity obsessed.
- 6y ago

salimmadjd 6y ago

When Apple vs. PC wars first started, PC won because of software. It’s a lesson Steve learned which is probably still guides their thinking. This is why there is numbers, keynotes, Pages, etc. Apple still wants to empower the creative community with Finalcut Logic. To ensure if you’re a creator there is a software to support you on the Mac platform.

freeqaz 6y ago

I agree with this and it makes me chuckle to think about how much Google has distorted outer world view. A tech company isn’t nuking their legacy software!? I’m shocked!

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

pier25 6y ago

My guess is that Apple knows a lot of people need to keep on buying macs to use Logic and Final Cut. Look at the price of Logic compared to other DAWs. Apple is almost giving it away for free. It only costs $200 but in contrast comparable DAWs cost many times that. Ableton Live Suite costs $750. Nuendo costs $1000. Etc. AFAIK Aperture never had such a hardcore following and didn't offer such a unique product. The photography market is clearly dominated by Adobe anyway.

slezyr 6y ago
Bitwig 400$, expensive, but closer to the goal and it seems that it provides more content.
- pier25 6y ago
  Bitwig is amazing, specially now with The Grid. But it's still the underdog. If it becomes more popular I'm sure the price will go up at some point.
  - whatok 6y ago
    I wouldn't really compare the two. They target much different markets.
    - pier25 6y ago
      True, and neither is Ableton Live, but look at all the new features in Logic blatantly copied from Live.
      - whatok 6y ago
        It's definitely a good way to branch out on their current user base and probably makes a lot more sense for people starting out to buy Logic than base Ableton. Ableton Suite just doesn't seem like a great value vs Logic unless you absolutely need something in Ableton.

C1sc0cat 6y ago

Selling the super high end Mac pros into the audio industry probably

phlakaton 6y ago

I don't ask questions; I just gratefully take the cheap Logic updates as they come!

gbjw 6y ago

It's the same reason Apple invests so heavily in Pages, Keynote and Numbers (all free apps on three different platforms). They believe that building software internally (taking hardware into account) leads to a better user experience, and sparks an intangible 'joy' when using their products--a sense of completeness that transcends software and hardware. This was the core of Jobs' philosophy and I think still drives the entire company.

saagarjha 6y ago
Apple invests heavily in iWork? That's news to me. Occasionally it'll see a couple new features (it's gotten better at that recently) but there was a long period between 2009 and 2017 or so that it was just worse than the iWork suite it replaced.
- gbjw 6y ago
  You're right--'heavily' relative to their purchase price ($0).

danpalmer 6y ago

Other responses have made great points about why it's worth something, but I'll take another tack: I don't think it costs Apple much to do this. How much does it cost to keep Logic around? There's engineering/product/design costs, marketing, and training/selling costs in store. The training probably pays for itself and not many staff at Apple Stores are trained anyway. There's very little marketing, so it's entirely possible there is no dedicated marketing resource for Logic. As for the product/engineering/design, it's well known that Apple is pretty lean on these sorts of things and often has far smaller teams than outsiders expect. I could see this easily being no more than a team of 5 at this point, maybe less. It obviously took a lot more to get it to this point, but with very few features over the last ~5 years, it's possible that it's been iterated enough to just be easy to maintain in its current form (assuming no major changes). All in maintenance team budget could be <$2m/year (not including store training in this). Apple probably spent that on door handles in the new HQ, and I can see Logic being as important a "halo" project as the HQ door handles.

briandear 6y ago
> As for the product/engineering/design, it's well known that Apple is pretty lean on these sorts of things and often has far smaller teams than outsiders expect. I could see this easily being no more than a team of 5 at this point, maybe less. You are wrong by several orders of magnitude.
- danpalmer 6y ago
  I could well be, but do you have any more information/hypotheses about why they need 50-500 people working on Logic?

thdrdt 6y ago

Thinking about a Mac Pro market I came to the conclusion [1] it might be for the audio market. If this is true I can imagine that Logic is still important for Apple. [1] Lack of Nvidia support means 3D/CAD and video/FX users will choose other brands.

culturestate 6y ago

> I can't understand its strategic value to today's Apple I've long had the same question about Claris. At least Logic fits in to Apple's brand thesis; FileMaker would make way more sense at Microsoft or Oracle.

robenkleene 6y ago

The answer to the Aperture question is easy: Apple decided those are more popular features and largely rolled those features into Photos.app. Even Adobe generally agrees, Lightroom CC is more of a competitor for Photos.app (both are entirely cloud-based) than Lightroom Classic (which is focused on the offline features that professionals generally need).

robertoandred 6y ago
Photos in no way requires any cloud connection.

poof_he_is_gone 6y ago

In addition to what others have mentioned, it is also the step up from their free and cross platform Garage Band application. It is an easy way to build lock-in on those stepping up from novice/hobby users into a professional daw without losing control of the soft-synth voice control from one platform to the next.

robenkleene 6y ago
Logic is not just a step up from GarageBand, GarageBand is Logic re-skinned, if you use GarageBand and import into Logic, you can see how all the simpler instruments in GarageBand were created by configuring the more complex Logic instruments. Logic is probably integral to GarageBand not just as being the same code base, but as the creative tool in which the GarageBand instruments are designed and prototyped.

robenkleene 6y ago

The reason Apple keeps Logic is they generally have a strategy of trickling down features from big pro apps to smaller consumer apps. Logic -> GarageBand, Final Cut -> iMovie, Xcode -> Swift Playgrounds. The AVID idea doesn’t make much sense as Logic and Final Cut are already integrated into their product lines. I think there’s a certain amount of truth to the brand prestige argument, but I think the more important point is that these capabilities are actually core to Apple's product strategy, they just manifest themselves in unintuitive ways. E.g., Apple's AUv3 strategy would never have worked without GarageBand and GarageBand is Logic.

mm89 6y ago
In this case, many of the features appear to be improvements upon features originally introduced in Garageband iOS, so the features are trickling backwards consumer -> pro.

smcphile 6y ago

> Anybody have any thoughts on what Logic does for Apple that Aperture didn't? I'm not familiar with Aperture. According to Wikipedia it and iPhotos were abandoned to the benefit of Photos. Not knowing why Apple made this choice, I don't know if doing something equivalent with Logic would make sense. I do know Logic. It's a well respected DAW and some musicians do buy a Mac just to be able to use Logic. Also, DAWs take a long time term to learn well, so when the time comes for a Logic user to upgrade or replace an old machine, they'll probably buy a new Mac. (More convenient, less hassle.) All this of course helps Mac sales. And while Mac sales might not be much these days compared to iPhone and iPad sales, the margins on Macs are still high, so why shouldn't Apple continue to sell Macs?

mortenjorck 6y ago
> I do know Logic. It's a well respected DAW and some musicians do buy a Mac just to be able to use Logic. I think you just hit on the test Apple has historically used to decide which pro software to continue developing and which to discontinue. Logic and Final Cut are both decades-old industry standards that demonstrably sell Mac hardware. Aperture, though? It was too new to have the installed base of either. It debuted around the same time as Lightroom, and as competitive as it may have been, I have a hard time imagining a Windows user in the 2000s specifically eyeing it as a reason to switch to Mac.

cptskippy 6y ago

Is it possible they keep it around as a pet project for developers whom they wish to keep on staff?

surfpel 6y ago
Doubtful since there’s never really a shortage of things to work on
- recursive 6y ago
  There might be a shortage of cool fun things to work on though.

gdubs 6y ago

Anecdotally — I have a lot of friends and colleagues in the music industry — I wouldn’t say Pro Tools is more prestigious. It seems pretty split on people’s preferences and old habits die hard, but a LOT of top composers and producers use Logic.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Avid has pissed off a lot of users by being greedy while not providing a reliable product. PT was pretty much the industry standard ten years ago, but since then there's been a lot of churn to other DAWs - primarily Logic and Cubase, although a lot of dance/rap newcomers use Live and FL Studio. Bottom line is the resources Apple needs to devote to its media products are barely a rounding error, and the rewards are increased traction with professionals and a few extra hardware sales, especially at the high end. It's a conservative strategy, and not a terrible one. The disappointing part is that it could have been part of a consistent product plan ten years ago. Now there's always the worry that Apple will lose interest again for another 5-10 years.
- gdubs 6y ago
  This is just my random thoughts, but it would seem like Apple learned a lesson with the Mac Pro that they're not looking to repeat. The other advantage of creating high-end tools in-house is that it moves hardware, which remains a huge part of Apple's bottom line.

SeanLuke 6y ago

> That's plausible but AVID Pro Tools is even more prestigious than Logic and AVID's market cap is only $250 million[0]. In no universe is Pro Tools more prestigious than any of its competition. I think Pro Tools is viewed as The Thing That All Studio PHB Managers Purchased At Some Point So It's Reasonable For Studio Techs to Be Trained For. Kind of the "nobody ever got fired for picking IBM" of the music industry. In my opinion, AVID does not have a reputation for making innovative products. See what happened when they acquired Sibelius (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI). My limited experience with the industry suggests that Ableton, Bitwig, and Logic are the Cool Tools for Producing Music, that Cubase (Steinberg) is particularly popular with composers, that FL Studio is the cool low-cost leader among students, and that Reason is The Outsider. Notice which software is not in this list.

kitotik 6y ago
There’s also the legacy of pro tools and logic. For many years pro tools was the only game in town for serious non-linear audio editing, and did not support midi at all. Around the same time period Logic was the only game in town for serious midi work and didn’t support audio at all.
rorykoehler 6y ago
Pro Tools is seen as the serious tool while the other DAWs you mention are toys for electronic music producers
- qppo 6y ago
  They're different product categories entirely these days. The other DAWs aren't "toys" and in fact do a lot of things significantly better than Pro Tools. Pro Tools as a product only makes sense at scale, with multiple people in the workflow in different locations. Same story for Media Composer compared to other NLEs.
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    I know they aren't "toys" but when I tell the Ableton crowd I use Pro Tools the common response is what one of respect for using more professional tools. I know it's mostly perception at this stage however this is from people who've been releasing music and touring with large crowds.

jchrisa 6y ago

Logic is better than ProTools (not encumbered by legacy implementation). It is also the basis for GarageBand on Mac and iOS.

SllX 6y ago

I think killing off Aperture was as much a strategic focusing move as anything else. Prior to developing the current Photos app (Mac and iOS share a codebase), Apple was developing and maintaining Mac iPhotos, iOS iPhotos, Aperture and the old iOS Photos app (Pictures? I don’t even remember). Reducing it all to one cross platform codebase allowed them to make the bundled app a bit more full featured, double down on a few headline mass market features like photos sync and theoretically add more features that are missing from Aperture over time. That said, they’ll probably never duplicate it all, probably don’t want to duplicate it all and they seem to have focused more of their photography effort on iPhone computational photography. Not to mention when Aperture was first released, Pixelmator, Acorn and Lightroom didn’t exist (on the market at least) yet. Contrast with Logic where there still isn’t a lot like it and part of how you get to be a billion dollar business is by maintaining those hundred million dollar businesses. There’s a lot more YouTubers, DJs and Podcasters out there now, not just musicians and one thing they all have in common is they’re all dealing with audio production.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

iamEAP 6y ago

It's interesting to see so much commentary (on HN and elsewhere) about Apple having lost its way with "pro" users from a hardware perspective (touchbar, butterfly mechanism, lack of a desktop tower)... But not see this as its attempt to avoid the same criticism from a software perspective. I suspect they continue to invest (at least some) into their "pro" software because they have a loyal user-base that they don't want to tick off in the same way they did with their hardware business.

smithza 6y ago

Taking a step back from objective pros and cons or other traits of individual DAWs, the fact that so _many_ producers and YouTube stars use Logic suggests its' value. This more from a populism standpoint, but there is assurance that a great crowd of users could help a single user when an issue arises. This is like the metrics SW engineers keep tabs on for language popularity. More questions in Stack Overflow and number of lines registered in GitHub suggest a language's value separate from, but suggestive of, objective traits.

wuliwong 6y ago

I think without knowing how much it costs Apple to maintain and update Logic it's hard to know. How do I way value versus cost without knowing costs? As far as Logic vs Avid; Logic locks a user into the Apple ecosystem, that is one difference.

kitotik 6y ago
If you don’t think Avid / Pro Tools relies / relied on lock-in as much as Apple you weren’t paying attention. It was tied to hardware dsp boxes and iLok dongles for a long time. Pro tools first big “unlocking” came when they bought m-audio and then would allow a crippled version of PT to run if you owned certain m-audio hardware.
- wuliwong 6y ago
  That's not what I meant. The question was asking what does Logic do _for Apple_ specifically. Logic is Apple only, that's the difference I was referring to.

rock_artist 6y ago

> People have been speculating this possible acquisition for years but I don't think it will happen. So not sure what Logic does for Apple that AVID Pro Tools doesn't. Might be a little ot. But Apple did actually acquired many top visionaries and developers from Avid to Logic team many years ago.

batmansmk 6y ago

1 - It makes money. 2 - The team is in place, and they are good at it. 3 - They bring internal feedback about latency, driver reliability etc, that makes the platform an excellent one for artists 4 - It is exclusive - so why get Windows when you can get more options on Mac?

musicale 6y ago

> So not sure what Logic does for Apple that AVID Pro Tools doesn't. Logic (besides being one of my favorite DAWs, supporting poly pressure and MPE, etc.) also forms the basis for GarageBand (and MainStage, which I also like.) GarageBand is a fantastic and widely used program; personally I consider it a "killer app" that makes iPads (and iPhones and Macs) incredibly useful in music education, recording, and performance. The live loops view actually showed up on iOS GarageBand before being added to Logic.

bwanab 6y ago

I own Logic, so I too and happy about the updates. I use Logic every day and since my preference is making music, I don't really have any reason to want to spend the time to learn another DAW. So, by keeping Logic reasonably up-to-date compared to other DAWs, Apple retains my Mac loyalty. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

coliveira 6y ago

With logic Pro, the money is not made in the software, but in hardware. Users of Logic Pro will buy thousands of dollars of Apple hardware to support music creation with the software.

throwphoton 6y ago

I'll tell you this much - if there were a good alternative to Logic that ran on Linux, I'd stop buying MacBook Pros. But I can't adjust to any other workflow, so I bought a new MacBook this year.

acomjean 6y ago
Bitwig isn’t bad. I know a couple people using it on Linux that have good things to say. It seems with live loops a change in workflow is coming to you

zitterbewegung 6y ago

Teach a person how to make a song and they might buy your hardware. Teach a person how to make a song in Logic Pro X and they must buy your hardware. (so that their workflow doesn't get impacted)

chrisstanchak 6y ago

I'm sure the thinking is similar to this: https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/e7703c0a95907363504064a57152de692487ce1e/d567c/images/posts/2017/disney-master-plan.jpg https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/e7703c0a95907363504064...

philip1209 6y ago

The stock photos with the monitor, iMac Pro, iPad Pro, and iPhone 11 easily contain $15k worth of Apple products. If this $200 software can attract people with that budget, it's a win for them. Unlike much programming, audio and video production seems to still need powerful local computers.

cactus2093 6y ago

I wonder if Apple discontinued aperture because the number of potential users is so high? Everyone who buys an iPhone is a photographer, and their consumer solution for them is the photos app. They want to dumb everything down and make it more streamlined, so all your photos just sync via the photos app to icloud and there’s no work involved like cataloging or organizing. You can make all your basic exposure and color edits right in the camera or photos app. Positioning aperture alongside final cut and logic, as the power tool for cool creative professionals, would confuse that because of how big photography is for the iPhone. Edit: also come to think of it, aperture was almost exclusively a tool for managing your photos shot on a dslr. Apple just wants everything to be “shot on iPhone” now so you shouldn’t need that type of legacy workflow.

fulldecent2 6y ago

Aperture did not have a monthly subscription that's why it was dropped. Photos has a monthly subscription and Music has one, that's why those were kept. News has a subscription. They are working on Chess and Dictionary to get subscriptions too. But if you open the about menu, you'll see these have been updated in 15+ years, so it has not been much of a cost to maintain those.

newdoctrine 6y ago

Apple doesn’t sell a service for 10.99/month to look at the photos you and others edited. They sell a service for you to listen to the music you made on software you already paid to license. Logic is also used as a front end like abelton/fl studio before a finishing software like protools is used for mixing in final workflows in my experience. Major label recordings are filled with sounds made in logic, sequenced in abelton, mixed in protools then finished in sequoia or something else. Apple has a bad rep for not supporting creative professionals, but they support when it benefits them like every other business. Logic has massive professional marketshare, it would be like Crescent stopping production on adjustable wrenches, because craftsman makes them anyway and it isn’t really making a dent in the bottom line. It’s one of the archetypal UX of a DAW and the expectation of good sounding stock instruments kinda came from them. I also hate when I have to use logic and would love if it went away, but that ain’t happening!!