16 ms·

Out of curiosity, are the audio APIs any better on iOS? Core audio seemed to work pretty well the last time I used it on OS X, so I assume it does, but I'd be c

by jfim 6y ago

Out of curiosity, are the audio APIs any better on iOS? Core audio seemed to work pretty well the last time I used it on OS X, so I assume it does, but I'd be curious to hear your take on it.

Jasper_ 6y ago
I haven't used it, to be quite honest, the games I worked on had the Mac/iOS ports done by a different team, but since I was usually called in to help diagnose customer issues in live and never had to touch the Mac/iOS audio stuff, it probably worked well enough!
dannyw 6y ago
Much better. In general, "creative" APIs (e.g. audio playback, camera/image processing) tend to have well-rounded APIs on iOS.
- leokennis 6y ago
  Probably unrelated observation. I use a MacBook for personal use and a Windows laptop for work. For many things, they both work well in general (Windows is better for "document stuff" and file management, Mac a little better in window management etc., but comparable in general). But when it comes to media stuff (think: cropping a lossless audio file and compressing the result into an AAC or MP3, resizing 20 images, transcoding a movie from one format to the other, removing one page from a PDF), on Mac it can usually be done with built in tools. On Windows you often need either a prohibitively expensive software suite or go on an ad infested crapware hunt resulting in a borderline unusable tool.
  - mettamage 6y ago
    This is my experience as well. I recently bought a Windows machine since a very long time as I want access to all 3 big operating systems (Mac, Windows, Linux). I forgot how terrible Windows can be with downloading stuff from the internet. I wanted to download a program so that I could control my fans a bit better. Before I knew it, it took over my browser and would redirect me to other sites, couldn't remove the program either. Norton didn't do its job, and I didn't do mine because I probably unchecked one box too few during the installation process. The only way to fix this was to wipe the disk completely. I've never had this experience on Mac or Linux.
    - dlvktrsh 6y ago
      Just as a heads up to anyone out there, if you ever get infected run Malwarebytes (free) first and that should probably fix your woes or else you can download bitdefender (also free) and run that. I see a lot of people using norton or whatever else and imo they're all just a waste of resources and time. I personally just uninstall Malwarebytes and bitdefender after I clean up and make sure windows defenders up and running and I'm ready to download all kinds of shit off the internet again. I think the best way to find niche software on windows is to search for open source alternatives. Making a system restore point from time to time can help greatly too on windows! (make sure you change the setting so that it doesn't delete your old system restore points due to low disk space making the whole thing useless)
      - matkoniecz 6y ago
        I think that if you have malware, then formatting of hard drive is minimum of what should be done. I would not assume that malware is actually purged, and unpacking backup archive and running script to reinstall software is not so troublesome (assuming that you have backups and script to automate installing your programs, but if you are on HN then you probably have it)
        mettamage 6y ago
        Well, I normally do :P But this was a fairly fresh install, so I didn't set it up yet. I use Clonezilla for backups.
    - eertami 6y ago
      Sounds like the problem exists between keyboard and chair. Executing strange binary files from untrusted sources could ruin your day on Mac and Linux as well. It is only less common because market share is so small compared to Windows, and as such these systems are less of a target.
      - spacekitcat 6y ago
        How do you establish that a binary is trustworthy? I know what I do, I generally try to find user reviews, but someone had to install it first.
  - senko 6y ago
    > But when it comes to media stuff (think: cropping a lossless audio file and compressing the result into an AAC or MP3, resizing 20 images, transcoding a movie from one format to the other, removing one page from a PDF), on Mac it can usually be done with built in tools. Which tools are these? On Mac I ended up using Audacity for cropping audio files, ffmpeg (cli) to compress it, and used either ffmpeg or Handbrake for transcoding. I don't remember what I used for pdf page split/combine, but I do remember that it was a pain. Honest question - as I still use Mac occasionally, it'd be great to know what are those builtin tools so I can actually use the features the OS has.
    - cprecioso 6y ago
      For cropping audio files, QuickTime can do it. Look in its menus. Also transcoding video files (to what extent this might be “compression” depends on your use case). PDF page manipulation is the easiest thing on macOS, also quite robust usually. Just open the document in Preview and open the page sidebar. You can reorder or remove pages there; or drag and drop pages from other documents.
      - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
        >For cropping audio files, QuickTime can do it. Look in its menus. Also transcoding video files Quicktime Pro could do this all very well, Quicktime X however? It can trim but the UI is bad and encoding options are so limited I stopped using it all together.
    - pilsetnieks 6y ago
      On a very basic level Quicktime can do that. And Preview lets you easily remove pages from PDFs - select the page in the sidebar, press Delete. Apart from that, more advanced 1st party apps for editing (for certain values of advanced) are available free - iMovie for video, GarageBand for audio, Pages for documents, etc.
    - limaoscarjuliet 6y ago
      It often comes to what we are used to. I switched from Windows to Mac on purpose: being a 20+ years Windows power user (software engineer) I wanted to learn a Mac to be a bit more versatile. It took me a year just to be decent MacOS user and I stil "hate it". For me Windows is still better, as for me it is easier and I know all the tools, etc. I am still to discover a built in set of tools on either platform. I use 3rd party to accomplish my daily tasks on both.
  - pilsetnieks 6y ago
    I personally know people who switched to Mac because of Print/Save as PDF. Not just because of that but it was the proverbial last straw. (That was before it was built in in Windows.)
  - paavohtl 6y ago
    > Mac a little better in window management Can you elaborate on this? I've been using a Mac for work for a couple of years now and I find the out-of-the-box window management experience pretty bad compared to Windows. No snapping to sides or corners, no quick resize to standard sizes other than maximum, and most importantly no easy way to change between multiple windows of the same program using keyboard shortcuts. I've been using Magnet [1] and Contexts [2] to improve things, but it's a shame I have to use paid third party apps for basic functionality like this. [1] https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/ https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/ [2] https://contexts.co/ https://contexts.co/
    - leokennis 6y ago
      Windows definitely improved significantly with Win10 in this regard. But Exposé (or whatever it's called now) invoked via a swipe gesture is fantastic. Swipe up with 4 fingers and I see all windows. Swipe down with 4 and I see all windows of the current app. Combine this with Spotlight to quickly find and open apps/documents. But, everyone has a different workflow. I can imagine that if you're a heavier shortcuts user, Windows works better.
      - paavohtl 6y ago
        Expose is pretty good! But the Windows 10 task view [1] (Windows+Tab) does practically the same thing. [1] https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-task-view-windows-10 https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-task-view-windows-10 Spotlight is great and puts Windows 10's search to shame, although it feels like it has gotten worse in the past few years.
    - Wevah 6y ago
      It might not be quite what you want, but Command-(Shift-)-` should cycle through an app’s windows.
      - ollifi 6y ago
        Only works if your keyboard layout includes backtick unfortunately.
  - ElFitz 6y ago
    I still remember how bewildered I was when I realized how easy it was on my first Mac to trim or convert an audio file, crop or resize a picture, build a pdf from images or sign a damn pdf ^^
  - mehrdadn 6y ago
    > On Windows you often need either a prohibitively expensive software suite or go on an ad infested crapware hunt resulting in a borderline unusable tool. For basic audio/video stuff on Windows, try http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/ http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/
  - bavell 6y ago
    ffmpeg is open source and cross-platform, no need for infested crapware.
    - dannyw 6y ago
      GUI apps are easier to pick up and learn than CLI commands with cryptic namings.
      - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
        You end up using FFMPEG all the time on Mac anyway because the built in tools only really support apple approved formats and if you're dealing with video being captured from elsewhere you end up with piles of webm containers full on non-apple endorsed codecs. Didn't use to be this way in the QuickTime Pro ecosystem but since QuickTime X you can't just work with any old video files.
      - bavell 6y ago
        Meh, pick your poison. I was just pointing out there are more alternatives than crapware and expensive tools.
  - Steltek 6y ago
    > Mac a little better in window management I need to echo the sibling comment. I was overwhelmed with how bad Mac window management is in a multi-monitor setup. This is compounded by Apple's apparent hatred of keyboard shortcuts and power users. Speaking to my longtime Mac-loving coworkers, they displayed Sapir-Whorf-like inability to understand why the missing features/behaviors are even a problem. In a the Covid/WFH world, I'm happy to let the 16" MBP collect dust while I use computers that adapt to me, rather than forcefully adapting myself to one particular computer's eccentricities.
  - robotnikman 6y ago
    I've used FFMPEG for these kind of things with no problem on Windows and *nix systems. If your willing to spend the money Adobe Media Encoder works perfectly fine on Windows as well.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Metal is a pleasure to work with, versus the "build your own API" experience of using Vulkan on Android.
- lultimouomo 6y ago
  As a person who develops a video player SDK on iOS, I can say that video processing is horribly undocumented, buggy, and randomly changes behavior depending on device and OS version. And Apple being Apple, you pretty much have no channel to report issues.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
You can tell by the plethora of realtime audio production apps for iOS that it’s pretty solid. CoreAudio is the best in its league.
jan_Inkepa 6y ago
Much better. Last time I checked, there was a baseline audio latency on Android that makes realtime music apps (and decent audio responsiveness in games) basically impossible, vs on iOS where there's a giant ecosystem of them. See this blogpost (from 2018) that seems to confirm my recollections: https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2018/02/17/10-years-later-android-audio-quality-still-lags/ https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2018/02/17/10-years-later...
- nethunters 6y ago
  > Based on MAQ stats, devices from Apple & Google are suitable for live audio use, and devices from other manufacturers generally are likely to have glitchiness and latency that makes them unsuitable. Seems to be more of an issue with manufacturers than a specific issue with Android as Google's own phones get low latancies.
  - lubonay 6y ago
    That's kind of a moot point - most Android devices are not Google's own phones, so you can't ship a reliable user experience on most Android devices.
    - nethunters 6y ago
      My point was more that if Google can do it, other manufacturers can do it. The issue with other manufacturers is that they concentrate a lot more on features that are visible to users whereas features like these aren't necessarily visible directly to the user and aren't given attention even though they're possible to implement.

by jfim 6y ago

Out of curiosity, are the audio APIs any better on iOS? Core audio seemed to work pretty well the last time I used it on OS X, so I assume it does, but I'd be curious to hear your take on it.

Jasper_ 6y ago

I haven't used it, to be quite honest, the games I worked on had the Mac/iOS ports done by a different team, but since I was usually called in to help diagnose customer issues in live and never had to touch the Mac/iOS audio stuff, it probably worked well enough!

dannyw 6y ago

Much better. In general, "creative" APIs (e.g. audio playback, camera/image processing) tend to have well-rounded APIs on iOS.

leokennis 6y ago
Probably unrelated observation. I use a MacBook for personal use and a Windows laptop for work. For many things, they both work well in general (Windows is better for "document stuff" and file management, Mac a little better in window management etc., but comparable in general). But when it comes to media stuff (think: cropping a lossless audio file and compressing the result into an AAC or MP3, resizing 20 images, transcoding a movie from one format to the other, removing one page from a PDF), on Mac it can usually be done with built in tools. On Windows you often need either a prohibitively expensive software suite or go on an ad infested crapware hunt resulting in a borderline unusable tool.
- mettamage 6y ago
  This is my experience as well. I recently bought a Windows machine since a very long time as I want access to all 3 big operating systems (Mac, Windows, Linux). I forgot how terrible Windows can be with downloading stuff from the internet. I wanted to download a program so that I could control my fans a bit better. Before I knew it, it took over my browser and would redirect me to other sites, couldn't remove the program either. Norton didn't do its job, and I didn't do mine because I probably unchecked one box too few during the installation process. The only way to fix this was to wipe the disk completely. I've never had this experience on Mac or Linux.
  - dlvktrsh 6y ago
    Just as a heads up to anyone out there, if you ever get infected run Malwarebytes (free) first and that should probably fix your woes or else you can download bitdefender (also free) and run that. I see a lot of people using norton or whatever else and imo they're all just a waste of resources and time. I personally just uninstall Malwarebytes and bitdefender after I clean up and make sure windows defenders up and running and I'm ready to download all kinds of shit off the internet again. I think the best way to find niche software on windows is to search for open source alternatives. Making a system restore point from time to time can help greatly too on windows! (make sure you change the setting so that it doesn't delete your old system restore points due to low disk space making the whole thing useless)
    - matkoniecz 6y ago
      I think that if you have malware, then formatting of hard drive is minimum of what should be done. I would not assume that malware is actually purged, and unpacking backup archive and running script to reinstall software is not so troublesome (assuming that you have backups and script to automate installing your programs, but if you are on HN then you probably have it)
      - mettamage 6y ago
        Well, I normally do :P But this was a fairly fresh install, so I didn't set it up yet. I use Clonezilla for backups.
  - eertami 6y ago
    Sounds like the problem exists between keyboard and chair. Executing strange binary files from untrusted sources could ruin your day on Mac and Linux as well. It is only less common because market share is so small compared to Windows, and as such these systems are less of a target.
    - spacekitcat 6y ago
      How do you establish that a binary is trustworthy? I know what I do, I generally try to find user reviews, but someone had to install it first.
- senko 6y ago
  > But when it comes to media stuff (think: cropping a lossless audio file and compressing the result into an AAC or MP3, resizing 20 images, transcoding a movie from one format to the other, removing one page from a PDF), on Mac it can usually be done with built in tools. Which tools are these? On Mac I ended up using Audacity for cropping audio files, ffmpeg (cli) to compress it, and used either ffmpeg or Handbrake for transcoding. I don't remember what I used for pdf page split/combine, but I do remember that it was a pain. Honest question - as I still use Mac occasionally, it'd be great to know what are those builtin tools so I can actually use the features the OS has.
  - cprecioso 6y ago
    For cropping audio files, QuickTime can do it. Look in its menus. Also transcoding video files (to what extent this might be “compression” depends on your use case). PDF page manipulation is the easiest thing on macOS, also quite robust usually. Just open the document in Preview and open the page sidebar. You can reorder or remove pages there; or drag and drop pages from other documents.
    - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
      >For cropping audio files, QuickTime can do it. Look in its menus. Also transcoding video files Quicktime Pro could do this all very well, Quicktime X however? It can trim but the UI is bad and encoding options are so limited I stopped using it all together.
  - pilsetnieks 6y ago
    On a very basic level Quicktime can do that. And Preview lets you easily remove pages from PDFs - select the page in the sidebar, press Delete. Apart from that, more advanced 1st party apps for editing (for certain values of advanced) are available free - iMovie for video, GarageBand for audio, Pages for documents, etc.
  - limaoscarjuliet 6y ago
    It often comes to what we are used to. I switched from Windows to Mac on purpose: being a 20+ years Windows power user (software engineer) I wanted to learn a Mac to be a bit more versatile. It took me a year just to be decent MacOS user and I stil "hate it". For me Windows is still better, as for me it is easier and I know all the tools, etc. I am still to discover a built in set of tools on either platform. I use 3rd party to accomplish my daily tasks on both.
- pilsetnieks 6y ago
  I personally know people who switched to Mac because of Print/Save as PDF. Not just because of that but it was the proverbial last straw. (That was before it was built in in Windows.)
- paavohtl 6y ago
  > Mac a little better in window management Can you elaborate on this? I've been using a Mac for work for a couple of years now and I find the out-of-the-box window management experience pretty bad compared to Windows. No snapping to sides or corners, no quick resize to standard sizes other than maximum, and most importantly no easy way to change between multiple windows of the same program using keyboard shortcuts. I've been using Magnet [1] and Contexts [2] to improve things, but it's a shame I have to use paid third party apps for basic functionality like this. [1] https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/ https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/ [2] https://contexts.co/ https://contexts.co/
  - leokennis 6y ago
    Windows definitely improved significantly with Win10 in this regard. But Exposé (or whatever it's called now) invoked via a swipe gesture is fantastic. Swipe up with 4 fingers and I see all windows. Swipe down with 4 and I see all windows of the current app. Combine this with Spotlight to quickly find and open apps/documents. But, everyone has a different workflow. I can imagine that if you're a heavier shortcuts user, Windows works better.
    - paavohtl 6y ago
      Expose is pretty good! But the Windows 10 task view [1] (Windows+Tab) does practically the same thing. [1] https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-task-view-windows-10 https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-task-view-windows-10 Spotlight is great and puts Windows 10's search to shame, although it feels like it has gotten worse in the past few years.
  - Wevah 6y ago
    It might not be quite what you want, but Command-(Shift-)-` should cycle through an app’s windows.
    - ollifi 6y ago
      Only works if your keyboard layout includes backtick unfortunately.
- ElFitz 6y ago
  I still remember how bewildered I was when I realized how easy it was on my first Mac to trim or convert an audio file, crop or resize a picture, build a pdf from images or sign a damn pdf ^^
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  > On Windows you often need either a prohibitively expensive software suite or go on an ad infested crapware hunt resulting in a borderline unusable tool. For basic audio/video stuff on Windows, try http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/ http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/
- bavell 6y ago
  ffmpeg is open source and cross-platform, no need for infested crapware.
  - dannyw 6y ago
    GUI apps are easier to pick up and learn than CLI commands with cryptic namings.
    - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
      You end up using FFMPEG all the time on Mac anyway because the built in tools only really support apple approved formats and if you're dealing with video being captured from elsewhere you end up with piles of webm containers full on non-apple endorsed codecs. Didn't use to be this way in the QuickTime Pro ecosystem but since QuickTime X you can't just work with any old video files.
    - bavell 6y ago
      Meh, pick your poison. I was just pointing out there are more alternatives than crapware and expensive tools.
- Steltek 6y ago
  > Mac a little better in window management I need to echo the sibling comment. I was overwhelmed with how bad Mac window management is in a multi-monitor setup. This is compounded by Apple's apparent hatred of keyboard shortcuts and power users. Speaking to my longtime Mac-loving coworkers, they displayed Sapir-Whorf-like inability to understand why the missing features/behaviors are even a problem. In a the Covid/WFH world, I'm happy to let the 16" MBP collect dust while I use computers that adapt to me, rather than forcefully adapting myself to one particular computer's eccentricities.
- robotnikman 6y ago
  I've used FFMPEG for these kind of things with no problem on Windows and *nix systems. If your willing to spend the money Adobe Media Encoder works perfectly fine on Windows as well.
pjmlp 6y ago
Metal is a pleasure to work with, versus the "build your own API" experience of using Vulkan on Android.
lultimouomo 6y ago
As a person who develops a video player SDK on iOS, I can say that video processing is horribly undocumented, buggy, and randomly changes behavior depending on device and OS version. And Apple being Apple, you pretty much have no channel to report issues.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

layoutIfNeeded 6y ago

You can tell by the plethora of realtime audio production apps for iOS that it’s pretty solid. CoreAudio is the best in its league.

jan_Inkepa 6y ago

Much better. Last time I checked, there was a baseline audio latency on Android that makes realtime music apps (and decent audio responsiveness in games) basically impossible, vs on iOS where there's a giant ecosystem of them. See this blogpost (from 2018) that seems to confirm my recollections: https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2018/02/17/10-years-later-android-audio-quality-still-lags/ https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2018/02/17/10-years-later...

nethunters 6y ago
> Based on MAQ stats, devices from Apple & Google are suitable for live audio use, and devices from other manufacturers generally are likely to have glitchiness and latency that makes them unsuitable. Seems to be more of an issue with manufacturers than a specific issue with Android as Google's own phones get low latancies.
- lubonay 6y ago
  That's kind of a moot point - most Android devices are not Google's own phones, so you can't ship a reliable user experience on most Android devices.
  - nethunters 6y ago
    My point was more that if Google can do it, other manufacturers can do it. The issue with other manufacturers is that they concentrate a lot more on features that are visible to users whereas features like these aren't necessarily visible directly to the user and aren't given attention even though they're possible to implement.