Mix Magazine Review: Sonar 2.0

Sonar for Mac>?

Is Sonar going to be ported to the mac platform ? Also, when is sonic foundry (I think that is the company not sure) going to get there heads out of there asses and port fruity loops to mac>?!?!!!! Whats with software developers? Honestly. WTF! It really pisses me off, I dont want to go out and buy a pc, but I am afraid that a lot of the cool stuff now, such as trackers, and small experimental programs are just made for pc. So I guess Ill have to get a crap lap top. :mad: . It cant be that hard to program for the apple platform now, its unix and cocoa. Can somebody enlighten me as to why sonic foundry does this? are they just hating us mac users or what? honestly.
 
the question of fruity loops being ported has been raised many times (Sonic Foundry makes Acid, Sound Forge, etc, not FL) but they have no intentions of doing so, so I think you may be waiting for quite awhile.

In His Service,
The Mantis
 
Hey, MIckey, cheer up. You guys have DIgital Performer (the latest version of which looks pretty hot) -- and now that Apple has bought Emagic to get the audio technology in Logic -- they're pulling that off the PC market. (Of course, I've only talked to one or two people in my life [in the real world as opposed to online] who actually used Logic on a PC, but it's the principle of the thing, right?)

And, of course, it's actually cheaper to set up a Pro Tools HD system ("cheap" isn't really a word that applies here, though) on a Mac than a PC -- because the Digidesign folks only support very expensive IBM brand PC models that actually cost more than "equivalent" Macs.


BTW, you should be mad at Sonic Foundry for not porting Sound Forge and ACID... not FL. ;)

And while I'm unaware of any current plans to release a Mac version of Sonar, the folks at Cakewalk did buy and overhaul a Mac sequencer called Metro. I haven't ever talked to anyone who has used it. Rumor was that they bought it to get a leg up on developing for the Mac. If they ARE going to do something with Sonar for the Mac I'm sure they're waiting for Apple to fold the audio and MIDI technology they aquired from Emagic into a future version of OS X.

The main reason you might see more of the kind of apps you mention for the PC is that MS took the course of building a lot of multimedia and audio functionalities into the Windows OS -- while Apple counted on individual Mac developers to "roll their own" low level audio and MIDI functions.

While Windows has supported multi-channel audio and has offered a standardized plug-in format (DirectX) for many years, Apple has lagged far behind -- which is why Opcode's OMS became a de facto standard. When Opcode went out of business, active support for OMS was finito.

The Mac Sound Manager, with no multichannel support, big latency problems, and no full-duplex capability, was an even bigger problem that had to be worked around. And it fell to the third party developers to create their own low-latency driver systems like ASIO and EASI. And, of course, each software house had to develop its own plug-in standard like VST (as opposed to the Windows DirectX standard).

Now, it appears that Apple will be playing catch-up in future versions of OS X and some of the burden on software developers will be removed.

But don't beat up on the Windows-only developers too much for not supporting the Mac. You have to remember that software development is very, very expensive and difficult -- even with an OS that offers extended multimedia support. If you develop for windows you're reaching approximately 95% of the market. It's prohibitive to start a whole new development process just to try to penetrate a submarket that amounts to only 5 out of 100 computers. Add to that the fact that some very powerful and thoroughly entrenched packages already "own" that market -- in addition to the concern that any product coming from the Windows world would be seen to be a "carpet-bagging interloper" and would undoubtedly be subject to an extreme (if typically uninformed) backlash -- and it becomes clear why you won't probably won't see any major Windows apps ported over soon.
 
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Great reply theblue1!

Thanks for explaining some of that theblue1. But to say "If you develop for windows you're reaching approximately 95% of the market" I dont think thats quite an acurrate percentage if your talking audio. Sure for general word processing and overall people who use a computer maybe but I know a lot of folks who use the mac in universities and studios all over. But I am very jelous of the pc folk with there trackers like buzz and all those small apps developed by bedroom audio guru's. Do you know if they have a tracker like buzz out of mac? One thing I noticed just a few days ago is that steinburg (makers of cubase) have a SDK (software development kit) for vst plug ins on macs. So I am jazzed on that. Digital Performer is cool ... no questioning that. Its pretty cool that they have reason ported to OS X now. I am jazzed off that too. So you dont think that fl will ever be ported to the mac? That sucks if thats the case! But oh well... I could always try it on virtual pc (emulation is horrible for audio) Thanks for all the info though, that explained some things.
 
Good point on the 95/5%. I must have been thinking with my database developer hat on... :D

Certainly, in the pro studio milieu (which basically means Pro Tools) it's a pretty Mac-centric world. (Although, as you can imagine, PCs have snuck in to run ACID and a few other popular Win-only programs.)

And, online, I have run into a fair number of serious audio people running Macs. But I have to say that most of the musicians I know in the physical world (Southern California) do use Windows. (I do have a number of Mac friends who are graphics pros, though. Big penetration, there. My video friends are split down the middle. In fact, my most serious vid production pal has split his shop between Macs and a new PC based system running Vegas.)

I was looking for sales figures for any/all of the apps and platforms and I couldn't find any anywhere (but I'll bet the players know the score, you bet).

Right now, I'd say that DP, Cubase, and Logic own the Mac. We'll have to see what happens as they move over to OS X and, down the road, when Apple updates the multimedia layer. You may well see an explosion of small developers coming out of the woodwork. Maybe even Buzzmachnes or something like it. ;)
 
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