Apple swallowing Emagic...any comments?

about time mac users had something to call their own. still, if i was a pc user who'd been using logic for years, i'd be well pissed off.

why should mac users have something to call their own

I really don't think they did it to capture the ~70,000 PC users. More likely they want to offer something that's only available to Mac users, with Apple's attention to detail. I guess they hope Apple PowerMac + Apple Logic would be a very compelling package for people rigging up new studios ect. I know of some video companies that already buy Macs specifically to run Final Cut Pro and nothing else (ie they say "I want Final Cut Pro workstations", not "I want some Macs and software to run on them"), so presumably that's what they're trying to do.

Also odd is the commmentary that says Apple are dumb to say goodbye to extra revenue for the PC version, surely smaller market share (which in this case is the other way around: PC users = 35%) is the normal excuse for ending product development for Macs, so it's weird seeing the PC press defending it vocally the other way.

I said they did it to capture the application not the users. But by then denying it to Windows users they hope, as you say, to steer future buyers towards Apple hardware because only that will have the application they want to run. Flaw in the plan is that I sense that Logic doesn't have anything like the reputation it did in the past, hence the 'lame duck' suggestion.

Yeah, but I don't believe Macromedia Final Cut had much of a reputation when Apple bought it (then again Adobe Premiere = utter utter buggy crashing clunky bollocks (at least v5 for PC is/was)). It'll be very interesting what they do re: branding, whether they keep the eMagic name or even Logic - they may well rewrite it and sell it as Apple Music Studio Pro. The other thing they can do that no one else really can is buy other music tools and integrate them and/or sell them as $999 add-ons like they've done for FCP (though maybe they can't get away with that price for music).

Surely Apple are buying it to guarantee a great music product on the Mac. Buying a software company to deprive a rival platform of it must be the stupidest business decission evah. Don't they know that there are hundreds of PC music software companies hoping to take Logic's place?

Sometimes the self-congratulatory loop between Apple and it's users is nausiating. When I first wrote Gbloink! some Mac user wrote to me to tell me I should have written it for the Mac because that's what all the creative people use!

Why, I'm glad you got that message, Phil. ;-)

but pc's are for dullards, aren't they?

Nah, Windows is just for people who can't appreciate a nice user interface when they see one. ;- ) Like windows media player (absolute utter CRAP) vs. iTunes (so simplistic that I think it's nearly perfect).

The consensus on this seems to be that Apple is trying to fortify one of its last redoubts - that of the professional music market where Macs still hold sway to some extent - by capturing and denying to Windows users the sequencing package widely regarded (at least in the past) as the best.

I thought instead they're sparing themselves the cost of keeping around a Windows development & support team, and saving the time that it takes to develop two versions of the software. Trying to maintain software on multiple platforms is a bitch, so I think they're smart to just give up on the Windows side of it and let some other company take over there.

They already have the professional music market. I think they realize that they have sold quite a few imacs, ibooks and G4s for people that make music at home.

The keyboard/music equipment manufacturers make their bigger money selling things to the home musician, which has blown up big time since the mid-90s. Examples of this are how much you see big chain music stores and the expansion of mail order music equipment companies in the same period.

I think Apple could possibly finally get smart and start having upgrade packages with good audio/midi inputs for their systems with integration into the OS. This way getting people to buy a Mac studio out of the box, no different than getting a home multitrack or some keyboard studio in a box like the things that Roland and Yamaha make.

I think they realize that they have sold quite a few imacs, ibooks and G4s for people that make music at home.

You may have a point. If a lot of their existing users are the kind of people who are uncomfortable with buying a 3rd party application and installing it this would make a lot of sense.

I think the out-of-the-box Audio machine thing will happen ie it will be marketed like that, but there's no way it would have anything like the level of stability of one of those Roland/Yamaha machines.

Logic on the mac is pretty stable already in my experience. It has never crashed for me on this here powerbook, not even using it live in noisy smoky rooms. If you set it up right it is the equal of any workstation stability-wise. And I would have to disagree with the above post about it not having the rep it had in the past. As far as I can see it has pulled significantly ahead of Cubase in the midi sequencer stakes, after years of tight competition. Logic and Pro Tools are pretty much the default applications for most pro studios these days.

Blimey, I sound like such an evangelist! I dont even like it that much! But I do think it is about the best software package around. ALthough hardware is much more fun than software...