[GoButtonGuy]

Originally Posted by Stephen Bond

As I have said repeatedly, for £200 I can buy Logic Pro X and receive free updates until a new major version arrives. That money is far better spent elsewhere. Sure I love Pro Tools but it is probably time to stick with what I have, even bearing in mind the punitive policies Avid have in place to return to the fold?

Depends on if you're willing to face the learning curve and change your workflow. We've got several composers in house and they use either Live or Logic. Of the 44 show the producers had out before Covid only two that I know of used Pro Tools in the creation. That was because the shows were based on remixed masters of the pop/rock stars those shows are based on. We use PT for tracking, sound tracks, programming playback (virtual soundcheck) film and TV and general tracking but typically not for music composition.

You can download Logic and demo it for 90 days to see if it works for you. With a month left on your PT sub it's enough time to see it you like it and it fits your workflow. I see an inordinate amount of focus on the tool compared to the end result. Our deliverable, the music, score, whatever is the key not necessarily the tool used to create it.

If you don't have to work outside or have clients that need/want you to be PT compatible and are willing to take a hit in productivity as you change workflows it makes sense. If you're in an environment where time is money you'll pay for a few years of PT upgrades before you're fluent enough in the other platform as you were in PT. Two days training per tech (and that's still only enough for pro level basics) is about two years of upgrades.

Originally Posted by JFreak

... or minus X days if he buys that developer box

He won't be able to get a transition kit. The supply is constrained as of last week priority is restricted to those with current MacOS apps in the store or if you can prove you've shipped. I've had a couple of iOS/iPad apps for a few years and I'm still on the list. Technically you're only licensing the system as Apple says you'll have to return it.

Originally Posted by JFreak

Day of OS update will never happen as companies like Avid need GM before they make final decisions. That is, assuming OS vendor will not delay release as per their customer requests...

Other major devs have been able to get enough info to work concurrently with the releases. At WWDC the entire Big Sur presentation was on a transition kit Mini including all the third party demo apps running native or in Rosetta 2.

I don't know if the old wounds between Avid and Apple have fully healed. There was quite a bit of bad blood when the Logic release around 2004/2005 came out. At one point at NAMM (IIRC 2005) there was not a Mac to be seen in the gigantic Avid/Digidesign booth including with the live console offerings. It was Dell everywhere and the rumors were Digi was so pissed about Logic they were going to phase out PT from MacOS.

Of course that never happened but there are high profile devs that get a leg up on the rest of us pleebs that can't get it until beta 1 is available. They don't need a GM to start building and working with the framework. It's not best practice software engineering to wait that long. They would likely have access to at least a couple of transition kits on day one assuming whatever hatchet has been buried between them.

The release timings for PT are purposeful and for whatever reason it takes Avid quite a bit longer than the other major devs to catch up. Be it a resource constraint or complexity of a codebase that's been layered on year over year or something else I don't know. For example they had a two year notice that 32 bit apps were on the way out. Apple nagged the devs every chance they got the 32 bit was going away. Yet for the QT importer Avid didn't have a 64 bit version when 32 bit were deep sixed. That's either poor engineering management, lack of resources of a biz dev/marketing decision. Any way you look at it maximum ball dropping for something that's a daily use case for post.