Communication prob's w/ Digi and Apple? Intentional?

[mister_peter]

A disturbing (because I own an MBox) thought has been lurking in my head lately. Let me review the major points:

(1) Digi seems incapable of writing a driver for X in a timely fashion, though many third parties create drivers and interfaces that are quite good. This includes third parties that don't even make hardware themselves (!!!).

(2) None of these third parties (including MOTU) carry out their proprietary formats to the degree that Digi does. This is especially notable on the low end (002, 001, MBox), because these systems are less likely to be PT-only computers.

(3) MOTU has been struggling to develop DP4 for a while now. Unless it is really a ground-shaking release, I don't imagine it garnering the support that Logic has now. Logic is now Mac-only, so DP is no longer the single Mac-only sequencer.

(4) Logic is owned by Apple.


So in my head, it seems clear that Apple is gunning to effectively own the low-end to prosumer market, and eventually work up from there. This puts into context the fact that M-Audio and others can quickly develop quality drivers and interfaces while Digi and MOTU (whose intial drivers sucked, too) appear to either be struggling or not caring. Note that I do not mean for this to 'shift blame' from Digi to Apple.

Any thoughts?

Is now the time to start learning Logic and scrapping Digi gear, knowing that this will only get worse?

Is Digi's path going to focus on Windows (maybe Win XP even) boxes and ignore their low-end Macs because it is just too much trouble to support them?

Would a really great driver with maybe even a good control panel interface solve (almost) all of this? If so, is it REALLY that hard to write one??

I'd love to hear what the 'prosumer' crowd thinks here.....

[nostatic]

I think your analysis is incorrect for a few reasons. First and foremost, you have to understand Digi's (and their parent company Avid's) business model: you make money from hardware. It is changing somewhat (witness XpressDV), but their strategy is to control all aspects...you run their software with their hardware. The charitable explanation is that this is an attempt to control as many variables as possible to provide a more stable environment. Another angle is that they just want you to use their stuff, and anything they can do to keep you from using non-Digi stuff is to their advantage. Nothing particularly evil about that, but you, the consumer, should understand that going in. Digi is not in business to deliver hardware solutions that work well with 3rd party products. If you want to use Logic, your best bet is to buy something else (that's what I did).

As far as delivering drivers, I think that Digi chooses not to allocate resources to the project...it isn't a high priority. What is a high priority is making sure PT works with Digi hardware. Apple and Digi are competitors, but I don't believe that Apple has "secret APIs" or other nonsense that keep other companies from writing software...that would be counter productive. I still beleive that Apple bought eMagic for the technology, and they will leverage that in other products like FinalCut (which of course will piss off Avid, but business is business).

Why MOTU is late to the party is a topic of discussion in quite a few places. There could be a number of reasons, but they seem to be focusing more on hardware these days. We'll see how DP4 is when it ships (it was supposed to go out Tuesday).

Digi likely won't quit Mac development, as there is waaay too much money in it for them. It still is the predominant platform for pro audio production, and likely in the prosumer market also. Part of the problem is that Mac users are somewhat spoiled by the fact that generally things work. When you get more "PC-like" behavior from a company, people get cranky. As for me, I'll offer my experiences as I still use PT from time to time, but I know how Digi operates and made a conscious choice to switch my first-call DAW first to DP and now to Logic. PT is still very good for what it does, but you have to be realistic about what it can and can't do, and what you can and can't expect out of the hardware/software.. ymmv

[J. Guerrero]

Part of the problem is that Mac users are somewhat spoiled by the fact that generally things work.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Yeah, we want things that work. We are such childs... [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]
Please don't take this as a personal attack, I know it was taken out of context... but come on, things are supposed to work as advertised and as smoothly as possible if you are paying good money for them, don't you think?

[J. Guerrero]

Anyway, getting back on topic: the drivers are more a PR move and I think they rushed them because we wanted them ASAP. They should've said that the drivers are in beta stage and that Reason will be supported in the final release. But they made sure that Logic worked with them, so I don't think there's an issue with Apple. At the most, the problem is with Propellerheads.

[Michael Cottrell]

All bets are premature. What is now, may not be in the future. OS X will totally change the way multimedia, including music, is produced.

All it takes is one small company which has creativity and knowledge of the OS X programming enviornment to change all the rules. The best is yet to come. Gentlemen start you engines.

Just as an ancedote:

Apple spent its entire existence trying to create a better Midi Management system than OMS and they never did it.

So now I'm wondering what scheme they are going to employ in OS X. Hmmmm... very interesting. [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]