What if Bill Gates bought Avid and discontinued the Mac products?

[tonygoodall]

Do you think we might get a few headlines?

You know the type - Bill Gates is Satan, etc......

It seems that the same behaviour from Apple doesn't attract the same criticism (i.e. stopping selling the Windows Logic product after buying Emagic - that's stopping selling it, not stopping developing it).

Yours, totally unimpressed by this behaviour

Tone

[Lee Blaske]

Pro audio is such a small, minute, inconsequential part of Microsoft's business, most likely Bill Gates couldn't care less about the whole situation. That's why I believe it'll be a long time before you see anything on the Windows side that will rival the new Core Audio, Core MIDI and Audio Units of Apple.

Come next January when Macs with IBM's new Power4 processors hit the market, the pro audio capabilities of the Mac are going to be scary.

Imagine if the reverse had happened, and Logic had been purchased by Microsoft. How much clout do you think Gerhard Lengling and crew would have had getting important changes made to Windows to accomodate their plans? If it had to have been one platform or the other, Emagic ended up in the right place. Content creation, including pro audio and MIDI services is very much a front burner item for Apple.

Lee Blaske

[tonygoodall]

so do you believe that summarily ceasing to sell Windows versions of Logic is a good thing for the Musical world?

[Lee Blaske]

I do have sympathy for PC users who are left out in the cold in this deal.

Ultimately though, with Apple putting the pedal to the metal in terms of audio and MIDI services development, it would have been hard to maintain feature and performance parity between the two platforms, especially in the coming year with Power4 on the way. Feature parity was an important cornerstone of Emagic's plan.

Emagic's other difficulty with the PC side of things, that might have ultimately made the sale necessary to Apple in the first place (if they were to survive at all) is not a topic which is permitted for discussion on this forum (I think you know what I'm referring to).

Lee Blaske

[David Sumich]

I have some pretty good insight into Microsoft's agenda with respect to audio, and I can tell you that they care alot about audio. Now what you call "pro" audio, that isn't quite as clear. They certainly are working towards standards that I would call pro (96Khz, 24-Bit, 6 channel audio). I for one am pretty excited by their forward progression with their new WMA Pro audio format. [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

[Wolfgang Eller]

And again the WMA Pro audio format lizence is owned by microsoft and to use it you have to upgrade to XP, you have to vist the Microsoft side within 30 days to get a update from the WMA player (where Microsft installs their admin rights on your PC).
Glad to stay with W2000 and real player and let "Pro Audio" where it used to be: Mac, Digi and no internet conection!

Regards Wolfgang

[Lee Blaske]

I'd imagine that if this was Usenet, the majority of PC users here would have already added your ramblings to their killfile. Let it go already. It's old. It's tired. I pray you have something better to do. Then again, maybe not......

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Hmmm... Check back to the origin of this thread. Warranted or not, it was an attack on Apple.

I can't speak for Wolfgang, but I'm only drawn to these threads when I see interesting or provocative titles show up under the Windows forum on the main DUC page.

I also don't think these discussions are tiring. This is a constantly shifting, dynamic area, and anyone professionally involved in this business needs to keep in touch with developments, no matter where their loyalties or allegiances lie *currently*. You can't stick your head in the sand, no matter which platform is your favorite today.

Besides, it's hard for any reasonably sized facility not to have and/or need multiple computers on multiple platforms. There aren't that many true purists out there.

These days, the one thing I think that has improved about these debates is that the discussion can get pretty intense without getting too personal or angry. By now, I think most of us don't have the energy (or expend the energy) getting too vitriolic. Life's too short. Maybe some of the youngsters on these boards can work up a lather, but most of us have a tough time getting too furious.

Lee Blaske

[Floater99]

Originally posted by Lee Blaske:
Hmmm... Check back to the origin of this thread. Warranted or not, it was an attack on Apple.

I can't speak for Wolfgang, but I'm only drawn to these threads when I see interesting or provocative titles show up under the Windows forum on the main DUC page.

I also don't think these discussions are tiring. This is a constantly shifting, dynamic area, and anyone professionally involved in this business needs to keep in touch with developments, no matter where their loyalties or allegiances lie *currently*. You can't stick your head in the sand, no matter which platform is your favorite today.

Besides, it's hard for any reasonably sized facility not to have and/or need multiple computers on multiple platforms. There aren't that many true purists out there.

These days, the one thing I think that has improved about these debates is that the discussion can get pretty intense without getting too personal or angry. By now, I think most of us don't have the energy (or expend the energy) getting too vitriolic. Life's too short. Maybe some of the youngsters on these boards can work up a lather, but most of us have a tough time getting too furious.

Lee Blaske[/QB]

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Lee -

Point well taken. Your are correct that this thread's topic incites this sort of response. With regards to Wolfgang, maybe I'm still tired of his "Gates is the anti-Christ" ramblings from the now deleted threads that began as a frank discussion on whether or not a certain user should switch platforms. I apologize for lumping this thread in with those others. I guess I was still living in what this board was becoming less than a few months ago where the platform war topics heavily outweighed the topics that actually helped Windows TDM users with issues and problems. In those days, if somebody posted a problem like "when I'm doing such and such, my PT crashes", the inevitable answer from the Wolfgang-types was "if you don't want crashes, switch to Mac". Those kinds of answers helped nobody. I guess I was frustrated with wasted bandwidth.

Anyways, you are correct, your point is well taken. Since this thread's topic opens this platform war can of worms, I respectfully retract my previous posting.

Thanks,

Marc

[tonygoodall]

Well I don't like platform wars, but sometimes I feel that Mac users feel they are following some true version of a religion, and I'm the enemy for wanting to use a PC (as if I'm a Roman putting Christians to death 2000 years ago).

I really do feel that Mac users would be shouting "murder" from the rooftops if Microsoft pulled a stunt like Apple has here, and although Lee's responses are very measured and reasonable, I really don't think you can justify pulling the plug on an existing product with over 100,000 users.

A business that produces software, with a user base of 35% Windows / 65% Mac will not benefit from shutting down the Windows product line, neither will the users. Apple may benefit.

Frankly, I think it's disgraceful to treat customers this way, and it won't encourage me to trust Apple in the future, they are clearly just as hard-nosed businessmen as Microsoft or anyone else, and their first concern is clearly not for the musicians or engineers!

[Floater99]

Originally posted by tonygoodall:
Well I don't like platform wars, but sometimes I feel that Mac users feel they are following some true version of a religion, and I'm the enemy for wanting to use a PC (as if I'm a Roman putting Christians to death 2000 years ago).

I really do feel that Mac users would be shouting "murder" from the rooftops if Microsoft pulled a stunt like Apple has here, and although Lee's responses are very measured and reasonable, I really don't think you can justify pulling the plug on an existing product with over 100,000 users.

A business that produces software, with a user base of 35% Windows / 65% Mac will not benefit from shutting down the Windows product line, neither will the users. Apple may benefit.

Frankly, I think it's disgraceful to treat customers this way, and it won't encourage me to trust Apple in the future, they are clearly just as hard-nosed businessmen as Microsoft or anyone else, and their first concern is clearly not for the musicians or engineers!

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Agreed. On the surface, it seems as if Apple was counting on Win-Logic users to buy all new hardware just to continue to use Mac-Logic. I think they really underestimated where people's loyalties were. From the number of Logic users I've talked to, they're all simply switching to Sonar. They have no intention of switching to Mac. Despite the frustrations of current Win-Logic users, I think Cakewalk couldn't be happier right now. Over on the Sonar boards, there has been a flood of new users who transferred from Logic. From the sentiment there, it seems as if Apple's move may have backfired somewhat. The users who may have been teetering on switching platforms are so pissed at Apple that they now vow to remain on the Win platform out of spite. I admit that there is probably more to Apple's reasoning to end Win-Logic support than a simple marketing move to try to funnel people to Mac hardware, but the adverse effect is certainly occuring at least on that level. Personally, as a Sonar user, I'm happy to have all of them on board!

Marc