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  4. VE Mac 64 bit?
  • S
    S

     Christian:

    Thanks for your comment. I do appreciate your frustration, but at least the article suggests that the decision to abandon Carbon was not completely thoughtless or arbitrary - - although that is small comfort to developers with existing Carbon codebases..... Right now, as you have pointed out in other places, there are alternatives for Mac users seeking to exceed the 2.5 GB sample load limit. In experimenting with Logic 8, OS 10.5.1 and VE, I have been able to create a file that simultaneously addresses and plays - - with reasonable success, the VE standalone, the VE plugin, the VI plugin, EXS 24 plugin and the Kompakt standalone (Logic 8 refuses to validate Kompakt under OS 10.5.1 although it successfully validated it under OS 10.4.11.) (For the audio from the standalones I am using SoundFlower to route the audio back into Logic via  AUX channels - - not an ideal solution as Soundflower seems prone to introducing artifacts - - clicks and pops.) Such a setup is made infinitely more practical with Leopard's new "Spaces" feature which allows one to move instantly from one program or one page to another....as I said in an earlier post, it's almost like having 4 monitors. 

    Willross:

    Although an ardent Mac user, I couldn't disagree more with your point of view. I am incredibly glad that most companies do cross-platform development since it helps them stay in business and continue development. I am, for example, very, very, very glad that I do not have to purchase a Windows machine to access the VSL library. What's important to me is what you can do with the software, not whether or not it is sufficiently "mac-like" to suit my taste.  I am not an adherent of the Mac "religion," I just want access to maximum functionality for making music.

    Stephen

    Dual 2.5 GHz G5

    7GB RAM 

    OS 10.5.1 (and 10.4.11) 

    MOTI 2408

    Logic 7 & 8 

    DP 4.6.1 
  • J
    J
    Stephen-- Hmm, my name is Jerome, for some reason now the board shows the login name when you don't check "Show Full Names" in your profile... rather annoying because I wouldn't like my boss to think I'm speaking on his behalf (which I am *not*!)

    But anyway- I should have been clearer - In the debate regarding native vs. cross-platform, I was specifically talking about stand-alone apps. As a plug-in, I think VE (and VI for that matter) are perfectly fine. The release of plug-ins both as Audio Units and VST is a good example of cross-platform apps that don't make me specifically realize they've been developed on another system (Except then the scroll wheel doesn't work on Mac :) )

    Stand-alone apps are usually another story though.

    JEROME. ;)
  • cmC
    VSL Team
    cmC

    jerome, your displayed name was the username of will ross because you are posting logged in to his account instead of using yours ... (which already has displayed name Jerome) - email me  if you can't remember the respective email address.

    btw: i've already asked you earlier a similar question because  icouldn't find registered products for *Jerome* ...

     

    soso ... motu concentrates on mac ... is this the reason their drivers are working so well (for both platforms)?

    christian

    and remember: only a CRAY can run an endless loop in just three seconds.
  • J
    J
    There's no registered products for *Jerome*... All the registered products I am using are at my boss' studio. Not sure which message board account I should use then?

    I personally think MOTU's Windows drivers are so-so. Compared to their Mac drivers anyway.

    But MOTU is far from being perfect either :) And I don't really want to compare VSL and MOTU since they don't do exactly the same kind of business (although maybe VSL will come out with a MIR hardware box one day).

    J.

    ps. I also really don't like that new forum where I have to enter html code to get correct formatting... am I doing something wrong here?
  • cmC
    VSL Team
    cmC

    jerome - this for example http://community.vsl.co.at/forums/p/17077/122290.aspx#122290 is a post you made with your account (287 posts).

     

    so i would ask you to revert will's account to what it has been and return to using your own account.

     

    i'm sorry to hear you are also a victim of the tinyMCE - safari issue which we are trying to overcome, but i would ask you to continue such a discussion in the website issues forum so we don't get a third topic into this thread.

     

    and of course you don't want to compare MOTU with VSL if their drivers are so-so, whereas VI software is not ;-) SCNR

     

    christian

    and remember: only a CRAY can run an endless loop in just three seconds.
  • J
    J
    Ah! Back in business :)

    Well, to re-center that discussion on topic - should we basically understand that you guys have no idea as to when a 64-bit version will come around? Like, can you at least say "in six month", or "in two years" or "when hell will freeze over"? :D

    The thing I don't understand is the fact you announced the 64-bit Leopard version of VE would come out a few weeks after Leopard's release - although at that time the "no-64bit-Carbon" issue had been known for 3 months already...?

    J.

    ps. regarding the forum - see what I meant when I said "Windows first, Mac second"? :D
  • H
    H

    Just to keep things in the right perspective:

    VSL invests a lot more time, manpower and money in OSX developement, testing and support than we do in windows (double to tripple amount).

    We do have more windows user than OSX users, so we simply invest much more ressources in our OSX userbase.

    Therefor this whole discussion is really strange for me.

    best

    Herb
  • J
    J
    As Miklos said earlier, if you were first developing for Mac and then for Windows, these figures might very well be reversed... So criticizing the Mac platform because it takes too much time to make sure your Windows app work doesn't make much sense to me either...

    Moreover you wouldn't be developing for OS X if you were losing money doing it; so all of those extra hours are surely worth it business-wise. Which is why I don't understand either why the complaining about the Mac platform (see cm's earlier post). But maybe this is simply a bad interpretation on my part.

    J.
  • cmC
    VSL Team
    cmC

    jeerome, the 18 posts made as will ross are now re-assigned to your account and the name for will's account is reset.

     

    furthermore i don't think you're in a position to teach VSL how and in which order we should carry out or organize software development - i've tried in several attempts above to explain why your suggestions are neither reasonable nor actually possible.

    i'd recommend you write some little C++ thingie and try to integrate it in Cocoa, then and compile an OS X and a windows version and then come back to me with the results and a report about the conveniences to do so.

     

    i for myself will continue to criticize any platform - more precisely bugs and misbehaviour of any platform, be it mac, windows or any other where certain things don't work as they should (a nice example would also be java on symbian)

     

    i will also continue to express my opinion about mis- or non-information where this applies as well as about price/value relations or reliability how i experience them for hardware or software - you can either accept other people are in another situation than you or not.

     

    finally and to show the priorities apple has if to choose between i-thingies and the operating system or applications: the already fixed execution exploit for malformed images in mail is back in leopard and not even fixed with the first update and i noticed a problem regarding gateways (and finally routing tables) on multi-homed computers ... a shame for an OS which is in fact the successor of BSD, _the_ network and security focused OS ever.

     

    everybody has to get their jobs done - the earlier, the better

    christian

    and remember: only a CRAY can run an endless loop in just three seconds.
  • W
    W
    You might be taking the content of my posts too personally...

    I am not "teaching VSL how and in which order" they should do business... as I said, I perfectly understand that cross-platform is a necessity for VSL. I merely expressed a (personal) frustration about the state of VSL's Mac development and I questioned it in order to understand better your motives.

    I didn't say you weren't allowed to express your opinion - who would I be anyway to say so as a guest on *your* message board? - I was reacting to that opinion and voicing concerns regarding what that opinion meant to me as a client of VSL.

    I went ahead with the discussion for argument's sake because I am well aware that VSL is not going to change suddenly the way they work (nor would I expect them to) just because I voiced a different opinion... If one lonely guy on a message board were enough to make VSL change all its software development routine, I'd be quite concerned ;)

    Again I do not agree regarding your final comments about Leopard, an OS that came out less than a month ago, which brings substantial changes to its core and which *has* already been updated, less than three weeks after its release (even if it doesn't fix some things, it already fixes a lot of small other things). Sometimes I wished that Windows XP got as many updates as Mac OS X did since both OS came out.

    That said, I agree completely that it is a point-of-view issue. That's exactly why I've been posting in this thread - because your arguments lead me to believe that you guys were somehow partial toward the Mac platform in general. To me, some of your arguments didn't really make sense (and some of them still don't, actually...) and seemed so subjectively pro-pc and/or anti-mac that I had to at least voice my concerns. And reading those arguments made me think that your point of view is a Windows-users point of view. Not a Mac-users point of view.

    Am I making any sense?

    J.

    ps. thanks for fixing up my mistakes re. the user account.
  • M
    M
    I think we have touched a nerve here cm: which is the point of this discussion. We do feel, with great respect to your expertise and capability, not just of you but everyone at VSL who are certainly masters of their profession and for me at least, peerless - that there is a politically pro windows or anti mac sentiment existing that is filtering down to the end user experience. I don't think anybody! is trying to "teach" VSL anything about software development! Certainly, you guys know what you are doing and my experience on the mac side has been excellent, and indeed - the problems I have had have been related to logic and cubase not doing what they are supposed to. (Thankfully Logic 8 on Leopard is a dream so far). However, I think it is a fair point to say that it is *because* you have to develop for windows that the mac "port" is harder, not the other way around - not that because you have to develop for mac, the mac port is harder. After-all, the mac development is designed to be far easier from the ground up, and that is what cocoa is aimed at - ground up development, and less towards getting windows apps ported to the mac (that was what carbon was for - and of course also for porting old mac apps to OSX out of classic - most of those old apps on both platforms were assumed to never need 64bit access). It seems that although it's fair to say it's hard and expensive to port code from windows to the mac, instead of the other way around, that it is not the mac side that is to "blame", since we are talking blame here, and lets be clear, ultimately, nobody is at all blaming VSL for what are in fact sound business decisions. We are blaming windows!!! (of course ha ha). With ignorance, I suggest perhaps it may be time to consider reviewing those decisions based on the new state of affairs? Just a suggestion, perhaps misplaced. Nobody every said there are not errors and inconsistencies in any mac os release but come on, they don't even stand side by side with any windows release on that front. Even though there exist theoretical vulnerabilities in the OS (as with any OS) they are yet to be exploited "in the wild". I don't believe apple is over occupied with as you say i"thingies" this is just more anti mac sentiment trickling through. Fine you don't like their way of doing things that is absolutely your right but you can't blame them that they are not Windows! And it does feel like at the end of the day VSL is saying well, we spend way more money that we should have to on OSX because it's not Windows, when in fact if you were to ask me, a mac user, I would say well, seems to me you have to spend way more money on OSX because it's not Windows!!! If you know what I mean... But all is fair in love and war as they say, fine job to the VSL team and that's all. It is a political war on much of the windows versus mac front and it's about engineering, user design, and personal preference... but some things are objective and some subjective. The point is: I venture to speculate that if you were to develop VSL soley for the mac from the ground up, it would be easier and cheaper than developing soley for windows *if* you had half as much experience and background knowledge in developing for windows in the first place, and NOT 2 - 3 times more as is apparently the case based on this discussion. [edit: sorry this came out wrong - what I mean to say is that it would not COST 2 - 3 times more, not that you need 2 - 3 more times knowledge on windows.... that came out wrong] The fact is that the mac is par for par generally much easier to develop for now than windows given the same or basically the same knowledge of each system being assumed in the 'test'. If you look at it that way, you see why mac users are a bit gruntled about the statement, it makes it look like osx is the backwards yesterday operating system when in fact it is windows, and that osx is costing vsl more money to develop for when in fact that is because the code has to run simultaneously to windows and run on windows first. I would say it is windows that is costing you money on your osx development. But again, all respects and I hope you don't mind me sharing my opinion, you certainly have a knowledge of development far surpassing my own conceptual understandings (with very little practical understanding), I hope you can simply take these posts as respectful feedback. All the best, Miklos. PS Oh and one more thing I am not for a minute suggesting that VSL develop only for the mac - that was my hypothetical example only - although, in a perfect world.....
  • S
    S

    I should start off by saying that I am a Mac user - - and use PC's only when compelled to. That's my preference - - nothing more. 

    Now that's out of the way, I'd like to suggest that everyone involved in this discussion take a deep breath and relax a little. The Mac vs. PC thing has always struck me as having a tone of quasi-religious conflict with each side nursing a sense of injury. People have different experiences and form opinions based on these experiences - - so, as in religious conflicts, neither side may think the other can fully understand or appreciate the truths of which they are so certain.

    Leaving this aside,  developers will, I fervently hope, continue to develop for both platforms. According to the developers I know, at one time or another, both Microsoft and Apple have been sources of immense frustration. I think one can safely assume that VSL wants to have satisfied customers - - regardless of the platform a particular customer prefers. In addition, developers are compelled to take economic reality into account - - in this case the reality is that, outside  the U.S., the PC share of the professional music industry market is significantly larger than the Mac share, whereas, in the U.S., Macs have a large share of the professional music industry market. I'm sure that no developer whose audience is this market both in the U.S. and elsewhere would willingly want to forgo sales to either part of the market because of prejudice against one platform or the other.

    I am sure that the folks at VSL will release a 64 bit version of VE as soon as it is possible. (I'm not mad at ShirtPocket software because they have yet to release a Leopard compatible version of SuperDuper - - a backup program that I have come to depend upon. The folks at ShirtPocket say they will release it as soon as it's ready - - and they develop only for Macs.. I believe them.)

    So perhaps we should all agree to be friends and notice that developers and customers depend upon each other. I also think that we should be grateful for the creativity and excellence characteristic of VSL products - - as well as the creativity, generosity and intelligence of forum participants who so frequently come up with solutions to each other's technical problems.

    Stephen 
  • M
    M
    Stevesong - the silence after your post, is quite funny, and telling of the situation isn't it! Look number one, we all support the VSL team in their wonderful effort of this tool that is something I think the whole world can be proud of... it's really an achievement. Naturally us mac users want to be equally respected on the political spectrum when it comes to development and perhaps some of us are hypersensitive to this issue as we do most of us resent the fact that windows dictates the political situation for mac users too often, because it is a legacy item as far as we are concerned. But that says nothing against VSL or the practical business decisions they need to make. We do want equal release quality and timing for Mac versions, and we hope that the continued growth in Mac market share especially in music, will continue so that as a platform it will become "less" costly per unit sold to develop for when having to port from windows... so we an all be glad of that. Miklos.
  • cmC
    VSL Team
    cmC

    i'd say it has become quiet because everything has already been said ... several times actually. not windows dictates a political situation, but C++ dictates development. same reason why there is no option to use the .NET framework or C#. less cost per unit would be nice, but not for any price - performance rules. give us the tools, we give you the applications.

    christian

    and remember: only a CRAY can run an endless loop in just three seconds.
  • S
    S

     Christian:

    I really did hope that everyone was taking a deep breath, but now I'm not sure what your most recent post means in practical terms. It is, after all Apple's decision regarding Carbon that seems to be the source of your frustaration - - a decision over which people who use Macs had no knowledge, influence or control. (I'm sure if they'd known this decision would cause enormous frustration to developers whose products are important to them, they would have voted against it overwhelmingly.)  Most of your customers, I'd guess, are musicians who, as much as they know about music, may have little understanding of the programming issues that have currently frustrated you. What they do know is that they thought highly enough of VSL to make significant investments in its products. Those of your customers who use Macs simply want to be assured that VSL  is committed to continued development of OSX versions of these products that have - - or will have - - functional parity with Windows versions. In other words, right now, they want to know if VSL is still committed to releasing a 64 bit version Vienna Ensemble for OS X. This question is, I believe, worthy of a direct answer.
  • H
    H

    I think our newsletter three weeks ago was quite clear.

    http://vsl.co.at/newsletter/74/newsletter.html

    Quoting the last feature of this newsletter:

    "Mac version: 32-bit for Mac PPC and Intel, 64-bit version coming soon"

    best

    Herb
  • J
    J
    last edited
    last edited

    @stevesong said:

     Christian:

     

    In other words, right now, they want to know if VSL is still committed to releasing a 64 bit version Vienna Ensemble for OS X. This question is, I believe, worthy of a direct answer.

     

     

     

    I think the original question was more focused on "when" it was going to be released (ie: time frame for an actual release date). The question of "if" it would be made seemed to be a question of doubt that challenged previous official announcements that the 64-bit version would come soon.

     

     

    Herb, Christian:

     

    If anything positive can be taken away from this thread, I hope that you and the entire VSL team realize what "monsters" you've created of your customers, including me! You've made a great product that promises to get better, so anticipation for additional greatness is to be expected.

     

    I can think of worse problems to have!!
  • S
    S

     Herb:

    Thanks very much for reiterating VSL's original statement regarding this issue.

    Sometimes a discussion can go off on a tangent that leads to confusion regarding basic issues. As I said earlier, most VSL customers likely have little knowledge of the technical issues involved or appreciation of the kinds of justified frustration a developer might feel when confronted by decisions by companies like Apple and/or Microsoft that throw a monkey wrench into their work. In other words, they probably have little first hand knowdelge of what terms like "Carbon," Cocoa," "C++," "Objective C," "C#," etc. actually mean - - other than what can be gleaned from advertising copy or superficial press reports. For Mac users, what they may have heard - - if they paid any attention at all to these things - - is that Cocoa is "cool," and Carbon "belongs to the past." As I also said previously, I think it safe to assume that, if Mac users had known that Apple's abandonment of a 64 bit version of Carbon (which was included in some earlier seeds of OS 10.5) would present a significant problem to developers whose products they depend on, they would have voted, overwhelmingly, against this decision. (Not necessarily because they had a serious grasp of the technical issues involved, but because they simply would have wanted development of products important to them to proceed without difficulty.) 

    In observing the intensity of feeling among Mac users, one has to take into account that they have often had the experience of being treated (not by VSL!!!) as second class citizens. There are still, for example, quite a number of websites that can be accessed only by Internet Explorer running on a PC, unfulfilled promises from developers that OS X versions of their software were in development and planned for release - - statements from some companies implying that Mac users have simply purchased the "wrong" computer and ought to "get with the program" as dictated by Microsoft. Given this experience, it is not entirely surprsing that some Mac users may have their suspicions easily aroused - - even when such suspicion is not justified by the facts.

    We are all grateful that VSL exists and that it carries on its tradition of excellence, creativity and disciplined craft in a world where commitment to anything other than "fast money" is increasingly rare. 

  • J
    J
    last edited
    last edited

    @stevesong said:

    even when such suspicion is not justified by the facts.
    Well, just regarding VE, I would say there were (and still are) some hard facts: VE Mac wasn't available the same day as the Windows version; when it came out it was a beta; and the 64-bit version is not available yet and there are no precise release date at this point ("coming soon" doesn't mean anything to me as a client and user, it is completely relative.)

    Then, you can basically read from one of the main developer that the Mac sucks as a development platform, that Apple sucks and that the Mac users are basically morons (I mean, come on, we're all buying computers which are freakingly expensive, have a shorter life expectancy than Windows PCs, and are harder to develop for! What is wrong with us!?).

    Sorry if I believe my reaction was at least half-justified.

    J.

    ps.Oh, and their forum doesn't work properly under Safari 😉
  • S
    S

     Jerome:

    Right now I am running significantly over 3GB of samples on two standalone instances of VE on my G5 (with two instances of Altiverb 6) and they are all playing without incident. So, even without a 64 bit version of VE, one can achieve a lot.  (The fact that this works so well has inspired me to order that last GB of RAM for my G5 - - currently equipped with "only" 7GB.)

    The fact that a 64 bit version of VE was not available on the same day as the Windows version seems mostly - - or, no doubt, entirely - - the result of the fact that Apple discontinued the 64 bit version of Carbon about 3 months before the release of OS 10.5 - - after announcing at the 2006 World Wide Developers Conference that they would continue its development and including it in early seeds of OS 10.5 given to developers.

    This is simply a fact with inevitable practical consequences. Developers who believed what Apple told them have been suddenly thrust into the position of having to rewrite their software in accordance with Apple's recent decision on this matter. You might notice that MOTU has not announced a 64 bit version of Digital Performer (Mac only), that Apple did not release a 64 bit version of Logic 8, that it will likely be years before Photoshop and MS/Office are available in OSX 64 bit versions. Even, as I pointed out earlier in this thread, ShirtPocket software (a Mac only developer) has not yet released a Leopard compatible version of SuperDuper - - a back up program relied upon by many Mac users. Many of the delays in releasing 64 bit versions of OS X versions of software are directly attributable to Apple's decision to abandon Carbon. I very strongly suggest that you read the article I suggested in an earlier posting - - found at:

    http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/6

    The writer of the article of the article, John Siracusa, is a Mac programmer who thinks that Apple's decsion on this issue will be proven correct in the long run, but is acutely aware that Apple's decision to abandon Carbon has had and will have a predictably negative practical impact (for a while, at least) on many developers. Read the article!!!

    If the folks at VSL say they are committed to release of an OSX compatible 64 bit version of Vienna Ensemble, I believe them - - and I don't think it's their fault that they could not release such a version "on the same day" as the Windows version. I think you might also forgive Christian's frustration with Apple's decision, since he is one of those taken by surprise and someone who works daily in the salt mines of programming. 

    I think we should all stay friends. 

    Stephen 

    P.S. I'm using FireFox