When you say Apple has not given the green light - that is not exactly correct. Cocoa is 64bit, Carbon, the more "legacy" line of api's is not - Since the VSL products are written according to christian in C++ it means that it works for them to use carbon to port their clever proprietary code to the mac platform. Unfortunately apple spontaneously and unexpectedly announced at the public release of leopard that carbon would NOT go 64bit as an api or platform when they said from the leopard announcement and for almost the whole time during the leopard beta that it WOULD be. So there is no blame on VSL on this point whatsoever as far as I can tell. They cannot help the situation. I am sure Apple engineers did it for one reason or another, I just hope that it was not because they were out of time, or not confident at the release, which, if that was the case they could have at least simply delayed it a few months. Clearly it was not working, or they just want to really send a message that Carbon was a legacy product since the start of OS X, and they have been encouraging developers to drop it for many years via subtle hints (I would say.)
On that point, I think VSL could have seen the road signs, Carbon was on the way out, yet, on the other hand Apple did formally say they would support 64bit Carbon... so what can you do. On apples side, supporting a legacy product in both 32bit, 64bit on PPC and Intel !! They must have just gotten fed up with it. It was designed to make it easy for people to port their apps from the old OS 9... and it's just been dragging on. These things happen.
Bottom line, it was easier and cheaper for VSL to port to Carbon all these years and write their code, presumably, mostly in windows. If they want to go 64bit now, they're going to have to run for Cocoa.
An argumentative person would say "well they should have done that years ago, or at least got started on it" but from VSL's perspective why would you when Carbon is going to go 64bit (now not going to happen). But I've always thought Cocoa was a superior api anyway and a better platform all around although I understand the chain of decisions.
Bottom line, they're going to have to rewrite some large amounts of code if apple doesn't change their mind, and it looks like they very definitely won't unless there is a lot of hoo haa from dvelopers, and since most developers are perfectly happy with a 32 bit carbon api, and don't care about speed or memory access of 64bit, that's it.
I read also that adobe is mostly still written using carbon, so they won't be happy since most of their apps would greatly benefit from 64bit code! What a shame for them, Perhaps between companies like adobe and VSL there will indeed be enough pressure to get apple to support a 64bit carbon api, and perhaps just on intel 64 bit machines?? Or PPC's as well - I hope so!
The all in one box set up is absolutely in my opinion the ideal - a super fast 8 core machine, 16 Gb's ram, ample fast hard drives for samples and freeze and audio tracks, and 64bit host and sample software so that you can stably load the amount of samples you need to get a project done in one box. Other people feel differently but I think this is always going to be the most straight forward powerful option if properly implemented, so I do hope, despite the up front cost (as I do think it will even out as an expense over time) that VSL will most to cocoa 64 bit apps.
It doesn't really matter if logic or cubase are 64 bit providing ensemble is run externally, then logic is just routing audio.
Miklos.
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There is an interesting article by the way I think on slash dot about Leopard being 85% market share of OS only sales in Japan for October, and windows flavours were down to around 4.5% something like that anyway.
Hmmm... actually that was only an increase in "market share" for Box sales (not OEM); so it's not really surprising since Leopard juste came out! That doesn't mean Windows sold less copies, just that there has been a lot of Leopard sold... which means that in the following months everything will go back to "normal" (ie. 80% windows, 10% Leopard). Don't hold your breath ;)
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Miklos-
I agree with most of what you said. I don't blame VSL for using Carbon. I blame VSL for being (overall) Windows-centered and (too often) blaming Apple when something's not working. Even though they did develop a Mac version, I hate reading stuff (basically) like, "we do care much more about Apple than we would like to have to.". To me this means, "we do it but it's really because we have to and I (secretly) wish we weren't."
If you don't want to develop for Mac, don't. If you want to and you're committed to it, then any amount of time is not a problem. I know when I was a webdesigner I would put the extra work to make sure my websites worked perfectly on Safari and Firefox; whatever the amount of time needed I simply wouldn't deliver a single website that didn't work on IE, Firefox *and* Safari (and at the time considering my layouts it was a challenge in itself, only to benefit a very little amount of people).
J.
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I agree I wish they would develop the mac version first then port to windows. I'm not saying they will do that or that this is the best option for VSL,but as a mac user, that would be my preference from a selfish point of view... but it seems to me that these days all things being equal Mac os is a far superior product to develop on if you work within the framework apple suggests and has worked hard to prepare for developers, namely, cocoa, not carbon which was always plugged in to the OS (properly mind you) as a legacy item. There was the darwin core, then the classic emulation was a "plug in" emulation, that is now no longer used - the carbon, and it was stated since the begginning this was transitional, although would be supported for a lot longer than classic , and finally cocoa, which is the preferred "standard". It seems to me this is case of just having to take the hard road to a good finish - and face up to the fact that cocoa is the modern standard development platform for the mac, and it's not as easy to port from windows, because it's a good deal further away from the windows world than carbon was... but I argue further, that that is a very good thing at least from an engineering perspective, even if it is, in the short term, easy to view it as impractical, and inconvenient, we could call it an inconvenient truth that a re-design is in order, in order to future proof the software on the mac platform in 64bit.?? Perhaps I'll get flamed for this post! All I know is that I find it frustrating that we mac users have to suffer for the inconsistencies and bad design of the windows platform, but then again, the mac would not have been quite the under dog and therefore quite the surviver and therefore quite the survivalist that it has become over the years without crummy windows and the fact that apple nearly got completely squashed before lord steve returned... still that lessens not my lack of mercy to windows and microsoft! All things being fair, we have to respect that what VSL has done alone given the state of affairs, logic being apple only, the operating system changes, hardware changes and so on over the years, given that VSL is, correctly as Christian very much "push your consumer hardware to the limits" cutting edge use of standard hardware... they've done a good job. One more point, I do think if they favourited the mac or at least equalled it as a platform for VSL compared to windows, they would find their VSL mac community would indeed grow as a direct result, because these days, except for hard core windows fans, you can't beat a mac for music production using VSL, excepting the fact that on windows you know you are a little better supported. And one other thing - Apple should be supporting VSL directly because the filter down effect of having technology like VSL superiorly supported on the Mac and how that translates in studios and perception of the platform, it only makes sense that they should befriend and fully support a clever company like VSL, If I were working at apple I would make sure VSL always had the latest test gear and was as well informed as their top VIP developers, it only makes sense and it can only help the cause! Miklos.
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Hi Will - re your post below - I do agree that this is clearly the perception that is given. So lets say for our part - you and me - we wish to offer VSL some feedback in that, it "appears" to be the case that it is as you have said below, but we don't accuse anybody of anything! Perhaps it is a PR thing, but yes, over the years, I have found too that what you have said is more or less on the money, and although I like the VSL team very much, I feel annoyed by that too, as I do like Macs a lot and I would never use a PC except by physical force!! It is annoying when you know that, if you want to see it a certain way, yes macs are difficult, but viewed another way, they are really better. It's like when people say Ferraris are noisy and hard to drive, and impractical, and I think, hmmm, well that's a fair opinion but on the other hand!!!! come on, they're a master piece of engineering, ok I'm not comparing macs to ferraris!! by any means! don't misunderstand, but what I"m saying is that, you know you can see negative things in there if you want to when looking at something like a ferrari, that is a masterpiece most of them. Re your webdesign issues, I know I am very much mac centered, and I find with web design it's very frustrating to make a site that works on firefox, opera, safari, but not IE..... and I wonder if they didn't do that on purpose by breaking convention. I truly hate microsoft as a company and all their products including office... I think it's the worst... but that's just me and I reserve the right to my own opinion and don't force it on anyone else. But what you say is right there is at the least an impression that VSL would rather just do windows and drop the mac but do it only out of sheer pressure, and as a mac user I agree with you that we would like to see and feel that we are as important as a platform. I agree it's great we can talk civily to each other. I wouldn't call this discussion heated, unless we are pissing off windows advocates... (sorry). Look the article in PC world magazine recently said that for running vista the fastest laptop in the world right now is an Apple Macbook Pro.... stick that in your pipe and smoke it 😊 So I think yeah, macs should be equally supported, even though they are a smaller market share even in this type of software, they are very important musically as a platform. A disclaimer: All respect to those who use windows, you can't be blamed for what you don't know. Miklos.
Miklos-
I agree with most of what you said. I don't blame VSL for using Carbon. I blame VSL for being (overall) Windows-centered and (too often) blaming Apple when something's not working. Even though they did develop a Mac version, I hate reading stuff (basically) like, "we do care much more about Apple than we would like to have to.". To me this means, "we do it but it's really because we have to and I (secretly) wish we weren't."
If you don't want to develop for Mac, don't. If you want to and you're committed to it, then any amount of time is not a problem. I know when I was a webdesigner I would put the extra work to make sure my websites worked perfectly on Safari and Firefox; whatever the amount of time needed I simply wouldn't deliver a single website that didn't work on IE, Firefox *and* Safari (and at the time considering my layouts it was a challenge in itself, only to benefit a very little amount of people).
J.
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stevesong, thx for the link - the article is well considered and i pickup and return to a point it mentions (which has btw. been the initial start of this thread):
what about companies with a vast existing codebase like adobe (or in the case of VSL a nifty but not so huge codebase but less ressources than adobe)?
and consider even _if_ everything would be transitioned to Cocoa - how to compile the windows versions from it, or maintain two seperate codebases or actually have two development teams ... forget about it or see the speed of development slowing down (i'm assuming now nobody would ask to abandon windows versions to improve development of mac versions).
so one has to accept we are facing a kind of oneway and have to live with it, though i'd wish we wouldn't have to. such a wish should be understandable.
christian
and remember: only a CRAY can run an endless loop in just three seconds. -
@cm said:
(i'm assuming now nobody would ask to abandon windows versions to improve development of mac versions).I wouldn't mind... 😊
In all seriousness, that's the whole problem, and VSL is definitely not alone in that respect.
Adobe, Sibelius, the Mozilla Foundation, Native Instruments, Propellerhead.... there are countless companies who develop both for Windows and OS X, and the end result is that the Mac versions tend to be not as good as the Windows version. These products simply don't "feel" native. The interface doesn't follow OS X guidelines (Firefox), things are not working the way they should (I'm thinking about mouse scrolling in Sibelius for example), the file browser is proprietary (Reason), etc, etc. I don't know any cross-platform app which really "feel" native on Mac - but it (of course) always does on Windows.
This is why, whenever I can, I favor a native app, developed primarily for OS X. I've found that by doing that I have far less problems and it's much more consistent in terms of interface and/or functionality. It makes my life easier, and I actually enjoy my computing experience more.
Yes, I wish that some companies would be doing the same as MOTU and focusing on only one platform. They would then be able to use the advantages of *that* platform. The problem is that most sample companies have now become software companies as well and as a result have to spend huge resources into software development; and considering their user base it makes complete business sense to develop cross-platform apps (and it makes complete business sense to spend as less time as possible to make that cross-platform app work in two environments.) But the fact that I understand that cross-platform is a necessity doesn't make the product more attractive to me from a Mac-user standpoint.
J.
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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
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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. ;)
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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. -
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?
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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. -
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
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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
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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.
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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. -
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.
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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.....
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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
