Do you use MacOS X? Options

[Francois Déchery]

With the new Jaguar (OS 10.2) , and the coming major music apps, how do you feel about it?

[Levon River]

With the new Jaguar (OS 10.2) , and the coming major music apps, how do you feel about it?

I feel just like I did when the major music apps were still coming under OS 10.1.x. They are still coming.

Until somebody shows me something Logic can do that DP can't do as well (and nobody has yet), I will not pay the premium for Logic. Beyond that, Logic under OS X still has a whole list of important things "coming," so it's not even a fully working package yet as far as I'm concerned. (I also vowed back in the '80s that I would never, ever, under any circumstances support any software that required a hardware dongle--which are like cabinet locks in a daycare--and I have no plans for ever breaking that vow, but that's a separate issue.) So I certainly am not moving full music production over to X in Logic at this point

Until there is a fully functioning DAW+MIDI package for OS X, I'll be in the using OS X "for everything else" category. Serious music production just is not an option for me without a complete, intact work flow that doesn't require bouncing in and out of operating systems. It's too schizophrenic.

It's always been bad enough having to bounce in and out of various programs, or going through what it's always been necessary to go through to get several disparate proprietary packages to work in sync, since we are this many decades into the use of computers, and *nobody* has ever actually produced a complete solution. That's exactly why we have to have "fixes" like OMS, FreeMIDI, ASIO, VST wrappers, ReWire--the host of "cures" that are sometimes almost as bad as the disease. We have the promise that Core Audio and Core MIDI and Audio Units are supposed to make life oh-so-much easier, but apparently even those are going to be no panacea, and so ASIO and ReWire are both still going to be required, both depending utterly on the whimsical cooperation of independent developers to implement them at all, and, if so, to implement them correctly and effectively. To the degree they don't, we'll continue to shell out money for needed apps that won't talk to each other, or, when they try, stutter.

I do believe (hope springs eternal) that somewhere not too far up the road there will be a choice of working, effective DAW+MIDI programs in OS X, and that things actually will be better than they were in OS 9. But right now it ain't. So I'm in the "for everything else" category.

P.S. I inadvertently hit the wrong button on the poll, and got myself a nice, shiny, useless "null vote" entered, apparently, that I cannot shed, change, orphan, abandon, or disclaim. If anybody knows how I can change it, please let me know. Otherwise, please mentally tote up one more "for everything else" vote.