The Logic Off Topic list

--- In logic-ot@yahoogroups.com, mercutio wrote:
> On Friday, July 18, 2003, at 08:01 AM, Eric Baird wrote:
> 
> > Who here thinks that logic is now a better suite for 
> > losing Windows support? And for not supporting OSX VST? 
> > And for losing the option of supporting UNIX?
> 
> first one - I think it has to be better. Many things that 
> are kludgy about Logic probably had to do with keeping a 
> generalized design that could quickly compile to both 
> platforms. 

In theory, I agree ... I don't know what logic was actually written 
with but it /seemed/ to have the sort of design things that you'd end 
up with if you used MS VC++ (colourscheme, badly integrated menus and 
help system). MS VC++ was cross-platform but had some really horrid 
design weaknesses.

Thing is ... after we've paid the price, in terms of losing the cross-
platform stuff, are emagic actually then going to go ahead and 
redesign this great user-interface that we are waiting for, or are 
they going to decide that the payoff isn't worth it at this late 
stage, and keep the program pretty much as it already is?

I mean, with their proprietary softsynth format, one of the 
advantages was that it allowed all sorts of really advanced stuff 
that would only have been possible with emagic having control over 
the interface ... since logic seeemd to be designed to be kinda 
extensible, we might have had the ability to edit additional noteon 
parameters, which could have been assiged to parameters in their 
softsynths, or used as part of a modulation matrix (so that you could 
set a filter setting or playing style for an individual note of a 
chord) ... but it never happened. 
In fact, we never even got support for basic stuff like program 
changes or mono mode!

So the new potential is nice, as long as its really going to be 
realised. But I suspect that some of logic's kludges are less to do 
with cross-platform support than with other things.
Logic 5.5.1's control surface MIDI subsystem stuff really doesn't 
seem to be stable under WinXP, but under OSX, with a rewritten MIDI-
optimised operating system partly redesigned by emagic, and a new 
architecture, and the new focus on a single operating system ... it 
still doesn't seem to be stable! :-)

Of coursed, perhaps emagic are still struggling with cross-platform 
code in order to be able to support both OSX and OS9, and perhaps we 
won't see the real advantages until they go OSX-only. Which they 
don't seem to have any public timetable for. Hmm.

  

> second one - not supporting VST is as much a political decision as 
> anything. 

Quite

[re: UNIX?]
Sorry, my bad wording, I probably should have have said 
the "potential" of UNIX support rather than the "option".
AFAIK, emagic never said that they would be supporting UNIX, but it 
seemed to be a distinct possibility at one point. All the musicy 
people I know are sick of paying money to microsoft and annoyed at 
having to buy complete new computers from Apple to get an alternative 
OS, so the subject of UNIX keeps popping up in conversation ... they 
just just want a simple cheap, cut-down operating system that can run 
their precious DAW software on a dedicated logic-box. They don't want 
to spend a lot of money on the OS, and they don't want to waste 
processing power or harddrive space on maintaining animated icons or 
redrawing pretty curved-edge window borders, or taiwanese language 
support, or 3D graphics or gamer support ... they aren't computer 
enthusiasts, they just want the OS to boot up their computer, launch 
logic, and then keep the hell out of the way. 
If they want to do email and internet stuff, they'll do all that on a 
separate general purpose machine and keep their DAW box lean and mean 
tuned up and dedicated to running their DAW.

I liked the idea of a logic-optimised version of UNIX with all the 
unneccessary stuff stripped out or pre-disabled, bundled 
with "logix", and I think a lot of musicians would have been very 
happy to have a music PC that simply boots up into a pre-tweeked 
dedicated emagic environment. 
But now it'll never happen <sigh>.