"Logic Pro X will eventually be sandboxed"

[Tronam]

+1000.

Going from a situation where I can sell my own plugins, at whatever price point works, through my own website, to a situation where I have to sell them through a single point of sales, where I give up 30% of the profit, and have to get everything approved by a mega company before I sell it, would be HUGELY DEPRESSING. Dealing with the whims of Apple/Steinberg/Avid/Pace is depressing enough as is.

I don't put Microsoft in that category, as their software practices haven't negatively impacted my plugin development (yet). Plus, Microsoft didn't hire me in 2009, which forced me to find my own career path, hence Valhalla DSP.

Sean Costello

I see what you mean, Sean and it's great to get a dev's point of view on this. This is probably why the Mac App Store hasn't been nearly as successful as the one for iOS. It's mainly been functioning as a delivery vehicle for Apple software and maybe it should stay that way. I guess the worry is that some conventions like this can become so sticky and broadly accepted that traditional methods of distribution become antiquated for anyone but the most hardcore users. I hope it doesn't come down to that.

[Tronam]

People have grown so accustomed to online stores like this now that the transition may eventually be unavoidable.

Ummm, no. And hell no. And never. If this is the end game, the corporatization of music creation tools with a 30% Apple/M$ tax, then I'm out.

The wonderful thing about the plugin revolution is the free-spirited innovation by independent developers sold directly to customers on an open internet. Locking that creative spirit behind a walled corporate garden is a bleaker future than I care to imagine.

Universal Audio kind of blazed this trail before most everyone else didn't they? I think their centralized curated plug-in store for the UAD goes back as far as 2002-2003 or so. I couldn't imagine that ever meshing with Apple's. Hopefully they never make App Store adoption compulsory.

[SWAN808]

I see a lot of interesting points in this thread.

These problems have been around for years, if not decades. Ever since the computer came along, the audio industry has been wrecked by wave after wave of IT-driven technology cycles, bean-counter money-grabs, and fickle company "focus shifts". We are doing some interesting things at Harrison to try to break the cycle.

-Ben

interesting Ben!

If you introduce a creative MIDI and VSTi functionality in Mixbus I would consider a move!

[samsam]

He was back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The longhoped-for bullet was entering his brain.

He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

No Apple thread is truly complete without a reference to Orwell.

True. I'm still waiting for "The computer is the dongle", that one always tickles me.

[egbert]

He was back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The longhoped-for bullet was entering his brain.

He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

No Apple thread is truly complete without a reference to Orwell.

I guess the 1984 Super Bowl advert was Steve getting in on the ground floor. The point about this sort of situation is to realise that the interests of monopolists or would-be monopolists do not coincide with yours - the customer/musician/citizen. If you know your US history, then you know about the history of pools and trusts and how there is scarcely any limit on the lengths monopolists will go to if they can get away with it - eventually the US govt stepped in and broke up those sort of anti-competitive scams. If you feel the need to go on a public forum and rationalize how the big fish in this small pond taking anti-competitive action really isn't all that bad you raise some interesting questions about yourself.

Funny thing is - the music industry used to be all about gatekeepers. Everybody knows the Beatles couldn't get recorded because they couldn't get signed because - for example - some A&Rsehole at Decca was convinced guitar groups were just a passing fad. This reflected the cost and relative scarcity of recording equipment and the link between recording studios and distribution. Public exposure of music depended on making the playlists of corrupt radio networks.

[egbert]

Read this if you think having gatekeepers is a good idea. Another layer of things to go wrong.

[fedexnman]

I guess this will make Logic simular to Reason or AU like RE s . I think this is a bad move for Apple and Logic . If I was a Logic user Id look hard at an alternative VST host on Mac or Windows .

[Tronam]

I guess the 1984 Super Bowl advert was Steve getting in on the ground floor. The point about this sort of situation is to realise that the interests of monopolists or would-be monopolists do not coincide with yours - the customer/musician/citizen. If you know your US history, then you know about the history of pools and trusts and how there is scarcely any limit on the lengths monopolists will go to if they can get away with it - eventually the US govt stepped in and broke up those sort of anti-competitive scams. If you feel the need to go on a public forum and rationalize how the big fish in this small pond taking anti-competitive action really isn't all that bad you raise some interesting questions about yourself.

Funny thing is - the music industry used to be all about gatekeepers. Everybody knows the Beatles couldn't get recorded because they couldn't get signed because - for example - some A&Rsehole at Decca was convinced guitar groups were just a passing fad. This reflected the cost and relative scarcity of recording equipment and the link between recording studios and distribution. Public exposure of music depended on making the playlists of corrupt radio networks.

I agree with your ideas. I just don't agree with the general assumption that running a regulated ecosystem automatically equates to bad, evil monopoly. No one is forcing you to buy a Mac or Logic or even adopt AU at all and despite all the online histrionics about Apple by conspiracy theorists, they still represent ~10% of the computer market and even their global smartphone marketshare barely breaks 20%. In the audio world there's more choice, variety and competition than ever before, especially in the DAW market. I buy Apple products because of their consistent hardware build quality and robust operating systems that don't get in my way. If that ever changes, then I'll move on to something else as I've always done.

[Tronam]

I guess this will make Logic simular to Reason or AU like RE s . I think this is a bad move for Apple and Logic . If I was a Logic user Id look hard at an alternative VST host on Mac or Windows .

Bear in mind that the idea of only being able to buy your audio plugins through the App Store is a what-if premise that sprang out of the original topic of sandboxing Logic Pro. Considering the Mac App Store is still merely optional at this point and barely successful beyond existing as a distribution platform for Apple's own software, I still find the notion highly unlikely at any point in the near future. Frankly, I don't think Apple cares enough about this tiny sliver of their market to risk the public backlash that would ensue, especially from companies like UAD or numerous other professional audio companies that depend on external hardware, dongle based copy protections and their own proprietary online plug-in stores. It just isn't worth it. Sandboxing Logic doesn't automatically equate to AU walled garden of App Store doom.

[egbert]

@tronam
What concerns me is not Apple acting alone - it is the potential for a more wide-spread reversal of the sort of spirit which brought us MIDI and open plugin systems in the first place.

If you are long enough in the tooth, you will probably know that Roland, SCI and Yamaha etc had their own digital sequencing and control systems - all proprietary protocols and connectors etc. You could hook up a bunch of Roland sequencers/synths/drum machines etc and - whoa - you had a whole "band" playing!

By some miracle, all those companies abandoned their "not invented here" way of looking at things and, after sitting cross-legged in a circle singing Kumbaya for the requisite period, embraced a completely open published spec - MIDI - and here we are 30 years later. VST and ASIO have also allowed a great diversity of hardware and software to work together on affordable consumer computers opening the possibilities we KVR denizens have been enjoying for longer than I would care to remember.

All of this - which is arguably an outgrowth of the sort of unfashionable (on Wall Street) "hippie" values that begat the open internet - could go away. One by one, each company could decide to maximise its own profit and start sending 7 year olds back into the dark satanic mills - oops - I mean axe open standards and block unencumbered market access for small players - the sort of people who have sprung up all over the world and given us Voxengo, RGC Audio, FxP and U-He etc. If you make it too much of a hassle, or too bureaucratic or too much like working several days a week to enrich a big company, the next guy like Urs is going to just do something else with his skills.

[Jace-BeOS]

Reading this thread doesn't make me hate on Apple. It makes me hate on the entire computer industry for being such a pile of BS, excuses, lies and workarounds. i've been around with software on various OSs, and my experience ends up the same every time: everything is junk. Some is worse junk, and everything works in utter isolation from everything else (which is not how reality works, but that's what developers think).

Programming is hard. Once a program grows past a certain size, there's just too many interactions going on and it becomes exponentially harder to keep track of them. This is the cause of what you're talking about and nobody has found the solution yet (if there even is one).

i get that this is the commonly offered explanation. What i don't get is if it's an excuse for things to stay the way they are, because no one wants to change things fundamentally, or if it's actual fact. Frankly, i don't hear much in the way of research done to find a better way. It just seems to me that there are solutions and no one wants to take them. The two primary holdups i see are "we must sell upgrades without investing much in the actual development" and "this is how programming is done, and no one will convince us otherwise." i used to be in the alternative OS scene, and i watched the project shift from being "let's do this right" to "let's do what linux does" and a part of me died inside.

[Jace-BeOS]

Adobe went the cloud based model. I've made piles of money with PS... For the longest time it was my favorite software. But I will not be upgrading again and if the point comes where I cannot keep using Adobe software without joining the cloud model, I will use something else.

Same here; agreed. i will never rent software. i don't have an interest in cloud stuff, either. My internet connection isn't fast enough or reliable enough to ever treat it as a requirement and i don't trust anyone to manage my data (security or data-safety). We're entering a point in the computer industry market where the companies that dominate are trying to find new ways of growing their dominance. Software and service rental is the only thing they can do to increase that revenue yet again, because upgrades aren't infinitely sustainable (though they've bloated the hell out of formerly good software trying to make it so). i'll not be part of this trend. Not only do i find it offensive as a consumer, i cannot afford it.

[Jace-BeOS]

I see a lot of interesting points in this thread.

These problems have been around for years, if not decades. Ever since the computer came along, the audio industry has been wrecked by wave after wave of IT-driven technology cycles, bean-counter money-grabs, and fickle company "focus shifts". We are doing some interesting things at Harrison to try to break the cycle.

The audio industry developed fastest in the early days, when you could open the lid on your LA-2A and poke around inside. Theoretically, open source software would allow users to "open the lid" and start really innovating again. But in practice, open source can bog you down in linux details and academia. Our solution is to make the open-source Ardour workstation "fun" with Mixbus, and also make it easily buildable - by users - on all 3 OS's. We aren't done yet but it gets easier to build with each release.

In theory, plugin support could be drastically better if the host were open-source, and plugin developers could see what the host is doing. In practice this isn't the case; the majority of plugin developers don't have resources to study host code, even if it's available (most of them have day jobs). Developing a plugin for a target system is a crapshoot because of vague specs, hosts that make their own plugins, and tremendous variations across systems. Our solution: we use the LV2 plugin format which is fully open on both the host and plugin side. So we can work both sides of the fence, being totally open to input from host _or_ plugin devs.

In theory, serious users should be switching to Linux in droves because Windows and OSX are increasingly catering to casual users. In practice, though, plugin devs and I/O maufacturers can't adopt linux because the ecosystem doesn't exist there, yet. Our solution: Mixbus runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. All our plugins run on all 3 platforms, too. So you can get used to Mixbus on Windows and then move to Linux ( or SteamOS ... ) when the time is right.

Anyway, I just want you guys to know that "someone" is also recognizing these problems and working towards a solution. I think things will be better for the audio industry in a few years. It seems like "desktop" computing is no longer the focus of so much radical innovation, so we can start focusing on our craft rather than keeping up with platforms. Desktop computers might get a little more expensive again, but I think it will be better for people who are using them to get work done. A lot of casual users have moved to tablets and phones, so hopefully the consumer companies will focus their disruptive efforts on those fronts for a while.

Let me know what you think!

-Ben

Sorry, Ben, but Linux doesn't accommodate me. i've been a tech guy all my life, and i still can't stand Linux. It never felt comfortable or sensible. It felt inconsistent, clumsy, ugly, unfriendly, demanding... Despite great strides in improving the user experience, it still doesn't serve me at all even today. It's not just the available software. It's the whole system. It demands more specialist knowledge than Mac OS X (or even Windows, though i hate Windows pretty much for the same reason, yet it is more usable).

Serious users want to get work done with their tools, not program on and recompile their tools. Those that like programming and compiling are different kinds of users, and more of a minority. Catering toward casual use isn't always bad. Freeing the user of the demands of specialist knowledge allows them to get more work done. Catering to the ease of use, ease of access, lowering the barriers to entry, etc., are all good.

The development ideals and attitudes in the Linux community have pretty much been anti-user; hostile to those who don't WANT to obsess over technical details and specialized knowledge. It already requires specialized knowledge to a degree to be a musician or an artist, and more so on a computer. Adding the demand of programming and OS management on top of that is beyond undesirable. The Linux community must either stop trying to appeal to general users (because it does not honestly want them), or actually learn to cater to them. There's nothing wrong with not being a geek. There's nothing wrong with not wanting to obsess over those details. When the Linux community realizes this, things may change.

[Jace-BeOS]

Okay, enough developers have ranted about VST3 that i want to hear what's wrong with it. Do tell.

[pc999]

Sorry, Ben, but Linux doesn't accommodate me. i've been a tech guy all my life, and i still can't stand Linux. It never felt comfortable or sensible. It felt inconsistent, clumsy, ugly, unfriendly, demanding... Despite great strides in improving the user experience, it still doesn't serve me at all even today. It's not just the available software. It's the whole system. It demands more specialist knowledge than Mac OS X (or even Windows, though i hate Windows pretty much for the same reason, yet it is more usable).

Serious users want to get work done with their tools, not program on and recompile their tools. Those that like programming and compiling are different kinds of users, and more of a minority. Catering toward casual use isn't always bad. Freeing the user of the demands of specialist knowledge allows them to get more work done. Catering to the ease of use, ease of access, lowering the barriers to entry, etc., are all good.

The development ideals and attitudes in the Linux community have pretty much been anti-user; hostile to those who don't WANT to obsess over technical details and specialized knowledge. It already requires specialized knowledge to a degree to be a musician or an artist, and more so on a computer. Adding the demand of programming and OS management on top of that is beyond undesirable. The Linux community must either stop trying to appeal to general users (because it does not honestly want them), or actually learn to cater to them. There's nothing wrong with not being a geek. There's nothing wrong with not wanting to obsess over those details. When the Linux community realizes this, things may change.

That is not the linux of todays (specially if it is a something like Ubuntu or Linux Mint).

I actually find it much faster and quite easier to use than Windows in many, many cases, sadly not audio (well things like Renoise or Tracktion4 are just as good, but you get much better performance out of the box).


I really advice to pick VirtualBox (a virtual machine host) and Ubuntu or ubuntu studio to see how things changed. (that should take less than 20m)

I dont meant to make you a ubuntu user, just to see how much different it is from what you think it is.