Apple Acquires Camel Audio

[spaceman]

If this is indeed true, and the Camel guys purposefully sold out to a company that would screw all PC users out of an Alchemy 2, all PC users that love Alchemy should NEVER forgive them.

Get a life.
It's a piece of software.

[glokraw]

Well, I have been procrastinating that hackintosh build too long anyway...

It's like wearing two shoes. Mac users can afford PCs, and PC users can afford hackintosh.
Whining about not having some nice windows software is like
walking a gravel road with only one shoe.
We'll need an official hackintosh forum here, by Friday

My displeasure with Apple started in the late 80's when they consolidated their two music departments and downsized more than half of them. (Both were regular and faithful customers of mine.) I've watched Apple progressively treat their artist base worse and worse every year in favor of the mass marketing of label whores since then.


But beyond that, it's just that they build half the machine and expect twice the price for no other reason than they are Apple. Pretty arrogant. Never thought they were a bad machine (except for that POS MacBook Pro I bought a few years back). But a person would have to have some logical inconsistency to buy simply because of name when they are giving you the bare minimum for the highest prices.

Affording Apple is not the real problem. Accepting being ripped off by them is.
Hackintosh is most likely the only way for me as a matter of principle.
(And most of my old laptops run Linux now).

(I am an apple free kvrian, never owned/used one)
Apple are not a benevolence fund, they maximize profits for stockholders, and are wildly more successful than many business managers who would have only squandered the profits,
rather than banking them to insure surviving the storms of commerce.

Progress happens. Fewer workers are needed. Horse. Buggy. Buggy whip. Ford.
Even happens to artists. Apple didn't sell half-puters, but recognized
that brand loyalty, value added content, and a familiar OS, (sans virii and bsods,
and the troubles they bring), could sell bog-standard PC's with fruit stickers on them,
at a huge premium. The more valuable a customers time was, the more trivial
the price gap became. So a good portion of successful, powerful, influential people
buy apple, because it's a safe bet, and time is money.

and then began the march of iDevice...

[OutCider]

Apple could buy up every VST developer in the world tomorrow, if they wanted, then where would we be?

Using our new macs, using our old versions on our pcs, taking up fishing as a hobby or on the internet crying

So they've started giving Macs out for free suddenly? Great!

Some how I didn't think you'd go for option one judging by how much option four you're getting through.

I'm not bothered at all by your doomsday scenario.

[ChamomileShark]

well if it is true and if it is the end of the line for Alchemy on PC that's a shame.

But I can't help thinking that even if that happens with a ready made hole in the PC market which developers know PC users will pay to fill that someone will fill it with something similar. Or more likely several products will appear.

[glokraw]

If this is indeed true, and the Camel guys purposefully sold out to a company that would screw all PC users out of an Alchemy 2, all PC users that love Alchemy should NEVER forgive them.

If it is in contract writing, that Camel promised you xyz if you purchased Alchemy,
then you may have legal standing. If not, don't risk a heart attack from all the hating...

[spaceman]

I welcome thee to my humble Master Logic oh Appleified Camel Overlord May the additive blips and blops be with you and may the numerous modulation sources bless you forevermore and protect you from the whinging PC drama queens.

[spaceman]

If this is indeed true, and the Camel guys purposefully sold out to a company that would screw all PC users out of an Alchemy 2, all PC users that love Alchemy should NEVER forgive them.

If it is in contract writing, that Camel promised you xyz if you purchased Alchemy,
then you may have legal standing. If not, don't risk a heart attack from all the hating...

I did not quote that. That's quantum7's quote.

[Liero]

Good grief.

You still own the product that you paid for. You still don't own the product that you didn't pay for and which doesn't exist. You weren't screwed out of that, because it wasn't yours.

And turning this into a PC/Mac thing is so pointless. Being bought out by any DAW maker was inevitably going to exclude users of other software from using future Camel products. Would you rather they'd been bought out by Cakewalk so you couldn't use Alchemy 2 without Sonar? Or if you already use Sonar, just consider Image-Line, or Ableton, or whoever. Did you just think that if they had been bought out, it would just happen to be by the developers of your favourite DAW?

+1

The only post worth reading in this whole thread.

[spaceman]

Whatever is available to whinge about will do.
This is KVR after all, where whingers roam freely.

[Gates of H&I]

The only post worth reading in this whole thread.

Thanks. Have a trifle.

[glokraw]

I wonder how Apple users would feel if Logic was bought by a company that was going to turn Logic into a PC-only product. I guarantee that their would be death-threats and lynch-mobs. Seriously though, can anybody blame users for being upset? We'll get over it. It just makes me nervous though, for what other beloved software will be taken over to the "Dark side" by Apple. Laughter is the best medicine!

I can't understand why Apple made Logic Mac only - wouldn't they make more money by making a PC version too, since the PC market is much bigger? Or do they think they'll sell more Macs if they keep it Mac only?

Lawyers and patents kill profits. Apple keep things in house and in control, and simple.
Software sellers that support both mac and win, from the outside,
don't have the same set of pitfalls to guard against. There's still a ton of
undiscovered music to be created using the eol Camel products.

[fmr]

Good grief.

You still own the product that you paid for. You still don't own the product that you didn't pay for and which doesn't exist. You weren't screwed out of that, because it wasn't yours.

And turning this into a PC/Mac thing is so pointless. Being bought out by any DAW maker was inevitably going to exclude users of other software from using future Camel products. Would you rather they'd been bought out by Cakewalk so you couldn't use Alchemy 2 without Sonar? Or if you already use Sonar, just consider Image-Line, or Ableton, or whoever. Did you just think that if they had been bought out, it would just happen to be by the developers of your favourite DAW?

+1

The only post worth reading in this whole thread.

Not really, because none of the DAW makers that have also VSTi in their port-folio make them exclusively for their DAW. Cakewalk have z3ta+ 2, Dimension Pro and Rapture (and some new things in the near future) that even exist for Mac OS X. Steinberg has Retrologue, Padshop Pro, HALion and HALion Sonic, and MOTU has Mac Five 3. None of these are exclusive of platform, much less of DAW. Avid had some instruments once, but they give up, and these are now also bi-platform and open.

[Gates of H&I]

I didn't say VSTi. Several DAWs have synths that aren't available outside the DAW, because they're not VSTis. I was assuming any DAW developer would prefer to keep Alchemy to their own DAW if they'd bought it. I still think most of them would do that, but I guess there's an argument to be made for the possibility that they wouldn't.

I was under the impression that Sonar had both VSTis that can be used outside Sonar and VSTis that can't?

[maceasy]

Well, nice for the Camel guys, but a bit rubbish for all their customers. Apple do not have an encouraging record when they buy out small companies. The product could disappear, with traces of its technology built into a Logic synth, although I doubt the depth of programming will remain, or access to excellent libraries. Maybe they just want the programmers. But you can be sure they couldn't care less about its previous history, or its former customers. A shame, because I much prefer independent developers, as Camel was, to a giant corporate multinational for whom Alchemy will be a microscopically unimportant part of their empire. They killed redmatica, I don't hold out any great hopes for what they will do with camel products. But you can sure of one thing: they won't tell us anything, after all in Apple world all decisions are like state secrets, and customers don't figure in any considerations when it comes to communication. The sky might fall in if they or Camel actually communicated with their customers about a small piece of software.

[fmr]

I didn't say VSTi. Several DAWs have synths that aren't available outside the DAW, because they're not VSTis. I was assuming any DAW developer would prefer to keep Alchemy to their own DAW if they'd bought it. I still think most of them would do that, but I guess there's an argument to be made for the possibility that they wouldn't.

I was under the impression that Sonar had both VSTis that can be used outside Sonar and VSTis that can't?

All of the plug-ins that come with Sonar can be used outside of it, except for some third-party ones that have some kind of restriction (like Breverb). Regarding the instruments that come with it, all of them can be used in other DAWs as well.

In Cubase things are different. In the past, they had some instruments that were exclusive of the DAW (basically all third-party ones, like those created by VirSyn, or previously by Waldorf). But recently, after they started creating their own, they have made them also available to other DAWs. That's what happened with Retrologue and Padshop Pro. HALion was always available independently.

Logic instruments were always exclusive (it was like that already in Emagic) because they are not real plug-ins, rather built-in in the DAW code. That's why they are not available to other DAWs, even on Mac OS X.

So, regarding Alchemy, what I think will happen is that Apple will terminate its development, and in the future maybe create something for Logic and MainStage based on it, but that would not at all be like Alchemy 2.