About that cakewalk email that should be in your inboxes right now

[Alex Westner]

That's the thing, "SONAR" might be thought of as a "big name"

I am not sure I do that anymore.

I am starting to think about them a bit like Wusik.

Both offer good products, but recent wheeling and dealing schemes for upgrades seems a bit desperate.

I mean, how much have Cakewalk earned on abandoning the usual cycle of updating the DAW every other year or so for Windows, and leave it at that.
Instead of meddling sub fees, then with free for live updates, and teasing an OSX version that is not gonna happen.

All publicity is maybe good publicity, but I thought more about them as a stable long time DAW maker before, rather than now.

I think your criticisms are valid, and we hope to earn back some trust from the community going forward.

[Numanoid]

I was obviously too harsh in that message.

Don't want to dishearten the dev either.

There are many Cakewalk products I use and enjoy.

[VariKusBrainZ]

Can it be compared to Apple buying Camel Audio, discontinuing Alchemy on Windows, while later giving away Alchemy 2 free with GarageBand.

WTF you talkin 'bout Numi ?

[chk071]

It seems that Sonar is tightly connected to Win API. It means that to give proper Mac support they should re-write product from scratch, and this is an unprofitable task for them on their level of business. They should have been started their product as cross platform, as others (Cubase, Ableton Live, Reaper) did. Now Sonar doomed to be Windows-only product.

That was my thought too. "Probably they'd need a complete re-write of the program, to make it crossplatform-compatible". Well, it's tough. The way i see it, they don't have too many ressources really. Took them a couple of years to finally fix Z3TA 2, to get rid of some long standing, severe bugs. I think what Cakewalk would sorely need is a investor, to pump some money and manpower into the company. Can't help it. I'd be a bit scared as an investor though. Not exactly what i'd call a "cash cow".

It is true we are very much locked-in to Windows, but we also don't feel we are "doomed," by any stretch. There are plenty of Windows users in the world for us to address, and we look forward to reaching them!

Yes, we are a small team, small company, but we have some new ideas to innovate and help us grow. I'm totally optimistic and see a lot of potential for us.

That's good to hear. Didn't want to sound too negative really. In fact, i have no clue how things at Cakewalk really ar,e of course. It just struck me a bit odd that Z3TA 2, which really could be kind of a flag ship product as a synth plugin, had to live so long with dealbreaking bugs.

[SJ_Digriz]

I'm actually glad they are sticking with Windows. Cubase going to a "common" approach for OSX and Windows has totally f**ked up the GUI on Windows. What they really mean is they will spend a little time trying to figure out how to get the GUI to somewhat work on Windows. As a OS-X hater, it annoys the shit out of me to have a Windows app that follows the interface rules of a MAC. I can't even f'n alt+tab through the god damned project anymore. And I have this f'n stupid banner bar across the top of my screen that serves no purpose other than take up space. Those and a dozen other craptastic Macisms.

[machinesworking]

I love how everyone is accepting the explanation that it's too hard etc.
MOTU did it with Digital Performer. You announce a product, you produce it. I use Ableton Live but I'm not making any excuses for them abandoning network collaboration features, and anyone using Bitwig should do the same if they don't come through with network features and a modular system.

You announce you're developing a product, you're creating a buzz, enjoying some sales increases and increased optimism about your company, you should expect that when you fail to deliver you get negative press. There's a reason it's now illegal for publicly traded companies to announce future improvements or products, it creates vaporware that artificially increases stock, like we saw with Cakewalk here.

I own Rapture and Z3ta+ 2, both have had huge issues on OSX, I'm not at all surprised that Cakewalk are abandoning porting, they do messy coding to begin with. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but beyond an installer bug in Z3ta+ that went unresolved for 5 months, Rapture leaves literally 11GB of installer files buried in the Library folder for no good reason, essentially doubling the plug ins drive space. No real explanation, none..

[aMUSEd]

Rapture leaves literally 11GB of installer files buried in the Library folder for no good reason, essentially doubling the plug ins drive space. No real explanation, none..

Does it? Where? Can't see any Cakewalk folder in Library...

[Robert Randolph]

I love how everyone is accepting the explanation that it's too hard etc.
MOTU did it with Digital Performer. You announce a product, you produce it.

There is a difference here.

#1 - OS X -> Windows is much easier if you were following standard Apple design conventions. Either direction is difficult if you're working 100% native, but native cocoa to native win is much less messy than vice-versa due to the common practices and general culture of the platforms.

#2 - Motu had to rewrite DP for carbon->cocoa not shortly before, which allowed them to invest a lot of work in to a software design that was more portable.

What cakewalk has done is not acceptable, but I do not think it's fair to compare it to Motu's efforts.

(Especially since DP9 in windows is a mess still.)

[chk071]

I'm actually glad they are sticking with Windows. Cubase going to a "common" approach for OSX and Windows has totally f**ked up the GUI on Windows. What they really mean is they will spend a little time trying to figure out how to get the GUI to somewhat work on Windows. As a OS-X hater, it annoys the shit out of me to have a Windows app that follows the interface rules of a MAC. I can't even f'n alt+tab through the god damned project anymore. And I have this f'n stupid banner bar across the top of my screen that serves no purpose other than take up space. Those and a dozen other craptastic Macisms.

I have something weird with Cubase since 2 versions, and that's that i see the desktop, when i open it, while usually, there was a grey background. And when i minimize the Cubase window, i still see top bar. Wonder if that's normal, a bug here, or the thing you mentioned. The interesting thing is, the 32-bit version of Cubase 8.5, which i also have installed, doesn't have this, works "normal", as it always was (and i'm sure that the 64-bit version of Cubase 8.5 had the exact same thing i described, when i had it installed...).

[machinesworking]

I love how everyone is accepting the explanation that it's too hard etc.
MOTU did it with Digital Performer. You announce a product, you produce it.

There is a difference here.

#1 - OS X -> Windows is much easier if you were following standard Apple design conventions. Either direction is difficult if you're working 100% native, but native cocoa to native win is much less messy than vice-versa due to the common practices and general culture of the platforms.

#2 - Motu had to rewrite DP for carbon->cocoa not shortly before, which allowed them to invest a lot of work in to a software design that was more portable.

What cakewalk has done is not acceptable, but I do not think it's fair to compare it to Motu's efforts.

(Especially since DP9 in windows is a mess still.)

I'm not sure how MOTU investing more money into keeping DP up to date is somehow pertinent to the argument? They did it, a Mac OS DAW from 1984 was ported to Windows, they announced it, they brought it to fruition. Cakewalk have the same opportunities to learn to code for OSX as MOTU have had for Windows, they simply didn't invest in it. I get it that MOTU were further along, but the odd stumbling blocks I'm sure were there, they just got through them. They also didn't announce it until they had a decent working Alpha.

There are people on Windows using DP who are happy as can be with the port, it seems to be not surprisingly, hardware connected in terms of issues.

[machinesworking]

Rapture leaves literally 11GB of installer files buried in the Library folder for no good reason, essentially doubling the plug ins drive space. No real explanation, none..

Does it? Where? Can't see any Cakewalk folder in Library...

User Library, I removed it,(support said it was OK to), but it's in User/Library/Application Support/Cakewalk, installers for all the flac files...

[cryophonik]

I love how everyone is accepting the explanation that it's too hard etc.
MOTU did it with Digital Performer. You announce a product, you produce it.

Cakewalk explicitly announced an alpha version of Sonar for Mac and they produced it (albeit a few months late, no surprise). They've made their decision and provided a clear explanation of their reasons for not pursuing it any further in the email and on their forum. They really don't owe us anything else AFAIC.

[jinotsuh]

Yeah but I don't think anyone was expecting the mac alpha to be the Sonar Home Studio version on top of Codeweavers though, seems like an easy attempt to save face and appear to have done what they said they were going to do to me,

Cakewalk Staff 1 -

"Hey, we can't pull this off, the userbase aren't going to be happy, so lets use the really stripped down version, Home Studio, which has far less features and ablitlies and therefore bypass all that other hard stuff, and to make it easier, lets not worry about it being native, but hook up with Codeweavers and get it to run on that, that way we can save a little face, and appear to have given them what we promised without the expense and hard work, after all they believe anything we tell them"

Cakewalk Staff 2 -

"Yeah that might work, good idea, they really do believe anything we say. lets do it"

Cakewalk Head Honcho -

"Done deal"

Concerned Cakewalk Staff 1 -

"But what about those people who brought into the Lifetime Updates soley because of the Mac Alpha?"

Cakewalk Head Honcho -

"Well they shouldn't have taken it as gospel, we never said it was a certainty . . . we got their money now . . . Suckers"

[flugel45]

Y

Concerned Cakewalk Staff 1 -

"But what about those people who brought into the Lifetime Updates soley because of the Mac Alpha?"

Solely for the Mac Alpha? And who might they be? Sure, I imagine plenty of Sonar users were on the fence about the lifetime updates who then got nudged over with the Mac enticement...

But users with zero invested or interest in Sonar -- IOW, solely in this for the Mac Alpha -- who paid hundreds of dollars just to see a Mac Alpha of Sonar? Who? Why?? Out of a general curiosity?

[deastman]

I've been using Sonar since v4 as my main DAW. I bought into the lifetime updates, so I'm going to get whatever comes out. Hopefully the steady updates continue and Cakewalk has a long future ahead of them.

That being said, I've also started using Ableton Live for the past few years, then added Bitwig Studio. Now I've bought my first Mac in many years so I could better collaborate with friends who use Logic. I've also dabbled with Reaper enough to know that I could be productive in that application if I had to. So basically, I have plenty of other options, and I'm not going to have a huge amount of heartburn over whatever happens with Sonar, either way. The Mac announcement is disheartening, no doubt about it. I'm certainly rooting for them though.