How would a subscription model benefit the consumer using Logic?

[Forgotten]

Well I took a look, and it doesn’t look great, but they’re usable UIs. Definitely not as bad as the Korg Legacy plugins that are long overdue for updates.

[Jace-BeOS]

Well I took a look, and it doesn’t look great, but they’re usable UIs. Definitely not as bad as the Korg Legacy plugins that are long overdue for updates.

Those really are in need of an update.

[Forgotten]

Well I took a look, and it doesn’t look great, but they’re usable UIs. Definitely not as bad as the Korg Legacy plugins that are long overdue for updates.

Those really are in need of an update.

Parts of the UI on some of them are just unreadable.

[jonljacobi]

Well I took a look, and it doesn’t look great, but they’re usable UIs. Definitely not as bad as the Korg Legacy plugins that are long overdue for updates.

Those really are in need of an update.

Yes.

[medienhexer]

I'd say they're probably scared to dig into some of the older code. Kidding. Mostly.

I'm pretty sure old OLD code wouldn't be running anymore if left untouched. There were the abandonment of Carbon and 32 bits a while back and not sure if the Pro Application framework is still running the show in the background anymore, as well as Quicktime being swept out by the janitor a while back. Not that that's a reason for despair.

Also, I'm pretty sure they're constantly rebuilding parts of the application with swift instead of objective-C and probably remnants of plain C from the cross platform days. They've just reworked the audio engine to support all those cores in the new Mac Pro. That probably wasn't easy.

I'm sorry if my prediction is always the same in these discussions, but I'm pretty sure they will keep giving us free updates until all FX and instruments have new GUIs and have been brought to more current feature sets.

But Logic is really complex and they're using the time for more than just a paint job. You can marvel at those long long lists of bug fixes and improvements but really, if you think about it, those probably come from continuously investing in code refactoring while laying the groundwork for bigger things.

The environment was great, but looking at Bitwig or Tracktion in regards to modular patching, there is potential for way more. I think that's somewhere in their backlog and moving up by the day. So my impression isn't that they're shying away from those cobwebs and dusty bones in the basement.

Perhaps they'll come up with a collaboration or a new standard to give us what was lost when they discontinued TDM. The DSP effects in Apogee interfaces for monitoring without the DAW's latency are a good step in the right direction, and since Universal Audio went ahead and developed their own DAW for that kind of DSP integration, maybe the Logic team will give Waves another stab at it with Soundgrid? Seems to have an actual market this time around. And it's open to other manufacturers this time.

Also, perhaps Apple can work with NI. Wouldn't it be great to have NKS preset browsing and controller interaction without the KOMPLETE KONTROL plug-in? And what about Softube? Console 1 integration in Studio One seems to be all the rage. I'd love this kind of stuff before the Siri songwriting assistant comes along.

As for a subscription model - I don't think it would be worth it for Apple. Some of the reasons have been mentioned.

Think of family sharing of AppStore accounts, Education licenses, etc. Seems like a lot of headache for a business model which will drive away some existing customers. And then those new customers who would never have paid 200 bucks for Logic but now subscribe because they can afford to and cause way more support incidents per Dollar than the one-time-payment customers because Logic is too complex? And then they cancel subscription right after downloading the full 80 GB Library. Any what about license fees to the creators of the loops in the Factory Library? Nah, bad deal for Apple. They're already the most affordable major DAW.

[Jace-BeOS]

Well I took a look, and it doesn’t look great, but they’re usable UIs. Definitely not as bad as the Korg Legacy plugins that are long overdue for updates.

Those really are in need of an update.

Parts of the UI on some of them are just unreadable.

Agreed. I’m glad to have the MS-20i MIDI controller for the MS-20 plugin. While I wish MIDI was higher resolution for smoother control changes, it makes working with this plugin much easier. It’s a shame it doesn’t help with anything else in the Korg collection! The MDE-X effects plugin is particularly egregious.

Logic isn’t THIS bad (and I do like most of the LOOK of the Korg plugins), but Logic definitely needs some redesign and unification. I’d like to see the GUI of the Environment (and other parts of Logic using the same UI elements) made more functional, instead of the 1987-type GUI elements...

And I do hate pixelated bitmaps, which is a matter of course when zooming GUIs beyond 100%, which is a matter of necessity for me to work with the plugins that are still not updated.

But, I find UltraBeat, ES2, and EXS24 to be terrible GUIs in general.

The inconsistency of Apple updating stuff in Logic reminds me of how Microsoft Windows can still suddenly show you UI elements from what seems like the Win16 era... and I don’t like the newest ones either. Logic UI elements aren’t exactly all consistent with the rest of the UI APIs in Mac OS. Some of it is screaming “custom Mac OS 7 elements” to me (such as the aforementioned Environment).

Why they felt it necessary to flatten out the main UI (and the previous look was far nicer), but not update all of the rest of the product, I have no idea. Alchemy looks like today’s flat fad, but it’s not drawn with vector graphics. The moment you enlarge it, there are the ugly bitmaps. The flat design serves zero utility and is all about style (ugly style, IMO).

[Forgotten]

I don’t think Logic needs to be made more like other DAWs - it’s got a lot of depth missing from other DAWs, and does what it does really well.

Maybe Apple is planning it, but I think I would prefer to see better integration with iPad and other hardware if they were to add new features.

I do agree that it needs UI updates, but it’s not so bad that it’s not usable.

[Passing Bye]

I don’t think Logic needs to be made more like other DAWs - it’s got a lot of depth missing from other DAWs, and does what it does really well.

Depends with what you compare it with and for which tasks, Logic is one of those DAW’s that doesn’t do anything best, but does enough of everything, so appeals to wider audience than let’s say Cubase or PT, but those two are deeper than Logic in what they are best for, MIDI and audio, on creative side those fun DAW’s also have an edge in that game, but are missing depths others offer... Logic is in between, doesn’t excel at anything, does little of everything.

[Forgotten]

Logic is one of those DAW’s that doesn’t do anything best, but does enough of everything

Yeah, that's pretty much what I meant

[jonljacobi]

Logic does most things very well. It’s a great DAW functionally and you can do anything with it. And it’s cheap. I had real issues reading the audio editing grid and found it to be overly complicated for what I wanted to do. When it started arming tracks on its own when I accidentally pressed record, I decided it was time for something engineered for quick and easy.

[Ploki]

Depends with what you compare it with and for which tasks, Logic is one of those DAW’s that doesn’t do anything best, but does enough of everything, so appeals to wider audience than let’s say Cubase or PT, but those two are deeper than Logic in what they are best for, MIDI and audio, on creative side those fun DAW’s also have an edge in that game, but are missing depths others offer... Logic is in between, doesn’t excel at anything, does little of everything.

that's not entirely wrong, but not entirely right either.

There's some things that are just insanely fun and deep:
- environment
- routing (compared to cubase)
- MIDI FX is great - being able to route any MIDI message to any plugin parameter in a channel strip is super fun and opens a lot of possibilities and is much faster than midi learning every VST
- multi-track time stretching (especially slicing algorithm)
- first to implement ARA2

[Passing Bye]

that's not entirely wrong, but not entirely right either.

There's some things that are just insanely fun and deep:
- environment
- routing (compared to cubase)
- MIDI FX is great - being able to route any MIDI message to any plugin parameter in a channel strip is super fun and opens a lot of possibilities and is much faster than midi learning every VST
- multi-track time stretching (especially slicing algorithm)
- first to implement ARA2

It's entirely right, there are other DAW's that are deeper than Logic on almost all of that points, it's really good all around DAW that doesn't excel at anything in particular, but does almost everything, that's his thing, it's not best DAW for audio recording and editing, it's not best DAW for MIDI recording and editing, it's not best DAW for jamming and experimenting, but it's the DAW that does all that good enough, I used Logic for ~8 years and I know that thing quite well.

[Ploki]

It's entirely true, there are other DAW's that are deeper than Logic on almost all of that points, it's really good all around DAW that doesn't excel at anything in particular, but does almost everything, that's his thing, it's not best DAW for audio recording and editing, it's not best DAW for MIDI recording and editing, it's not best DAW for jamming and experimenting, but it's the DAW that does all that good enough, I used Logic for ~8 years and I know that thing quite well.

I don't think that's true in the context of 2020 DAWs, they're so similar in abilities... except protools which sucks ass

[Passing Bye]

I don't think that's true in the context of 2020 DAWs, they're so similar in abilities... except protools which sucks ass

Similar, but still some excel at different things and that's how the things are, we like it or not.

[jonljacobi]

Now why did you pick on Pro Tools? It's not my favorite, but it hardly sucks. I don't know exactly how much commercial music is produced with it, but it's a pretty high percentage.