The future of CoreAudio and AudioUnits - a real concern

[mikehalloran]

...And virtually all speculation is gonna be wrong, so why get out the dowsing rods?

The only constant, it seems.

[HCMarkus]

When I'm making music, I never think for one second about the software unless it fouls up. I certainly never think about what Apple might be doing down the road. I'm just thinking about melody and rhythm and harmony. So where's the frustration? Does this affect anybody in any way, today, right now, in the moment? How can you work as an artist if you're worrying about gearhead minutiae? And virtually all speculation is gonna be wrong, so why get out the dowsing rods? I seriously don't even understand a discussion like this this.

I use a Magic Trackpad. Every time I try to move a fader with the scrolling gesture, I'm reminded of the roots of this conversation. It just doesn't work right. There are several other apps that also do not scroll right with the Trackpad. This is after a couple years of use that always felt like the best I/O device ever, in all apps.

So... ydsfaes. It affects me every time I work. The deeper concerns, such as Apple's new self-conscious role as a luxury vendor, not at all. But having seen the keynote, I can't help but think about it from time to time and wonder what this means for the rest of us.

Shooshie

***Broken Record Alert***

One Word: Mountain Lion.

Oh. That's two words. But you get the idea. Still available for purchase at the App Store.

[James Steele]

But having seen the keynote, I can't help but think about it from time to time and wonder what this means for the rest of us.

Exactly what I was trying to say.

[stubbsonic]

This is subjective, but I can recall hearing about (and believing in) these kind of "safe zones" where 10.4.11 was THE stable OS, while 10.5 kind of worked out it's problems. Then 10.6.8 became THE stable OS as 10.7 arrived with all its lil issues. For 10.8, 10.9, 10.10 I don't recall any of them getting this degree of "blessing" from the power-users.

In the post 10.6 OS days, there would be these glaring day-to-day bugs in the OS. Little and not-so-little stuff that was weird or just broken. I had gotten on with Apple Tech support and it would often be a known/repeatable bug and there'd be no guarantee that they'd ever fix it in the current OS. With the dawn of the free OS, they wouldn't be obligated to fix anything because they could just push the new OS and stop supporting the older ones.

With the nature of computers and software development, and market share, we end up being over a barrel. We invest in a platform, software, and learning curves-- presumably so we can just get to work and not think about it all too much. We also trust and hope that with updates, ample resources are directed at making things REALLY REALLY good. I imagine it is very complicated work.

But with there being some slop in new OS releases, it promotes the practice of "locking in"-- i.e., pick your machine, your OS, your software, get it all working smoothly, then freeze it all right there in that state-- no more updates. Boring, but you can get your work done.

[Michael Canavan]

Again, in direct reply to the stated concern here, Apple has updated Core Audio, Audio Units, and the way iOS devices interact with audio. This year in fact.

So if the concern is that Apple is not working on OS based Pro Audio software development, that hasn't happened yet.

[stubbsonic]

My comments weren't specifically about AU & CoreAudio, but more to the general slop I've been experiencing and (perhaps subjectively) noticing in comments with more recent OS releases.

The reliability, usability and stability of the OS does not look like a steadily improving line, but rather goes up & down.

[David Polich]

I have absolutely zero issues with CoreAudio. I'm still on ML (10.8.5) and my system is solid
and reliable. Updates to AU plugs and VI's work fine for me, even the most recent ones.

I don't think the problem with VE Pro was/is related to CoreAudio. I think, like EastWest's
crappy Play engine, it's VE Pro that sucks and sucks big time. I bought it, paid the money, tried using it for about a month, trashed it from my system. Chalked it up to a poor investment.

Whatever Apple does, they'll do regardless of our input. We are a small community of users.
I honestly don't think Apple has ever cared what their customer base wants, they go with what their management and software engineers want.

[billf]

It seems Apple's messaging has completely lost touch with middle America.

It strikes me the messaging used to be aimed largely at the creative demographic, and it has shifted more towards the consumer demographic. Therein lies the concern for me.

As for AU and CoreAudio, I haven't had an issue with it. IDK, perhaps things like application sandboxing and the app store are larger concerns to watch for if it leads to Macs being locked down in a similar manner to iPhones and iPads.

[James Steele]

Right... I'm saying it's at the "water bottle toting, Chardonnay sipping, upper middle class, nanny employing, Range Rover driving, I-have-a-personal-trainer, beautiful people, Silicon Valley" consumer segment. I think that's myopic as they assume the rest of the country/world and computer buying public relates to this lifestyle, because that's probably the lifestyle of many of the folks who work at Apple. Maybe Apple/Macintosh was NEVER the working man's computer and that space has been reserved for the PC all along. But Apple has never felt so Gucci to me. Just saying. Maybe Apple's shareholders and board realize that "luxury brands" are often more impervious to the ups and downs of the general economy and that's how they're positioning themselves. I guess my reaction is very visceral and I find it hard to articulate.

[billf]

I understand, and it's what makes money for them. That part doesn't bother me so much, I can take it or leave it. As long as I have a phone that works, great. Brand is less important than reliability. Give me my Toyota 4runner over a BMW and I'm happy.

What does bother me is the creative pro area that Apple once catered to isn't catered to by the alternatives, at least not yet. And while Apple still has one foot in that space, their history of dropping things on a whim is disconcerting. Microsoft is probably too big to care and is doing their best to emulate Apple on the consumer side, so that certainly does not appear to be a safe haven. Linux, despite having been around quite a long time now, is still mainly for hard core techies, so I'm not convinced that will ever be a viable alternative. That leaves folks like us in a place that could end up being precarious. Time will tell.

[Shooshie]

The sad thing, if this change DOES affect us adversely, is that only Apple ever figured out the key to creative work on a computer. Free up the mind so that you can just do what you need to do, but provide the tools to go deep. Lately, they've only followed the first clause of that sentence. They've forgotten the "deep" part. Maybe they're correctly assuming that people don't want deep anymore. But who is going to make the slick movies, the finely crafted graphics? The exquisitely layered music? Those things don't happen by accident, they happen because some guy or girl sits long hours in front of a screen paying CLOSE attention to myriad details that escape the causal observer, and yet which make all the difference in a brilliant creative work at the end of the day.

The myth of the photographer with the trained eye who perfectly captures the exact shot with a single click of his perfectly configured camera is... well... the stuff of Ayn Rand believers. Those shots may happen now and then by accident, but the only way to get them into regular production is by shooting a million of them, then carefully adjusting exposure, contrast, cropping, and... well... all those things we're talking about. Likewise, every discipline has its myths and realities. Apple had figured out how to provide the tools that enable us to bring the reality as close to the myth as possible, but without sacrificing the reality of hard work and determination with deep tools.

One by one, their primary software in each of those disciplines has been letting go of some of the important tools. I majored in photography for a few years, and during that time I learned some very important things that still inform my digital picture taking, though it's flipped upside down now and works backward (positives instead of negatives). It involved shooting dozens of rolls of film with bracketed exposures and shutter speeds, then processing each roll with different times, temperatures, and agitation, and then doing similar things in the printing. The variables introduce thousands of options. But when you see how those options affect the final outcome, you can literally plan how your picture is going to look before you shoot it, knowing how you'll arrive at the final outcome. That kind of knowledge is critical, and cannot be acquired by setting an automatic button, though the automation really is amazing, too. Still, everyone has the automation. If you want to distinguish yourself, you must go beyond that, and to do that, you must have tools.

Need I explain that same need in music?

They haven't left us yet. They may keep us on. The Mac Pro trashcan is an attempt to do that while keeping true their cool, ahead-of-the-game image. Yeah, they're making us spend more money, but they aren't abandoning us. And you have to admit, if we want to play, we have to pay. They aren't in it for charity.

But the fear remains. I hope they stay with us.

Shooshie

[James Steele]

The Mac Pro trashcan is an attempt to do that while keeping true their cool, ahead-of-the-game image.

Right. So we can have all those cables hanging off the thing and not be able to swap graphics cards out and things like that. Would have preferred they just made a new tower with slots. They could have made it as hip on the outside as they wanted to. The trashcan has a wow factor, but it *appears* to have been done at the expense of some function... the new convention cooling notwithstanding.

[Shooshie]

The Mac Pro trashcan is an attempt to do that while keeping true their cool, ahead-of-the-game image.

Right. So we can have all those cables hanging off the thing and not be able to swap graphics cards out and things like that. Would have preferred they just made a new tower with slots. They could have made it as hip on the outside as they wanted to. The trashcan has a wow factor, but it *appears* to have been done at the expense of some function... the new convention cooling notwithstanding.

Remember the Mac Toaster? It was Steve Jobs pet project, which was officially called "The Cube" back when Bondi Blue was still associated with iMacs. It was a dead-end project, but it was also the one the trashcan most resembles. Nothing wrong with it unless you wanted to modify it. I predict that the trashcan will be similarly remembered as a great step forward, technologically, but with limited expansion it becomes impractical to the very people who would spend that much to buy it.

I predict a future Mac Pro (or other named pro-Mac) with more of the tower form-factor, but smaller components. Apple has proved that you can get all that into a small space, and that's a good thing, but it's got to be expandable. With the availability of 1TB thumb drives, "expansion" becomes a new game. But I don't think that a round form factor can last. Railroads once experimented with round hopper cars, but tunnels and bridges were still rectangular, so they gradually went back to forms that fit clearances for maximum loading. It's not a design limitation, it's a real-world limit. "Round" works for planets, balloons, ant beds, and things that must keep a certain distance from a central core, but to fill space efficiently in manufacturing, rectangles are just easier.

The Mac trashcan was Apple flexing its design muscles. They've impressed us. Now they can get back to work. We'll see another Mac tower. Probably soon.

Shooshie

[thracks]

This is a weird thread

As far as audio performance on macs. I've never had a more stable, powerful and *affordable* system. EVER. I know everyone has different experiences and perceptions, but that's mine. I am by no means a power user, so take my opinion for what it's worth

And hasn't Apple always been considered a product for snobs? I have been routinely mocked by PC folks since I bought my first Mac Plus way way back when. They called me an "elitist" Speaking of the Mac plus, it was an all in one design based on the original. The core design principal for the Macintosh as far as I'm concerned. I hope to be able to purchase a Mac Pro this year. I can't imagine that I'll have less functionality than I do now.

I guess Apple is like that really great band you loved when you were young. The band that you could see at a local venue and the only other fans were people like you who truly appreciated their greatness. Now that band is selling out stadiums worldwide. Is that a bad thing? Maybe. Maybe not

[stubbsonic]

Well one take-away from this thread is that Mac used to thrive being the choice of pro-audio people. Yes, they are still the choice platform, but are also making boatloads of money from appealing to the masses (versus the pros).

There was a sweet period of very-low-problem-sailing in the 10.6.8 days. Since then, bumpy ride.