NAMM 2015: DP9

[musicman691]

I left Snow Leopard kicking and screaming, but I am happy to have iCloud integration with my phone. Other than that, Mavericks feels exactly the same to me.

How are you getting on with the gui? I found it one of the ugliest ones out there when I had it on my daw machine.

I'm not in Yosemite. Every time I see it on someone else's computer, I absolutely despise it.

My apologies; I misread your post. Glad I'm not the only one who thinks Yosemite isn't all that great looking.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Glad I'm not the only one who thinks Yosemite isn't all that great looking.

Lots of us agree with that, it's just some of us don't care as much as others. Personally, I don't focus as much on the "look" of the screen as I do on the sound that comes out of my speakers. Sure, eye candy is great, and I do prefer more contrast, but I adjusted quickly and don't even notice it any more and I do find it a bit easier on my eyes.

[BobK]

Lots of us agree with that, it's just some of us don't care as much as others. Personally, I don't focus as much on the "look" of the screen as I do on the sound that comes out of my speakers. Sure, eye candy is great, and I do prefer more contrast, but I adjusted quickly and don't even notice it any more and I do find it a bit easier on my eyes.

+1

I've adjusted to Yosemite. I still think the GUI changes were unnecessary at best, but at least I got new features like...um...let's see...uh.......oh yeah, easy screen sharing via Messages! I haven't been able to get it to work, despite hours of attempts. It's poorly documented, and even senior AppleCare techs didn't know about it. And then there's iCloud drive, which I used for about a day.

That said, Yosemite has worked fine on both my 2009 Mac Pro and 2012 MacBook Pro. DP and standalone VIs seem to be fine. (One exception is Arturia's Wurlitzer V - the GUI flickers in standalone mode.)

I've learned to keep expectations low, and breathe a sigh of relief if a Mac OS update doesn't break some basic functionality or make obsolete an app that I like.

The only problem I recall was caused by an old Digi Core Audio driver (left over from Pro Tools 9) on my laptop. It messed with Core Audio recognizing my Metric Halo ULN-8. Troubleshooting that one was a time-consuming PITA.

[mikehalloran]

I don't know if it's a good or bad thing that DP 9 will run on 10.6.8. Were there proposed features that were tanked to make 9 backwards compatible? DP 8 is fairly lean as far as programs go but would be leaner if it was 64bit only. Are there issues that could be fixed if the code dropped 32bit support? I don't know and, as long as 9 works on my iMac, I am good.

I don't have PT 12 and don't use Logic Pro X enough to know what features require Mavericks or Yosemite – besides being 64bit only.

DP 7.24 still works and is nice for opening old projects so that they open cleanly in 8 64bit.

I was looking at upgrading my machine before Mavericks was released a year and a half ago. Too old, too slow etc. Going 64bit, getting into DP 8 and later adding an SSD put off any planned upgrade till next year at the earliest. Now that I am doing more with VIs, it is again showing its limits but nothing I can't handle for awhile longer. Yosemite made it a little faster and added many features (or fixed them) that I use every day. That I can do things on my iPhone that show up in my iMac and iPads is of tremendous use to me.

OS 10.6 gave us a taste of what was possible with many new apps that required the Intel chip with Rosetta providing functionality for many PPC applications. OS 10.8.2 was a watershed release fixing certain functions that broke in 10.5 and 10.6 and improved them. Yosemite 10.10.1 was the next real step up. 10.7 and 10.9 were stopgap releases, IMO. Apple never should have charged money for 10.7.

[Michael Canavan]

Count me as someone who is happy with most of the GUI changes. The candy gloss thing wasn't ever that appealing to me. I've always used graphite anyway to get rid of the stop sign look in Finder windows for instance. Secretly I liked OS 9's look better, but to say that was to say I didn't like OSX's stability or something? There are many reasons to like Yosemite beyond it's look, the Finder improvements are a huge thing to me etc.

[bayswater]

I've become used to most of the changes, and don't find the new look better or worse. The thing that I haven't adapted to is the mystery of the disappearing title bars, the lack of distinction between the title bar and the rest of a window, and the lack of clarity in many cases on exactly where to grab a window to move it. I can see why a title bar is a waste of space in many case on an iPhone, but I'd rather stick with a strict standard in OS X to make it easier to adopt a common workflow across apps -- an old advantage of Macs that seems to have been abandoned (look at the new Print dialog in Chrome - WTF is that?)

What I do like is what appears to be improved handling of audio in 10.10 over 10.7-9.

The thin fonts in iOS? Turn on the bold preference.

[Shooshie]

My reasoning is as follows:
I'm responsible for the sounds that come out of it. I'll do the best I can with any app, but DP gives me what I want to work with, for the most part. It's my choice, no matter how it looks.

But at my peak usage of DP, I was literally staring at it for often 24 hours a day. I used to work 36 to 48 hours straight, pausing to eat and occasionally leaning back in my chair and closing my eyes for 15 minutes. I'd sleep 6 hours and do it again, ad-infinitum. It just took that much work to get everything done, and I'm a fast worker. Naturally I developed lots of tricks to speed it up; it's not like I WANTED to work for long hours. I just had to do it. Sometimes I'd have to get two projects ready, either of which could have taken 6 weeks, and I had 2 weeks for both. I was paid very well.

Anyway, if you're spending that much time in an app, the last thing I want is a gray or blatantly white screen burning through my retinas for all that time. I want a mix of color, and I want it to look aesthetically pleasing. An all-gray or all-white room/interface/OS, etc., is my idea of prison. When I was working those long hours, I carried art books with me, and I stood them up around my workspace to make up for the glare of DP, which was pretty garishly white back then. People would come by and look at those books open to beautiful pictures, and they'd invariably say "Cool! Wish I'd thought of that!"

I have tiffany-glass lamps throughout the rooms where I work, for the same reason. They are gorgeous, but theirs is a mosaic of color so that no one color ever dominates. The light they project downward is, of course, the white color of the bulb you choose, but the shade simply adds beauty to the room.

I can't really take seriously the idea that someone would prefer to be locked in a gray room with a gray screen or worse, a white room with a white screen all day or night, when they could have the option of bringing in color, but I'm not going to knock it if that's really what someone wants. It's different with Photoshop: the gray background avoids distraction from the photo, which itself is artistic and (hopefully) beautiful. But a gray or white interface in a music app has no aesthetic relief like Photoshop, whose content itself is the beauty. So, give me beveled edges and rich textures. Give me colors. Give me shadows. Make it look great.

Shooshie

[Shooshie]

The thin fonts in iOS? Turn on the bold preference.

Oh, trust me, I did that first thing. They are STILL thinner and less readable than they used to be, plus, that doesn't apply to all apps and all fonts. Many apps went with the styling of the OS, and you don't get to select THOSE fonts.

[mikehalloran]

An all-gray or all-white room/interface/OS, etc., is my idea of prison.

Sorry for being obvious but I couldn't resist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkae0-TgrRU

[musicman691]

I don't know if it's a good or bad thing that DP 9 will run on 10.6.8. Were there proposed features that were tanked to make 9 backwards compatible? DP 8 is fairly lean as far as programs go but would be leaner if it was 64bit only. Are there issues that could be fixed if the code dropped 32bit support? I don't know and, as long as 9 works on my iMac, I am good.

You do know OSX 10.6.8 can run in 64 bit kernel mode right?

[mikehalloran]

You do know OSX 10.6.8 can run in 64 bit kernel mode right?

Only on Macs capable of booting into the 64bit kernel. Many Macs incapable of that will run 10.6 and 10.7; they will not run 10.8 or later except for Mac Pros that can be hacked. The Core Duo and many Core 2 Duos cannot.

You missed my point. PT 12 and Logic Pro X require Mavericks or Yosemite. Besides being 64bit only, why?

My guess -- and it's pure speculation – is to keep users from trying to install on Macs incapable of booting into 64bit... but why not include Os 10.8?

Not my issue.

[Morpheo]

PT 12 and Logic Pro X require Mavericks or Yosemite. Besides being 64bit only, why?

And yet PTHD 12 requires 10.8.5 or later. Go figure........ Ahhhhhh Avid.....

[musicman691]

You do know OSX 10.6.8 can run in 64 bit kernel mode right?

Only on Macs capable of booting into the 64bit kernel. Many Macs incapable of that will run 10.6 and 10.7; they will not run 10.8 or later except for Mac Pros that can be hacked. The Core Duo and many Core 2 Duos cannot.

You missed my point. PT 12 and Logic Pro X require Mavericks or Yosemite. Besides being 64bit only, why?

My guess -- and it's pure speculation – is to keep users from trying to install on Macs incapable of booting into 64bit... but why not include Os 10.8?

Not my issue.

Actually PT12 is okayed for OSX 10.8.5 per this page:
http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_U ... quirements

I know that's for the HDX dsp platform but the software is the same between the HD and 'vanilla' versions - it's just the license asset on the iLok that makes the difference.

My internet/Photoshop machine is a mid 2010 Mac Mini Core 2 Duo running OSX 10.6.8 in 64 bit kernel quite happily.

[bayswater]

PT 12 and Logic Pro X require Mavericks or Yosemite. Besides being 64bit only, why?

My guess -- and it's pure speculation – is to keep users from trying to install on Macs incapable of booting into 64bit... but why not include Os 10.8?

OS and browser versions can be excluded from support lists for no other reason than the developers chose to use later OS versions in their development and QC environments. It may not be that specific application versions won't run in earlier OS versions, but that the developers haven't tested their code with earlier OS versions and don't know or care whether it will work.

If you write buggy code (not that anyone would argue that Logic X is buggy ) it could get pretty expensive getting it working on a lot of old OS versions.

There are a couple of long time Logic X users reporting success with 10.6.8 despite the system requirement.

[musicman691]

PT 12 and Logic Pro X require Mavericks or Yosemite. Besides being 64bit only, why?

My guess -- and it's pure speculation – is to keep users from trying to install on Macs incapable of booting into 64bit... but why not include Os 10.8?

OS and browser versions can be excluded from support lists for no other reason than the developers chose to use later OS versions in their development and QC environments. It may not be that specific application versions won't run in earlier OS versions, but that the developers haven't tested their code with earlier OS versions and don't know or care whether it will work.

If you write buggy code (not that anyone would argue that Logic X is buggy ) it could get pretty expensive getting it working on a lot of old OS versions.

There are a couple of long time Logic X users reporting success with 10.6.8 despite the system requirement.

Corollary to what you wrote is the Avid situation and qualifications. Specifically when they test against a new operating system version they test their whole product line and if there's a fail in any one point it's not qualified. So for example Media Composer could be running okay but if there's a fail with ProTools in a particular test setup that gets a 'not qualified' (for that setup) for not only PT but everything else in the Avid line.