Hollin Jones
Apple’s clever decision to tie Logic into the Mac means many music producers favour its products over unwieldy PC alternatives.
Like any creative industry, the pro audio world has a trade show every year at which new products are unveiled and the public gets to see what developers have been up to. In fact, there are several major shows that take place around the world, at different times of the year. Anyone who is anyone generally has a stand, from small independents making expensive, custom-built touch-screen controllers right through to the heavy hitters with vast product ranges. One developer that’s rarely, if ever, in attendance, however, is Apple. Which seems odd, given that Macs are so widely used in the music production industry and always have been. It’s even more surprising when you learn that Logic, Apple’s flagship music software, is favoured among many of the more serious producers as their weapon of choice.
Why could this be, I hear you ask? Essentially it’s because it doesn’t have to. Aside from the company’s legendary need to control every aspect of the way it appears in public, something that’s difficult at an event staged by someone else, the products, much to the chagrin of the competition, seem to a large extent to sell themselves. Brand recognition for Apple is off the charts since the iPod and iPhone, and although pro audio, like pro video, is an important area for the company to compete, it’s a still a niche market in the wider scheme of things. You don’t build up cash reserves in the tens of billions of dollars by selling high-end music software or even high-end Macs to run it on. That honour goes to the consumer devices.
Most people’s experience of computers starts with a PC, cheap and ubiquitous as they are. For anyone who studies music technology, on the other hand, it’s much more likely that your lab will be stocked not with beige boxes but with iMacs or Mac towers. Not guaranteed, but likely, as it is for other creative areas such as photography, video and animation. In-jokes from early episodes of The Simpsons show animated versions of screens from what looks a lot like Mac OS 8, complete with a gag about slow render times. Experience suggests that people tend to stick with whatever software on which they first cut their teeth as they go through their lives and careers. As such, a high proportion of people who studied music technology carry their love of Macs with them through their life. As they build studios, become teachers or buy computers for their kids, they’re very likely to choose Macs. This helps to explain why the platform remains so solid among musicians despite rarely seeming to be advertised specifically to them. That, plus the fact that the prospect of trying to do anything creative with Windows fills many experienced professionals with dread.
When it comes to the software, on the other hand, some gentle prodding is needed, especially since all the major music programs run almost equally well on Mac OS X. Here, things start to get a little less clear cut – far less simple than choosing Mac over PC. Despite its iTunes business, Apple has never really been a music-focused company, at least in terms of music creation. True, the OS drew many musicians to the platform and kept them there, but for many years the software that people used to make music was all third-party products. Apple itself had no real track record in making music software. Back at the turn of the millennium, it decided to buy its way into the game. Emagic was a well-established German software house that had for many years been making Logic, a digital audio workstation, both for Mac and PC. Despite its detractors ironically finding it rather illogical in its workflow, it had many fans at all levels of the music production world, from bedrooms to top studios.
On acquiring the company in 2002, Apple immediately discontinued the Windows version of Logic, signalling its intentions to establish the Mac as the dominant platform in the audio world. At the time this upset many PC-using Logic fans who were presumably forced to get a Mac or stick with the PC and use another program. There are actually still people using cracked versions of Logic 5, the last Windows version. One of Apple’s first moves was to do away with the baffling and expensive pricing structure of purchasing endless ‘unlocks’ for features that were already there but locked away. And it ditched the hardware dongle – an anti-piracy measure still implemented by many software vendors that lose money to people who copy their software. There was also a massive price drop to less than half of the previous cost, and suddenly you got everything for your money. No more unlocks, the whole shebang was yours for a set price.
For those who didn’t need all the bells and whistles, Apple created Logic Express, which was and is still a remarkably capable piece of software. Currently priced at £163 (£139 ex VAT), it offers a feature set that would have cost you well over a grand a decade ago. Crucially, it runs very happily on a mid-range MacBook and so suits even the producer on a budget. Much of the technology from Logic ended up trickling down into GarageBand, originally released in 2004 and a part of iLife ever since. It’s been supplied with all new Macs for a number of years and actually hides some powerful features behind its apparently simple interface. The only major criticism that can be levelled at it is that for a consumer application, it’s a real resource hog on slower Macs. Despite that, it’s a great way to get started making music on your Mac, with audio and Midi recording, virtual instruments and effects. You can make the jump to Logic later, although the learning curve can be pretty steep.
Ultimately, it’s hardware sales that keep Apple growing at such a rate. It has admitted as much, saying that the iTunes Store doesn’t really make it much money. But, crucially, the store does mean selling more iPods and iPhones on which to store and consume that content. In the same way, making Logic Mac-only and dropping the hardware dongle actually made the Mac itself the dongle: you can’t run it without a Mac, resulting in another hardware sale.
This, of course, is understandable and good business: nobody could ever claim Apple didn’t know a thing or two about selling. The company has a habit of announcing new products as and when it feels like it, regardless of anyone else’s schedule. So it’s not surprising to industry watchers that it operates in its own bubble when it comes to pro audio, just like it does in more or less all the other areas. Despite the grumbles about pricing and bugs that come with any technology, many years of support from musicians isn’t just going to go away, especially when the alternatives are not all that appealing.
