Isn't it Time? Sonar X2 on OSX

I know. I know. Another thread on Sonar on the Mac platform? Why, Right?

Well, I've been a Cakewalk/Sonar user since Sonar 1. I've made most of the upgrades. For years I was a hold out. I didn't want anything to do with apple products. All of my friends in the music biz said, "you should get a mac." I said, "no." I built machines, bought new gear, tweaked my pc, just like everyone else. I was constantly in search of a powerful setup that would run reliably. I had pride in being a loyal Cakewalk customer, and told anyone who would listen about this great company who cared about their customers and made great, under-appreciated products. I currently have a Custom i5/Asus computer, running X2, a Presonus Firestudio, and the VS 700C controller. I've invested lots of time, money, and energy into being a Cakewalk user. 

A few years ago, I got a new job. My employer bought me a macbook pro as my daily office computer. I thought I'd try Logic, so I started trying it out, and it was really cool. Still, most of my work was in Sonar 8, so I just ran 2 machines. Logic was just for fun. Sonar was for my serious work. Time went on. I found myself working in OSX more and more. Switching to my Windows machine was less and less common and became increasingly annoying. I found myself needing to use my mac for other work tasks while working on projects in Sonar. It was frustrating moving between machines. I wanted to run my recording projects and do my daily work from the same machine, but I didn't want my main workflow for recording to be based on a laptop. I like a desktop setup much better.  So, I set up my PC to run OSX. I ran Logic and other daily work apps on the Hackintosh. The only thing I do on the Win7 partition is use Sonar. We multitrack each week in Sonar. I bring the project to my office for editing/mixing. It's so annoying to have to boot into windows to do this. 

It seems like Cakewalk is missing something here. The Apple marketshare has been steadily increasing over the last 10 years. That's not a trend I see changing. More and more people are either switching to the mac or they are being introduced to computers on the mac. Since the days of the PC vs. Mac debate are really over, shouldn't every DAW be available on both platforms? If Reaper can do it, why can't Cakewalk? If all the other DAWs can do it, why can't Cakewalk.

For the first time, I'm seriously considering abandoning my DAW of choice because it has become too much of a pain to use. Expanding Cakewalk's OSX development just makes good sense. Here's an example: When I spent $2000 on a control surface, I opted for the VS 700C because it was designed for Sonar AND it had mac drivers. It didn't work all that well out of the box with Logic, but it gave me basic functionality UNTIL I upgraded to Lion. No compatible driver. So, I was stuck with a huge control surface on my desk that only works with a program I only use a small part of the time. What did I do? Unplugged my VS 700C and put it back in the box. That's a pain. If Cakewalk devoted resources to OSX development, I might have a control surface that actually helps me. 

Anyway, fire away with all your "If you love your mac so much, just switch and leave us alone" rants. Just wondering how many of you feel the way I do. I would LOVE to see Sonar X2 on OSX!

Yeah, yeah...great. I get it. Cakewalk made its choice a long time ago. They are committed to their platform. Great. The point is not that I got a Mac. The point is...The WORLD is getting a Mac. Again, yeah, the touch integration in Win8 is awesome. That's probably one reason I'm not going to see Lion (and now Mountain Lion) support for my control surface that was advertised to work on OSX. Here's the bigger question there: Do you think touch screen is the way of the future in the Pro Audio world? Is everyone just going to put a touch screen in the middle of their work flow? I don't see it happening, at least not for a long while. Of course, as you've already made clear, I could be wrong.

On your other point: If Cakewalk were a division of Microsoft I might see your point here, but Cakewalk, last time I checked is competing in the DAW market. Clearly, Windows based DAWs are not the dominant trend, nor will they be. It's only getting more and more obvious. For whatever reason, Apple doesn't seem all that motivated to put priority on development for Logic. That's a shame. A better question might be, "When is Apple going to release a major update to Logic?" That may have more impact on what happens in the future with Sonar than anything else.

Brad Russell


Yeah, yeah...great. I get it. Cakewalk made its choice a long time ago. They are committed to their platform. Great. The point is not that I got a Mac. The point is...The WORLD is getting a Mac. Again, yeah, the touch integration in Win8 is awesome. That's probably one reason I'm not going to see Lion (and now Mountain Lion) support for my control surface that was advertised to work on OSX. Here's the bigger question there: Do you think touch screen is the way of the future in the Pro Audio world? Is everyone just going to put a touch screen in the middle of their work flow? I don't see it happening, at least not for a long while. Of course, as you've already made clear, I could be wrong.

On your other point: If Cakewalk were a division of Microsoft I might see your point here, but Cakewalk, last time I checked is competing in the DAW market. Clearly, Windows based DAWs are not the dominant trend, nor will they be. It's only getting more and more obvious. For whatever reason, Apple doesn't seem all that motivated to put priority on development for Logic. That's a shame. A better question might be, "When is Apple going to release a major update to Logic?" That may have more impact on what happens in the future with Sonar than anything else.

Man your post makes me think what a very insightful person. You got all that I was saying seemingly with ease. I also like the way you can discuss this without any angst. You deserve a better posting than I can deliver. No wonder you are one of the old guard. We joined at the same time.

I don't see a problem with touch being in a studio because at some point it will be hard to fine a non touch display. Apple may be doing very well but MS is still the no. 1 in OS deployment. When MS puts out a new OS they do so in the millions. Apple only in hundred of thousands.

The market for an OS is dominated and near controlled by MS. That is not going to change any time soon. Without Apple MS would be in real trouble because they would be seen as a monopoly.

You can bet MS does not want Apple to go anywhere. You can also bet that a touch screen is in your future.  



 

BlixYZ


i want them to do it.   i dont even know if i would buy a mac.  i just think it would be a boon for a company i love.   i dont see the down side.  i think mac users would embrace sonar.  the more i think about it, its crazy not to.

Yeah, It seems really obvious to me.

  One thing you haven't brought into this conversation is the Roland factor. It seems to me even though Roland and CW have been close for a very long time now that they own CW it would seem better for them if their software were cross platform. They support Apple just as much as they do Windows so it would seem likely CW may get some pressure from Roland to port. 

So I don't believe its a sure thing that CW wont at some point go both ways.

Somehow talking with a rational Mac user is more fun then I ever thought.  

You need to post a lot more.

I don't have anything against Macs but I have a hard time understanding the business logic that would drive a decision to port Sonar to Macs OS. My thinking on this is that it would be illogical to think of the existing Mac DAW user base (PT, Logic, QB etc) to spend the money, and take the time, to learn/move to Sonar. I would guess most of the sales would come from younger users who seem to have other options that may be more appropriate for the music they seem interested in developing.

And it isn't that I'm against the idea...I'm for anything that would make Cakewalk as successful as possible. That said I feel that Cakewalk would be better served using their limited resources to improving the product.

The one other comment I have is based on what I read in the other forums for the DAWs I use Macs are not, apparently, in possession of their much vaunted 'greater stability' meme.

Lastly, and this is just personal mind you, were Cakewalk to do the port as a PC user (and software dev) I would have no inclination to make the move to a Mac.

Regards,

BlixYZ


i want them to do it.   i dont even know if i would buy a mac.  i just think it would be a boon for a company i love.   i dont see the down side.  i think mac users would embrace sonar.  the more i think about it, its crazy not to.

I'm with ya James.
Brad brings up a valid point. I know that If I were a software developer/vendor I'd want as many people as possible to have the option to use it.
In this day and age all software should run on all platforms.


Mike

What mmorgan said.

I totally agree with you BRAD RUSSELL. I live the same thing. I tried to resist as much as I could not to get a MAC in this industry, but I was almost forced to, because everybody around me used a MAC. So I did the same, bought a MAC. Now I use Sonar X1 for my personnal projects, but as soon as I do things for work, I use my MAC laptop. I don't need to say that X1 is my last purchase of Sonar. I currently use my Mac laptop all the time. I have bootcamp with Sonar on the other side, but it's a pain to switch virtual machines. I WOULD BUY X2 FOR OSX THE DAY IT WOULD RELEASE... but for now, Cakewalk, don't expect any more dough from me.

I'm sure they aren't doing it out of principle or anything. It's business. Think of it from a Director's point of view. What is the COST of making this change? What RETURN will it bring? What is the RISK associated? I bet they have done any alalysis on this and it's obviously not finaciably feasable at the moment with the current level of risk that they are willing to take. Chances are, they are being on the cautious side. The are a smaller sized company in the scheme of things after all. They don't have money to throw around.

What would it cost? Cake spends a year going from X1 to X2 (not to even mention updates). How many programmers does that take? I have no idea, but lets go with 20. Now, all of cake's programmers have an expertise in Windows DAW programming. You;re gonna need new staff. Who is good at programming DAW software in MAC? Well, other companies probably have those guys already. You need to poach them. With what? Money. You need to OUTBID the other companies to get some quality staff who have experience with this side of things. What if there is company loyalty? You need to factor in more cash for that. Do they need to move interstate? More money.

So we need 20 programmers, each is going to cost a LOT. Let's say that want $150,000. I don't know if that's realistic, but we'll go with that number. X1 took 2 years. So building a new DAW from SCRATCH with MANY hurdles and problems to resolve will be hard. Maybe it's gonna take 2 years? OK, spare $6 million anyone?

Oh but wait, nothing's going to sell without marketing. Marketing is usually the biggest expense. Don't know if that's the case here, but we'll just call it $4 million cause you're gonna need lots of ads in mags, internet, promotional expos, everything. It's a lot.

$10,000,000. But we need more admin staff now to handle calls. We need to train the tech support to be able to handle mac issues as well. That's gonna cost. Plus all of those hidden costs. New office space. Office computers. Stationary. Accounting staff. It's a lot. But we'll keep the $10 million for now.

Now we need to sell some copies! Some people will already own SONAR of PC, so they get an upgrade price. Some people won't buy producer, so that's cheaper. Let's go with $200 on average. How many units do we need to sell? 50,000. We need to sell 50,000 copies to mac users to get back to zero. Ah, but we took out a $10,000,000 loan to pay for this, right? Now to cover interest, we are more like 60,000 sales.

Now we have broken even. We still have not made a CENT after 60,000 sales.

Will we make 60,000 sales in a year? Don't know. There is a probability factor involved with that. If cake wants to take risks, maybe go for it. If they are sitting on the more conservative side of things, that might be a really big risk to take.


Now I don't have any idea if those numbers are near realistic or not. They might be much lower and might be much higher. But you need to look at this from their eyes. If they haven't done it now, they've probably done a similar (albeit much more complex) analysis to what I just did up there and it is not FINANCIALLY feasible for the level of RISK that they are willing to take.

If they decide to take on a higher risk, OR the market shows a change and lots more demand for a MAC version, they just might do it. But most people I speak to have never heard of SONAR. They know Cubase, Logic, ProTools, Garage Band, Audacity etc. Rarely do I find someone who has heard of SONAR. It's just not as well known out there which makes the marketing costs even more.

It's just not as simple as "it makes sense, surely heaps would buy it?"

As both a long time Sonar user and long time Mac user, I would like to see Sonar ported to OSX. I've just ordered an new Macbook Pro, but I doubt whether I will load up Windows/bootcamp on it which means I'll stick with Logic and it will be bye bye Sonar unless I really need Sonar and boot up my old machine (which is getting long in the tooth). I think in a lot of ways Sonar is superior to Logic but I can get the job done in Logic and who knows maybe there will be a Logic upgrade around the corner.  
Would I buy Sonar if it was ported to OSX?  Not sure. It would depend on the cost, but if I shall do some work on a few old songs in Sonar in the next couple of weeks and see if I miss it!

Andy  

I think you make some very good points Steve.

no, why?

My understanding of Sonar is that it is tightly integrated with the Windows OS.  I could be wrong, but I don't believe there is a total abstraction layer which separates the Sonar application from the OS upon which it resides.  Such a layer would simplify portability between different OS's.

I don't know enough about Logic and Cubase, but both had their origins on the Atari platform and were ported to both Mac and Windows.  The only conclusion one can draw is that they were designed / written with portability in mind.

With Studio One, one of the primary devs developed Cubase, so you can draw your own conclusions of it's ability for dual platform support.

I was surprised by an OSX version of REAPER - but by the time this was written, I'm sure the designers realized that linking up with a single OS was probably not a great idea.

Pro Tools on Mac and Windows - I'm not familiar with the history behind that.

Ablelton Live - also not familiar with its history, but the app was supposedly written entirely in C++.

We still don't have a Windows version of Digital Performer 8 for Windows - it's about a year late, but if they manage to pull that off, hurray for them.  It would seem that they are reaching out to the more pervasive of the the two OS's.

As mentioned above, if there were to be any business motivation for porting Sonar to OSX, to me, it would seem to be a huge undertaking.  If for some reason Roland would want to have a single DAW presence on OSX and Windows, it would have to be built from the ground up, using some of the intellectual content the have embedded in what we know today as sonar X.

And then there is the mad dash for for a presence on the iPad and other tablets out there, but that is a topic for another thread.

Count me among the Sonar users who would love to see a Mac version.  I bought my wife a MacBook Air and Thunderbolt Display for Christmas and loved it so much that I bought a MBA for myself earlier this year.  I use it as a sketch pad for scratch tracks using a different cross-platform DAW (Live 9) and I don't see it replacing Sonar/PT on my PC anytime soon, but it would be much easier for me to have Sonar on my Mac.  Yeah, I could use Bootcamp or Parallels, but that sorta defeats the purpose and takes up a good chunk of precious space on my 128 GB SSD.  That said, I put Parallels and Windows 8 on my wife's MBA and it's a pretty slick setup, but she doesn't use it for anything that requires a lot of data storage space.