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!