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,

I'm more interested in recording with a class compliant interface using Linux. I love the idea of using any laptop anywhere and my portable drive and portable interface to make a great recording. 

Ubuntu!!

smiles.

http://wiki.linuxaudio.org/wiki/current_audio_gear

http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=13494

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.

What mmorgan said.

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.

The thing is, there is a bit of an opportunity presented right now in the OSX Daw market. People are becoming increasingly discontent with Logic because Apple appears to be so unmotivated to update it's feature set. They finally gave us 64 bit support, but there has been no significant UI improvement, metering in Logic is not very good, and many Logic users hate to edit audio in the program. It has been nearly 4 years since their last major update. There is a real opportunity for Cakewalk there. Where are people supposed to look? Most opt for Cubase, but I hate to even look at Cubase. Reaper is nice, but I prefer a DAW with more creative tools. Pro Tools? Nope. Digital Performer...maybe. I just feel like I've stepped back in time when I use it. Then there is Ableton. Cool but not my cup of tea. Reason...same opinion there. PreSonus is competing well, but I think if Cakewalk entered the OSX market, lots of people would look their way.

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.

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.

Good point, John. It would seem Roland would have particular interest in tapping into the OSX market. 

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

Well, I guess you can chalk that up to years of being a devoted PC user 


Always good talking to you, John. I saw the sad news about our old friend Billy Arnell. He was a great guy.

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?"

the pc market is 10x that of the mac market, and while everyone would wish to argue that in professional (ie fee paying and earning studios) music production the ratio may be 50/50 (a guess), the majority (in volume) of DAW sales are, by observation, clearly from home hobbyists... so my guess is that the served available market for PC based DAW is probably 7-8x that of MAC based...

So.. on a level field then, a MAC based Sonar would garner 1/7th the revenue.. but heres the rub.. anyone currently mac only and involved in music production already has a DAW... so you are limited to converts (many factors against that....incremental cost, learning curve, loss of projects, inertia & comfort factor), and to new users (many factors against that...free garageband, low rate of MAC sales, competitive basis vs cubase logic etc etc).. conclusion.. the take up rate for a MAC Sonar would be long low and slow.

therefore I simply dont see any ROI for such a port.. any additional $MM R&D investment over all current work (which i assume is simply not available in current economic climes) would provide far better ROI being applied against current x2 and x3 development ..whether stability, features, enhancements etc..