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 Matt and Mystic have got it right - porting an application to a different OS is a major undertaking, one that requires a good estimated ROI. 
 
Back in the 90's, the company I work for used to support Windows, MAC, Unix, Sparc, etc.   Around 2000 they made an official statement that they were going Windows only due to A) A big downward slope in the number of engineers using these other OS', and B) The cost in developing for multiple OS'.  So what I've experienced first-hand is the opposite, though the end result was the same: more $$ into the products themselves vs. support multiple platforms.
 
At the time the company when Windows only it was around $250m gross, or so.   Today it's over $500m.   So yeah, it was certainly the right decision.
 
FWIW... the exception over the last two years has been for mobile OS', mainly iOS and droid.  But that's an entirely different market/usage, and most of these are still using Windows machines when back in the office.
 
Just my $.03 on why CW may not be pushing for a MAC version... insufficient ROI.
 

I think you make some very good points Steve.

I don't see it happening. Cakewalk is a small company (total of 65 employees last time I checked) and they would have to double their development and help desk staff to support an Apple image. Windows still has 92% of the PC market compared to Apple's 6%. I don't see a return on that investment.

no, why?

Excuse me for jumping in, but it's also becoming less important for Cakewalk to bother with a Mac version..

I am currently using a Mac Pro boot camped to Win7Pro with no problems and I've been told that ther are others using 3rd party software a to run Sonar while running OSX...

Now others are working at applying Wineskin and the likes to make this evn more simple and productive...

Maybe the solution is no longer necessarily in the hands of the program developers and will shortly run on either platform to begin with.

We're all seeing how both OS's are adapting many of each others characteristics and I'm currently thinking that we will soon see both of them running either platform's programs natively...

So I'm guessing that MS & Apple will be the one's to solve the issue at last...

It seems to be in either/both of their' best interests to do so...

I have and use both platforms and don't see a reason for the two not to find this common ground...

Just my 2 cents...

Keni

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.

Keni,

I think that would require some emulation mode/abstraction layer. Since latency is so critical in Audio Apps, I'm not sure that even if an emulation mode were created that it would be something I would choose to use.

It would be interesting only if they could do it without increasing latency significantly, and there would be sooo many apps for which millisecond latency wouldn't matter that they software developers might not consider performance a high priority, even if they attempted it.

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.

gswitz


Keni,

I think that would require some emulation mode/abstraction layer. Since latency is so critical in Audio Apps, is critical, I'm not sure that even if an emulation mode were created that it would be something I would choose to use.

It would be interesting only if they could do it without increasing latency significantly, and in there would be sooo many apps for which millisecond latency wouldn't matter that they software developers might not consider performance a high priority, even if they attempted it.

Hi gswitz...

I understand and agree with you to an extent...

I'm certain there is a way for an OS to incorporate both sets of "standards" within their' systems so that there is no need for emulating anything... much...

I mean that the only hardware difference between the two systems is the bootup cache which could easily be resolved by adjusting OSX to bypass the bios cache calls (not sure what they are actually referred to as) for programs that use the OSX-method of file emedded bios and use the MS/bios when a program calls for them... the hardware itself is essentially the same now...

I'm currently running OSX Lion on my OSX bootup and Win7Pro on the Windows bootup (using bootcamp) and I have excellent results with performance...

If not for my displeasure with Lanes and some recurring crashes, I would be totally ecstatic! ;-)

Is this emulation hurting me? I have all the power I could hope for at this time (dual 3.2GHz Xeons/16GBRam) my latency appears excellent even far into complex programs running large numbers of plugins of all kinds..

So even if a company used a method of calling the differences while in the OSX  (as I'm told some now do), the hit on the system is relatively low...

I typically have a project with a dozen stereo tracks containing eq/comp on most, a half dozen Digital reverbs of various kinds, 2-4 large synth models as well as a couple of instances of guitar amp simulators and I can play a third instance with realtime monitoring and not feel any latency....

So I freeze tracks when complete only for safety sake so that I have prints of each track as audio in case of "emergency"... ;-)

Making each OS cross-platform capable is an obvious way of gathering that many more portential users.... Seems a lot more to gain for Apple and maybe that's why they gave us Bootcamp... Going the next step seems both logical and rewarding for them...

Imagine simply loading OSX and being able to install/use any program that's in either camp.... sure would make a lot of changes in the reasons for selecting an OS... eh?

;-)

Just extrapolating outloud... I've never been a Mac fan overall, but specific programs entice me from each OS and it's frustrating to need to switch machines to have the use... It just seems natural that this should happen...

Keni