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Would Pro Tools count as "damn good"? Especially their HD line with the 32-bit, 192 KHz I/O (which, for those /.'ers just joining the program, CDs are 16 bit, 44.1 KHz)?

Or is there something even more damn goody?

...and what?!

Under mandrake getting dvd to work was simply a matter of downloading and installing a couple of libdvd things including libdvdcss.

In Windows, I put a DVD disc in the DVD drive and pushed play in Windows Media Player.

Haven't had much luck with direct to hard disk multitrack audio recording and editing though. I think the authoring stuff may pick up with the 2.6 series kernel -- built in ALSA and pre-emptible, no need to apply a lot of patches.

In Windows, I bought Pro Tools and was done with it. Good luck getting anything close to Pro Tools on the Linux desktop anytime soon...

It's not a G5, it's a PPC970, completely different beasts. Not to mention neither Motorola or IBM have 2GHz chips in their roadmap until 2005.

1GHz bus? gimme a break. Intel hasn't yet reached this.

The rest of Apples site would say "3 USB Ports" not "Three". Also, Apple have a long standing habit of using Firewire instead of USB 2.0.

Only one FW800 port? Why would Apple stick with FireWire 400 anyway?

but optical audio in a graphics machine? I'm sorry but this sounds like wishful thinking.

Ok, so you have to use Win 98SE/ME or OS 9 to get it for free but nevertheless...
http://www.protools.com/
Click on "support" and in the submenu "downloads".

Screw that, man...I want Sound Forge. I want ACID. I want Vegas Video. I want Martin Hash Animation:Master. I want ProTools.

Figure out how to make apps like those run on Linux, or write NATIVE apps like those on Linux, and I will happily de-assimilate one of my Windows 2K boxen. Happily.

This distribution looks alot like Demudi. I've never seen a little friendly competition hurt anything, especially in the Linux world. I hope companies like Steinberg and Protools start releasing apps for it.

This is not only good news, but great news. Pardon me for feeling gleeful that Windows users will now feel the way some of us Mac users have felt in the past. It's about time that the Windows world lost a piece of software which is important to them. Although there are still options for them such as Digidesign'sProTools and Motu's Digital Performer, at least I can bask in the schadenfreude I have knowing they've lost a fantastic application like Logic Audio.

On to something more serious now, will this acquisition be good for Apple ? Certainly they've got the majority of Logic users, but can they improve upon this product to the degree that it will cause the Windows users to switch? I'm not sure whether they can. Getting someone to switch platforms when there are other solutions available is obviously not easy. But some of these audio applications take a lot of experience to master, and it may be cheaper in the long run for someone to buy a PowerMac instead of having to learn one of the other available applications for PC.

I do hope that everyone benefits from this, and that the small audio guy who only has a PC isn't left completely out in the cold, I do realize not everyone can afford a Mac. Hopefully the existing user base will not be immediately left out in the cold when they drop PC support. There should be some modicum of respect for the users who helped make Emagic as popular as it is today.

A lot of posters to Slashdot have the same qualities :-) A lot of it is simple "maturity", younger people rarely have it, but usually think they do. Another part of it is understanding a concept from another person's point of view, which few geeks are willing to do.

Business reasons are often like peacock feathers: utterly stupid and wasteful from any logical perspective, yet somehow evolution seems to favor them. Businesses that survive do things in a "business" manner. Geeks in a business environment are always telling management how stupid they are for putting such big feathers on a peacock, when better solutions exist. And geeks know they are absolutely right, thus the problem.

Marc was simply one of those geeks (making assumptions by extrapolating from my own experience). BTW, so were Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Jobs got pushed out of Apple for much the same reasons. In Jobs' case, he conflicted with management until he was pushed out. It wasn't an issue if Jobs was right or wrong, only that his geekness made him incompatible with those who ran the company. However, once geeks like Jobs and Gates start running the place, they actually prove that their non-business-practices have merit.

The problem for geeks/nerds everywhere is that business is much like the military: to become a leader, you have to prove that you are a good follower, even those two skills aren't directly related. For geeks to get into a position of power (in order to implement the ideas that they know are right), they have to stop being so difficult and arrogant, even when it is obvious that management are idiots.

Of course, OpenSource often does an end-run around business, but it doesn't mean you'll get the $$$ or the babes going that route :-)