Apple Buys Emagic

sapporo writes "Apple has apparently bought Emagic, developers of Audio Logic, music production software used by 200,000 people worldwide. Emagic will operate as a wholly owned division of Apple, and the Windows versions of their software will be discontinued on September 30, 2002. Whoa!"

Comments

Bye, bye Mac Cubase

[Anonymous Coward]

This will probably mean that the Macintosh version of Cubase will die...

Great for Linux

[heikkile]

I hope this will be an eye-opener for many users of commercial software. This is what may happen to any such software. The only guarantee is to do like the electronics industry does, and prefer stuff that has more than one provider. In software the only way to do this is to go with Open Source. That always leaves open the possibility of hiring someone to continue to support the stuff, no matter what companies get sold, close down, or change strategy.

Re:Great for Linux

[feldsteins]

While that is a valid point, it's equally valid to point out that if the open source community was willing and able to create an audio application that could sucessfully compete with the commercial big boys they haven't done so yet.

Please do not flame me with two dozen sourceforge URLs pointing to unknown or half-finished projects. The key descriptor here being that can sucessfully compete with the commercial big boys. And do please remember that I'm not saying it can't be done...only that it hasn't yet.

Re:Great for Linux

[foobar104]

I hope this will be an eye-opener for many users of commercial software. This is what may happen to any such software. The only guarantee is to do like the electronics industry does, and prefer stuff that has more than one provider. In software the only way to do this is to go with Open Source.

You know, for all the posts on Slashdot that point out the failures of the commercial software industry (most of them with the subject "Great for Linux"), the fact remains that there is no competitive open source software for these sorts of applications. There's no open source equivalent of Flame, or Shake, or Boujou, or Audio Logic. There's nothing out there that even comes close.

Tclosed-source software model may have flaws, but despite those flaws it has one thing going for it: software.

Re:Killing

[C0LDFusion]

>i wonder if stuff like this is filed into the memory of bill gates when he negotiates with apple? it could be on a list of reasons to discontinue ms office, or IE (no great loss that one).

::rolls around on the floor laughing for hours before composing himself to write a post::
Okay, anyway, get real. Mac software sales is more profitable for Bill Gates than most of his other departments. Sure it doesn't beat the Windows Office department, but Mac Office was a girl with expensive tastes. If he felt like dropping Mac Office on a whim, he wouldn't dedicate massive human and financial resources to the Macintosh on a yearly basis.

You say "no great loss", but the great loss comes out to be about 20-30% of MS's yearly profits.

Point of the matter: Microsoft ain't ditching Mac. Really. Gates ain't stupid. He knows Macs have slower obsolescence than PCs and Mac users will not buy into a company that destroyed their favorite machines. Killing Mac by ending development will send the die-hard Mac guys (some of which are already toying with PPC distros of Linux) to Linux.

Then you'd have what I call a "Bad Day"

The Next Step

[davecl]

As has been pointed out here, buying up software companies and killing their Windoze versions is a good way to annoy users, unless there is a process by which they can be encouraged to make the transition to Macs as painlessly as possible.
The whole SWITCH campaign may be part of this, but I'd hope they're going to do much more. With these companies come their lists of registered users. I would not be surprised if Apple didn't offer favourable deals on hardware purchase to help users of these packages move from Windows to Mac. This is one way to reduce the bad PR that comes from such, frankly, Microsoft-like actions, and it could even be turned into good PR given the right spin.

But are they going to do this?

Very Likely

[BitGeek]

> PC version consumed 70% of their development and support costs
That seems unlikely

No, I would expect that to be the case. Usually it is that way when you release a product on both platforms. I know this, I've done it.

Your costs on the PC side are much higher-- both in initial development, and in support. This is due to the poor quality of the development environment for Windows and the poor quality of the machines people buy- bad power supplies cause memory corruption, causes your program to crash and the computer illiterate mother isn't going to think that maybe she shouldn't have bought a computer from some fly by night company for $400-- she's going to wonder why your software doens't work.

Developing software for Windows is also more expensive because in order to get a unit of sales you have to spend more money to reach the customers-- there's a lot more competition. Whereas on the Mac side, getting the same unit of sales is a lot cheaper because theirs less competition for it.

The reason companies support windows at all (given this situation) is that marketing guys are idiots and not businessmen-- they never take into account the costs of development and costs of sales, they decide based on the size of the market. And non-marketing CEOs believe them.

There's a great opportunity for Mac software developers... but so few have taken it, that apple has started doing it itself.