[MaloS]

Who here thinks that Apogee Duet being marketed only for Apple users is a bunch of ******** **** **** ******* **** ***.


< few more paragraphs of asterisks here >

/ rant mode off

Discuss:

 

[antonyfirst]

Hahahaah

 

[Jaska]

I feel your pain. It was truly disgusting not having software with proper gapless playback of audio files on the Mac for years until iTunes 7 came out, and Windows 95 users were able to run foobar2000. Then there's still the whole secure ripping disparity.

Anyway, as others have commented, there certainly could be an argument built that for about 1k, you can build a very nice system with a Duet and a Mac Mini. The Mac that I use with my Duet is on the very bottom of the compatibility spectrum, and I had to pay about €35 to upgrade my RAM in order to use the Duet, so not only is the Duet a Mac-only device, but a newer-Mac-only one besides.

 

[MaloS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaska /img/forum/go_quote.gif I feel your pain. It was truly disgusting not having software with proper gapless playback of audio files on the Mac for years until iTunes 7 came out, and Windows 95 users were able to run foobar2000. Then there's still the whole secure ripping disparity.

Since when could MAC's be dual-booted with Windows software? Wasn't that pretty early on (at least with bootcamp)? On the other hand I doubt I will be able to get Leopard up on my Thinkpad.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaska /img/forum/go_quote.gif Anyway, as others have commented, there certainly could be an argument built that for about 1k, you can build a very nice system with a Duet and a Mac Mini. The Mac that I use with my Duet is on the very bottom of the compatibility spectrum, and I had to pay about €35 to upgrade my RAM in order to use the Duet, so not only is the Duet a Mac-only device, but a newer-Mac-only one besides.

But then how much can we do for 1k in the first place? I mean 1000 bucks buys me a DAC1 with its balanced preamp...and no-one stops you from getting one for your MAC :-/ While the $500 price makes Apogee very very attractive, options substantially expand once we get to $1000 mark.

I find the saddest thing here to be the fact that many of us have to use Windows-based systems for work (time series and majority of engineering soft is preferable on Windows or Linux even) -- and yet many products for audio seem to be made proprietary for Macs (that's a new marketing spec, I am willing to bet money that Apple paid Apogee for a Mac-only product).

Also -- wonder how well Digidesign compares to Apogee - at least Digidesign products are user-friendly with regards to OS choice.

Heh, this probably should go into the Lounge, but I would like to see people's opinions on this field. I want to expand the topic to monitoring interfaces in general - because they offer excellent neutral sound with good internal amplification, allowing us to look elsewhere instead of our classic 'high end headphone amp and DAC manufacturers'. It makes the market more interesting, but when things are done like with Duet -- it just compresses the market and makes it less efficient.

 

[blessingx]

I can only remember a couple instances when Windows people got up in arms because something they thought they deserved wasn't on their platform. There was a ton of animosity over Apple not releasing the 1G iPod outside the Mac. Now there has been (what three?) threads about the Apogee Duet being OS X only? I know this thread is a bit of a joking rant, but believe me, just be happy a Linux or Mac member doesn't start complaining every time their options are limited. Can you imagine the number of threads? "Rant" could become a more popular term than "teh"!

Can anyone remember a single post in the last four years where a Mac user complained about Foobar, EAC or Creative, etc. developers not making Mac versions? Me neither.

That said, as a primary Mac person (though typing this on a ThinkPad), I would avoid the Duet. I like things to be platform independent and when even Apple releases computers without Firewire, I don't know the longevity of its compatibility.

EDIT: And are we taking bets on Apple paying Apogee? I'll wager $1000. Apple isn't MS in that it has a history spending for R&D with promise of supporting MS technology. If Apple started I highly doubt this is where it would spend the money. This product will never be that popular to influence marketshare, etc. It would be a waste.

 

[jinp6301]

The Duet was built so it could work with apple products well. I guess if you really want, you can run an OS X emulator on a windows machine, but even with that, it still might not have core audio which is required for the duet to work

 

[grawk]

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

 

[Jaska]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaloS /img/forum/go_quote.gif Since when could MAC's be dual-booted with Windows software?

Well, it's 2008 now, and I still can't boot my Mac into Windows, because it's a PPC Mac, and there still isn't any true secure CD ripper for OS X. So, I would either have to buy a PC (which I did, even though I didn't want one) or buy a newer Mac plus a standalone copy of Windows just to be able to use foobar2000 or any secure CD ripping software. And the cost of this was more than that of a Mac Mini.

I doubt Microsoft was turning any screws to add to my frustration over the years, but it still was an expensive thing to have to do to be able to rip CDs securely and listen to albums the way that albums are supposed to sound.

In this case, one single product is being considered (when zillions of other DACs exist that work under Windows), whereas in the bigger picture, fundamental things like ripping CDs and, until the release of iTunes 7, gapless playback of separate contiguous tracks, are/have been kept out of the reach of Mac users.

 

[MaloS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jinp6301 /img/forum/go_quote.gif The Duet was built so it could work with apple products well. I guess if you really want, you can run an OS X emulator on a windows machine, but even with that, it still might not have core audio which is required for the duet to work

That's really silly. Professional audio setups primarily run on ASIO -- platform independent audio format. (Audio Stream Input/Ouput, it basically ignores OS-specific audio solutions. Windows hates it - if you run ASIO without integrating it into the OS (E-MU integrates their stuff), Windows can't even do most of its sounds).

Quote:

Originally Posted by blessingx /img/forum/go_quote.gif I can only remember a couple instances when Windows people got up in arms because something they thought they deserved wasn't on their platform. There was a ton of animosity over Apple not releasing the 1G iPod outside the Mac. Now there has been (what three?) threads about the Apogee Duet being OS X only? I know this thread is a bit of a joking rant, but believe me, just be happy a Linux or Mac member doesn't start complaining every time their options are limited. Can you imagine the number of threads? "Rant" could become a more popular term than "teh"!

Adapting a product by making drivers for a different OS is not that difficult, especially for a company that already has a few multi-platform products.
Quote:

Originally Posted by blessingx /img/forum/go_quote.gif That said, as a primary Mac person (though typing this on a ThinkPad), I would avoid the Duet. I like things to be platform independent and when even Apple releases computers without Firewire, I don't know the longevity of its compatibility.

The firewireless thing scares me too, hah. It is superior to USB, yet only select machines seem to have it.
Quote:

Originally Posted by blessingx /img/forum/go_quote.gif EDIT: And are we taking bets on Apple paying Apogee? I'll wager $1000. Apple isn't MS in that it has a history spending for R&D with promise of supporting MS technology. If Apple started I highly doubt this is where it would spend the money. This product will never be that popular to influence marketshare, etc. It would be a waste.

Not really -- one of good ideas for Apple is to capture the professional/semi-professinal Audio market in order to pick up the 'Productivity Tool' image (they do not hold up to that in many ways, while great in others, also tangent argument). Apogee is not a small name in that area, thus orienting them towards Apple helps substantially.

 

[MaloS]

So...at the rate we are going here - who is a fan of Open Source software? xD Maybe it would be interesting to write a thesis on the general concept of open-information business models and their impact on economy and society...

 

[Jaska]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaloS /img/forum/go_quote.gif Adapting a product by making drivers for a different OS is not that difficult, especially for a company that already has a few multi-platform products.

This may not be the best example, but the release of ESI's DuaFire was delayed for months and months (over a year??) while they tried to sort out the EWDM technology to make it work better with Windows. If this product was designed for OS X only, it would have been released long, long ago. Even reading through the user manual, it's easy to get the impression that integration with OS X was/is a simple matter.

If Apogee could avoid such hassles with making the Duet compatible with Windows, and still make a profit with a competitively priced product, then why would they bother with Windows support? I'm sure this factor alone accounts for their ability to bring this thing to market as a Mac-only device for such a low price.

 

[MaloS]

E-MU for a long time did not have MAC/Vista drivers, but they explicitly pointed out that they will be released. The interface was designed for use with ASIO, and they released it under whatever was working well, later on providing drivers for others systems (took about a year for MAC drivers, and another year for Vista after release, during the duration of which they made the latest Beta drivers available for users who were changing platforms and wanted to maintain use of the product).

This leaves me under impression that Apogee is still short-changing things here.

 

[grawk]

Apogee has explicitly stated that they were able to do the ensemble and duet as cheaply as they did because it's so tightly integrated with core audio. It let them worry about the audio, and let apple handle the software.

 

[sejarzo]

It was also my understanding--though certainly not to any deep level--that something in Core Audio allowed Apogee to design the Duet hardware in a way that worked great in the Apple realm, but effectively made PC compatibility impossible. At least that was how the Apogee rep explained it to me when there was a lot of confusion over whether or not there would ever be more Mini-DAC FW's hitting the market last year!

I was planning on ordering the Mini-DAC FW, then they suddenly were completely unavailable. When I saw the announcement of the Duet, I called them to see if the Duet was the de facto replacement for the Mini-DAC FW....considering the Duet does more yet costs less, you see...and got the bad news that no, PC users were stuck waiting out the "re-availability" of the Mini-DAC FW, because the Duet would always and forever be a Mac-only device, end of story.

 

[Hopstretch]

How many different ways can it be stated? The Duet is a pro device aimed at a market segment that pretty much only uses Apple's Logic Studio. The hardware was specifically designed around the software. Bitching about its lack of support for other platforms is like complaining that your coffee machine refuses to brew beer.