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Who knows? The point is that if they can't demonstrate some reliability and control over the technology that most customers now take for granted when dealing with their vendors, and what most vendors offer day-in and day-out, it should be considered a small miracle that anything new has been produced at all! I know it's a small enterprise with a troubled past, but... Customer service is everything today and to expect consumers to do business catch-as-catch-can through email (with addresses they've had to pick up on an independent user forum) doesn't really do much to bolster continued commitment from your owner/consumer base. First things must come first and if that isn't being handled, then the indication is that anything else is somewhere (far?) down the road.

True...they need to apply the attitude of the Irishman wearing 2 condoms to their server........ to be sure, to be sure....

They're not the only music software group being attacked. Someone didn't like free software in the pro audio/video area.

http://lwn.net/Articles/132773/


_________________
(formerly Mikka.....message to self...get off the net)


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: emzee on 2005-04-25 22:41 ]</font>

On 2005-04-25 18:00, narly wrote:
...I know it's a small enterprise with a troubled past, but... Customer service is everything today ...

the company is an anachronism and I love them for being it, as long (and as good) as it gets
their product-customer-progress oriented business model, spiced with a lot of faith and enthusiasm is totally outfashioned today.
It is almost imposssible to succeed with such a broad (low budget) target group.

I'd rather consider most stuff (in this segment of the pro audio market) as overhyped, re-branded, re-packaged or re-engineered at lower facility costs.

the majority of customer support departments (ok, even more outside of pro audio focus) are not much more than adress collectors for advertizing campaigns.

I don't deny that the opposite exists as, just to pick one 'close' example John Bowen has a phantastic service, but just have the overall picture in mind

not to forget that CWA is supposed to have a lot of work (with the same reduced staff) on their well established broadcast solutions.

if first things first applies there are more vital priorities than just a quick email response - an overestimated thing anyway and recently even condemned as worse for your concentration than weed...

cheers, Tom

Good service is a bonus these days, but it's not exactly ubiquitous is it? I certainly came to this conclusion when my credit card company took so long to send me a replacement card that I got a card with another company!

Back on topic - when you bought your CW system, you bought it for a certain platform/OS. There were never any guarantees that you would get free updates for every new OS version.

Look at ProTools TDM/Mix users - most are still on OS9. This is because it works and there's nothing apart from bells and whistles and marketing hype that's forcing them to upgrade.

Huuuuubbbbbbbiiiiirrrrrrdddddd!

good job by Paul D. Lehrman, except sales numbers it is publicity that can change things
thanks for the link Gary
cheers, still on OS9

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hubird on 2005-04-26 09:04 ]</font>

Sorry, but this article is obviously written by a guy, who has no idea about OSX.

<moaning>

"Optimisation" is a progress to "connect" the just installed application to the existing (dynamic) libraries provided by the OS. This can indeed take a while, but fastens up the start of the application in question. And it has nothing to do with permissions as he suggests later.
BUT some installers do change permissions, which isn't a good thing, but could be avoided with good quality assurance.

RAM: it is widely known, that one should only put proven RAM into a machine, This is even true for Wintel boxes. Btw, on his installer disk is an hardware checking app. Why didn't he just used this one ?

"Don't go into sleep mode" .. if hardware manufacturers complain about this or even advice it, they should also admit, that they aren't able to write drivers, which support this feature. Especially m-audio should be quite here ... their programming is .. errh .. brrr ..

If he has to restart his mac, because of a faulty usb audio driver, why does he blame OSX ?

If he looks to late on the digidesign site, why does he blame OSX for it ? Btw, it is widely know that digidesign supports/approves every new OS version only about half a year later. This was even at OS9 times the case.

His external drive experience: some people obviously must learn it the hard way, that they have to unmount a drive *before* he disconnects it physically.

Small annoyances:
- I can add a question mark or a slash to a filename; don't know, why he can't.
- permissions: uh, "it's my machine, so why can't I just do what I want with it?" .. that's a pointless argument. He already has proven by his missing knowledge, that he would have distroyed his whole system, if everything would be allowed to do for him.

I could go on ..

</moaning>

No question, OSX could be improved in many ways and it is still not perfect (even not tiger). But to me it looks like, he desperately tried to find annoyances. This is easy with any OS out there.

Two years ago I was a Wintel believer and never thought about macs. Due to my job I had to start using a mac.
Now you could say, I'm converted and start to enjoy a relatively troublefree and easy environment. This might not save money but a lot of nerves.

my two cents
Wolfgang

Don't get me wrong - CWA is the best and that's why we're all here. Deployment of automated sales and registration/download/support tools are surely an investment in themselves but if they don't work they are a drain, if at the very least becuase they do not live up to their intent which is simplify sales/support and to liberate the team to focus on admittedly more important objectives >> boosting sales w/ new products/development. If these tools can't be made to work, then it's a problem that affects the team as well as consumers who we'd like to think will continue to do buisness w/ CWA. So, it's gotta work if you want to move on to the big stuff and keep the money flowing in from new and existing customers, many of whom would just as soon buy a hyped/rebranded product because of ease of support/registration (not that CWA wants all of those customers or even that all of them are deserving of Creamware superiority ).

I know Creamware Audio wants to have it work reliably and have their own challenges with that and I don't seriously doubt their ability to sort it out. I can't pretend to know what underlies the issues with it. Scads of other sites exist that perform the same functions, but don't seem to have the same frequency or amount of downtime. It just doesn't seem a good indicator if THAT can't be made stable, what is the expectation that development of presumably low-profit efforts like OSX/Linux will happen? This is not a condemnation, just an observation about what can be expected from CWA as they exist today. Sure, I would like to be on OSX someday, but am not hedging any bets on it - so I've situated myself in Win2k (yes, I know "Windoze"...) and will wait and see what happens. I guess my hope was to impart reality on any who act completely fed-up and would threaten to trash their Scope setups because they can't have OSX now. This isn't a reasonable reaction, IMHO. Stay the course - buy MORE CWA products!

It also isn't reasonable to hit Apple for opting into PCI-X technology, as was pointed out there are a ton of G4/OS9 users out there using what's available (CWA or otherwise). OSX could be developed to suit the G4 user base which I'd guess is fairly broad and doesn't require new CWA hardware. Based on where CWA is apparently situated, that can't be a priority though, but that's how it's gotta be. That is no reason to give up the ghost though.

CWA is an inspiring team with fantastic technology behind them and I'm encouraged that there is development happening that will hopefully boost their strength. Hopefully their market read is correct, but no one has a crystal ball as has been evidenced by other monumental flops in audio R&D (not necessarily by CWA).

I look at it this way: the potential development of the alternate OS support is a bonus if it is to ever happen. In the meantime, what is available now is extremely workable, so use it to it's best advantage (like those ProTools TDM/Mix users ).

Not meaning to be so long winded - it's not like I have a monopoly on thought...

exactly.
the thing that struck me about the article was how much these osx complaints sounded like windows complaints(not in substance but in perception).

This is also partly because the Mac world is now coming to terms with issues and annoyances that the Linux upstarts of the last 5 years have been dealing with. UNIX/BSD was not originally designed for colorful desktop work. It's been adapted admirably by the likes of Ubuntu, SuSE, Linspire, and yes Apple, but those issues of permissions, and firewire/USB hot swapping, etc. are *NIX issues through and through.

Sam

On 2005-04-26 10:50, wolf wrote:

Sorry, but this article is obviously written by a guy, who has no idea about OSX.

<moaning>

"Optimisation" is a progress to "connect" the just installed application to the existing (dynamic) libraries provided by the OS. This can indeed take a while, but fastens up the start of the application in question. And it has nothing to do with permissions as he suggests later.
BUT some installers do change permissions, which isn't a good thing, but could be avoided with good quality assurance.

RAM: it is widely known, that one should only put proven RAM into a machine, This is even true for Wintel boxes. Btw, on his installer disk is an hardware checking app. Why didn't he just used this one ?

"Don't go into sleep mode" .. if hardware manufacturers complain about this or even advice it, they should also admit, that they aren't able to write drivers, which support this feature. Especially m-audio should be quite here ... their programming is .. errh .. brrr ..

If he has to restart his mac, because of a faulty usb audio driver, why does he blame OSX ?

If he looks to late on the digidesign site, why does he blame OSX for it ? Btw, it is widely know that digidesign supports/approves every new OS version only about half a year later. This was even at OS9 times the case.

His external drive experience: some people obviously must learn it the hard way, that they have to unmount a drive *before* he disconnects it physically.

Small annoyances:
- I can add a question mark or a slash to a filename; don't know, why he can't.
- permissions: uh, "it's my machine, so why can't I just do what I want with it?" .. that's a pointless argument. He already has proven by his missing knowledge, that he would have distroyed his whole system, if everything would be allowed to do for him.

I could go on ..

</moaning>

No question, OSX could be improved in many ways and it is still not perfect (even not tiger). But to me it looks like, he desperately tried to find annoyances. This is easy with any OS out there.

Two years ago I was a Wintel believer and never thought about macs. Due to my job I had to start using a mac.
Now you could say, I'm converted and start to enjoy a relatively troublefree and easy environment. This might not save money but a lot of nerves.

my two cents
Wolfgang

On 2005-04-26 15:54, stardust wrote:
Where the hack did these guys spend the last 10 years ?

these gues and girls were working on projects all the time, instead of thinking why this or that mobo doesn't work
No? check out my website, everything -and not too little- is made within the last 4 years, and I'm a slow creator
http://www.ezsound.nl

If you speak about ideologic behaviour, you forget that the base of the relative succes of a Macintosh computer consists of the unity of operating system and computer hardware, as opposed to the principal modular structure of Wintel machines.

Yes, this automaticly awakes some brand consciousness, it has to do with trust in the company you depend on for your work.
This way, the socalled 'ideologic behaviour' is nothing more than the logic opponent of 'total freedom of choice', so important in the pc world.

It's an old reproach, that of ideological behaviour, but if I read my Dutch Mac magazine I can't find anything serious that looks like that, on the contrary even.
They show off a very critical attitude to Apple's.

Anyway, all these words don't mean I feel bothered about it, I just like the debate now and then

A friend of mine to whom I sent that article's link, came with exactly the same reaction as Wolf (that friend makes a good living from multi medea work on mac for years, btw he made my website also).

I myself am not capable of enlightening the discussion, as I'm really stupid (and, obviously, don't work on OSX).
To me the annoyences in the articles don't really look like showstoppers...
Except the PCI voltage problem.
A really rotten apple in the basket indeed.

Personally I have no problem with OSX, although certain aspects are clunky and I miss the slick feeling of a tweaked XP install. However it has other benefits (generally much easier to get realtime glitchfree audio happening, certain software not available on other platforms, etc).

The issue I have is with people who expect magical things to happen with updates for an OS which is brand new for CW. OSX is completely different to write for. And outsourcing the job to external entities requires a *lot* of thought and planning. The Scope source code is basically everything that Creamware has.. if it were to be exploited they would have nothing. I don't think it's so hard to see this. Let's hope they manage to get a system in place where they can keep the important areas of the source secure, while outsourcing the platform-specific bits. Maybe they'll even get some R+D money happening after sales of the ASB synths and do it themselves.

I can't be bothered to read the article, but one of the things I've run across on the G5 is the bad bus design.. everything (firewire, USB, PCI etc) shares the same bandwidth, and can be rather annoying in quite a few circumstances. I think it's only the PCI-X slots which might have a different bus, althought I'm not 100% sure about this. I really hope this stuff is improved in future hardware revisions.

well, Wolf and your friend may not see the whole picture...
and I hope that everyone here has checked this guy's website

On 2005-04-26 10:50, wolf wrote:

Sorry, but this article is obviously written by a guy, who has no idea about OSX.

"Optimisation" is a progress to "connect" the just installed application to the existing (dynamic) libraries provided by the OS. This can indeed take a while, but fastens up the start of the application in question. And it has nothing to do with permissions as he suggests later.
BUT some installers do change permissions, which isn't a good thing, but could be avoided with good quality assurance.

his quote of the developer ...you have no idea how hard these libraries make my job... is a similiar bottom line

RAM: it is widely known, that one should only put proven RAM into a machine, This is even true for Wintel boxes. Btw, on his installer disk is an hardware checking app. Why didn't he just used this one ?

your wrong Wolfgang - I've been through almost the same process WITH properly speced quality brand RAMs. Without an Apple label your lost...

how about my error: we used a customer relations app which makes use of some Oracle interface libs (running under VirtualPC), which performed flawless on a Sawtooth G4.
On the Dual-mem-bitchy-G4 the app didn't start any more and complained some Oracle files missed or have been damaged.

No problem - go to the original G4 - verify the app is ok and copy VPC's drive image to the Dual.
Yes, the Oracle library bla, blah
Back to the Sawtooth - the app performs as ever - impossible - another network copy - same result.

But one doesn't have 15 years of Mac support for nothing, so power down the machine, remove the extra RAM (as it was the last modification of the machine), boot again and bingo, customer relations reappear like magic

I bet you NEVER would guess a hardware error from the message above, an emulated Windows message btw when everything else, even in VPC, was completely normal.

His external drive experience: some people obviously must learn it the hard way, that they have to unmount a drive *before* he disconnects it physically.

the warning about the Oxford chipsset was recently confirmed by Apple and published in their name in mags.
By pure chance we happen to have Genesys ones in our external drives...

...No question, OSX could be improved in many ways and it is still not perfect (even not tiger). But to me it looks like, he desperately tried to find annoyances.
...
Now you could say, I'm converted and start to enjoy a relatively troublefree and easy environment. ...

that's the difference: you've been converted recently and he started 20 years ago.
What he expresses (I'd consider it mild irony , not even sarcasm) is the normal reaction of everyone who used to work (productively) with Apple's 'traditional' machines.

Those things simply didn't concern you - they didn't even exist.
When Apple started a new OS it was legitimate to assume it's for improving the old one - but in productivity they missed badly.
They won the consumer market and tarnished Unix in the most impressive way (I have a mini Mac here).
It's as if you have a notebook for mobility, but are forced to carry your Desktop PC with you to make it run.

Seriously, I'm not kidding - rather expecting a fair amount of xtra workload=cash from OSX, so no reason at all to complain but I have not spoken to one single pro user who preferred OSX - all used it because they had to.
That's not about 'welcome to reality' - people familiar with the latest versions of OS9 were in fact already suffering from the OSX transition.

Apple's professional user base, who worked for > a decade with OS7 and OS8 turned out to be the most horrible customers.
Their machines did their job and were never replaced - just new ones were aquired if a new position in the company was created.

THAT's the reason for OSX and not some technical necessity or superiority
Btw if OS7 would run natively on a G5 it would be pretty useless - it would be simply too fast to read the sceen output

cheers, Tom

Something I've noticed about OSX is that it 'feels' the same on every machine you use it on, regardless of speed. The speed of the GUI seems to be set to a fixed value, and I find this extremely bizarre, I have to say.

The speed of the OsX gui is unfortunately one of the downsides. One of the graphics apps I used until a year or so ago was ported to OsX relatively early (and me along with it) and I never did relish having to fire it up. Unlike music where the dsp can continue in the background, I was tied to the speed of the interface up until I hit render.

I will have to say though that there are things that I preferred about OsX, namely the access to the 'underpinnings' that the BSD legacy brought with it.

his quote of the developer ...you have no idea how hard these libraries make my job... is a similiar bottom line

But he's talking about the library folders located in the system and user domains. A developer should know the difference between a user and a system domain (I admit some still don't know).
I was talking about the framework libraries, which are used by a lot of applications. Sorry for not beeing clear about this.

your wrong Wolfgang - I've been through almost the same process WITH properly speced quality brand RAMs. Without an Apple label your lost...

mmh, I have 2 GB non-apple labeled (but prooved) Ram in my PowerBook, works very well. The same with the several G5, the iBook, another PowerBook and the iMacs I have at my job.

I bet you NEVER would guess a hardware error from the message above, an emulated Windows message btw when everything else, even in VPC, was completely normal.

nope

the warning about the Oxford chipsset was recently confirmed by Apple and published in their name in mags. By pure chance we happen to have Genesys ones in our external drives...

Yes, I know. But he did some other fundamental errors regarding external drives (and backups), which I was referring to.

that's the difference: you've been converted recently and he started 20 years ago.

I know .. and coming from Windows, OSX is like having holiday
But I always hated it, when I had to work in a custom studio with OS9 equipped only. Of course this might have been due to my unawareness of OS9 at that time and the ongoing crashes, which were regularly followed by the need of a long winded system restart

What he expresses (I'd consider it mild irony , not even sarcasm) is the normal reaction of everyone who used to work (productively) with Apple's 'traditional' machines.

I consider this to be a "I don't wanna learn and/or don't need the new bells and whistles".
Jazzanova still used notator on atari in 2001; now they wonder, what the hell did them keep from using newer stuff

When Apple started a new OS it was legitimate to assume it's for improving the old one - but in productivity they missed badly.

That is simply not true. It's just, that the troubleshooting guidelines for OS9 are no longer guilty for OSX, therefor some people are lost. It's the simplicity in some areas, that is missed, although OSX still is very easy to use. E.g. you don't need to bother with the underlying Unix, but you can. In most cases productivity is prevented by the person in question, not the tools

but I have not spoken to one single pro user who preferred OSX - all used it because they had to.

In my job among other things I take care for hollywood filmscorers, well known artists and guys, who do mixes for Sinnead O'Connor and the like, which I consider to be pros. They started using OSX because they wanted it, but not because they were forced to it. In the beginning some moaned, in the meantime most are convinced and enjoy the stability and easyness
There are also a few guys, who still use OS9 and don't consider to move on because everything just works and the money is better spend in a nice weekend/holiday
I won't argue with that, as it doesn't make sense to change a running system.

THAT's the reason for OSX and not some technical necessity or superiority

This might be true for some companies, but not for all (people). As said, for some there is really no need to change the system, others want to use the new functions newer software delivers, and need the power of the new machines (e.g. because they want to go native only and ditch digidesign).

Btw if OS7 would run natively on a G5 it would be pretty useless - it would be simply too fast to read the sceen output

oh, btw, the gui speed will be a lot better in tiger thanks to CoreImage and the usage of the graphic cards processor and hopefully will advance in future as soon as developers start to make use of it.

cheers
Wolfgang

The real issue with the GUI is that its not as high priority as it is in the Windoze world. This does mean that OsX users are unlikely to ever find the graphics card drivers swamping the bus (to all those windows users who rely on DoubleDawg) but at the same time I think it is a bit odd for a machine that supposedly targets the 'creative' professionals. Certainly it has sped up a bit over the last 4 years or so, but remains sluggish regardless. Doesn't affect audio of course...