Apple unveils biggest update to Logic since the launch of Logic Pro X

It is simple, it continues to keep professional people with large budgets on the Mac. These creative people are often influential to others (an example of this is a music artist I follow on Instagram who basically constantly posts their mobile studio setup that involves a MacBook Pro - free advertising of the most valuable type, organic).

Compare Logic’s cost with a $800/year ProTools subscription and suddenly you might not really mind the fact that the SSD in your new Mac is overpriced. With that price difference it would be illogical to ever move to software that can run on Windows.

It’s great for their brand. Apple has always used musicians to brand itself as a creative brand.

Musicians are way more visible as creatives than photographers. Becoming a rock star is a thing, becoming a rock star photographer is... uhm... yeah well no, not the same as a real rock star.

Maybe a mix of marketing value and organizational inertia? Music software allows you to do the famous musician uses Mac sell which Aperture does not. People probably can name you their favorite musician but not so much photographer.

For decades creatives and even non-creatives were able to be convinced that "Macs were better for audio, video, photography" without any analysis of benchmarks, hardware differences, performance.

This thought pattern transcended the PowerPC processor, to the off-the-shelf Intel processors that the competitors used, to the ARM processors the mobile devices used.

Apple continuing that perception with at least software updates can continue to cement their hegemony amongst the minds of people.

They're also good machines without the fluff! But merely showing support for that perception can help retain the premium pricing when even artists across the entire socioeconomic spectrum (heavily weighted to one side) will still prioritize getting Apple devices over other expenses, or at least aspire to and talk about those dreams.

It doesn't really make much sense from a $ perspective and really only serves as a lesser (and rapidly diminishing) halo effect for the rest of the brand. Logic is one of those programs that keeps people on Macs. I'm sure I don't need to explain this to a Logic owner but audio engineering and production was strictly a Mac-only affair in the past and that has rapidly changed over the past decade. Macs have gotten increasingly difficult to work with due to constant OS updates breaking everything and have only gotten more expensive with less options for actual professional users who need real I/Os. Keeping Logic fresh is important to keep people from switching as everything else they do on a more macro level is pushing people in that direction.

Someone somewhere in Apple decided that holding onto this market was worth it for probably solely the halo effect. I can't think of any other reason and makes no sense from a strictly financial perspective.

One thing that’s always been very important to Apple’s marketing is the sense that the coolest people in the world use Macs. The positioning has always been “Well that CEO has a PC but that artist with a lot of sexual partners uses a Mac.”

Logic is part of the portfolio to preserve that image by having as many musicians as possible using Apple hardware and software.

Once the DJs start using Windows, they'll stop buying iPhones, and once the DJs stop buying iPhones, the people who go to clubs will stop buying iPhones, and once the people who go to clubs stop buying iPhones so will everyone else.

To be more specific, and in response to your reply:

Together with Final Cut Pro, Apple wants to have Mac-only exclusive software that is aimed specifically at cool creative professionals to build up the image that trendy creatives use Macs (and you therefore have no choice but to use a Mac, otherwise you won't have the software you need).

Aperture couldn't really compete with Adobe's whole workflow (since Apple didn't have a full-fledged Photoshop competitor). But also, movies and music are "sexier" in a way.

AVID Pro Tools works on Windows so it doesn't do anything for Apple. The whole point is awesome software that works only on Macs.

The day that every single program creatives use runs as Windows as well as Macs, is the day it becomes a lot harder for a lot of people to justify buying a Mac. It's that simple.

(So it's certainly not about any profit from the software directly, and it's also not just a marketing "halo".)

The Windows port was discontinued the same day Emagic was sold to Apple.

I always assumed that the goal was to strengthen the Apple brand and signal that it's a more suitable system for creative work.

I'd think it must be to sell laptops, not to sell Logic.

Now, do they need to do this to sell laptops, does it actually sell significant laptops, are there more people that buy a Mac laptop for Logic than who bought or would have a Mac laptop for Aperture? I dunno. It's also possible they miscalculated with Aperture. Or may be miscalculating now with Logic. Apple can make mistakes or behave irrationally too.

But it's gotta be to sell laptops. (Which is consistent with not charging for the upgrade; it's not about revenue from the software at all). And there are definitely at least some people buying a Mac laptop for Logic. (In a world with decreasing laptop sales in general, as many move phone/tablet only).

Now, with what you say about iPhones... I keep worrying that Apple will decide they don't really care about selling laptops after all someday...

Came here to ask the same question and so far none of the answer seems convincing to me. It would have made a little more sense if they had released this update as Logic Pro 11 and charges some upgrade fees. Instead it is free. To put it into perspective, Logic Pro X user has been getting free update for nearly 7 years running!

I think one possible reason / theory is that the resource allocated to Logic is so small ( by today's Apple standard ) none of the management bother about it, and it is not running in direct competition to any of their own Apps ( Aperture with Photos ) or their close allies's ( Adobe ). So the name Logic dont even pops up into management radar and the team decide to keep working on it.

And compared to Final Cut Pro or Aperture against its competitors, I think Logic is doing very well for musicians in many professional market. ( And they are the ones willing to buy Mac Pro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNrG2mwt4Uo. And in the later video, turns out literally most of his audio kits are ridiculously expensive. And Mac Pro isn't even considered expensive at all. )

When Apple vs. PC wars first started, PC won because of software. It’s a lesson Steve learned which is probably still guides their thinking. This is why there is numbers, keynotes, Pages, etc.

Apple still wants to empower the creative community with Finalcut Logic. To ensure if you’re a creator there is a software to support you on the Mac platform.

I agree with this and it makes me chuckle to think about how much Google has distorted outer world view. A tech company isn’t nuking their legacy software!? I’m shocked!

My guess is that Apple knows a lot of people need to keep on buying macs to use Logic and Final Cut.

Look at the price of Logic compared to other DAWs. Apple is almost giving it away for free. It only costs $200 but in contrast comparable DAWs cost many times that. Ableton Live Suite costs $750. Nuendo costs $1000. Etc.

AFAIK Aperture never had such a hardcore following and didn't offer such a unique product. The photography market is clearly dominated by Adobe anyway.

Selling the super high end Mac pros into the audio industry probably

I don't ask questions; I just gratefully take the cheap Logic updates as they come!

It's the same reason Apple invests so heavily in Pages, Keynote and Numbers (all free apps on three different platforms). They believe that building software internally (taking hardware into account) leads to a better user experience, and sparks an intangible 'joy' when using their products--a sense of completeness that transcends software and hardware. This was the core of Jobs' philosophy and I think still drives the entire company.

Other responses have made great points about why it's worth something, but I'll take another tack:

I don't think it costs Apple much to do this.

How much does it cost to keep Logic around? There's engineering/product/design costs, marketing, and training/selling costs in store. The training probably pays for itself and not many staff at Apple Stores are trained anyway. There's very little marketing, so it's entirely possible there is no dedicated marketing resource for Logic.

As for the product/engineering/design, it's well known that Apple is pretty lean on these sorts of things and often has far smaller teams than outsiders expect. I could see this easily being no more than a team of 5 at this point, maybe less. It obviously took a lot more to get it to this point, but with very few features over the last ~5 years, it's possible that it's been iterated enough to just be easy to maintain in its current form (assuming no major changes).

All in maintenance team budget could be <$2m/year (not including store training in this). Apple probably spent that on door handles in the new HQ, and I can see Logic being as important a "halo" project as the HQ door handles.

Thinking about a Mac Pro market I came to the conclusion [1] it might be for the audio market. If this is true I can imagine that Logic is still important for Apple.

[1] Lack of Nvidia support means 3D/CAD and video/FX users will choose other brands.

> I can't understand its strategic value to today's Apple

I've long had the same question about Claris. At least Logic fits in to Apple's brand thesis; FileMaker would make way more sense at Microsoft or Oracle.

The answer to the Aperture question is easy: Apple decided those are more popular features and largely rolled those features into Photos.app. Even Adobe generally agrees, Lightroom CC is more of a competitor for Photos.app (both are entirely cloud-based) than Lightroom Classic (which is focused on the offline features that professionals generally need).

In addition to what others have mentioned, it is also the step up from their free and cross platform Garage Band application. It is an easy way to build lock-in on those stepping up from novice/hobby users into a professional daw without losing control of the soft-synth voice control from one platform to the next.

The reason Apple keeps Logic is they generally have a strategy of trickling down features from big pro apps to smaller consumer apps. Logic -> GarageBand, Final Cut -> iMovie, Xcode -> Swift Playgrounds.

The AVID idea doesn’t make much sense as Logic and Final Cut are already integrated into their product lines. I think there’s a certain amount of truth to the brand prestige argument, but I think the more important point is that these capabilities are actually core to Apple's product strategy, they just manifest themselves in unintuitive ways. E.g., Apple's AUv3 strategy would never have worked without GarageBand and GarageBand is Logic.

> Anybody have any thoughts on what Logic does for Apple that Aperture didn't?

I'm not familiar with Aperture. According to Wikipedia it and iPhotos were abandoned to the benefit of Photos. Not knowing why Apple made this choice, I don't know if doing something equivalent with Logic would make sense.

I do know Logic. It's a well respected DAW and some musicians do buy a Mac just to be able to use Logic. Also, DAWs take a long time term to learn well, so when the time comes for a Logic user to upgrade or replace an old machine, they'll probably buy a new Mac. (More convenient, less hassle.) All this of course helps Mac sales.

And while Mac sales might not be much these days compared to iPhone and iPad sales, the margins on Macs are still high, so why shouldn't Apple continue to sell Macs?

Is it possible they keep it around as a pet project for developers whom they wish to keep on staff?

Anecdotally — I have a lot of friends and colleagues in the music industry — I wouldn’t say Pro Tools is more prestigious. It seems pretty split on people’s preferences and old habits die hard, but a LOT of top composers and producers use Logic.

> That's plausible but AVID Pro Tools is even more prestigious than Logic and AVID's market cap is only $250 million[0].

In no universe is Pro Tools more prestigious than any of its competition.

I think Pro Tools is viewed as The Thing That All Studio PHB Managers Purchased At Some Point So It's Reasonable For Studio Techs to Be Trained For. Kind of the "nobody ever got fired for picking IBM" of the music industry. In my opinion, AVID does not have a reputation for making innovative products. See what happened when they acquired Sibelius (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI).

My limited experience with the industry suggests that Ableton, Bitwig, and Logic are the Cool Tools for Producing Music, that Cubase (Steinberg) is particularly popular with composers, that FL Studio is the cool low-cost leader among students, and that Reason is The Outsider. Notice which software is not in this list.

Logic is better than ProTools (not encumbered by legacy implementation). It is also the basis for GarageBand on Mac and iOS.

I think killing off Aperture was as much a strategic focusing move as anything else. Prior to developing the current Photos app (Mac and iOS share a codebase), Apple was developing and maintaining Mac iPhotos, iOS iPhotos, Aperture and the old iOS Photos app (Pictures? I don’t even remember).

Reducing it all to one cross platform codebase allowed them to make the bundled app a bit more full featured, double down on a few headline mass market features like photos sync and theoretically add more features that are missing from Aperture over time. That said, they’ll probably never duplicate it all, probably don’t want to duplicate it all and they seem to have focused more of their photography effort on iPhone computational photography. Not to mention when Aperture was first released, Pixelmator, Acorn and Lightroom didn’t exist (on the market at least) yet.

Contrast with Logic where there still isn’t a lot like it and part of how you get to be a billion dollar business is by maintaining those hundred million dollar businesses. There’s a lot more YouTubers, DJs and Podcasters out there now, not just musicians and one thing they all have in common is they’re all dealing with audio production.

It's interesting to see so much commentary (on HN and elsewhere) about Apple having lost its way with "pro" users from a hardware perspective (touchbar, butterfly mechanism, lack of a desktop tower)... But not see this as its attempt to avoid the same criticism from a software perspective.

I suspect they continue to invest (at least some) into their "pro" software because they have a loyal user-base that they don't want to tick off in the same way they did with their hardware business.

Taking a step back from objective pros and cons or other traits of individual DAWs, the fact that so _many_ producers and YouTube stars use Logic suggests its' value. This more from a populism standpoint, but there is assurance that a great crowd of users could help a single user when an issue arises.

This is like the metrics SW engineers keep tabs on for language popularity. More questions in Stack Overflow and number of lines registered in GitHub suggest a language's value separate from, but suggestive of, objective traits.

I think without knowing how much it costs Apple to maintain and update Logic it's hard to know. How do I way value versus cost without knowing costs? As far as Logic vs Avid; Logic locks a user into the Apple ecosystem, that is one difference.

> People have been speculating this possible acquisition for years but I don't think it will happen. So not sure what Logic does for Apple that AVID Pro Tools doesn't.

Might be a little ot. But Apple did actually acquired many top visionaries and developers from Avid to Logic team many years ago.

1 - It makes money.

2 - The team is in place, and they are good at it.

3 - They bring internal feedback about latency, driver reliability etc, that makes the platform an excellent one for artists

4 - It is exclusive - so why get Windows when you can get more options on Mac?

> So not sure what Logic does for Apple that AVID Pro Tools doesn't.

Logic (besides being one of my favorite DAWs, supporting poly pressure and MPE, etc.) also forms the basis for GarageBand (and MainStage, which I also like.)

GarageBand is a fantastic and widely used program; personally I consider it a "killer app" that makes iPads (and iPhones and Macs) incredibly useful in music education, recording, and performance. The live loops view actually showed up on iOS GarageBand before being added to Logic.

I own Logic, so I too and happy about the updates. I use Logic every day and since my preference is making music, I don't really have any reason to want to spend the time to learn another DAW.

So, by keeping Logic reasonably up-to-date compared to other DAWs, Apple retains my Mac loyalty. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

With logic Pro, the money is not made in the software, but in hardware. Users of Logic Pro will buy thousands of dollars of Apple hardware to support music creation with the software.

I'll tell you this much - if there were a good alternative to Logic that ran on Linux, I'd stop buying MacBook Pros. But I can't adjust to any other workflow, so I bought a new MacBook this year.

Teach a person how to make a song and they might buy your hardware.

Teach a person how to make a song in Logic Pro X and they must buy your hardware. (so that their workflow doesn't get impacted)

I'm sure the thinking is similar to this:

https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/e7703c0a95907363504064...

The stock photos with the monitor, iMac Pro, iPad Pro, and iPhone 11 easily contain $15k worth of Apple products. If this $200 software can attract people with that budget, it's a win for them. Unlike much programming, audio and video production seems to still need powerful local computers.

I wonder if Apple discontinued aperture because the number of potential users is so high? Everyone who buys an iPhone is a photographer, and their consumer solution for them is the photos app. They want to dumb everything down and make it more streamlined, so all your photos just sync via the photos app to icloud and there’s no work involved like cataloging or organizing. You can make all your basic exposure and color edits right in the camera or photos app.

Positioning aperture alongside final cut and logic, as the power tool for cool creative professionals, would confuse that because of how big photography is for the iPhone.

Edit: also come to think of it, aperture was almost exclusively a tool for managing your photos shot on a dslr. Apple just wants everything to be “shot on iPhone” now so you shouldn’t need that type of legacy workflow.

Aperture did not have a monthly subscription that's why it was dropped.

Photos has a monthly subscription and Music has one, that's why those were kept.

News has a subscription.

They are working on Chess and Dictionary to get subscriptions too. But if you open the about menu, you'll see these have been updated in 15+ years, so it has not been much of a cost to maintain those.

Apple doesn’t sell a service for 10.99/month to look at the photos you and others edited. They sell a service for you to listen to the music you made on software you already paid to license. Logic is also used as a front end like abelton/fl studio before a finishing software like protools is used for mixing in final workflows in my experience. Major label recordings are filled with sounds made in logic, sequenced in abelton, mixed in protools then finished in sequoia or something else. Apple has a bad rep for not supporting creative professionals, but they support when it benefits them like every other business. Logic has massive professional marketshare, it would be like Crescent stopping production on adjustable wrenches, because craftsman makes them anyway and it isn’t really making a dent in the bottom line. It’s one of the archetypal UX of a DAW and the expectation of good sounding stock instruments kinda came from them. I also hate when I have to use logic and would love if it went away, but that ain’t happening!!

I switched from Logic to Ableton recently and now I love Ableton's workflow. I just downloaded the Logic update, and while there are new things, it feels like the same old Logic that I just couldn't get into. I'll be sticking with Ableton.

After you hang around a bit more here, you won't be surprised anymore. Guys at HN have a specific way of destroying any good news or ideas...

My novation lauchkey 49 works perfectly with logic 10.2 (control surfaces->setup->new->mackie design HUI and then select the input/output port to your lauchkey)

That second one is super important for any of us stuck with 32-bit plugins that haven't gotten updates!

Agreed, but Logic's heavily subsidized by Apple. There's no way a DAW could cost so little, especially considering the plugins and instruments it comes with out of the box.

Still the UX is cluttered and the shortcuts obscure, I find Ableton much cleaner.

> Logic, an arguably superior product

how so? I personally find Ableton to be vastly superior to Logic. Some of these latest Logic updates look like copies of core Ableton workflow / features:

Live Loops : Session View

Drum Machine Designer : Drum Rack

Sampler & Quick Sampler : Sampler & Simpler (also Looper)

I don't quite see how it's an unsustainably cheap price that none of their competitors can match, considering that the implicit price of Logic includes $1000+ hardware to run macOS on.

I recently switched to more hardware based setup, because I just lost creativity on the computer and needed a switch up. I still use a DAW to record audio/midi from hardware to mix and master. But other than that all recording happens on hardware. Something about the computer doesn't really do it for me anymore when I stare at it all day programming. I'm liking hardware, I'm currently using Roland Fantom and the archaic sequencing and certain limits really inspire me. I can sit in front of that thing for hours.

>It's weird that they're going into that direction...

I think it's a reflection of the fact that there are (at least) two different kinds of ways to make music:

1. the "traditional" way of recording individual instruments in a more or less linear fashion

2. curating/compiling pieces of pre-recorded audio, aka samples, and triggering a sequence of them on-the-fly, while recording that sequence.

Each calls for a different set of tools and workflow. Logic's roots are in the former but Ableton tapped into the latter. Logic is trying to appeal to both.

REAPER has a great workflow. Its like the vim of DAW.

Why? I've been in a lot of studios and never seen Reaper used once. It's all Pro Tools and a surprising amount of Cubase. This is very much the same as "if you want to get serious about coding use VIM not VSCode".

Your comment reminds me of the last time they tried to show off audio production using the all new Touchbar in 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO-t2TTIdPE

There really is an embarrassment of wealth in terms of DAWs these days.

At the low end, Reaper, Cakewalk, GarageBand (not to mention Cubasis and Auria on the iPad), FL Studio, Reason Essentials, Bitwig 16-track et al. give you amazing capabilities for very little (sometimes no) money.

There is also an amazing wealth of great cheap or free instrument and effect plugins.

Nope. From the release notes the system requirements are 10.14.6 or later, so Mojave.

And he has a radio show on Apple Music. ;-)

(And the late great Avicii famously used FL Studio to great effect. These are amazing and affordable tools that are good enough for everything from podcasts to bedroom recordings to multiplatinum albums to film scores.)

Above and Beyond use it, Gabriel and Dresden, Armin van Buuren, Ferry Corsten.. A ton of famous names in the electronic music world use it. Many use Ableton and Logic together.

Isn't Cubase supposed to be more focused towards composition, sequencing, tonality