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Comment by robenkleene | Hacker News Reader

Apple makes Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, Notes, Calendar, Contacts, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Freeform, just from a "quality" standpoint, I'd rank any of those applications as competitive for the "highest quality" app in their category (an admittedly difficult thing to measure). In aggregate, those applications would make Apple the most effective company in the world at making high-quality GUI applications.

Curious if I'm missing something though, is there another entity with a stronger suite than that? Or some other angle to look at this? (E.g., it seems silly to me to use an MP3 metadata example when you're talking about the same company that makes Logic Pro.)

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Of those apps you've listed that I've used, none of them have been notable for being high quality to me, though as you say it's difficult to measure. For me I would rate them somewhere between unremarkable (notes, calendar, contacts!?) and awkward (pages, numbers, keynote). If you asked me to guess what desktop software Apple makes that people rate highly, I never would have guessed any of those, except _maybe_ Logic[1] and Final Cut, though ironically those are two of the three I've never used.

I also think you're confusing what I wrote. It's not a competition.

I have just found that Apple's hardware on desktop has been stronger than their software, in my experience (periodic sporadic use, ~2006->now).

[1] and now from a sibling comment I hear that perhaps people regard that tool as bad, so there you go, they jury is clearly out

What software do you find to be higher quality and why? That's the only valid way of even trying to have this conversation.

E.g., I'd rank something like VS Code "lower quality" because when I launch VS Code, I can see each layer of the UI pop in as it's created, e.g., first I see a blank window, then I see window chrome being loaded, then a I see a row of icons being loaded on the left. This gives an impression of the software not being solid, because it feels like the application is struggling just to display the UI.

> I also think you're confusing what I wrote. It's not a competition.

> I have just found that Apple's hardware on desktop has been stronger than their software, in my experience (periodic sporadic use, ~2006->now).

I disagree with this, the only way to make an argument that Apple has deficiencies in their software is to demonstrate that other software is higher quality than Apples. Otherwise it could just be Apple's quality level is the maximum feasible level of quality.

> unremarkable (notes, calendar, contacts!?) and awkward (pages, numbers, keynote).

This is laughable, Notes is unremarkable? Give me a break, and Keynote is awkward? Have you ever Google'd how people feel about these applications?

I'd argue a critic only has value if they're willing to offer their own taste for judgement.

Do you regularly use the alternatives to these programs? Admittedly I'm not cut out to judge the office suite, but the consensus in the music world seems to be that Logic Pro is awful. It lacks support for lots of plugins and hardware, and costs loads for what is essentially a weaker value prop than Bitwig or Ableton Live. Most bedroom musicians are using Garageband or other cheap DAWs like Live Lite, and the professional studios are all bought into Pro Tools or Audition. Don't even get me started on the number of pros I see willingly use Xcode...

It's not exactly clear to me what niche Apple occupies in this market. It doesn't feel like "native Mac UI" is a must-have feature for DAWs or IDEs alike, but maybe that's just my perspective.

Yes, I use Ableton Live every day.

> It lacks support for lots of plugins and hardware, and costs loads for what is essentially a weaker value prop than Bitwig or Ableton Live.

This is an obviously silly statement, not only is Logic Pro competitively priced ($200, relative to $100-$400 for Bitwig, $99-$750 for Live), but those applications obviously have different focuses than Logic Pro (sound design and electronic music, versus the more general-purpose and recording focus of Logic Pro, also you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't think Logic Pro comes with the best suite of stock plugins of any DAW, so the value prop angle is a particularly odd argument to make [i.e., Logic Pro is pretty obviously under priced]).

But all this isn't that important because many of these applications are great. DAWs are one of the most competitive software categories around and there are several applications folks will vehemently defend as the best and Logic Pro is unequivocally one of them.

> Most bedroom musicians are using Garageband or other cheap DAWs like Live Lite, and the professional studios are all bought into Pro Tools or Audition.

This is old, but curious if you have a better source for your statement https://blog.robenkleene.com/2019/06/10/2015-digital-audio-w...

Found a more recent survey https://www.production-expert.com/production-expert-1/2024-d...

> We can see that Pro Tools for music is the most popular choice, with Logic for music second and Pro Tools for post coming third.

Note that I'd say Logic Pro's popularity is actually particularly notable since it's not crossplatform, so the addressable market is far smaller than the other big players. It's phenomenal popular software, both in terms of raw popularity and fans who rave about it. E.g., note the contrast in how people talk about Pro Tools vs. Logic Pro. Logic Pro has some of the happiest users around, but Pro Tools customers talk like they feel like their hostages to the software. That difference is where the quality argument comes in.

That is an awfully large amount of text for what amounts to an admission that Logic Pro is lower quality software than Pro Tools. Your comment reeks of all the hallmarks of Reality Distortion Syndrome, while I'm willing to argue on merits you simply sound smitten by Apple's (rapidly degenerating) accumen for visual design. In the other response, you're telling off a perfectly valid criticism of Apple software because they won't fulfill your arbitrary demand for a better-looking DAW. Are you even engaging with the point they're trying to make?

I'm sorry to say it, but I genuinely think you're detached from the way professionals evaluate software. While I enjoyed my time on macOS when Apple treated it like a professional platform, I have no regrets leaving it behind or it's "quality" software. Apple Mail fucking sucks, iCloud is annoying as sin, the Settings App only got worse year-over-year and the default Music app is somehow slower than iTunes from 2011. Ads pop up everywhere, codecs and filesystems go unsupported due to greed, and hardware you own gets randomly depreciated because you didn't buy a replacement fast enough.

If that's your life, go crazy. People like you helped me realize that Macs aren't made for people like me.

> That is an awfully large amount of text for what amounts to an admission that Logic Pro is lower quality software than Pro Tools.

I definitely didn't say this. Pro Tools likely has higher marketshare than Logic Pro, but I don't think anyone would conflate that with quality. I only brought up marketshare because you framed Logic Pro as being unpopular, which is just objectively not true.

> I'm sorry to say it, but I genuinely think you're detached from the way professionals evaluate software.

I literally think I've spent more time trying to understand this than practically anyone else e.g., https://blog.robenkleene.com/2023/06/19/software-transitions... but also my blog archives https://blog.robenkleene.com/archive/, it's one of the main subjects I think about and write about.

Note that how professionals evaluate software is tangential to what "quality" means in the context of software. E.g., I don't think anyone would argue Adobe is the paragon of software quality, but they're arguably the most important GUI software there is for creative professionals.

Both topics are very interesting to me, what software professionals use and why, and what constitutes quality in software.

> In the other response, you're telling off a perfectly valid criticism of Apple software because they won't fulfill your arbitrary demand for a better-looking DAW. Are you even engaging with the point they're trying to make?

I'm not sure what this means, who's talking about a "better-looking DAW" and which point am I not engaging with?

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