Fresh from the Apple Developer Connection:
Apple has interviewed music developers on the conversion process for Intel-native Universal binaries for the Intel Macs, talking to Ableton (Live 5.2), BIAS (Peak Pro, etc.), Metric Halo (drivers, plug-ins), Native Instruments (KORE), and Roland/Edirol (drivers).
The interview includes a glimpse of what goes on behind-the-scenes to drive the software we use. Ableton, for instance, uses Visual Studio on Windows and switched from CodeWarrior to Xcode for the Mac. If you’re a non-programmer, it might be worth a skim to see how Universal development is coming; for the most part, the news looks pretty good (provided developers gave themselves enough lead time). If you’re a programmer, it’s a must-read, as the developers give some tips on how to ease the process.
And as a reminder of why this is all worth it, watch MacBooks smoke PowerBooks running Peak Pro (pictured; just one example of performance gains across the board).
Going Universal: Audio Developers Catch the Wave [Apple Developer Connection]
In other Mac development news, Apple has updated its Audio Unit programming guide. It’s all you need to learn how to program audio plug-ins — provided you know MIDI, know a fair amount of DSP theory and mathematics, and are experienced with C++ programming. Yes, admittedly, that’s not a lot of you, especially with tools like Reaktor and Max/MSP that can let you build just about anything you can imagine with much more basic knowledge.
Those of you who are experienced AU developers, I’ll be curious to know if you think Apple has improved its documentation and examples with this update; I know both had been roundly criticized.