Ableton Forum

Screw it, looks like I am back at square one with getting an old model G5 imac and waiting who knows how long for all this crap to get ironed out.

My thought is its going to be a similar in time frame to the OS 9 to OS X port. Might be a little less if anything but itll take a bit of time

kenn michael wrote: Also remember that all these developers have different priorities when it comes to their own internal schedules and upcoming updates. Ableton has to now code for 3 platforms - Windows, OSX PPC, and OSX Intel.

They dont have to work on 3 now. Only 2. thats the point of Universal Binary. It will work on all the macs. intel or PPC.

Or even one!

Live never included Altivec, so there is nothing too awful to remove/replace. I am betting on a NAMM announcement. Robert has stated on here in the past that the codebases are very similar for XP and OSX. In his words

Good bye Altivec. You should praise us for not waisting resources into a technology which we tested and did not get a significant boost and which would have had the huge problem of maintaining two code bases.

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 9&start=10

as far as a UB version of Live goes I imagine it will be a lot easier/quicker transition than for (for example) Final Cut - which makes extensive use of Altivec.



So it shouldn't be too hard!

I am damn curious to see those macintel UB performance figures.

inis wrote:

kenn michael wrote: Also remember that all these developers have different priorities when it comes to their own internal schedules and upcoming updates. Ableton has to now code for 3 platforms - Windows, OSX PPC, and OSX Intel.

They dont have to work on 3 now. Only 2. thats the point of Universal Binary. It will work on all the macs. intel or PPC.

And here comes vista, in 32 and 64 bit environments.........coders better not be drinking decaf!!!!!!!!!!

mg75 wrote:tested the demo today.
iMac 20" intel 512mb ram
launched fine.
while playing the demo there were audio dropouts.
system performance was at 160% or more.

This is great news, really. This kind of performance makes Live unusable on the new macs, forcing Ableton to deliver a Universal binary as soon as possible. Many of Live's new potential users will have intel macs. Ableton can't sell their product to people who can't use it. Bad news would be if Live did work on Rosetta (say like 75% CPU). Then I could see us stuck for many months with lousy Live/Mac optimization (again).

mg, just out of curiosity, did you test this machine in the Manhattan/Soho Apple store? Cuz I called them 2 days ago and they said they wouldn't have any IntelMacs until Feb.

Also, were there any "Energy Saver" type system preferences like the G5 iMacs?

inis wrote:

kenn michael wrote: Also remember that all these developers have different priorities when it comes to their own internal schedules and upcoming updates. Ableton has to now code for 3 platforms - Windows, OSX PPC, and OSX Intel.

They dont have to work on 3 now. Only 2. thats the point of Universal Binary. It will work on all the macs. intel or PPC.

You're right about that... But the optimizations are different. Altivec vs. SSE. But since Live was never Altivec or SSE optimized, it might make their job of porting easier.

I just tested an Intel iMac as well. I can also report CPU spikes around 116% with audio drop outs while trying the Demo Set in Live. Rosetta just kinda, well, blows. Since there is no altivec code to translate, it's pure math in C/C++. So I'm just going to get a refurbished G5 iMac which is the best bang for the buck. Developers will distribute universal binaries eventually, so the G4/G5 platform will still be supported, even if not intentionally.

Regarding the quote by Robert, that has to be some of the biggest bunch of bullshit. How well did they really test altivec code? As well as the beta and release version of Live 5? Why do all other programs that make use of vector processing significantly benefit from altivec optimization? Pure laziness. They probably goofed around for a few days and just said 'oh screw it, this takes too much time.' It's just laziness. Having to maintain two code bases for a $500 product? My God, I can't imagine having to maintain two code bases, like every single other company that makes Windows and OS X versions of their software. And Ableton really only makes one product. Complete bullshit. Anyway...

Angstrom wrote:Or even one!

Live never included Altivec, so there is nothing too awful to remove/replace. I am betting on a NAMM announcement. Robert has stated on here in the past that the codebases are very similar for XP and OSX. In his words

Good bye Altivec. You should praise us for not waisting resources into a technology which we tested and did not get a significant boost and which would have had the huge problem of maintaining two code bases.

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 9&start=10

as far as a UB version of Live goes I imagine it will be a lot easier/quicker transition than for (for example) Final Cut - which makes extensive use of Altivec.



So it shouldn't be too hard!

I am damn curious to see those macintel UB performance figures.

buzzcock....

The new Intel iMacs are being sold all over the Apple Stores. The test was run in one of their stores in NJ while I was visiting family.
There are no Energy Settings(processor performance wise) what-so-ever.
2 SO-DIMM slots (same RAM as MacBook Pro). The onboard 512MB is removable and the machine is upgradable to 2 GB of RAM total.

mg.

buzzcock wrote:

mg75 wrote:tested the demo today.
iMac 20" intel 512mb ram
launched fine.
while playing the demo there were audio dropouts.
system performance was at 160% or more.

This is great news, really. This kind of performance makes Live unusable on the new macs, forcing Ableton to deliver a Universal binary as soon as possible. Many of Live's new potential users will have intel macs. Ableton can't sell their product to people who can't use it. Bad news would be if Live did work on Rosetta (say like 75% CPU). Then I could see us stuck for many months with lousy Live/Mac optimization (again).

mg, just out of curiosity, did you test this machine in the Manhattan/Soho Apple store? Cuz I called them 2 days ago and they said they wouldn't have any IntelMacs until Feb.

Also, were there any "Energy Saver" type system preferences like the G5 iMacs?

The apple store I went to said they wouldnt have any new imacs until the end of the month.

Yeah, this is strange, as I am pretty sure that I didn't see any of the new intel macs at the apple store in NYC when I was there on Friday.....

And the release said that the stores wouldn't have them for awhile, but you could order from the apple website.

Strange.

Well, they're definitely here in Maryland. Actually, the Apple Store I went to replaced _all_ the G5 iMacs with Intel iMacs. Even the store models that were advertised as being G5 iMacs were really Intel machines (after using the Finder-> About This Mac). You can walk into an Apple store and pick up an Intel iMac today. Seriously.

anti-banausic wrote:Yeah, this is strange, as I am pretty sure that I didn't see any of the new intel macs at the apple store in NYC when I was there on Friday.....

And the release said that the stores wouldn't have them for awhile, but you could order from the apple website.

Strange.

In defense of the "moving target" that is OS X, forcing developers to re-tweak their apps with every significant release, the benefit here is it forces everything to stay up-to-date and well integrated and tuned. Compare it to Windows, which puts so much emphasis on supporting legacy code that it hasn't seen a major overhaul several years, putting it way behind OS X in terms of stability, performance, and expandability.

It's nice to have options... Apple and Microsoft have different, complementary approaches... pick your poison.

dten wrote:In defense of the "moving target" that is OS X, forcing developers to re-tweak their apps with every significant release, the benefit here is it forces everything to stay up-to-date and well integrated and tuned. Compare it to Windows, which puts so much emphasis on supporting legacy code that it hasn't seen a major overhaul several years, putting it way behind OS X in terms of stability, performance, and expandability.

It's nice to have options... Apple and Microsoft have different, complementary approaches... pick your poison.

Yep, you hit the nail on the head. Two diametrically opposed philosophies of software development. The moving target is actually quite a nice target. In fact if you've done any OSX development (I'm starting at the moment) you'll see that the whole thing is a very nice environment to work in. Oh, and the dev tools are FREE! That's right, no pirated versions of visual basuck or visual C++.... XCode is free. That more then justifies the price of a Mac in my mind. F$#k paying hundreds of dollars for legit dev tools, I'll take Apple's free ones any day.

When do you guys think a UB version will be out? I am teeter tottering on the fence about which imac to get...and I do have gigs coming up....

wait until after Ableton's NAMM , if they are going to announce one it will be there - or in a few months.