Mac and Music News

It may seem that the company ArtisFinance went bankrupt last friday. All alone this group was representing 70% of imports of companies in France (SCV Audio, Guillard-Musique, Codim, MSK, TIP, Dynamic Audio, Audiopole, DM2J, PHL audio… 1st importer in France). It was also shops like Backstage (Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux) and Star Music (Paris, Lyon). The legal settlements is under way and we should know soon more on the future of the profitable companies that may survive… Bad trip!

After the issuing of Jaguar (OSX.2), which will be released on the August 24th, music arrives at last in force on OSX :
Driver for the MOTU 828 in 4 weeks, Digital Performer as a christmas present, Logic Audio 5.2 in beta, almost finished, out during august (at worst for the 24th), Native Instrument stuff "soon"…

Source; MacworldNY visitors (big thank you to every one on the Analogue Heaven mailing list)

The long awaited BitStream PRO configuration software is now available to Mac users from the Wave Idea website, free for download.

MOTU, Inc. announced today that Digital Performer, MOTU's flagship audio workstation software, is coming to Mac OS X, maintaining its fidelity to the Mac-only platform.

Announcements made during the Steve Jobs conference at the MacWorld New York show:

• new iMac: 17' flat-panel (1440x900 pixels) and Nvidia Gforce4 graphic card.

• Quicktime 6 has MPEG4 support. MPEG-4 includes AAC audio, a new audio format made by... Adobe (!)

• Apple announces Jaguar as Mac OS X 10.2 with 150 new features. It will cost $129 and will be delivered in stores on August 24th


• Sherlock 3 completely rewritten

• Inkwell technology: handwriting recognition integrated into MacOS X, will work with every application.

• Rendezvous technology: automatic discovery of devices (computers, printers...) on network without configuration.

• Mail application largely improved: search in every mailbox, better handling of m ...

It seems that Digidesign has decided at last to offer us a FireWire interface combined with a dedicated Control Surface... The product should be introduced on July 18 at DigiWorld Nashville.

Where did we get the news from? Digidesign's Home Page, where, after a fourth dimension style whirlwindish effect appears a lovely teaser message announcing a new PTLE solution, topped by a FireWire icon and a picture of something that looks like what could actually be a miniature ProControl...

Good news for all Digi 001, Audiomedia III, and Mbox users: according to one of the DUC's (Digidesign User Conference) moderators, Pro Tools LE for Mac should be running 32 tracks before the end of the month. (Thanks Mr. T)