Applications and OS Choice for Creatives

Setting the Stage

The last decade in computing has been revolutionary.

It’s easy to miss when you only see each incremental update, and don’t think about how those stack up over time.

To say it started in 2010 is a bit arbitrary. Several things happened a few years prior that led up to a perfect storm of paradigm shifts.

To name a few:

• The center mass of consumers transitioned from media on primarily physical media, to media in downloadable (and later, streaming) form.

• Apple released the App Store on iPhone, which allowed for the crazy array of things that we can now do from mobile.

• Internet became viably mobile. Yeah, you could surf the web on a phone prior to that, but it was an awful experience.

• Internet infrastructure in general improved to the point where high speeds were common, and running an application remotely was a real possibility for the average user.

And while there are many more factors, I want to focus on those for the point of this post.

In 2020, we are already in the early phases of what will eventually be the new paradigm: it doesn’t matter what platform you use. Our daily tools are web+cloud based.

In 10 years, I predict that no one will care about Android, iOS, MacOS, Windows, or Linux. It won’t matter. And it’ll probably mostly be Linux anyway. ;-)

The average person will begin to think less about specific hardware and OS’s, and more about services, accounts and information. In fact, many already do right now.

There’s one major exception: content creators.

Content Creators

To be clear, content creators will be there too, eventually. But we’re not as close as general consumers are to being there.

For people recording music professionally, or shooting video, or doing 3D modeling, or creating augmented reality assets and experiences, we’re still a bit farther out from being able to do that, en masse, using nothing but cloud based, web-accessible applications.

And so, for those of us doing that work, platforms still matter. At least for a few more years.

And really, when I say platform, I mean applications. The past is littered with ecosystems that barely talked to one another. We’re still living on the tail end of that world. Apple’s 21st Century story is nothing if not building a loyal, insular ecosystem of hardware and software.

As a consequence, myself and many others have built a large body of work using tools that are proprietary, and only work on one ecosystem or the other. That facade began to crack in the 2010’s, but for many working professionals, there was too much time, money and effort invested in expensive tools and platforms to want to make a big change in everything.

My time in the ecosystem is coming to a close. I’ve been a loyal Apple user for a long time, using Logic Pro X, Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5, and before it went away, Aperture. I’ve got hundreds of projects, files and ideas spread across those applications. I got formally certified in Logic (and spent a lot of money doing so). Apple has just gotten obnoxiously expensive, for a user experience that isn’t drastically better. It used to be a little more expensive, for a much better experience. I’m tired of the disparity.

Ironically, Aperture was the first domino. I had built a robust library of my photography in the app. When Apple announced that they were discontinuing, it really hit me hard at how much energy was wasted managing a system that could go away at any time.

I reluctantly went to the Adobe fold for photography.

But the thing is, Adobe has some good ideas going. They’ve also got bugs and frustrations, to be sure, but a lot of good ideas. That was the first foray into realizing that there are plenty of options.

Final Cut and Logic are a little harder, because I actually really enjoy using both of them. I’m used to them. I know how they work.

I’ve delayed my transition because of that fact.

For Final Cut, I’ve since worked professionally for a while with Premiere, After Effects, and to a lesser extent, DaVinci Resolve. They all have strengths. None are perfect. But if I had to leave Final Cut today, I know that I would end up being just fine once I get into the groove.

I’m going to continue on the Macs that I have, until I can’t. But the software situation I begin solving now.

Digital Audio Workstations (DAW)

This is the hard one. Logic was my first professional tool. I was a musician first. Photo and video came later. I’ve used Logic for 13 years at this point.

But, all band aids must come off at some point.

About a year ago, I decided to commit to identifying a cross-platform DAW that I could begin calling home.

I tried out several demos, and I ended rolling with Bitwig. I've been using it now, almost exclusively, for several months, and built several projects.

It's a really inspiring piece of software that has some things that are just artful, and I deeply love those things. The Grid is magnificent, and the workflow of treating a DAW more like a completely modular synthesizer is a beautiful iteration in music production. The UI, placement of tools, etc. are wonderfully well thought out. I hardly needed the manual at all when I first started, because everything was right where you expect it to be.

But then...I've noticed that there are a few, mission critical oversights that are just mind boggling.

1) No swiping comp/take folders for audio overdubs. (What?!?)

2) No advanced MIDI note selection tools, like Select Highest Notes, or Invert Selection. (What?!?)

3) Not a single bit of audio stretching relative to the timeline for quantization. (...like seriously, what??)

It's hard to see such brilliant features mixed in with such glaring oversights.

I searched for work arounds on these issues, but none are really satisfactory. I had a few work projects come up where I needed to finish some specific editing+mix tasks quickly, and Bitwig ended up not meeting the challenge.

I jumped back into Logic, and had them done effortlessly.

I’m keeping Bitwig around to generate ideas, and to have fun, but it’s disappointingly not the long term answer.

Which brings me to Cubase.

Cubase

Way back in 2006, I actually used Cubase 3 with a friend of mine. It was easy to use, and I generally enjoyed it. I briefly bought the “elements” equivalent version of Cubase 3.5 about a year later for my PC, right before switching over to Apple and Logic. I didn’t want to buy another license, so I jumped into Logic head first.

So, when I began my search a year ago, I naturally started by looking at Cubase. I knew then that it would meet my requirements, but I was kinda hankering for some of Ableton’s style, and alternate approach to a DAW after being on Logic for so long. In my desire to shake things up, I overlooked Cubase as being a similar workflow to Logic.

I think that’s why Bitwig was so appealing at that time. It was refreshing to have such a unique approach to music making.

Now on this side of things, it’s pretty plain as day.

I’ve had a copy of Cubase Elements installed on my iMac for a while, but just never got around to opening it up.

As soon as I opened it last night and started working, it quickly became apparent that it’s just gonna be the right answer for me. It actually does a few things better than Logic, which has been a pleasant surprise.

Steinberg is a much bigger, less agile company, and no doubt, there will be bugs and frustrations. But, platform agnostic tools are where I’m headed, so it’s time to start down this road. My next computer will be a PC. My hope is that I’ve got some time before I need to buy a new computer, but all hardware fails eventually.

Logic will still be in rotation while I slowly convert projects over. But in the mean time, Cubase has turned out to not be the boring option that I dreaded it would be.

I actually like it.