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Infinite Loop / The Apple Ecosystem

Is Apple overhauling Logic to be a ProTools killer?

Rumors stemming from a former Emagic employee suggest Apple might have a few …

 It might not seem like it, but it's been almost five years since Apple acquired the German company Emagic and made their Logic "music creation" software part of their growing line of professional applications. Two short years after the acquisition in January of 2004, Apple showed off a new application called GarageBand aimed at the consumer market and packaged it with their iLife software, in essence creating a "lite" version of the application they had bought two years earlier.

In September 2004 Apple announced Logic Pro 7 and Logic Express 7, mirroring their lineup of iMovie, Final Cut Express, and Final Cut Pro, and in the process actually making the Logic product line less confusing (previously it was Logic Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Big Boxes; it was quite confusing to me anyway.)

It was after this that Apple began updating GarageBand yearly. In January of 2005, just one year after releasing GarageBand 1, a second iteration was announced as a part of iLife '05. Continuing the trend, in January of 2006 Apple announced iLife '06 which ushered in a new version of GarageBand: GarageBand 3. There has been no love for Logic, however, which has stood dormant for nearly two and half years. The natives began to wonder.

Today we received some news on the Logic front, but it wasn't from Apple and it wasn't really news per se, it was more of a rumor from a former Emagic employee, oh and it was in French. Luckily for us Create Digital Music is in the know and pointed us to the original post on Gear Slutz (erm.) which, in turn, pointed us to the original post on the French blog.

Basically the rumor is this: There will be no Logic 8. The successor to Logic 7 will have a new name. The unnamed application will be 10.5 only and will work with a new line of touch sensitive Apple displays. Also, it will be an OMG PROTOOLS KILLER!@!!

As always, this is a rumor so it should be taken with a grain of salt. It makes some sense, as it's been a while since a Logic update, and the monitor part could be plausible due to the lack of a refresh on that line as well.  It also fits into a discussion we had with Larry Yaeger a few years back about Apple incorporating gestures into applications like Motion. If you're looking for more reasons find faith in this rumor you can read this post where the author discusses a few more angles.

Although I have my doubts that Apple, or anyone else could make a "ProTools" killer—Digidesign could market crap on a stick, market it as ProTools, and still have it be the industry standard for audio production—these rumors are creating enough of a buzz to make some people who use the software contemplate what Apple has in store.

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