Angus Baigent
Member
Joined: 02 Dec 2004
Posts: 430
Location: Hamburg, Germany
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 Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 1:23 pm Post subject: Support for older Power PC processors |
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Support for older Power PC processors in Cubase, Nuendo, HALion and WaveLab
Apple’s transition to Intel processors for its computers, which began with their public announcement back in 2005, meant a milestone in the history of its platform. The transition was complete by 2006, after which point all Apple computers have used Intel CPUs. From this point on, Apple and its independent software vendors (or ISVs) like Steinberg have been essentially supporting two Apple hardware platforms: Intel and the earlier PowerPC.
As you can imagine, the aging PowerPC platform requires additional development resources. At the same time, the number of our customers still on PowerPC machines is dwindling rapidly. In order to make the best possible use of our development resources, we have decided that our developers and Quality Assurance team will from now on focus exclusively on Intel CPUs in the development and testing processes for our Apple products. In doing so, we are taking our cue from Apple themselves, who have already ended native support for PowerPC with the introduction of the OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard version.
For Cubase and Nuendo, this means that the current versions, Cubase 5 and Nuendo 4, will be the last versions to officially support PowerPC processors. Both these product versions will support Power PC processors for the full lifecycle of the respective Cubase 5 and Nuendo 4 versions.
Of these two products, Nuendo will be first to see a major update in the form of Nuendo 5 later this year. On the Mac side, Nuendo 5 will officially support Intel-based processors running on OS X 10.5 and 10.6 systems. Although Nuendo 5 will install and run on Power PC-based machines, we will officially certify Nuendo 5 on the Mac side for the Intel-based machines only, and our system requirements information will reflect this.
For Cubase, upcoming updates for version 5, the current generation, will continue to run on Power PC as an officially supported platform. The future development of the next generation of Cubase, i.e. later than Cubase 5.x, will focus exclusively on Intel-based computers on the Mac side, to offer the best possible compatibility with and use of all current and future Intel-based Macintosh models.
Such a major paradigm shift on the part of Apple obviously also has ramifications for other Steinberg products, too. The next generation of WaveLab will add support for Apple’s Intel-based Macs, a fact that we’re very excited about as it means that our industry standard audio editing and mastering application will finally be debuting for the Mac platform. The release of WaveLab for Mac will underline our ongoing commitment to offer Mac owners the best end-to-end music creation, production and mastering solution available today. As previously announced on the HALion forum at Cubase.net, development of HALion 4 is continuing apace. Development for HALion 4 on the Mac side is also concentrating exclusively on Intel-based machines.
An important factor in our decision was that Apple has decided not to support Power PC in its Snow Leopard 10.6 operating system, and because 10.6 is clearly a landmark release technologically, it makes it all the more imperative that we focus on the future to offer our Mac customers the best possible stability and compatibility. The new possibilities of Snow Leopard also pose new challenges, including harnessing the power of 64-bit computing for musicians and optimizing all our products and technologies for Apple’s new operating system. We’ve always orientated ourselves toward the future of the audio community, and as such we see this as a vital part of our commitment to the Macintosh platform far, far into the future.
If you have any feedback about this, please let us know at info@steinberg.de.
Thanks for reading!
Your Steinberg Team |
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