GarageBand. It isn't limited. It is a specific product with a feature set carefully designed to target a specific segment of the production market - people who have little to no knowledge or experience coming to music production for the first time ... with nothing else but a Computer, iPhone or iPad.Here is what the CEO said in 2022 according to musicradar: „The simplest version of Studio One right now has a 150-page manual, which is 149 pages too many”. The CEO also said that „having dabbled with recording myself, I’ve never found a DAW I didn't need an MIT degree to actually use“.The new CEO sounds like a complete idiot. Is he saying the manual needs to be cut down for all users including advanced users ?
If so that’s an absolute absurd statement and shows how out of touch he is with their customers. I had high hopes for Presonus, but if they’re gonna just sit by idle and allow this new CEO to try and dumb down their software, I wouldn’t remain a customer if there’s as well.
While simplifying things is good, I think it would be a mistake to aim for another Garageband - or something even more simplistic. And even if the development of such a product would not replace S1, it would certainly have an effect on resources for S1.
It is the best entry-level DAW SKU on the market, IMO, and more developers should aspire to that with their entrance SKUs.
Once you get past the genral UX, and look at the feature set - esepcially when you keep the target market segment in mind - you'll see that GB is basically on par with Studio One Artist... even superior, in some cases.
Random 13 year old kid who wants to start making compositions to video will get further with GB than with Studio One Artist, which has neither a Score Editor nor a Video Track. Same for the people who just have a computer or iPad who want to make Beats, or Pop Music, or Country Music, or Rock Music, etc. etc.
What Apple has done with GB is ingenious. They have made an entry-level solution that they bundle with their hardware at no cost that is equally useful for pretty much any type of music production or composition, and when people feel they outgrow it they can simply pay $199 - half the price of Studio One Professional - to move up to Logic Pro.... and they will still be just as well served there as they were on GB - just with more advanced functionalities, better [more professional] workflow and far higher quality plug-ins, virtual instruments and sample content while still being able to faultlessly import all of their prior works into Logic.
And I don't know anyone who really had to use a manual to use GarageBand, because it is designed to be as transparent as possible. It was designed so that the workflow has as few "layers" as possible, which means most things are not hidden and as a result people tend to learn how to use it more easily. There is a specific reason why these design decisions were made.
Unlike most other vendors, Apple did not create GarageBand by simply taking Logic Pro and disabling dozens of features.
What he said was badly worded, quoted in isolation (so we don't get great context, and people regugitate this quote in the same exact way)... however, the idea behind it absolutely makes sense.
Most users take the path of lease resistance. If GarageBand is easier for them than Studio One Prime or Artist, they are likely to simply use GarageBand instead and then upgrade to Logic Pro - which has no redundant learning curve (learning how to do the same things differently, learning different keyboard shortcuts, etc.) ... just additional features, utilities and workflows to accommodate and acclimate to.
1.4% of people are going to care about your manual when they find something difficult. It's not 1992 where the only way to get into music production was to spend hundreds on the software, which basically meant you have no choice but to waste time on inefficiencies and unintuitiveness due to your investment in acquiring the product.
People can simply choose to opt out and pick another cheap or free product and move on with their life.
Manual quality has gotten worse over time because they have become less and less important as most people ignore them. No point hiring the best technical writers to write amazing manuals if 98.6% of your users will never look at it. Context-Sensitive Help usurped manuals once consumer desktop computing moved to GUI OSes like macOS and Windows 3.
Modern Manuals are - generally - just a PDF print out of context sensitive help files. They are reference documentation, not "User Guides." Even if they label themselves as "Manuals," that is typically an inaccuracy.
Statistics: Posted by Trensharo — Mon Apr 01, 2024 3:43 am