Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) support

[Eckhard Doll]

Dear Steinberg Mac users,

We recently had an informational meeting at Steinberg to update internal departments about the progress of our preparations for Leopard. At the meeting were a number of Steinberg people from various departments, including two of Steinberg’s directors from the executive management team. We’d like to share the main points with you, and update you about how we’re coming along in this very important transition for our applications on the Mac.

Markus Stehlik is Steinberg’s Director of Development. “The preparations for Leopard are progressing very well. We are continuously testing and adapting our products with every new Beta version of Leopard and we will do so on the final release also. Since it’s normal for operating system betas passed to software vendors to be changed before the final version, we need to have the final version for compatibility results which we can rely on. The release of 10.5 will put us on the home straight towards an announcement of full support.

“Additionally, as most of you know, Apple announced that Leopard will be 64-bit, which we’re very much looking forward to supporting. However, Apple has also recently announced a strategy change (compared with their statement of one year ago) at the last WWDC in San Francisco. According to this, Apple will no longer be supporting their Carbon Framework technology for 64-bit applications on Mac OS X, and we have been using that so far for 32-bit and 64-bit development. ISVs like us will be forced to use the Cocoa Framework instead, which delays our 64-bit development for the Mac platform. So although it will take our Mac team longer to deliver 64-bit code for our applications, we will do whatever it takes to offer this to our Mac customers.”

Frank Simmerlein, Steinberg’s Marketing Director: “As a long-time Mac user myself, I’ve been following the developments concerning Leopard closely from a user’s point of view. The new OS 10.5 is looking very cool feature-wise. We’ll be updating Mac users with more information about the move to Leopard nearer the time to help smooth the transition to Leopard. Markus has laid out the reasons why we can’t say when we’ll be offering 64-bit support for Mac, though. And while we can't say exactly when the 64 bit version is available and it might take some time to get there, we want to make absolutely clear that the Mac platform is and will remain a vital one for us, and that we will stick to it come what may.”

So to recap: 10.5 support is coming up for Cubase and Nuendo following on from the release of Leopard, which is slated at Apple for October. We’ll be keeping you up to date with the progress of 64-bit support along the road. Please check back here for more information as we progress towards the release of 10.5.

Best regards,

Your Steinberg Team
_________________
Support Manager
Steinberg Media Technologies

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