“I’d really like to see an article, in Sweet Notes or inSync, about the coming of Windows XP and what the music industry is doing to get ready for the new OS from Microsoft.”
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That long pause was your inSync editor laughing, or crying as the case may be. It’s a fair question, but the reality of the circumstances make it hard to resist a very glib answer.
The music industry hasn’t even developed very much for Windows 2000 yet. Yes, there are some products, but quite a number of things still only work in 98. So, unfortunately there isn’t an article to write on the topic of XP. It’s way too soon for anything meaningful to be said. The music industry, due to its small size and relative complexity of its software, is generally forced to wait until new operating systems are on the shelves before it commits the resources to major development. And then that development can take quite a long time, which is adequately demonstrated by the aforementioned lack of support for 2000.
If things hold true to past form the developers will probably resist it as long as possible. The last thing they need is another OS to contend with and support. The only thing that will force the issue is widespread use. This is one area where the Apple/Mac paradigm seems to keep things relatively simple. Many advanced PC users don’t like the closed nature of the Apple product, but when Apple comes out with a new system they do a pretty good job of “forcing the issue” by no longer leaving the older systems as a viable option for very long on newer machines, thus forcing the developers to move on. This tends to keep things relatively consistent and “supportable.” The open ended nature of PC’s does a great job of allowing users to use the OS they prefer, assuming they have time to properly explore the advantages and disadvantages of each. Sweetwater has always taken the stance that your music computer really shouldn’t be used for your other household duties. This is primarily due to the fact that computer configurations that are optimized for professional music applications are necessarily not optimized for typical computer usage, and vice versa. So feel free to use whatever OS you happen to like this week on your Internet surfing, game playing machine, but it’s generally best to stick to something fairly ordinary for music apps. Of course two computers is the easiest way to accomplish this.