When do you hire someone to write manuals for a piece of software that hasn’t seen much change in quite a while? Most probable answer: when a new release is in the works. That’s why seeing this job ad in the June ‘07 issue of German “Sound & Recording” magazine gave me new hope that we will see a not-so-minor overhaul of Apple’s music production suite, Logic, in the none-too-distant future.
The job opening for “Technical Writer/Instructional Designer in Germany m/f” is for Apple’s offices in Rellingen near Hamburg, aka “the former home of the late Emagic,” and the key task for this position is to create “accurate and concise technical documentation for our professional audio production software Logic.” That’s great news for the Logic user community.
But there remains the question of when exactly Logic 8 will see the light of day, as the most natural-fit events during which to let Logic 8 out of the bag — the Anaheim NAMM show in January and Frankfurt Musikmesse in March — are still more than half a year away. That would be an awfully long wait…
Half a year is also the least you'd expect as the time one needs for hiring a technical writer and have him write a manual.
Doxxic
Yes, I agree: obviously, it will not only take time to actually write the documentation materials, but the hiring process itself will probably take a few weeks, too. Still, maybe Apple could provide some sneak peek of Logic 8 to make the long wait easier to bear. ;)
We've been tracking the next version of Logic for some time. It's a given that there's a significant update coming the near future. Keep in mind, they had about 9 months out of commission working on Intel compatibility ... and Logic is really due for some significant changes, incorporating I would think some of what you've seen in the first two versions of Soundtrack. That takes time.
I wouldn't assume Apple would use a trade show to launch Logic. And if they do, you're leaving out AES in the fall, among a couple of other possible venues they could do it.
There are other larger indicators than this that something is coming, as well.
peter, what would those other indicators be? This holdup on the future of logic is a huge problem for me as I'm about to open a studio and we need to make a fundamental DAW decision very soon, ideally after WWDC. I know you can't share inside info but is there anything else I should be aware of?
Thanks, Peter, for confirming that something major is in the works.
And a big thank you to you, Dave, for asking the question that immediately came to my mind, too, when I read Peter's reply. ;)
Hey don't forget about 2007 Summer NAMM. July 27-29 Austin. I think we HAVE to get, at least, a "sneak peak" and a timeline. I predict sneak peak Summer NAMM and a fall, late October release. Enough time for that new writer to update the manual . . .
"Don't Panic . . . "
I predict an announcement will either accompany or immediately follow the Leopard release in October, with the actual product arriving around January. And it might be called something different.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/2/27/7253