The now semi-defunct Logic Express 9 received some love this week from Apple by way of the 9.1.6 update. Don’t get excited, though. We’re just talking about stability enhancements and bug fixes. If you’re interested in all of the nitty-gritty, you can read the entirety of the release notes here, but be warned: They are about as dry as they come. Stability and bug fixes aren’t the most interesting things to read about.
What’s more interesting to me is Apple’s move to simplify its content creation apps by eliminating the middle tier and reducing the cost of the high tier. Instead of choosing from Garageband for free or cheap, Logic Express for a couple hundred, and Logic Pro for a couple more hundred, you now only have to choose between ultra cheap or a couple hundred bucks. The same goes for iMovie, Final Cut Express, and Final Cut Pro. Express is no more, and Pro is substantially cheaper.
Some media professionals complain that Apple isn’t meeting every single one of their niche needs, but Apple just doesn’t care about being everything to everyone. Making apps that are accessible to high-end consumers instead of just professionals clearly opens the way to a fountain of money, and that means tough titty for the specialists.
As someone who records and edits podcasts, I would absolutely consider buying Logic Pro at the $200 price point. Now that it is closer to the realm of an impulse buy, in conjunction with the easy availability thanks to the Mac App Store, people like me are just bound to think of Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro as a more likely purchase. More often than not, Apple knows very well what it’s doing in terms of pricing. I’m interested to see where it goes in the next year or so, and if we’ll see Logic and Final Cut make their way to the iPad in some way.
