The Telenator[Thanks for filling in some facts there for me and catching a couple of points I missed all together. Win8 has a UI that is essentially designed for illiterates and phone junkies. Although I do think it will ultimately be successful, please note the detractors you mentioned. Also, as Microsoft does almost every time (try to take over the world), as always it makes one wrong move inevitably and shoots itself in the foot. Please see Windows Live, Live Mail (still has the jitters in most browsers after 4 years and still doesn’t run well in its own IE9 browser!), the IE9 browser is bad in 32-bit and a total disaster in 64-bit, can’t use its stupid Silverwhatever flash copy to view some national news pages, they just cut back users of its Skywhatever Cloud system from 100 gigs to a mere 7 gigs storage, and it takes ALL DAY to upload to it — and now not only a ‘better’ tablet with a new OS that gets a lukewarm rating from everyone in the know. The EU and Opera browser is going to sue the pants off them again for browser anti-trust issue, same as a few years ago. I think the mngmt. is all on drugs. If I was MS I’d probably have to step in front of a fast city bus and end my own lack of foresight and save you all major suffering. Get back to ya on this. Got to finish posting . . . ]
There are other issues I discovered regarding Win8, as I have become more familiar with that OS, that will affect everyone’s use of Podium on Win8. The most important one is the requirements for running Win8 on any computing device. The rock bottom system requirements for running the OS alone — before any consideration of DAW or DAW-related software — is 4 gigs of RAM and CPU strength of 1.5 gigs. Again, this is rock bottom, meaning that Microsoft would rather the user have something beyond these limits. Now, I think most of us can cover the 4 gigs for memory. That’s common these days. For CPU, I know for a fact that many users would be hard-pressed to make this amount available mainly for the OS. What this means is that many PC owners will need to purchase a new machine when (or before) they start running Win8. Suddenly, we are talking about a year or two before everyone has a PC powerful enough to run the new OS comfortably with all their favourite audio goodies. My own PC would be able to run Win8 and then probably have enough left over so as not to max out over the full digital audio chores and have no problems, yet I am close enough to worry and to know that this PC will not be running Win8 under any circumstances. I would hit the ceiling on very large projects most likely. This is yet another very good reason Podium on Win8 should be put off for at least another year, since virtually none of us will be able to use it. And let’s face it, we all know quite a group of DAW-users (several here) who still love their Windows Vista and will not be leaving that OS unless absolutely forced, and you and I need to respect that choice.
Meanwhile, it would be to Zynewave’s advantage to attend to its own product, remove the several shortcomings and become better prepared to play with the ‘big boys’. I will be very blunt here by saying it won’t matter to me or any serious musician or recording tech which gadget it runs on if it can’t handle what I consider certain basic chores, namely MIDI foremost in the various features needed under this subject. There are a couple of other features, too, that I hope to get covered here.
Some of you may recall me asking not very long ago, “MIDI improvements? Which ones? And why?” Since then, I’ve had ample time to follow up on this and understand the many requests for better MIDI features. Aside from, I believe, ‘timestretching’, MIDI features were the overwhelming top requests and the major subject on our many lists. Yes, and although someone wanted a slightly improved MIDI editor or piano roll, and a few of us really need a virtual MIDI keyboard added, the MIDI requests truly boil down to two ultimately important features that are needed right now and not sometime later next year: MIDI routing and MIDI effects.