Re: MIDI driver for standard "dumb" interface
Re: MIDI driver for standard "dumb" interface
- Subject: Re: MIDI driver for standard "dumb" interface
- From: RolandCorp R&D <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2001 09:44:43 -0800
>
Or, to put the question simply: which multi-port USB interfaces that I can
>
buy today, or within the next few months, work well with both OMS under OS 9
>
and OS X?
Most manufacturers have not released or announced drivers yet. But I am
fairly confident that most leading brand name USB MIDI interfaces available
on the market today will probably have OSX support in the coming months.
Midiman is the only company that I know of that is shipping OSX drivers to
the public.
Roland has Beta version OSX drivers (very close to final versions) for
several Roland or Edirol products that we have released to some developers
under NDA. We already ship those products with OMS drivers for OS9.
Roland and Edirol have also announced several products that will use Apple's
standard USB MIDI class drivers under OSX and will run under OS9 with Roland
custom OMS drivers.
I think it is a matter of just a few months until the situation changes and
OSX support increases. So far there has been no pressure for interface
manufacturers to release OSX drivers because there have been no OSX
compatible MIDI applications. The process of rewriting a MIDI/Audio
application to run under OSX is huge; It is not a simple upgrade or
translation process. Additionally, the necessary development tools were not
available in early days of OSX development. So I'm not too surprised that
OSX applications have generally been slow to ship. But I think OSX versions
of major MIDI and Audio applications will begin to appear soon, increasing
the pressure on interface manufacturers to release OSX drivers.
Macworld and NAMM in January are typically times when companies choose to
announce new products. I expect that here may be some news from several
companies about OSX support at that time. After those events we may all have
a better chance to guess how quickly MIDI and Audio world is moving to
support OSX.
Regards,
Mike.
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| Mike Kent, Manager of Technical Relations |
| Roland Corporation |
| Email: email@hidden |
| Tel: (604)543-2973 Fax: (604)543-2983 |
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