Re: WireTap, CoreAudio's API, and system capture, and kexts...
Re: WireTap, CoreAudio's API, and system capture, and kexts...
- Subject: Re: WireTap, CoreAudio's API, and system capture, and kexts...
- From: "Andy O'Meara" <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 09:57:20 -0500
- Thread-topic: WireTap, CoreAudio's API, and system capture, and kexts...
> The plain truth is that there really hasn't been enough of a demand
> for this feature to make it a priority. Couple that with the DRM
> minefield and the fact that others have seemingly come up with their
> own solution, and you are left with a very complicated feature that
> has very little bang for the buck.
Yeah, I definitely respect that fact entirely, and is pretty much what I was
anticipating. I imagine saying the same thing if I was in Apple's position,
so I completely understand that being a final and complete justification.
>
>> The motivation here is the following. In our Windows release, we also
>> bundle a fun little app called the "V-Bar", that draws tickering
>> tiles of
>> our music visuals that go along to the side of the screen (and they
>> react to
>> whatever audio is paying over the system). Getting the system audio
>> is
>> impressively easy and well documented in Win32's "mixercontrol"
>> API. So as
>> much as love to beat the drum of how far head Mac OS is often ahead,
>> this is
>> an unfortunate and show-stopping discrepancy for our small company.
>
> It is self-evident that your statement is false. Clearly, other apps
> have found a way to do what you want to. The difference is that it
> isn't supported by the System and those folks had to be clever.
> There's nothing stopping you from doing the same thing except how
> willing you are to get your hands dirty.
Well, I don't consider hacking into Mac OS X to be at the same level as a
supported API, so I think it's reasonable to stand by the statement that
this is a shortcoming of CoreAudio (regardless of the basis of why the
functionality was not put in). I have to imagine that the people at
Ambrosia and Rogue Amoeba would agree with me, so I think it is reasonable
to agree with what I was trying to say. Put another way, me getting "my
hands dirty" in Mac OS X would be like me asking to you make a Win32
patch--I just don't have the Mac OS X innards level of knowledge to pull it
off such an extension in a practical amount of time, so I'm basically SOL
(my knowledge and xp is spread across three OSes, not one unfortunately).
> The fact is, Mac OS X's audio system was designed first and foremost
> for performance. This lead us to a design where it is not easy to
> support the functionality you want without imposing performance
> penalties. So, we have opted for better performance at the cost of not
> being able to provide this feature.
Yep, understood and of course that is a the reasonable and understandable
explanation I expected. However, it's just a real drag telling our users
that the reason our stuff can't visualize iTunes output (or whatever app) on
Mac OS X is because as a small company who crates software for Win32, linux,
and Mac OS X, we currently don't have the resources/expertise to create a
highly-specialized, high-maintenance, and unsupported Mac OS X extension to
do the job. I can only tell them they can visualize their audio if they use
our software on Windows (and as a Mac fanboy, this is tough for me to say!).
Sometimes those users express frustration that they thought Mac OS X is
supposed to be the best show in town, but I can only ask them to redirect
their comments to Apple engineering.
In any case, thanks for getting back--at least I know I'm not missing
something now. I definitely look forward to finding someone to hire to make
this kind of extension for us, but it's really really tough to find an uber
Mac OS innards guy interested in doing contract work that won't break our
bank (so if you're reading this is this describes you, please contact me!).
Again, that's a tough thing to have to explain to our users.
If there was of a way of co-developing such an extension with anyone here,
I'd be the first to sign up--I love the idea of making an open source item
that our company would fund. However, groups like Rogue Amoeba and Ambrosia
won't be interested since they've already created the technology and it's a
competitive/decisive technology for them (whereas for us, it's a
support/feature technology).
Thanks,
Andy O'Meara
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