FL Studio 12 Coming To Mac (Properly)

[soronery]

FLStudioOSX

Image-Line, developers of the hugely popular DAW FL Studio, formerly known as Fruity Loops, have confirmed that the software will be released as a native application for Mac OS X.

The company’s Knowledge Base FAQ entry on the subject has been updated to reflect the news, with the company explaining that the development team had completed work on native OS X versions of a number of FL Studio’s built-in instruments, and have now moved on to a native version of the forthcoming FL Studio 12 application itself.

A version of the software ‘wrapped’ using Codeweavers CrossOver was released last year as a public beta for existing FL Studio licence holders, but poor third-party plugin support always made it an unsatisfactory solution. Some users have turned to alternatives including Boot Camp and Parallels Desktop, while we’ve also heard of at least a couple of pro producers who switched to Logic or Ableton on the Mac but kept a PC around just to run FL Studio now and again.

The release of a Mac version of FL Studio 12 – expected some time in 2015 – will pitch the DAW against Propellerhead Reason, currently the closest Mac alternative.

A Windows beta version of FL Studio 12 was released for testing earlier this month.

Check out the full statement from Image-Line below:

Will there ever be a native Mac OS X release of FL Studio?

We started by testing a FL Studio Mac OS X BETA (Crossover Wrapped) version with direct installation on Mac OS X. But this is still a Windows program, running on OS X. The interest in the wrapped beta, and the problems we faced supporting 3rd party VST plugins in it, lead the team to start work on native OS X VST versions of Edison, Gross Beat, Harmless, Harmor, Maximus, Ogun, Slicex, Sytrus, Vocodex. See how to get these plugins here.

The VST plugin testing, was in fact, the start of the FL Studio native OS X compatibility development. The VST plugins use the same code-base as FL Studio itself and if we could get these working to spec on OS X, then FL Studio would likely follow soon after.

Well, the plugin testing is progressing nicely, and so the team has turned their attention to FL Studio 12 itself. It’s a long and slow process and we can’t make any promises, since we may come across unexpected and or unsolvable technical problems. But work is indeed under way. Below are some of the issues we face porting FL Studio to native Mac OS X and explains why this is taking ‘so long':

1. Delphi:FL Studio is written in Delphi with in-line assembly for much of the DSP. This is one reason why FL Studio and its graphics are so fluid.Delphi only recently got the ability to compile to OS X. So while this is great, it’s a 1st-generation OS X compiler, it’s cranky and sometimes causes problems of its own. But, before this came along, we needed to port well over 1 million lines of code to another language. We never thought that was a good idea, and it’s why we never did it before. But, things have changed, so let’s call this progress.
2. Windows API:FL Studio is tightly bound to the Windows API that takes care of moving, minimizing, maximizing windows, detecting cursor position, drag & drop, opening windows dialogs, clipboard functions, decoding MP3s, … so a port requires all operating system dependent calls to be isolated & replaced by bi-platform dependent functions. That’s a major part of what the team are doing now.FYI, just getting all this system dependent code from Deckadance (which was created more or less with porting in mind) and replacing it with bi-platform versions took almost 6 months. FL Studio is many times the size of Deckadance, so please be patient.

Will this impact on the development of FL Studio for Windows?

No, the team working on the conversion to OS X is completely separate from the Windows development team. They talk, but don’t share any bodies that we know of, so it’s business as usual on the Microsoft side of things. Bill Gates sends his regards BTW.



The FL studio Support Team

[_Agu_]

I have a distant memory of Image-Line announcing that making of a Mac version would take so long it's not practically possible few years ago lol.

[smalltock]

What about other unices?

[+] Spoiler

like linux?

If they release for my platform, I might actually start using FLS again.

I'm glad they realize supporting only one platform is no longer a wise decision.

[3za]

What about other unices?

[+] Spoiler

like linux?

If they release for my platform, I might actually start using FLS again.

They can get fucked.

They make up about 1% of the market, and that 1% are all open source hippies, that turned their backs to awesome commercial software of the world.

Please don't tell me you use LMMS? Do you have some legit reason to use linux? If you use it exclusively your probabaly a hipster tbh.

You have no right to complain hippy?

Dual boot.

[smalltock]

What about other unices?

[+] Spoiler

like linux?

If they release for my platform, I might actually start using FLS again.

They can get fucked.

They make up about 1% of the market, and that 1% are all open source hippies, that turned their backs to awesome commercial software of the world.

Please don't tell me you use LMMS? Do you have some legit reason to use linux? If you use it exclusively your probabaly a hipster tbh.

You have no right to complain hippy?

Dual boot.

Good job with your strawman argument.
I use it because I like it. I like Unix philosophy. I like piping and binary modularity. I like shell scripts and software development in general. I don't use LMMS. Why the fuck would you assume that? I use a lot of small utilities like libAV things, and sometimes Audacity/Ardour/JACK.

What's your reason for liking obscure, closed, monolithic software that doesn't have any means of public review/contribution?

I didn't complain. I don't want to dual boot.

[Edit] Sorry. That was a hostile comment. OS wars are fucking stupid though. Don't bash someone for making a different decision than you did. I'm happy with my OS.

[+] Spoiler

The 1% statistic probably isn't true. Nobody's actually tracking Linux installations because Linux installers don't have fucking spyware in them.
Linux and BSD are usually the backends of well-run servers. Unices dominate every computing market except for the desktop.

AFAICT, there's still no Delphi compiler on any non-mac unices, so I'm going to say a Loonix port remains unlikely. Oh well.

[3za]

The 1% statistic probably isn't true. Nobody's actually tracking Linux installations because Linux installers don't have fucking spyware in them.
Linux and BSD are usually the backends of well-run servers. Unices dominate every computing market except for the desktop.

M8 where talking about making beats on your pc computer.

What you on about???

What's your reason for liking obscure, closed, monolithic software that doesn't have any means of public review/contribution?

Protools
audacity/jack/shit i ain't ever heard of

[smalltock]

I'm taking the bate.

I was very clear about what I was talking about. If you want to be apathetic, that's fine, but don't expect me to pander to your interests. I'm just wondering for what reason you felt inclined to turn this into an OS debate. I just asked a damn question.

You not knowing about software is not an argument as to why I shouldn't use that software. Fuck off.

[3za]

I'm just wondering for what reason you felt inclined to turn this into an OS debate.

Imageline will not make FL for linux, cause fuck all people use it to make beats, and the ones that do generally don't buy software. That is all we care about in this thread on the matter of Linux/FL studio. It's taking them long enoght to get it on mac, which lots of people actually do use to make beats FFS.

Don't give a shit about servers here.

You not knowing about software is not an argument as to why I shouldn't use that software. Fuck off.

Give me a run down then, what it does, who uses it, USP, whatever.

Then I give you one for protools (haha)
You show me yours, I will show you mine

[smalltock]

They don't make a Linux version because FLS is in Delphi and there is no working Delphi compiler. It's nothing to do with ImageLine's ideals. I'll make you a graphic as to my software environment when I get home. Let's not shit up this thread anymore.

[3za]

They don't make a Linux version because FLS is in Delphi and there is no working Delphi compiler.

So if it was cheap for them they would do it, because they would profit

Mac market of beatmakers got bigger, so they're now making Mac version, which they said before they couldn't do.

It's all ideals.

[smalltock]

…

I PM'd you. Again, let's not shit up this thread with unrelated things.