Plaidophile

I don't know when this was announced, but Paul pointed me to Logic Studio, which has finally made the (previously) $1000 Logic Pro catch up with the $cheap GarageBand. Also it's only $500 now and includes a hell of a lot more than Logic Pro ever did (including all the jam packs!).

The upgrade is only $200, which I will probably be purchasing as soon as I get my G5 back. (Unfortunately, Logic itself now requires a dual G5 or faster. So I'll have to keep using 7 on my laptop for those rare times that I record from it.)

It's nice that they've also finally gotten rid of XSKey. Logic was a bit of an oddball in that it was the only Apple application with actual copy protection.

The IIR builder (Impulse Response Utility) might be fun to mess with, too.

I hope that you can still use it with the old multi-window interface, though. I liked having my arrange, sequence, and mixer in separate windows (and being able to have more than one of each). The single-window interface is one of the major downsides to GarageBand and I'd hate to think Apple have dumbed it down in the name of "ease of use." Of course Logic isn't easy to use. It's a professional application. It's okay for those to have a steep learning curve and a deep interface, because the deep interface also allows you to do a lot more than what you'd get from a shallow interface.