Wow, for the first time ever, BiaB Mac sales are exceeding Windows. BiaB is rising in appeal among young, professional musicians, and using Mac.


Demographics of the Mac biab skew towards younger people and professional musicians. And sales of the Mac biab have been rising, to the point that Mac biab sales now exceed windows biab. It is now 53:47 mac:windows. (It used to be 67:33 windows). That means a trend towards more younger, professional musicians using biab, on Mac

We hear from them more on social media (facebook, YouTube), and in the user showcase.

Must admit, it was the best thing I EVER did was changing from Windows to mac

Mac has always attracted creative professionals while Windows seems to be business orientated. Microsoft will make an effort to attract creatives every now and then but has never made a sustained effort.

The Apple Ipad is also becoming a popular music production platform. Has PG Music considered supporting the Ipad platform?

One of the more interesting things I watch for while looking at virtual instrument or plugin demonstrations on YouTube is if the demonstration is performed on a Mac or Windows computer. The demonstrations are overwhelmingly performed on a Mac.

The good news for PG Music is the move to Mac means the 2023 Mac release will be extremely popular.

Good news indeed. Glad to see the product is growing among younger users.
Bodes well for the future.

Lets hope this encourages PG Music to continue to elevate the level of development effort on the Mac Product.
The Mac version of BIAB has, until recent years, been a bit of a step child of the Windows version at PG Music.
My $.02.
Admittedly this gap has narrowed in recent years. I think its fair to say it has not disappeared.

I understand, the market does drive the business. Such is life

AAPL is now demonstrating software NATIVELY running on their own chips that might be exploited in the BIAB product.
Dedicating project audio and software tracks to specific CPU's as AAPL now does in LOGIC PRo X is one example.
That might significantly improve the regeneration of tracks, one of the performance gripes of the BIAB product.

As a minimum PG might finally ditch Rosetta and embrace a native mode version.

In the meantime, great hope for the future.

Will the Mac version of BiAB export a scrolling chord sheet with lyrics and audio to a .avi file like the Windows version?

Let's hope not. AVI files do not play on a Mac without a 3rd party converter.

MP4, OTOH, would be good.

I would bet that music and AV apps—as nice as they are—are not the main reason that young professionals have been switching to the Mac.

There are now millions of seats licensed by SalesForce in use globally. Yes, it works over Windows but nowhere nearly as well as it does on the Mac over Chrome. Combined with Apple Silicon portables, these make for extremely powerful work stations.

Peter, with the younger audience do you think you will produce more current pop and other genres that appeal more to youth?

Hi Peter
I believe there is a solid business opportunity to take what is some of your key IP, namely all the real tracks and associated musical assets, and create a new platform (using modern Apple software tools and technologies) to run on iPadOS and MacOS - natively and with minimal cross-platform effort.
It could be possible to create different product levels to cater for various user's needs, as well as to offer an upgrade path as a user develops in their musical journey. It would also be possible to provide content packs on an ongoing basis to provide additional revenue opportunities.
A modern BIAB, running on what are arguably the best hardware and software platforms for audio and midi, could have a market potential far exceeding what is currently being realised.
Cheers,
Robert

Every couple of decades it pays to rewrite a piece of code from the ground up, whether it needs it or not.

Somebody said that.

I think that's good news. I actually use both on my Mac with Parallels running windows. I've always felt that PC version was a little more stable. But with more Mac users at your office maybe the Mac Version will be more stable as well.

As to the demographics skewing younger, I'm 71 and I always thought was kind of a boomer thing.

Super interesting to see the improvement in Mac. Is this absolute growth (more users?) or is this related to a decline in Windows users? I switched from Windows to Mac some years ago, and I would never go back, so maybe it's partly your installed base switching.

The Mac includes GarageBand, which is a great free DAW. So maybe that helps get people interested.

One thing to consider... As a casual user of BIAB, I find the interface absolutely overwhelming. It feels like an archeological dig with 30 years of features piled on, going back to the DOS days. (I used BIAB a long time ago!) As a result, I have barely used the last 2 upgrades I bought and instead do all of my music production and songwriting in Logic Pro. (Which is more complex than GarageBand, but also enables you to hide the "advanced" features, though that's not a perfect solution.)

I would gladly buy a new easier Mac product from PG Music even if (or maybe because) it had fewer features. Perhaps you can expand your user base by appealing to new users with a less complicated product. (With native M1 support, of course!)

Best of luck

What Robert said. Every single word!!!

Apps from Apple have exactly one function: They help sell Macs. They serve no other purpose which is why, concurrent with the release of OS 10.9 Mavericks in 2013, most of them became free.

The difference between the free (GarageBand, Pages etc.) and the paid ones in the Pro Apps bundle (Logic, Final Cut etc.) is that the Pro Apps have phone support. Apple does not advertise this but it's true. A couple of years ago, someone decided to make this exclusive to the Education Store—quickly, orders came from the top to, again, let anybody buy it—because THEY HELP SELL MACS!
Apple Pro Apps Bundle

Back to BIAB for the Mac. There are windows that look like System 7 or earlier and a few interface bugs here and there because of this. So, yea, yea, yea, it could use a ground up rewrite but, once you get used to it, the workarounds become second nature and I think, "Wait till next year…"

Hey alright! Maybe the Mac version will come out before more than half the year is up now! :-)

Watch this space.

At 70, thanks for calling me young.