While the Mac enjoys a well-deserved reputation for its ease of use, and a place in the hearts of a large number of musicians and audio engineers, Mac users have had to put up with a fair number of complicated architectural transitions over the past few years. It started with the introduction of Mac OS X in 2001, continued with the change to Intel processors in 2006, and will now happen again as we migrate to applications that can take advantage of 64-bit memory addressing.

Each of these architectural shifts has meant that new versions of the applications people rely on every day have to be created. And because so many musicians and audio engineers became more reliant on plug-in software effects and instruments in the '90s (was it really so long ago?), each shift has also meant an even bigger headache in getting all of your favourite plug-ins to work again.

I don't know what the exact ratio of applications to plug-ins is, but it probably wouldn't be far-fetched to say that for every major application that needs to be ported there are probably several hundred plug-ins as well. And because there are so many, and so much diversity in the ecosystem that develops them — from students to seasoned pros — it's inevitable that some plug-ins never get ported to a new architecture, which is frustrating if you rely on such tools but you still need the latest Mac hardware or software.