Documentation rant (slightly) -- no user manual in PDF?!?

Let's see... No manual, printed or .pdf, few real improvements...

I don't think that Apple needs my $199 upgrade fee for LS9.

I don't care for the fact that MOTU doesn't make thier documentation in .pdf form but, with them, you do get printed manuals when you spend the $149.

I once made the mistake of ordering the printed manual with Finale. It was practically the size of a Sears catalog and printed four pages to a sheet of paper. The .pdf was so much easier to search and use that I became a convert.

I hate Adobe style Help files. When Apple gets the documentation right, I will vote with my pocketbook. I already updated DP. Logic can wait.

Wow. No PDF???

What were they thinking, if indeed they were thinking at all?

It's mystifying. I hope they move quickly to rectify this gross oversight.

Yikes. This is not a good move. When I am doing a session I disable airport and as such don't want to have to rely on a variable BW link to a server somewhere for critical and timely answers when I am in the middle of something.

Geez, how hard could it be to put ONE PDF copy on a server for those who want to download it? It is not like it costs them anything to do this so the lack of downloadable documentation is a complete mystery....or a worrying trend towards centralization and overly zealous control.

Don't get confused though - the manual is in HTML format, rather than PDF, but it's still in the application bundle so it's still available without needing to go online.

My beef with it is that it's ugly, the help viewer is a dreadful, slow clunky application, viewing the pages in a web browser is better but you lose the (crucial) ability to search, and Preview with PDF's is a much superior experience.

Every one concerned about the lack of a PDF manual needs to use Apple feedback, you can access it from within Logic, well, at least you could in v8.xx.

pancenter-

I've registered my displeasure.
I would encourage all to do the same:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/logicpro.html

I feel as if part of my brain was removed!

For everyone else, does the manual stay on top too? That to me is the worst aspect.

Besides being a less elegant psuedo-browser app, it stays on top of all of my other apps, which makes my entire computer useless, UNTIL I minimize or close the manual. If it were just a regular browser document in Safari, at least I could switch back and forth to it. Now it covers everything, email, Safari, etc.

I haven't found anything in preferences to make it not always on top. Please release a PDF version!

All,

Thank you for this info. You just saved me $200. I'll wait for LS 10 if Apple chooses to be stubborn about this and not add the PDF. I could probably live without the printed manuals (though for the money I shouldn't have to), but the lack of a easily searchable PDF manual is a deal breaker. Being able to find easy answers to questions is the first requirement for a complex software package; I could easily bookmark different manual pages in Preview. I honestly don't know why companies fix what's not broken (like MS rearranging MS Office toolbars for the PC).

I used the feedback link. Hopefully, they'll listen.

GSH

*Good news - there is a L9 manual, printed and in pdf format ....*

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... it's called Logic Pro 8 manual

Seriously, all the new audio features are only an add on to Logic 8. The basic features of L9 are pretty much 99% identical to L8.
Look at the Environment, Piano Roll, Hyper Edit, etc nothing changed. Look at the Preference and Project Settings, besides a few minor things, pretty much identical.

So Apple did the right thing: no writer hired, no trees cut, no extra packaging.

Didn't you guys wonder where the 200 new features are and where the actual list is. Maybe it just came straight out of marketing and the developers trying since Thursday to find enough new features to make the list. Here is one: The movie commands moved from the Options menu to the FIle menu ... yipeee. This one was so much more important than long file names.

I think I'm less concerned about the new features than what they did with the old features...like an easily searchable, bookmarkable, offline pdf manual. Wow! I really can't believe they did that. Okay, rant over. I gave feedback.

Edgar wrote:

Here is one: The movie commands moved from the Options menu to the FIle menu ...

Edgar, don't you realize that this is part of the "Advanced music-for-picture features" which "make scoring and sound design easier than ever"?

😉

Regards,

-=iS=-

iS

you are right. I will let my producer tomorrow know that I can finish the movie scoring now in half the time thanks to those major improvements in "Logic 8Plus" (aka Logic9)

Logic 8 XL...

No printed manual is just ridicilous, plus it encourages piracy. I like to read the huge bulky paper version of the Logic 8 manual. It makes me feel smart. Like a college professor.