16 Years After Its Release, FL Studio is Finally Coming to Mac

If you're a dance, rap, or hip-hop producer, you most likely use one of two programs to make music: Ableton or FL Studio. While Ableton is the more recognizable name, the world's most popular DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) is in fact been FL Studio. Unfortunately, it has always suffered from one fatal flaw—it doesn't work on Macs. This has meant that for the past 16 years, any Mac user that wanted to make use of it had to slow down their computer by running a program like Parallels or Boot Camp to mimic a Windows environment, or keep a dedicated PC on hand specifically for making music. At long last, that's finally going to change.

In statements made to Attack Magazine, the FL Studio Support Team revealed that OS X will be getting its own native version in FL Studio 12 next year. The Support Team attribute the need to import "1 million lines of code", close intergration with Windows' API, and lack of OS X support in Delphi—the code with which FL is built—for their delayed response in porting the program over to Mac. So, why now, after 16 long years of complaining? It's simple: Ableton's market share is increasing and fewer people have PCs.

Over the past five years, many producers have switched from PCs to Macs and been faced with the option of either a lacklustre production experience or needing to learn a new system. A significant portion have opted for the latter. Recent estimates peg Ableton's popularity as being right behind FL's and Image Line, the company that produce FL Studio, are hoping to put some distance between the two.

As a FL Studio user and lover, here's hoping version 12 was worth the wait.

Ziad Ramley is on Twitter: @ZiadRamley