It’s funny but the thing that is keeping me from being able to fully jump in to Logic is that I remember Aperture all too well 
Cool, it looks like 10.8 adds a Mastering Assistant that looks a lot like Apple’s take on iZotope Ozone
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Thanks for the heads-up - will update asap 
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I bought the M2 Mac mini base model and it’s just a kicka$$ machine. It’s so fast and very affordable. I’m waiting for the M3 mini so I can retire the M2 as my TV box. lol.
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I bought an M2 Mac Studio and Studio Display as my main production machine. It’s super-fast, whisper-quiet, and easily handles multiple pro applications running simultaneously.
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Any rumors on when the M3 mini is likely to come out??
Anyway, I am sure I’d be fine with a M2. Planning to get one very soon now 
No roll-out date has been set for the M3 Mac Mini, but industry watchers believe it will be soon.
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Niiiiiiiiiiiice 
Might be overkill for me (and my wallet )
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The combined price tag of an M2 Mac Studio with 64GB of memory and a Studio Display was a serious hit on the Apple Card, for sure. But I depend on my system to do the heavy lifting for all the content I create for my clients, so the system is literally paying for itself. 
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Part of me wants to get back in to mac development. I’ve been an iOS developer for over a decade and Minis have always been the stealth sweet spot. They are really capable for such a compact little thing and are cheap. It’s like putting a top end laptop in a desktop case for half the price.
That said I would probably buy a Studio for serious software development.
For music the Mini is totally fine. Love my M2 Pro mini. Typing on it now in fact.
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Man, I played around with it only a little bit, but it is awesome - I think I need to re-master my previously released tunes; everything comes out so much more clearly 
(It is pushing my processor to the limits though 
)
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Yeah I love Ozone for the same reason. Just throw it on the Master bus and leave it off except when rendering to final audio.
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My brother just bought the M3 MacBook base model I’ll be trying it out when it arrives next week.
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Seeing that you own both, you could A/B those two - would love to hear your thoughts!
Sure, let me do that this weekend.
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It’s actually really good, not as many features as Ozone but running just a stock analysis on a project with both I think Apple’s did a better job. Of course you never use just the stock output, you tweak it based on the recommendation, but with Apple’s, fewer adjustments would be needed for the project I tested it on.
Here’s a test on an unmixed quick recreation attempt of one of our band’s old songs. I left these unmixed and without correct track EQ just to see how the two mastering plugins would do with their initial analysis attempt on a really raw project. It still sounds like garbage but that’s not surprising without proper mixing and track EQ; the key is to listen for the improvement.
Unprocessed:
Ozone (much better):
Logic (even better):
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Thanks - much obliged!
So, the way I understand it, you wouldn’t run this plug-in on all your channels, just on the Stereo Out in Logic (after you’ve done all the mixing and EQ’ing)? That’s where it sits “pre-loaded” in Logic…
Or, would you indeed run it on each individual channel??
Also, I am guessing the Apple plugin is more for, uhm, “less experienced” people like me who wouldn’t know what knob to tweak anyway 
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Correct, you add one instance of this to the master bus slot. You only need one mastering plugin. The equivalent for a track would be a limiting channel strip like Neutron. These usually have compression, EQ, and a limiter, and are used in mixing to balance track loudness and tone.
Yes the Apple plugin is very simple and effective.
One last thing about mastering plugins - they typically add latency. Don’t enable them while recording, just when exporting.
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So I have run in to my first showstopper in Logic and it might be a dealbreaker.
Logic can only load Audio Unit plugins, which is normally fine. However, Audio Unit Instruments (even AUv3) are incapable of sending MIDI out, they only route audio out. There is no way to route, for example, MIDI generated in one instrument plugin out to another plugin or to external hardware.
This is actually extremely limiting. Many plugins have outstanding sequencers or arpeggiators that are super useful to use to sequence or drive other tracks. There are in fact a class of plugins designed only to do this. Being unable to use this functionality at all in Logic is bad.
Logic itself comes with a basic step sequencer and arpeggiator as MIDI effects, which are OK, but are not up to what exist in the better plugins.
This is not so much a failure of Logic as it is of the Audio Unit format standard. Which unfortunately makes it less tractable for Apple to fix.
Bummer.
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There might be a workaround that sounds pretty hacky but it didn’t work when I just tried it. We’ll see.