EXS24 MkII History: Emagic, now owned by Apple, makes Logic, a professional sequencer and audio recorder. It is very popular among professionals. Emagic decided to make a sampler that works in conjunction with Logic, and came up with the EXS24 (currently renamed as Sampler). It was a Logic-only plugin (although long ago there was a VST Windows version sold). The last Windows version of EXS was in Logic 6.1, which of course was the last Windows Logic version. Nowadays, EXS is completely Apple, and Mac and Intel in nature.
In 2003, prior to the total-Mac switch and the Apple purchase, Emagic released EXS-24 Mark II, which contains a nice modulation matrix and more filter types, noteably a high-pass filter. This also included the previously released trigger functions in the groups, which enabled the Giga-ubiquitous key-switching ability. Plus it streamed samples from hard disk, now a standard feature on all samplers.
After the buyout, starting with Logic 6, Apple included EXS24 for free within Logic itself - no more paying for it separately.
Each Logic version includes a very-slightly upgraded EXS24. No serious work has been done with it for a long time. Yet, because of it's good basic feature set and nice integration with Logic, it continues to be used heavily. One wonders if we'll ever see a EXS24 Mark III.
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