Mac Or Windows?

[spencer]

I like mac but microsoft computers get you so much more for your buck. Why is it that most musicians prefer mac?

[lemur821]

It's what you might call a cult. Also, Microsoft products can be a huge pain.

[Steve'r]

With PC, there are thousands of really crappy editing programs.
With Mac OS, there are only a couple. And they're industry standards. Nothing beats GarageBand for people who need a good place to start when they want to learn production, Logic is quickly becoming THE studio software to have for everything from capture to sequencing to MIDI, and ProTools was, untill quite recently, Mac only as well.

Plus, they just work better in general.

And, of course, if you use a Mac, you probably have a ponytail. Sounds like a musician to me.

[RWP]

OH NO!!!!

[MeYHymN]

If you know Mac, then get a Mac. I, however, am NOT a Mac user. But what I'm wondering is, when is someone going to put the new OS 11 (or whatever) that runs on X86 hardware on a standard PC clone?

[Greg Huff]

Originally Posted by MeYHymN

If you know Mac, then get a Mac. I, however, am NOT a Mac user. But what I'm wondering is, when is someone going to put the new OS 11 (or whatever) that runs on X86 hardware on a standard PC clone?

As much as all the PC faithful are hoping for this, its just not gonna happen. The OS has a dependency on some things that are only found in the Mac hardware, like a different videocard and some other stuff like that, so you never know, it might happen one day, but there are both hardware and software issues involved with getting it over, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

And hey, I just got my first Mac on Friday and I have to say, as a long time Windows user, its really not that hard to make the switch, it is easy and is not painless at all, unlike what some people would have you believe (*hack* Bill Gates *hack*) so hey, give it a shot, you never know, the lack of viruses and other annoyances of that nature, along with the best OS ever, might make you a convert so give it a shot. .

[WalterBush]

I wouldn't say most musicians prefer Mac. For years, Pro Tools was the only workable DAW. It ran on Mac only until the late '90s (although Digidesign's earlier product, Session 8, ran on both.). So Mac was the program of choice for digital recording proffesionals.

That hasn't been the case for years, now. Plenty of studios run systems on Macs, PCs, or proprietary computer systems like PyraMix or Radar. Modern studios usually have several systems available.

Digidesign now uses XP to run their hardware at trade shows, BTW. Apple kind of shafted them by not giving them warning that the newer G5s would have PCIe slots only, and Digi only had PCI units ready for their HD 7 release. They were upset, I'm told.

Mac users like Macs. PC users like PCs. These days, you can find excellent software and hardware on both. If you took a sample, I think you'd see that ratio of Mac to PC users among musicians is about the same as the general population.

Having said that, I'm going to sit back and watch the wars start again

[bburk]

A man walks into the room and nonchalantly lights a match. Pausing first to ponder the flickering flame, he cups it in his hand and gently moves it toward a long black string which begins near his feet and snakes around behind an unruly pile of obsolete electronics equipment. As the flame engulfs the end of the string, it instantly crackles to life. Sparks reflect in the man's sunglasses as they travel along the filament consuming it wholly, inch by inch. The hint of a satisfied smile crosses the man's lips as he studies the phenomenon. No one can see the gleeful, almost insane glimmer in his eyes under his dark glasses. The tiny light show disappears behind an old CRT carelessly discarded amongst the other detritus of a forgotten era of personal computing. Heart rate elevated, the man flicks the matchbook away, and turns for the door. Without breaking stride, he deftly releases the latch, pulls it open, and on his way through the portal performs a graceful pirouette, rotating on the ball of foot and catching the still opening door with his other hand. As he rotates the takes one last opportunity to scan the faces of the room's remaining occupants. Only a few have taken notice of his presence and of those, few seem to exude any emotion other than bewilderment. Smiling so broadly now that his chipped and yellowed incisor is plainly visible, he slams the door shut.

An ominous quiet falls over the room. The air is thick with the smell of cordite. The small conflagration of tiny sparks slowly nears its terminus in the rusted out hulk of an ancient IBM-386. It glints and sputters softly as it enters a small dime sized opening in the front of the forgotten PC. A small label etched in the yellowing plastic near the hole reads "TURBO".

At the same moment, a thousand miles apart, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both feel an identically mild tingling sensation in the back of their necks, just below where the spine meets the skull. The sensation passes quickly, and both dismiss it out of hand.

The man is outside now, ambling aloofly down a filthy side alley. He pulls his left hand out of his jeans pocket to check his watch. it reads "1011 : 111011 : 110110". Watching the digits tick past, he counts softly to himself.

"viisi..."
"neljä..."
"kolme..."
"kaksi..."

The man looks back over his shoulder one last time...




































LINUX!!!

[deaf pea]

I'm NOT trying to "start something", but . . .

I remember, back in the stone age, that IBM (the original PC-type CPU) was a PAIN . . . programming was a pain, and just USING a CPU wasn't really worth the trouble. I vaguely remember the 1st Midi sequencer program (designed by Todd Rundgren's keyboardist, IIRC) - I think it was called "Texture" . . . Don't know, I'm probably wrong about the title. Anyways, this was the early-mid eighties. Then came the Commodore Vic 20 and the Atari CPU that were a little bit friendlier for musician use, but it was still simplistic line entry programming.

Then Apple arrived with it's unique (at the time) OS that was a whole OTHER ballgame! A while later MS got into the game with a "watered down" version of Mac OS that was the 1st "Windows" OS. "Windows" OS was - literally - copied from the Mac OS!

Recently Mac has returned the favor, copying some of the features that were developed in Windows for use in Mac OSX

[brianrost]

Walter Bush and deaf pea are correct, historically a lot of music software was developed first for Macs (as well as Atari and Amiga) because they had graphical interfaces. Early DOS sequencers made you look at lists of MIDI events Any veterans of Dr. T's KCS want to testify?

Direct to hard disk recording was supported with built-in hardware on Macs by the early 90s while on Windows you had to pick a soundcard, install drivers, etc.

Finally, Apple started bundling audio apps with the machines while with Windows you always had to buy apps yourself. Today, every Mac comes with GarageBand installed and you can start making music with it as soon as you power the thing up.

That's why in the past Macs had an edge with musicians. No religion involved!!!

[elros]

It's purely practical.
I was tired of having to work with the computer. I figured IT should be working for ME. I began using Macintosh computers in '01, and not once have I missed the Windows "features" that I hear others complain to each other about. My experience has been that it just works, like they say.

[these_go211]

yea, here we go again....but i do love these batttles.....haha!

mac all the way!! it's true that these days audio is done with both. but over the long run, on average, using a mac will give you *A LOT* less problems. period. that's a fact. mac stole their GUI from xerox, and since then microsoft has stolen a lot from apple. i don't think it's ever been the other way around. microsoft continues to write buggy, sloppy, security-hole ridden software. vista was out for only days (maybe even hours) before the first security flaws were exploited. a few years ago bill gates had a demonstration at a major computing conference come to a crashing halt as his windows machine was brought down by the blue screen of death. business are so entrenched in the pc world it is prohibitively expensive to try and change. so they keep having to grin and bear it as microsoft brings forth lame offerings. but this will change.

it's laughable how some of the "new features" of vista have been directly copied from mac OS X. ie, spotlight, dashboard widgets, etc.

and don't be fooled by rock bottom prices you can get on some pcs. when you compare performance, being free of problems, and the lifespan of a typical mac vs that of a pc, your total cost of ownership is a lot less with a mac.

rant over.....or, maybe to be continued.....

[joebingo]

I have a pc with cubase...

I want a mac with logic pro, 'nuff said.

[lemur821]

Originally Posted by Greg Huff

As much as all the PC faithful are hoping for this, its just not gonna happen. The OS has a dependency on some things that are only found in the Mac hardware, like a different videocard and some other stuff like that, so you never know, it might happen one day, but there are both hardware and software issues involved with getting it over, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

More like Apple has a dependency on selling hardware.

[Tbirdbassist]

I'm running Cool Edit Pro 2 on a nearly 5 year old HP Pavillion a230n running XP home edition. It works just fine for me. This is my main computer too, running a couple other big programs, no problems. I'm eventually gonna get a laptop for other other things and make this my media computer only and give it a couple mods. Until then, it's doing me well.

Yes Macs are the standard for media, etc. However I don't see how building a PC specifically for media/recording can't be the same/better. I haven't looked at prices in a long while, I think you can get all you want and fall under the $2200 Mac price range. COrrect if I'm wrong as I'm not entirely too sure.

[BigDawg]

Originally Posted by WalterBush

I wouldn't say most musicians prefer Mac. For years, Pro Tools was the only workable DAW. It ran on Mac only until the late '90s (although Digidesign's earlier product, Session 8, ran on both.). So Mac was the program of choice for digital recording proffesionals.

That hasn't been the case for years, now. Plenty of studios run systems on Macs, PCs, or proprietary computer systems like PyraMix or Radar. Modern studios usually have several systems available.

Digidesign now uses XP to run their hardware at trade shows, BTW. Apple kind of shafted them by not giving them warning that the newer G5s would have PCIe slots only, and Digi only had PCI units ready for their HD 7 release. They were upset, I'm told.

Mac users like Macs. PC users like PCs. These days, you can find excellent software and hardware on both. If you took a sample, I think you'd see that ratio of Mac to PC users among musicians is about the same as the general population.

Having said that, I'm going to sit back and watch the wars start again

You are correct. After a debate with two friends of mine (one who has a Mac preference and the other, a PC preference) it was concluded that they are equally capable these days. The PC user is a computer programmer who, just to clarify the situation asked the CTO of their company what his take on it was. His answer was just as stated above, PCs are just as capable now as Macs, but Macs are typically pushed on musicians because of their long time relationship with the industry.

Don't fall into any traps...if you are buying a computer for strictly music, then you can't go wrong either way. If you have any use whatsoever for Windows-based software (for school, work, etc.) then get a PC. Although you can use much of Windows programs on a Mac now, none of it is supported by Microsoft...at that point when you are fuct, you are fuct.

[Richard Lindsey]

It just doesn't matter all that much, unless there's some specific environment that you absolutely have to dovetail into, which I venture to say most of us don't have. A well-set-up PC works fine for a lot of people. Mine hasn't given me an instant's trouble in years. Can't say the same for my buddy's G4. OTOH, there are folks who have had hellish experiences with PCs and great ones with Macs.

For most purposes, I'd say it's more important to think about what software you want to use. For example, if you want Logic, you've got to go with a Mac; if you want Sonar, it's gotta be a Windows machine. If you want ProTools, it could be either. I use Tracktion myself, and that's either Mac or PC.

What I really would like to see would be for Linux to take over, but I suppose that's too much to expect any time soon.

[Steve'r]

The $2200 Mac pricepoint is pretty off base.

You can get a 17 inch iMac with a 2.0 core duo 2 processer for $1,199. Slap in an extra $100 to bump the RAM up to 1.5 gigs and you're absolutely laughing for a recording machine.
And considering that that is including a fully legit copy of GarageBand, which is an extremely capable recording, sequencing, sampling and MIDI DAW, you are pretty well gold right out of the box.

I have a 1.8 gHz 17" iMac G5 and a 1.86 gHz Intel Core Duo, each with a gig and a half of ram in them, and either one is a VERY capable recording machine.

And given that you can do a full, legit, non-emulated install of Windows XP on an Intel based Mac, there's really no reason to go with a PC at this point, unless your budget for a new computer is really, really low. And even then, you can get an older G5, or even late G4 that could still run GarageBand quite nicely.

And for as much as people keep saying that they want Linux to be THE OS of choice, they seem to forget that OSX is pretty well just a GUI based on the Unix kernel. I mean, isn't that close enough? Maybe it's not quite as tweakable, but at least it actually WORKS with things.

[BigDawg]

Originally Posted by Steve'r

The $2200 Mac pricepoint is pretty off base.

You can get a 17 inch iMac with a 2.0 core duo 2 processer for $1,199. Slap in an extra $100 to bump the RAM up to 1.5 gigs and you're absolutely laughing for a recording machine.
And considering that that is including a fully legit copy of GarageBand, which is an extremely capable recording, sequencing, sampling and MIDI DAW, you are pretty well gold right out of the box.

I have a 1.8 gHz 17" iMac G5 and a 1.86 gHz Intel Core Duo, each with a gig and a half of ram in them, and either one is a VERY capable recording machine.

And given that you can do a full, legit, non-emulated install of Windows XP on an Intel based Mac, there's really no reason to go with a PC at this point, unless your budget for a new computer is really, really low. And even then, you can get an older G5, or even late G4 that could still run GarageBand quite nicely.

And for as much as people keep saying that they want Linux to be THE OS of choice, they seem to forget that OSX is pretty well just a GUI based on the Unix kernel. I mean, isn't that close enough? Maybe it's not quite as tweakable, but at least it actually WORKS with things.

Aside from the fact that you can get a Gateway with Core 2 Duo, 2 G ram, 19" widescreen, etc, etc, etc for $839...and that comes with the Windows Vista upgrade for free.

[joebingo]

is it possible to get OSX on a pc? (btw, i'm just askin, not making a ridiculously laid out point to counter bigdawg's post)