After my faithful old PC went out in a blaze of glory (the power supply caught on fire) I was troubled as to figuring out the computer that would suit my needs and more importantly ... suit my needs down the road. I like work horse technology. Who doesn't? And I hate buying a nice piece of equipment just to realize that it's going to work with component A or Component B but maybe Component C if I install yada yada yada ...
Well ... I had bought a Mackie Spike interface over the summer for recording ideas. This interface could be used on either OS X (mac operating system) or Windows XP.
But once my computer died I was in the market for a new computer. At first I had every intention of buying a windows computer (I'm an ASP.Net web developer).
But I soon realized that with the launch of Windows Vista that it was going to be a while before support for software and hardware comes up to par. And then the costly question ... What about support for my current hardware. I had just bought it the past summer (not even 6 months old when making this consideration).
Now I was looking for something a little different than the current software I was using ... so cost of a new piece of software was well into consideration. However, I thought about all the poor folks who may have been in the market for a new computer or operating system. They'd be running into much of the same problem. This is the reason for this post.
Hopefully by now you've realized that I'm a new windows --> apple convert. However, I've still paid close attention to the whole vista release. Also, being a developer me and and few other developers had first had release access and were able to give it a test. After a couple of months a few of the developers reported back that Vista was a bit of a resource hog compared to Win XP and Server 2003 but didn't seem to add much in the way of useful features to make lives that much easier at the end of the day. I mean lots of eye candy for sure, but me and my co-workers could not come up with a legitimate reason for moving to windows vista. Yes, recording and and development are two entirely different worlds together, but they both require resources.
So I'm back to developing in Windows 2003 ... but ... in a Mac environment running parallels (for those of you who don't know this is a virtual PC environment used for running different operating systems on linux and mac). In all honesty I'm very impressed with the stability of the app running the development and server software. I wouldn't recommend it for recording through (it needs quite an amount of memory, especially for running large apps). So for this I've moved to OS X. I wasn't overly concerned about setting up my external interface, but when I plugged it in I was surprised that I didn't even need to install any drivers (there was a firmware install that was necesary as well as a soft app install). And the issue that I was most concerned about the most (my audio interface not working when I plan to upgrade the operating system) will not be an issue. This spring Apple will be releasing OS 10.5 (OS 10.4 being the current version). First the cost of me upgrading will be the price of the operating system (about $130). My hardware will be supported by the OS for the entirety of the versions of OS X. I can thank Mac Core Audio Drivers for this (also the reason for no driver install). And I can't forget to mention great stability.
Granted there are issues concerning Intel macs supporting hardware and applications. So this is something to consider if you are looking for a computer and are wondering if making the switch is worth your while.
So yep I'm a convert. I haven't thrown all windows stuff out the window. But I noticing that apple is seriously making my life easier. But this makes me curious...
1. With Windows Vista release being yesterday how do recording software and hardware manufacturers plan to respond?
2. Will apple get more converts because of windows vista's downfalls?
3. How long will people stick to windows xp?
For more info about windows vista and performance there are a number of articles currently on
http://www.tomshardware.com.
