Mac or PC?

[Captain_Arrrg]

BTW - I haven't experienced a driver-related complication on any of my PC's running XP.

Vista, on the other hand...

I have yet to have a problem with vista, and I'm running the 64-bit version. I'll agree that it's not so good for the lay user, but if you know how your computer works (ie. how to update drivers) then there's no problem. It may just be that I wanted something that would use all four cores of my CPU and all 4 GBs of ram; And actually use it instead of having sit the most of the time inactive until you click something. Waiting for programs is a thing of the past. I love it.



Edit: That said if you aren't running a quad core with 4GB of RAM then avoid like the plague due to Microsoft's RIDICULOUS pricing scheme.

 

[Captain_Arrrg]

Probably what I'll end up doing. I almost pulled the plug on a Macbook pro last week, had the salesman bring the box down and everything, but I backed off when I saw the price of the 3 year Apple care plan. No way am I buying a laptop with just 1 year warranty, and no way am I paying what Apple want for their 3 year coverage.

Sorry for the triple post.

If you actually read what Apple Care covers, you'll find your better off with homeowners policy on your laptop. FYI.

Mac vs. PC is just deciding which multinational corporation is going to try to screw you. At least the Mac people seem happier....

 

[tZer]

I have yet to have a problem with vista, and I'm running the 64-bit version. I'll agree that it's not so good for the lay user, but if you know how your computer works (ie. how to update drivers) then there's no problem. It may just be that I wanted something that would use all four cores of my CPU and all 4 GBs of ram; And actually use it instead of having sit the most of the time inactive until you click something. Waiting for programs is a thing of the past. I love it.

Maybe I'll revisit my machine and see about some updates. It's been many months since I purchased that box - maybe even a year. But the frustration I experienced (and I am not afraid to go under the hood) was enough to make me completely uninterested in any of the so-called improvements Vista was supposed to have made.

I've been expecting MS to correct those flaws at some point - if they didn't, this debate would be moot - PC's would cease to be a viable competitor in any arena.

I need a better soundcard in that machine anyway. Maybe I'll grab a worthy soundcard and see how that frustrating monster behaves after a few updates.

 

[Captain_Arrrg]

Maybe I'll revisit my machine and see about some updates. It's been many months since I purchased that box - maybe even a year. But the frustration I experienced (and I am not afraid to go under the hood) was enough to make me completely uninterested in any of the so-called improvements Vista was supposed to have made.

I've been expecting MS to correct those flaws at some point - if they didn't, this debate would be moot - PC's would cease to be a viable competitor in any arena.

I need a better soundcard in that machine anyway. Maybe I'll grab a worthy soundcard and see how that frustrating monster behaves after a few updates.

SP1 has made thing smoother and third party hardware manufacturers have stared to get with the program of getting working drivers out.

I have a Creative sound card and they are up to date with their Vista drivers.

 

[jsbass]

Mac's are PC's folks, nothing is different about the hardware. Any other old laptop is built to run the same way your Mac is. The only difference is the operating system. Quite frankly, other than a different looking GUI, XP and OSX can do the same things just as well as one another. For Windows you can find many many free applications that do anything just as well or better than the programs Apple forces you to use because there is no such thing as third party software on Mac OS. It's a shame because most of the best software out there is third party. Mac tells you what you can and can't use/do, which I don't like one bit.

 

[Infernal Affair]

Here we go again.

 

[mjolnir]

Mac OS is a shell over BSD. Linux will have more of a learning curve for your average Joe. I think he wants to get up and running with minimal hassles.
Get a Mac. You wont have to worry about viruses, stupid crashes etc. Plus its just a simpler, more intuitive and elegant operating system.

I was mostly joking there. I just get sick of the whole Windows/Mac debate, that's all.

I agree with tZer, however, that this Vista debacle has tipped the scales in Mac's favor.

 

[hunta]

I'll agree that it's not so good for the lay user, but if you know how your computer works (ie. how to update drivers) then there's no problem.

Uhm. No.

For you there may be no problem, and I don't know specifically what you're running Vista on or what you're doing with it, but if simply updating drivers and maybe some minor tweaks were the answer then you'd be seeing articles all over slashdot and all the tweaker sites about it.

I'm an IT guy and every Vista PC I've come across has been a total disaster. I recently was helping someone out with a DVD editing project on their Vista laptop and it was an absolute nightmare. Nearly every piece of software I was used to using to do various functions would not work properly or at all on Vista. (Ended up using Vegas 8 which worked well, but I've seen plenty of reports of problems with Vegas 8 + Vista as well, including some VERY angry people).

There is hardware that runs "fine" on Vista. There is hardware that will not work on Vista. There is hardware that is NEVER going to work on Vista because the vendor isn't providing proper support. The same applies to software. If you think any of this is really going to be solved by service packs and updates you're loopy. The OS is fundamentally flawed and that is NOT going to change. Vista was DOA and the only reason it wasn't laughed out of the marketplace at launch is because of marketmonkeys, a gullible public, and the "Microsoft Monopoly" pushing the crap on OEM's.

As you said, unless you're using Quad-Core and 4+ gigs of RAM you should avoid Vista. And if you're using Quad-Core and 4+ gigs of RAM you should run linux.

 

[mjolnir]

Uhm. No.

For you there may be no problem, and I don't know specifically what you're running Vista on or what you're doing with it, but if simply updating drivers and maybe some minor tweaks were the answer then you'd be seeing articles all over slashdot and all the tweaker sites about it.

I'm an IT guy and every Vista PC I've come across has been a total disaster. I recently was helping someone out with a DVD editing project on their Vista laptop and it was an absolute nightmare. Nearly every piece of software I was used to using to do various functions would not work properly or at all on Vista. (Ended up using Vegas 8 which worked well, but I've seen plenty of reports of problems with Vegas 8 + Vista as well, including some VERY angry people).

There is hardware that runs "fine" on Vista. There is hardware that will not work on Vista. There is hardware that is NEVER going to work on Vista because the vendor isn't providing proper support. The same applies to software. If you think any of this is really going to be solved by service packs and updates you're loopy. The OS is fundamentally flawed and that is NOT going to change. Vista was DOA and the only reason it wasn't laughed out of the marketplace at launch is because of marketmonkeys, a gullible public, and the "Microsoft Monopoly" pushing the crap on OEM's.

As you said, unless you're using Quad-Core and 4+ gigs of RAM you should avoid Vista. And if you're using Quad-Core and 4+ gigs of RAM you should run linux.

As a fellow IT guy, I agree completely and wholeheartedly with these statements and can provide several specific examples to confirm each and every one of them.

hunta also hit on a problem that the average Vista user may not normally come across, and that's software and hardware support. Many third party developers are simply not providing Vista support for their products, and many have openly admitted that they have no plans to do so.

 

[tZer]

Well, maybe the debate should be framed as "Mac running Leopard" vs. "PC running Vista" or "Mac on OSX vs. PC on XP"...

I still have hopes form my Vista box - at worst, I still have some hearty system resources that can be re-purposed into an new machine - but I'll give a service pack update a try before I scrap it entirely.

The bottom line for me is that at one point I would have dismissed the Mac vs. PC discussion outright - either was fine. But my experience with Vista, while it has not changed my mind about PC's and XP - it has about the overall Microsoft vs. Apple discussion. MS seems to be flailing with the nightmare that Vista is - and Apple seems to be thriving.

 

[seamonkey]

MS Vista is in trouble:
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

But you just wait and see because MS will release "Windows 7" three years early and solve every-one's problems.

I don't mind XP - I got it stable for me and I have seen any software companies say they're not going to support XP. It'll be selling through 2010 now.

But I'd love to see some major support of Linux by music software companies, but it just doesn't happen.
Next I'd love to see Apple turn into a OS company and let Dell, Gateway, HP, etc sell hardware running OS-X. Get the price down and make it more convenient to purchase.
If not I'd love to see MS switch to *nix OS. That's right - Wine for current apps, and native for new. Then SW makers would switch to *nix.
None are ever going to happen.

Market share wise Apple is still only like 5% of all sales. Not that market share really means anything about what is best.

 

[DocBop]

MS Vista is in trouble:
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

But you just wait and see because MS will release "Windows 7" three years early and solve every-one's problems.

I don't mind XP - I got it stable for me and I have seen any software companies say they're not going to support XP. It'll be selling through 2010 now.

But I'd love to see some major support of Linux by music software companies, but it just doesn't happen.
Next I'd love to see Apple turn into a OS company and let Dell, Gateway, HP, etc sell hardware running OS-X. Get the price down and make it more convenient to purchase.
If not I'd love to see MS switch to *nix OS. That's right - Wine for current apps, and native for new. Then SW makers would switch to *nix.
None are ever going to happen.

Market share wise Apple is still only like 5% of all sales. Not that market share really means anything about what is best.

i have used Linux from 1994 till a couple years ago and doubt you will ever see a lot of large companies supporting it. Apple OS X is more stable because only has to develop for a known platform, not thousands of variants like the PC world.

MS does have Unix roots people forget they used to have MS Xenix. Window is a combo of the old DEC OS and Xenix, read the book Showstopper for a history. What MS needs today is grow a pair and decide to rewrite Windows and forget about backwards compatibility. Apple has done it a couple times over the years. They give developers a couple years warning they will have to port to new platform and give users a year or so warning. Even Linux has done major kernel upgrades that forced developer to port and users to rebuild apps. So MS needs to rewrite Windows from scratch and not kludge things for backwards compatibility. That is what Vista originally was going to be, but they started getting off schedule and cutting the spec' to pieces and then panic mode and pushing developer too hard.

 

[msquared]

Here we go again.

Seriously. Do these people not realize that they can just look one or two pages past the first and see that practically every third thread is a Mac vs PC question? But then again, this board has Jazz vs Precision and four string vs five string threads on an almost weekly basis so it's no surprise that this one is at three pages.

MS does have Unix roots people forget they used to have MS Xenix. Window is a combo of the old DEC OS and Xenix

I've seen an extraordinary amount of BS on Talkbass since joining years ago, but this one takes the cake. Even if it were true that MS had Unix roots, it doesn't even remotely resemble Unix at this point either from an interface or an under the hood standpoint. The fact that MS licensed and resold Xenix at one point in the freaking '80s doesn't mean that people who are currently working on 32 and 64 bit Windows pulled anything from it. And thank goodness for that.


Neither is better. If you're familiar with one, go with that. If you're familiar with the other, go with that instead. It is an absolute fallacy to suggest that either is better than the other for something as technically simple as audio recording. Please realize that when you ask whether a Mac or a PC is better for audio, you are asking something equivalent to whether Reeboks or Nikes are better shoes for killing a spider.

 

[the_thriller]

http://www.rainrecording.com/products/ <--- just get one of these. They are expensive, but designed for recording. And if you have the cash, you can buy me one too

 

[xkimsungminx]

Hm.. well Macs are cheaper to current College students depending on if your schools bookstore has sales on them. [They have Mac sales quite often around my area at the UC's around me and at the Cal States] So they're pretty similar price wise with a pretty evenly equipped PC laptop.

Well with Vista... just give it a few SP's and it should be good to go . [I saw a few because I think it'll take them more SP's to fix Vista than it did to fix XP] It took Microsoft up to SP2 for XP to get it running smoothly and I have no problem with my Microsoft XP Pro edition.

And about the... Mac can do everything a PC does... I say it's false from a gaming point of view because the only real company that supports Mac is Blizzard right now [I think]. The hardware on Macs can definitely support what's out there right now but I don't think pro gamers would really want to be playing on Macs.

As for myself... I'm actually currently debating on whether I want to purchase a Macbook from the school computer store sale or go with a Lenovo since they're in the same price/spec range, but I'm tempted to go with Mac because I really don't want to deal with Vista and the only thing the Mac won't be able to do will be done on my self-built XP Pro running PC.

 

[fdeck]

Just a note that Windows XP is still available. You can get a Dell Vostro for 400 bucks with WinXP. To find the cheapest Dell computers, you have to look at their "small business" offerings. When I got this computer, it was the cheapest Dell notebook available at the time, and it has served me just fine.

Also, I think that XP Home is all that most users need. It has worked fine for me.

I'm only mentioning all of that, not to argue about platforms, but just to emphasize that the baseline price point for a modern computer is around 400 bucks. More money gets you more computer, but more money would also get you more microphones, preamps, etc.

 

[debassr]

I officially recommend either Mac, Windows or Linux.

 

[Signal to Noise]

Try a Mac - You Will Never Go Back......Take a Bite of the APPLE.....You get what you pay for when it comes to this....

 

[JonathanD]

Is set the laptop functions correctly I do not thing its the PC or MAC thing...its the operating system and how it works with your program of choice.

I use a mac because the PC I had sucked it. But some people do very well.


Get firewire on whatever you get.

 

[namraj]

I have 4 PC desktops and 1 macbook laptop, the words that regually come out my mouth when ever I sit down at any of the desktops to do anything are "f**king PC's!!" They don't do it for me, and I find as they get older they end up crashing a ridiculous amount, and a new cheap pc laptop will still crash alot (laptop at my job (I'm a pa for a boy with muscular dystrophy).