The iMac laptops

[Slaphound]

I'm convinced. iMac it is. I guess Ill go for the lowest end. 13 inch macbook and spend $1099. As it will be used mostly as a practice tool, do I need to spend more money on any thing else? More ram? There are 2 models with 13 inch screen. One has a slower processor.

 

[MakiSupaStar]

Love macs. I'm running a network of 350 of them. The ibook is a great little machine, but can I make some suggestions?

Bump up the memory (ram) to 1G (overall better experience), get an external HD (you'll find your hard drive filling up pretty fast when you're working with sound files).

Also the little speakers are tinny at best (trust me I listen to a lot of reggae and the bass just doesn't cut it through those little speakers). Invest in some headphones or some external speakers.

But enjoy. You'll find OS X a joy to work with. Start with Garage Band 3.0 then upgrade once you start finding the limits of that program. You can actually buy a little adapter from radio shack to take your fat instrument cord into a little headphone input to start with. Then look into getting an interface to serve as... well.... an interface.... between your bass and the computer. Garage Band 3.0 has some cool features built in that lets you noodle with it a little.

BUT, and this is a big BUT. OS 10.5 is due out in the early spring. This is going change things around a lot as well as a new version of iLife (bundle that includes GarageBand) is probably going be released at that time.

 

[andrewd]

The base model Intel MacBook comes with 24-bit 96kHz audio inputs/outputs, both analog and digital, directly integrated with the OS and with very low latency (processing time). It has Firewire 400 on the motherboard, see above, which is the most popular way to add an external audio interface. It has an excellent high resolution screen and directly supports a second monitor up to, say, 23" for dual screen operation. It comes free with a quality Audio/MIDI editing application (Garageband) stuffed with better than average virtual instruments and a fully functional Video editing app (iMovie), both directly compatible with FinalCut and Logic Pro, leaders in their respective fields. You can buy it for $949 (plus another $70 or so for an extra 1GB RAM. easy to install and not optional IMO) from any Apple store where it can be returned to an intelligent human if a problem should arise and often be fixed on the spot.

It's also the coolest looking hardware on the block. And runs WinXP if you feel the need.

Ummm...get me a laptop like that for $500 from Dell? I think not.

N.B. I don't work for Apple! I just need to work with quality hardware.

Nother N.B. - not an advert, but I run my MacBook with a Samsung 215TW 21" 16x10 monitor when editing. Beautiful 1680x1050 widescreen display. rotates to portrait mode, Analog & Digital computer inputs, Component, S-Video & composite analog video inputs, small tinny speaker (but OK for video monitoring) Does analog video picture-in-picture while displaying the DVI-D computer input - amazing when editing video or writing to picture. Looks _almost_ as nice as my Apple 30" at work, costs $450. ***?

are you sure the macbooks do 24/96? My powerbook does 24/48... didn't realize that the macbooks had stepped it up a bit.

edit: I strongly recommend getting an audio interface of some kind (USB will probably be fine, but firewire is better). The 1/8" minijacks just aren't robust. The line in on my powerbook doesn't always work so well, because 1/4" cables are basically too heavy and can bend the jack on the inside.