Want To Buy My First Mac... Don't Know What I Need, trying to solve ignorance Options

[impl0dr]

well... i need some major help. i have been making music on my piece of crap pc for a couple of years. it is really slow, so i don't have many options as to what i can run on it. anyway... i'm looking to get serious about the whole music making thing and know that MAC is the way to go. i know some basics of what i want, but don't know enough about macs or making REAL music using REAL equiptment. so... on to what i know i want:

g4 laptop 12" or 15"
-i need a separate hard drive for my music. my wife intends to use this as her computer for her job too.


i know ABOUT firewire, but don't know anything about it. i do know that i can only get firewire 400 on the 12 and 15".


i have some synths, a 12 track mixer, a drum machine that i will adding to (of course) and would like to get to start really using them.


anyway, i don't know what's available as far as specs go or what i want/need to get in order to sucessfully create music.

so, as you can see... i need a lot of help here. i would like to make this purchase sooner than later and really appreciate your time. thanks

[boze]

hi implodr-
i just read your post and i wanted to chime in about the whole mac laptop purchase idea. put simply, i think mac laptops are not a very good value these days. apple has a reputation of being the comp of choice for serious producers, artists, and graphics people- and it's true that macs are very popular in these areas. that said, i honestly believe you'll have a better experience with a pc laptop at every pricepoint the applestore offers.

i sometimes get castigated for making comments like this, but keep in mind i'm not saying that powerbooks aren't good machines. i'm just saying that they're overpriced, underspec'd, and underpowered these days. i think this will likely change in about a year when G5 laptops exist. at least i hope that's the case. not a good value- that's all i'm saying.

let me break it down one time:

for $1299 you can get an ibook G3 900mhz with a 12" screen and 128M of sdram. the only cheaper laptop at the apple store is an even slower ibook with a CD-ROM instead of a burner or combo drive.

skipping the fancier ibooks for now, the 12" powerbook starts at $1600 and features a 12" screen, 256m of ddr ram and an 867mhz G4.

ibook- 900mhz/128/40 - $1299
12" pbook- 867mhz/256/40 - $1599

you can argue that these are well-built machines that would be adequate for all sorts of uses, but it's much harder to argue that they are a good value.

if you watch these two websites: dealnews.com and for dell stuff gotapex.com you can see laptops every week that have really high end specs for good prices and you can find deals by companies like sony and toshiba that have a really good reputation for pc laptop build quality as well.

my best friend (who owns a ghz tibook and is an electronic musician and cold fusion programmer) recently bought a toshiba 15" 2.2ghz Pentium 4 with 512m of ddr ram, combodrive and built in wireless for $1050 after rebate. i was a bit disappointed because it only did 1024x768 but it does have a 32m ATI videocard and is a good machine for that price. you can get 3ghz dells for $1300 if you watch for a few weeks, and you can get pretty tricked out sony's and toshiba's if you want to spend $1600. no way will these laptops have soldered in ram and 12" screens either. but remember when mac coined the term 'megahertz myth' about how their machines weren't really slower? well you haven't heard anything about the 'gigahertz myth' and that's because there isn't one. if you put a 2.2ghz P4 or 3ghz P4 up against an 867mhz G4 it's going to get outperformed at everything. add the dippy screen size and skimpy ram that you can't take out and it's hard to say that the 12" pbook really compares to other laptops that cost $1600.

it's a tough situation that apple got into as a result of having the G4 chips made by motorola who needed to make lots of small slower chips for other bigger clients and can't make the kinds of hot big computer specific chips that intel can do. the G5 is a big step in the right direction, but G5 laptops are long ways off.

in the meantime you'll get way more for your money with a pc laptop.

[boze]

sorry for writing such a long post and sorry if it sounds antagonistic at all.

i used to own only macs and now i have a mac desktop and a pc laptop and i'm amazed at how much faster and more affordable pc laptops are- even the better known brands which cost more.

lots of pc laptops have firewire or usb2 as well, so you're soundcard needs would still be pretty much the same.

good luck!

[dixiechicken]

Mac:s have always had a higher pricepoint than comparable PC:s.
(a fair comparison is hard to do for a variaty of both technological & market reasons).

The main tecnological reason is that Apple does development of both hardware & software.

The speed myths are always hard to debunk, I can state thouh that my Fujitsu Lifbook E-7110 P4-1,7GHz
with 384Mb ram & Win2K, is generally slighly slower than 800MHz flatpanel iMac with 1Gb ram, running Mac OS X.

I mean simple things like opening word, excel, coying files across the network, booting up the computer.
My Fujitsu felt pretty snappy until I installed MS Office Professional, Norton AntiVirus, Acrobat 5 & few other things.

Cheers: Dixiechicken

[bracken]

I amazed the loops that some people jump through to save a couple bucks.

[boze]

bracken- what is that supposed to mean exactly? i mean i know you meant 'hoops' and not 'loops' but i still don't understand. shopping for a laptop that isn't a mac is jumping through hoops now? i don't get it. or is it wanting to get the most powerful laptop for the money that's the jumping through hoops part?

dixie, the 'feels generally slower' or faster comments don't really do anything to sway my conviction. usually folks who are hard pressed to prove that macs aren't as slow as the specs indicate will push photoshop tests- and it's totally true that having an app optimized for your os of choice is one of the best speed advantages there is.

see how many reverbs and vsti instruments you can run in each. for a mac music site, i think that's the best test. obviously there are things that will keep it from being a totally even comparison. make sure the laptop is plugged in for this test as they scale there cpu back to save on battery life when not plugged in. and anyway- i'm trying to compare mac to pc laptops and you say you can't really make a straight comparison and then try to compare a pc laptop to a mac desktop? the 7200rpm spindle speed of an iMac hd alone will make a huge difference in how it does lots of audio related tasks- and again, i'm not sure the 'feels snappier' type comments really mean much.

and i'm not sure about your comments about price and reasons for apple's higher prices either - i think hw/sw dev might not be the main reason as you said.

but regardless, the point i was trying to make was that for way less money you can always get a cheaper pc laptop that will do everything faster than a mac laptop. apple just updated the 15" pbook today, so after like 9months of waiting the 15" finally has ddr ram and a faster system bus.

still for the $2000 starting price you can get a comp that will clean it's clock at everything but photoshop maybe. and this is an audio forum so even though we all own macs i think that it's a reasonable thing to bring up.

jaguar is slow, too. slower than xp. osx has a lot of potential, but machines running osx are taking a speed hit from it these days it's not something that makes a comp faster except insofar as it is dual processor aware and that benefits pbooks not at all (and remember the whole point of dual processor macs was to stay caught up with how much of and ass whooping they were getting as a result of the slow motorola chips)

G5 powerbooks. that's where things start to get interesting.

i'm sorry for these longs posts- i'm not trying to stir anybody up here. it's just a question of value. pbooks are really nice machines, and it's true that they're fast enough to do most of the things most folks want to do. but they're also very expensive, and the nature of digital audio production with vst instruments and plugins is that you need lots of headroom to be creative. i feel like a lot of the mac world is just making any excuses it can come up with to avoid the fact that mac laptops are slower. and they are- they'res just slower. no getting around it. well built, yes. but there are several pc manufacturers who make really good quality pc laptops too. and even at prices hundreds less- over a thousand dollars less in some cases- these pc laptops are faster. and in computer hw that matters. faster matters. apple's own commercial for the new G5 touts, "the worlds fastest, most powerful personal computer". so if we can all just admit that this matters and that apple is significantly behind in the laptop race then i'll be happy.

thanks for reading and sorry if i offended anybody.

[greatscott94]

Hello Boze!

I understand that you are just stating your opinion, but I'm sure you can understand that this being a MAC Music site I take some offence someone registering to the site with what seems to be an agenda to convert Mac users over to PC. This world is already about 98% PC, I don't think it needs to be 100%. I'm not going to get into a debate about specs as I am not all that informed with them. All I know is I own a 12" PowerBook with 867mz, 40 gig internal HD, 80 gig external HD and 640 RAM and I love it and I would recommend it to anyone.

I'm sorry if I misinterpreted your intentions, I am not trying insult anyone, and I am sorry for turning impl0drs question into a debate. I will reply to his question later.Thanks.

[boze]

thx for being diplomatic, gs94- i appreciate it.

it's just that i don't think we as mac users need to hoodwink anybody into thinking you need to spend $1600 on a 12" pbook to make music on a laptop. these days with the continuing osx migration of our favorite apps and plugins and instruments it's actually still an awkard time in some ways.

plus as somebody who's only in the past 4 months running an xp system for audio i'm in kind a 'emperor has no clothes' mode since i've been paying through the nose for so long and it's not like apple doesn't have plenty of hw and sw issues of it's own. the fact that it's a mac forum shouldn't keep us from being up front about the fact that you can do anything on a 2.2ghz P4 Toshiba laptop for $1050 that you can do on a $2000 pbook except for run Logic and Soundtrack.

in some ways i feel like it's the blind devotion of much of the mac community that keeps us living with things like this long-ass wait for the 15" aluminum powerbook. it's nice to be aligned with something other than wintel, but osx is not exactly the green party in this equation.

and what you call my 'agenda' (i know you weren't trying to call me out, i'm just saying..) i perceive more as my 'experience'. i've recently bought a really usable vaio laptop for a good price and i'm doing audio (mostly reaktor, which runs like 300% better under windoze) and having a fine time. it makes me think twice about the prices people are paying for 867mhz or 1ghz of G4 in a laptop and the G5's aren't here in a mobile form factor to save us just yet.

it's not that i'm trying to get ppl to buy PCs, it's that i'm trying to testify about my recent experiences producing on both platforms with sony and apple hw and draw some conclusions about value based on those experiences.

-- sorry to carry on this way in your thread implodr, the new 15" pbooks make the situation somewhat brighter now so you got that going for you if you want a mac--

[greatscott94]

Hi Boze

I'm apologize for being defensive. I live in an environment where I am constantly having to stick up for Mac. My girlfriend and a lot of my friends dislike Macs, and not due to experience but ignorance. But reading your response helps me understand and respect your opinion. I can understand what you are saying about blind devotion, we should let our experiences not our need to be in an allegiance to help us make decisions. My experiences have led me to Mac others experiences may lead them away.

Perhaps we could continue our conversation in open bar.

thanks

[greatscott94]

Hello impl0dr

What I would recommend (not knowing your how much you have to spend) would be a basic but great set-up. I would start with a 12 or 15 PowerBook whichever you could afford (you can get more mhz with the 15). I would then buy either a Digidesign Mbox or 002. If you plan to record with no more than 2 tracks in at a time I would buy the Mbox. If you are going to need more than two lines in I would buy the digi002. Both of these products are made by digidesign and will come with 32 track protools editing and mixing software. I would then buy Propelerheads Reason. This is a wonderful midi program. It will give you the ability to create midi music and sample. Reason is a very fun program, I highly recommend it.

Keep in mind this is only my opinion, but I can tell you I have experience with all these items but the 002 and they are worked amazingly for me.

Thanks

[magness]

Hi Boze

I'm a new forum contributor, but by no means new to MacMusic.org - in other words, until now I suppose I've been what one might call "a listener". The thing is, Boze, I think that by now everyone pretty much understands your point of view about PC laptops. At least that's my opinion.

I might make just this one suggestion - If you could manage to keep your posts to the size of a short paperback novel you may not offend quite so many people... And Dixie, you needn't feel bad about words like, "... i'm not sure the 'feels snappier' type comments really mean much." because apparently (with all due respect) Boze gives the impression
[B] of being someone who believes that unless you talk like this, " ... below c. 1MByte/sec sustained throughput, i.e. roughly the 802.11g standard ..."[I] then you don't know diddly.

Sorry Boze, I honestly mean no offence.

Cheers,

magness

[boze]

i appreciate you trying to be light-hearted, but it still feels like you're trying to invalidate my thoughts on the subject. i'm talking about laptop value to somebody who's a newbie to electronic music and thinking about a mac laptop purchase. honestly, i don't know how active this board is and i doubt the original poster has even been back across. but still, it's unnecessary to act like you're the peacemaker while telling me sarcastically that my posts are too long and implying that i don't have respect for other peoples perspective.

the stuff i'm offering relates to the idea of buying a mac laptop to do electronic music. i think it's a well-intentioned thing to talk about pro's and con's of mac laptop ownership so that a new buyer goes in with their eyes open. i just think that value for your money is a con of mac laptop ownership because of the performance of single processor G4s in OSX.

if someone knew that lots of production ppl used protools setups and they were coming to the board with the false assumption that you needed to plunk down $2200 on a digi002 to do any serious music making on your computer- it would only be seen as lending a hand for somebody to come in with some info to the effect that you can spend way less and still get quality results from a home studio.

instead it's like nobody can bring up wintel without being taken to task as doing something profane. but then when the G5 towers get released all of the sudden speed and power are allowed to matter again? that's hypocritical i think.

This post has been edited by boze: Wed 17 Sep 2003, 16:49

[dixiechicken]

I'm not particularly interested in swaying peoples opinions in a "mac vs pc" battle.
If you ask me what I think I have to state what my 10 years experience as sysadmin at our dept tells me.
( some 250 computers mixed environment - 210 pc:s 30:macs & 10 *nix boxes )

I spend on average +40 hours a week supporting the PC:s, less than an hour for the macs,
for the *.nix boxes 5-8 minutes.

I have run just about all desktop os:es there is, on a variety of hardware and Mac OS X is the slowest.
Followed by Win2K, WinXP and Mac OS 8-9 tie for third position.
For speed and stability various *nix distros are in class by themself, windoze & mac os are simply pitiful in these respects.

The belief that various hardware developments - will result in any drastic speed-advances for common users - is plain bullshit.
( sorry - this is not meant to be a personal flaming ) This hasnt happened yet, it very likely never will.

Whatever hardware resources are avaliable will be used to the limits -
by bloated software & increasing user-demands for more network bandwith.

B.t.w I've just checked the new G5 1.6GHz machine out, at our computing department.
Yes it's nice to look at, is it fast??? Yes it is a little bit snappier than my old G4-400.
NOT impressively so.
It felt on par with my Redhat 7 distro on an old Celeron PC with 384MB ram.
( I use that one for special backup purposes )

Cheers: Dixiechicken

[boze]

jeez, i'm getting outflanked on the left here..

dixie, now that this thread is officially and irretrievably off topic i'd like to follow along with your ideas..

first, what does it matter how stable unix is? this is a mac audio board, so even me comparing pc laptop value to demonstrate how mac laptops are underpowered or overpriced is only relevant as a tangent. you think we should recommend that the newbie wanting to start recording on his comp should run linux and Ardour or something?

osx is really slow, that's true- but that line about a G5 1.6ghz being 'not impressively snappier' than a G4 400mhz is a bit of a foot-in-mouth i think, your sys admin career notwithstanding. i mean c'mon- feeling snappy is no kind of test. i think the count in last months Sound-on-Sound had the number of platinum verbs you can run from a 400mhz G4 and a bunch of other comparable models with or without processor upgrades. a dp 800mhz runs like three times as many reverb plugins and i'm sure with that crazy system bus even the sp G5s will go another good way past that.

do you do audio production yourself? i can't imagine a single music person i've ever met who'd fail to feel the difference between a G4/400 and a G5/1.6.

[dixiechicken]

I'll agree with you that the powerbooks are overpriced, underpowered depends on what you want to do with them.
You will always pay a premium prices for MAC:s because of small market share & higher developer costs.
( although the last years Apple have reduced their prices quite a bit - this is still the case )

However if you factor in support costs and life expectancy the TCO on Mac is much lower than for a PC.
These days in flattened organisational structures and the expectation that every employee should do everything themselves - ( this is typical of academic institutions, universitys and the like ) you'll find that the hidden costs for using PC:s in any company are substantial.
( by hidden cocst I'm talking about lost productivity time,
when users are sitting around asking themselves and workmates for help trying to figure things out )

I'll further agree that I would perhaps have to test-drive the G5 1,6 model on a regular basis for a week or so to back up my glib statement.
( I really dont think I'll have to retract it - hopefully I'll have one of the G5:s myself in Januari-2004 and we'll see )

However the fact that the "this Xeon server" or "that G5/G4 box" does fare well in benchmark tests or applaying phoshop-filters to giant graphics files, is just marketing hype.
I says precious little about how that same "box" will behave in everyday use.

That said I'll have to stick up for MAC OS X, in one respect,
it is actually very good at copying lods of files over the network.


Cheers: Dixiechicken

[boze]

thx gs-

hey, if anybody is reading this thread (unless i'm mistaken i don't think implodr has been around but anyway...) my gf just noticed that the applestore's deals section has 12" 867 refurbs in limited quantities for $1199.

i think that's the perfect newbie audio mac laptop.