Mac Or Pc, Help, is mac better for music? Options

[jd222]

I know its a biased forum, but is there any advantage to getting a Mac over a PC. I was set to buy the G4 15" powerbook w/ 512MB of RAM for about USD$2600 ot use with cubase sx, but I realized that for the same price I can get a pc with twice as much memory and a processor with double the speed, and I I've herad that cubase runs much better on a pc. But, mac users swear by their computers. Any thoughts.

[lepetitmartien]

I know its a biased forum

mhmmm… Never! Not one PC in sight LOL

Please guys no Mac/PC bashing, it's NOT allowed. Capice?

Put on your brains (if you have some spare) and bring out arguments

I won't enter the talk, but why do you absolutely want a laptop?

[manexmachina]

I can't believe I'm going to walk on these coals... but here goes.... (first know that I'm a mac user who started on APL, then to DOS, then to Apple, back to DOS, then to Mac... there ever since... though I've done a little work on windows and a little work on UNIX too).

Anything I'm about to say can be disputed.

Mac users are generally people who respond to the aesthetic experience of their machines while PC users often find the toolings of the machines of more interest. Macs, being an all-in-one-box concept tend to avoid being as unexpectedly unreliable as PCs - YET - that comes with a price - Macs cost more. The Intel chips now are faster than Mac chips for mathmatical processing which happens a lot on midi apps. It's true that you can't compare gigaherts evenly between macs and PC's, but if you have to crunch some numbers, the equivalently priced PC often does it faster and the possibility of going even further. HOWEVER, wait until six months from now and start hearing about the new IBM chips which are supposed to emerge for Macs... this could be a huge tipping point.

I'm a designer and musician and for me, I really care about the entire fluidity and aesthetic experience and I don't want to have work to hard to fix something when it goes wrong. I like the interface and homogeny of the mac world.

Does cubase SX work better on a PC? Well, it was CERTAINLY true that the steinberg apps worked better in windows than in OS 9. However, Steinberg writes in UNIX and then ports to Windows and OSX simultaneously. one man on each platform... so I am not sure that this is the case any longer. I've not pushed cubase sx on the mac, but I have not found it to be notably buggy or crashy.

All this said... I know some people going from Macs to PCs, others going from PCs to Macs. Use what works for you. If it were my Mom, I'd beg her to buy a Mac for it's simplicity and the fact that there are just so many wonderful extras like the iLife package and things that make common desired tasks so easy.

PCs have one big advantage... they are more common and thus... more software options will show up... for now... and you don't really need every piece of software... just the things that work for you and there's plenty of stuff that works very well on the Mac platform.

So - that's as level headed a response I can give.

This post has been edited by manexmachina: Thu 10 Apr 2003, 05:12

[rickenbacker]

I think manexmachina has put the case for Macs pretty sweetly there.

Not much more to add, except to say I agree that Macs don't get in the way of your work - it's a much more transparent computing experience. Much less stressful. Some great integrated software bundled free, too. iLife - superb.

Music software for Macs? To be honest, with very few exceptions, anything you can't buy for a Mac you won't ever miss. Everything professional is available for Macs: Cubase SX, Logic (Mac only), Pro Tools, Digital Performer (Mac Only), Reason, Live, Melodyne, BIAS Deak and Peak, plus all the soft synths you could ever want.

I use SX and Logic and like 'em both pretty equally. No major headaches for me running SX on a 600MHz G3 iBook - it shouldn't even run on my G3 system according to the SX manual, but it's been OK. The only problem comes when my USB interface can't handle the data flow or I use too many plugins.

Finally, Mac laptops are very, very cool. I almost bought a PowerBook recently, but I've now settled on a PowerMac. With dual processor support, your music apps like SX or Logic will really fly.

I wouldn't necessarily wait six months for new machine announcements from Apple either - why waste a year waiting for a new machine when you could start making music today with a Mac that'll still blow you away in terms of raw power?

[tacoboy]

I didnt get a mac for it's beauty. I got a mac because I am one of the lucky ones who was born and raised with one. Dating back to the SE through to a 6500 to a G4 400 now I have an 867.

Getting back to the topic. it must be known that you cant simply compare the speed of a mac and PC by the number of their processor. ie. a G4 1gig isnt the same as a pentium 1gig. the G4 will be like 3 times faster (when using the correct software.)

Good software for audio and graphics is usually made for mac beacuase its BETTER. Especially Logic (apple now ownes).

I have a mate who decided to put togethor his own PC using an athalon processor. Dont get me wrong, im sure he thought he was doing the right thing (athalon are good for audio
) until the thing decided not to even start up (wrong motherboard). Now he wishes he just got a mac.

Macs are arcitectually designed better than PC's inside and out.

Only downfall is of course they cost more! But once you start with one you will NEVER look back (I promise).

[jd222]

Thanks for all the helpful advice. After trying friends different setups and reading message boards ad nauseum, I decided to get a the 1GHZ powerbook. I feel like I may have spent too much $$ (compared to a pc), but I really like using it, so screw it.

[tacoboy]

If I may extend this topic a little further:

When the world finally is divided into humans and mechs, who will be using PC?

Thats right! The *#!* mechs!

Just kidding, if you own a PC, your ACTUALLY REALLY COOL! Well at least PC users like to think so. They know macs are better and some (less dedicated) users tend to even agree.

PEOPLE WHO MAKE APPLE MACS,PLEASE REALISE THAT BILL GATES IS STANDING ON OUR TOES MAN!!!!

KEEP US AS PROUD AS WE WERE WHEN THE G4 FIRST CAME OUT

-peace

This post has been edited by tacoboy: Thu 17 Apr 2003, 17:42

[lepetitmartien]

Steve, just lend me a deca G5 4GHz, full of PCI and I'm your man

(beware some obvious inadequacies have been said on this thread, let them lie dead… The best argument for macs, is when they s…s, or are slow like toads, first we still feel them like people, not BORGS, and we still remember how cool they are)

[This was a bunch of subjective statements that aree still the most important for me, myself and I]