Comments about:

NAB: Apple Updates PowerBooks, iBooks

Would a PowerBook G4 1.5GHz with a 4200rpm internal hard drive be sufficient for composing music with Emagic Logic Platinum 6? Or would a fast external hard drive like a FireWire 800 be preferable? Or is G5 simply the way to go?

not essential, but i would HIGHLY RECOMMEND getting and external FW 800 drive for use w/ Logic.
people usually make due w/ what they've got, but in terms of reliability and performance, Logic works
much better with a faster HD.

Thanks, Casino. Would a FW400 7200rpm external drive be good for audio recording, or is FW800 essential?

I use a powerbook and so far Logic 6 seems to work just fine as long as I'm only recording one live track of audio or MIDI, but it has no problems performing on playback.

You're recommending using a FW800 with a powerbook, or just in general instead of the desktop?

FW400 / 7200rpm is MORE than sufficient. It's the internal drives that usually cause trouble. Even that depends on how many tracks you're recording: conventional wisdom is simple stereo recording on the internal drive is FINE (do it all the time), but multichannel can cause problems.

In fact, before you get a FW800 drive, you should check compatibility with your FireWire audio interface. (Well, you should do that even with a FW400 drive, but the 800s in particular have been an issue.) I've had issues with my machine not recognizing my M-Audio 410 when I plug in a Weibe Tech drive. I'm going to try to sort that out and publish the results here on MacMusic. And, interestingly, those would appear to be on separate buses (FW800 HD + FW400 audio interface on my 17" PB) but I think they run via the same controller.

We're STILL waiting for Apple to bring out faster internal HDs. It's about time.