PC user with a couple of MAC questions ( no debate here just some ????)

[Hutch]

Let me start this off by saying this is a simple question. I am not here to start any kind of debate about which platform is better, I'm just asking a question and looking for an answer.

Now let me say I've always been a PC guy, but have used mac's when I was going to school. All the comp's we had at school for music ( local JC ) were mac's ( OS 8 ) and I got around on them ok. I have the 001, and have been using it for about a year. I run it on PC because I already knew the OS and well cause it was alot cheaper $$$$$$$ wise and I was and still am on a budget.

Anyway to make a long story short I got to play around a little today with a brand new MAC ( OSX 1.25 or something dual processor with the "23" cinema screen ) and was really, quite impressed with it. Now I know that there is a big debate with mac people who either love or hate OSX, but it was really a nice change from windows.

So my question really is what are some major pro's and con's of MAC OS 9 vs OSX vs Windows XP. like I said I'm not looking for "mac rules PC sucks" type of answer's if thats how you want to answer, then save your finger tip's and your time and dont reply. I'm just looking for pro's and con's about the system's in general. Like how easy is it to go and configuer your comp settings. How much can you really change to increase the overall performance of the comp ( I ask this, cause I've heard PC can dig deeper into what the user can do OS wise that is ) how easy is it to upgrade mac hardware wise, just any pro's and cons in general.

Let me say too that I dont mean to pin any mac vs PC questions, but you have to remember that PC is all I really know. I have very little MAC experence, so I coming from one side but am trying to learn about the other you know.

Thanks in advance for any answer's you may have.

[Kedron Porter]

Hey Hutch I will try to give a little insight on what my experience has been. My brother is a computer tech and has been for some years. He has owned both PC's and Macs but prefer Macs because they are built better straight out of the box. This means anything he has had to upgrade, change or reconfigure over the years has been easy. Anything he has done like that with PC's has been nothing but hours of pain and problems to get them going again. Now granted PC's have gotten better over the years but they still don't compare to the ease of setting up like a Mac. I hear some out of sight price ranges and performance talk from the PC forum that just isn't true when they compare Macs to PC's. Macs have power to burn. The reason is better configured OS and parts that are compatible to the whole computer. They are extremely effecient machines because of this. Whenever I have upgraded my G-4 867 or My brother to his Macs it has been simple and very few problems. One last illustration. My brother owns a daystar computer from 1995. Apple let this company make clones of their computers and sell them. He can still upgrade that computer to a G-4, basically the lastest Processor on the market. It's still compatible and even can work under OS X. You cannot do that with any PC from that day and upgrade it to a Pentium IIII. It is impossible. So when you buy a Mac you can use it for years to come. The engineers at apple make it possible so you don't need to screw yourself out of a computer every two years. I hope this helps.

[lwilliam]

Jayman's right on the spot with his comments. I'm also a pretty geeky type of person.

I've used both Macs and PCs for years starting with DOS 2.11 for Intels and System 6 for Apple.

I've thought every OS Microsoft made up to Windows XP was more trouble than it was worth. They finally did a pretty good job with XP.

I haven't used OS X yet. I'm running OS 9.1. People I've talked to who HAVE used it say it's by far the most stable Mac OS yet. It's UNIX, after all: a very stable and powerful system that's been around for a while - no core bugs are left, although there are bound to be a few "missing" features at first with the new Mac version of it. It does include system-level midi and multi-channel audio which should provide tight interfacing with DAW software.

I WILL say that UPS shipped my Mac to my door and 45 minutes later I was recording in Protools. That includes unpacking the Mac, setting it up, and installing PT software and hardware.

However, PCs can work VERY well for audio - if you know what you're doing and get the right parts that are compatible.

As Jayman said, Macs have fewer manufacturers of their parts and so can be tested by software/hardware companies more thoroughly. The likelihood of having compatibility problems is greatly reduced, but not totally eliminated.

Jayman also stated something that shows he knows his business: the main hardware difference between Macs/PCs anymore is the BIOS. They use the same or similar drives, memory and many peripherals.

The Mac OS is pretty elegant, though. There's a pretty low learning curve to become proficient at using it. I find it interesting to note that in XP, certain things are "hidden" from the user - just like in a Mac. There is no winipcfg in XP, for instance, but it was included in Win98se, so XP is becoming more of a "closed" system than Windows used to be; kind of like a Mac in that sense.

When I want to tweak or play, I use my PC. When I just want to get work done, I use my Mac. But that's just me.

I would still advise the basic technical consulting rule I've used for years: pick the software that does the job best first. Then you have to consider two other major factors:

1. What hardware does that software run on best
2. Can you support that hardware inexpensively

Well, we're not talking about supporting an IBM mainframe or a Sun Workstation cluster, but a Mac or a PC. Macs aren't that hard compared to Windows, but it is a factor you should consider.

In a summary:

Macs:
1. Easy to use; support and upgrade
2. More expensive
3. Works great with PT; PT was written for a Mac

PCs/XP:
1. Improved ease of use over NT and 98, but still not as easy yet (IMHO); not as easy to support; most components can also be upgraded; sometimes upgrades cause conflicts (IRQ, I/O, etc)
2. Cheaper
3. Some compatibility issues with various components; the list of compatible components changes all the time.

You'll have to decide.

[where02190]

And not to state the obvious, but talking Protools and OSX is still a moot point at theis juncture, as there is still no compatible software from digidesign for OSX....

[mBoxLuvr]

Originally posted by where02190:
And not to state the obvious, but talking Protools and OSX is still a moot point at theis juncture, as there is still no compatible software from digidesign for OSX....

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">but I do have more trust in an OSX transfer from OS9x as oppose to 98 to XP.
I still cant get my mBox to work in XP!
I have a G4 933, that even my 12 year old daughter can lay tracks on!
For now, my PC does all the 3D grunt work and my G4 helps with the harmonies:O)

[Morningstar]

Well boys, I'm going to talk OSX anyway, just because I've been playing with it alot since 10.2

First, it's not OS9. Period. It feels much more like a Windows OS as there are folders every-******n-where. At first, I missed the stone-age simplicity of OS9, but that quickly dissipated as my comfort grew with the new interface. I use Logic Audio as well as PT so, for a short time, I put my 001 in a old homerew PC and my Delta 1010 in my G4 533 just to play some. Now, Logic works really well in X, as would be expected, but I did have some issues with the 1010 and the new Core drivers. These were all growing pains that you would expect from a new technology, and I am very curious to see Digi's implementation of our old soundcards in the new system because the 1010 drivers were multi-client making the card available to multiple programs simultaneously. If done correctly, and it was my understanding that the new AudioMidi setup app was a little buggy (or that could've been a copout on M-Audio's part), the Digi cards could interface much more seamlessly with other apps, we'll see...I don't do much midi, so the new coremidi wasn't put to much of a test by me. I use a little controller to trigger the EXS24 in Logic, it has worked fine since day one. No OMS though, whoohoo. The new app looks like OMS, little pictures and all, I think all of the pictures will be of Apple/Emagic gear but there's a way to import your own. The performance of my system was higher in X. Now, it doesn't 'feel' higher in a 'zippy' way, just that the cpu meter is much slower in creeping up the scale. X is supposed to dish out resources much more dynamically and I guess it does. For example. There are no more extensions in X. Eveything is a 'startup' item. X has a set little routine at startup that makes an old OS9'er think 'man I gotta turn that **** off' with all kinds of non-audio related items being loaded. Well, apparently it doesn't use them until needed. And let me add here that this is where I figured out how to really screw up X.2. I used a little third party App, 'Diablotin', to turn off some startup items to see what would happen. OSX won't boot without most of the startup items intact (items from the install, not third party startup items like the Delta 1010 startup app). Without, say the Apache web thingie, ,You'll just get a spinning disk forever. Hah, I had to reboot into OS9 and put the startup items back into the startup folder (like our old extensions, 'enabled' and 'disabled' folders) and it worked again. We're going to have to get used to this, I mean I still really feel the need to turn things off, and in X, it just ain't happenin'. So anyway, the performance is improved, but not like you might think. The video redraws will be better depending on your Vcard. Mine's the old GeForce 2MX, the minimum for X.2 and it works fine, but seems to be a little slow the first time it has to draw something, them much faster with repetition. I guess this is the fact that the Quartz thing unloads more work to the card itself, I know little about graphics. The GUI is more intuitive, if not simpler, and with the new digibase system, should make navigating the machine faster. Column view rules, by the way...
That's enough for now

[yavuzj]

Originally posted by Morningstar:
Well boys, I'm going to talk OSX anyway, just because I've been playing with it alot since 10.2

First, it's not OS9. Period. It feels much more like a Windows OS as there are folders every-******n-where.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">May be because I was a windows user, I can not stand OS9.2. I can not stand it so much that I immidieately erased OS 9.2 and the classic environment. I am running OSX 10.2.3.

TO answer the original poster....;

I switched from PC recently and bought a 1GHZ TiBook. I ordered my copy of Logic. Unfortunately PT LE does not work on OSX yet. I would wait for that to happen to switch which is very soon. I borrowed my friends MOTU 828 for now and will be using it for a month once my copy of Logic gets here (on Dec. 27th according to UPS tracking [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] ).

OSX looks great. It does not Look primitive and is superior to WIndows XP. OS 9.2 and the extensions nightmare WILL remind you windows 95 (not even the Win98). So take my advice as a PC user who switched a week ago and stay away from 9.2. OSX support is a couple of months away for MOST of the programs.

[Morningstar]

Hey Yav, good to see you over here. I moved over what, a year ago? I still have my old homebrew PC, the one I mentioned earlier, that I ran PTLE + Logic on for a long while. Yeah, Logic is nice in X, I can't imagine composing without it..anyway, see ya round.

[Hutch]

Thanks to everyone who replied, got some good info out of it.

I understand alot about comp's, I put my together myself, I can get into BIOS and I know what does what, thats why I was wondering about the MAC side of things cause I've never got a chance to really dig deep into them. I was not impressed with OS8 at all, and OS9 is not my cup of tea, but OSX was really nice to me, and yes I can say I was impressed with what I saw.

So when ever it becomes time to upgrade my Comp what ever I can afford at the time is what I will get, but the Mac is a little more on my mind right now. Well at just have to wait and see how PT6 preforms on OSX, and XP, and after I know I'll upgrade from there.

Thanks again........

[JasonWorrel]

Originally posted by Jayman#9:
To be honest the only thing that seperates a Mac and a PC is the BIOS (a small program that boots the computer) and the OS. The rest is the same. They both have IDE hard drives, AGP video cards, motherboards, DDR ram, etc.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Actually that’s not quite true, and if it was, one could simply flash their PC's BIOS with the Mac one and install OS X. Or with a simple BIOS update, one could be running Windows on a Mac. However that is not the case. They have completely different types of processors with different architectures that process instructions and deal with data in different ways. The OS is not the only difference, there is a big difference between the hardware as well.