Constant blue screens in 2016? You are making something wrong, then. W7 and W10 are very stables OS.
Maybe is better if you continue with Apple.

 

On the contrary: Mac is for noobs and comfort no tech people, Windows is for the braves and smart people ;)

 

Seems so... But the transition back to windows for me is not filled with delight. High end systems are still very, very expensive, and I do really prefer Logic. But we'll see. Sure tempting to have all the recent goodies. But it's probably cheaper just to buy them and stick with mac to be honest.

 

Blue screens happened because the PC architecture is more open so you can add tons of hardware but since it is still using legacy numbers for the IRQ's this is what was causing the VXD drivers crashing. When Microsoft went to WHQL
this eliminated 90% of the crashes on Windows 7. Certified drivers weed out companies who are fly by nighters selling crap hardware and that was a very important step. You can still load unsigned drivers in Windows 10 ( unlike macOS which is becoming more difficult) in test mode.

One of the biggest issues prior was the number of IRQ's ( BIOS) and this is why Apple went to UEFI as they had their famous beachball incidents with hardware crashes ( Kernel panics).

With the Move to M1 I think this is the end for the MacOS releases, plus all these tests are completely faked and notice that gaming was completely left out, including 3D graphics.

The reason why Apple's numbers are faked comes down to the hardware as everything is soldered on board and no ports are there anymore, just straight connections to the buses. This eliminates many problems but also means you are cooked when it comes to swapping ssd's or adding ram ( swapping out a dead ram module)

On laptops with Windows we can still change many things and that makes more open than any macbook out there.

Apple is going to M1 because they know that Iphone time is over, as the Iphone12 is most likely their last throw. They are now moving all their devices to M1 including the Ipads, which means less and less 3rd party hardware.

The Iphone thing is over and apple took advantage of that market for years now they need another computer comeback so they are switching to Arm so that other companies are not controlling how fast they build them.

We will see if Dell or HP make some M1 laptops but I highly doubt it.

The key in this game is which software company will port their software over to M1 and that will dictate it's success as without software your computer is useless.

 

True
And not only have bluescreens almost completely disappeared, but general protection violations that you used to have all the time are practically non-existent. Overall, errorhandling and -tolerance has been significantly improved.

Also: MS has never forced technology changes and incompatibilities on its users as often and harsh as Apple has. With Apple I threw away thousands of dollars of "outdated" hardware after a few years becaus Apple just stopped to support it.
My old PC hardware in contrast is usable for decades.

But I think everyone has a platform he/she feels home and that means neither Apple nor MS is "better" both have pros and cons.

 

Last edited: Jan 8, 2021

Judging user decline of an OS on the fact you don't see as much pirated software is just the funniest thing I've heard in ages.

Cracking mac software is made harder and harder for the teams over the years where windows is a hell of a lot easier. With the introduction of the ARM chips and Big Sur, things are getting a lot harder to crack for macOS. Second that on the sister site the people who crack mac plugins are getting bullied off the platform (and deleting their uploads) thus not seeing much software popping up.

 

I love macOS (OSX) but I installed windows on parallels this week. TBH it's the best of both worlds. Drag and drop and key commands work between the 2.

 

I am new to audio production: is it better to use windows or mac?

 

Try both and decide youself, both have strenghts and weakness

 

Oh please! Just because poor people can't afford to buy plugins and have to resort to using cracked ones for free, doesn't mean that Macs and macOS is going anywhere. It's the choice of creative professionals more often than not. And people who use their computer for work don't choose their system based on which system has the most cracked plugins. Give me a break. If you need plugins for your work, you can afford to buy them. Or you're not very good at your job.

The reason that newer ilok protected plugins haven't been released is pretty obvious from going through threads on several forums. They have been cracked for a while now on the macOS side as well. It's just that the crackers on the mac side didn't like how the plugins were distributed everytime everywhere when they put something out that was meant only for a small circle of people and not to be sold and so on. And other people were taking credit for their hard work. So they stopped releasing anything of note to the general masses. And not even giving hints on how to do it. There are plenty of capable people who enjoy the puzzle part, but don't enjoy the whining and demanding part.

 

let me kindly disagree, actual Pros, like broadcast, venues etc.. use mix of both, because although audio and networking is generally more friendly, reliable and overall more matured on MacOS, various media management systems, suites and realtime video FX software and VJ stuff simply performs noticeably better on Windows - unsurprisingly because of PC gaming industry which really pushes graphics cards forward on Windows platform,
on top of that, larger enterprise productions which use domains, servers and virtualization often have troubles with MacOS to function properly, be it implementation of AFP/SMB or just software compatibility in general (hence why Parallels virtualization remains very relevant and popular),

Windows is incomplete and full of holes by design, smart admins can tailor it to do what they need, majority of users don't - not to say people are dumb, but let's assume most "creatives" don't have way of thinking to troubleshoot things and configure things properly...
I personally think MacOS is the better system by design, but I am aware of its limitations, so I can quickly reboot into Windows 10 on my hackintosh machine when need to...and play games for ex.,

which exactly is the reason why Windows 10 is still Windows Vista in its 13-year old core - sure it's good for backwards compatibility, but also a huge burden for many other things, like SSD's filesystem, user rights management etc...
speaking of usability of old hardware, I happen to have MacBook Pro 13" mid-2012 (i7 4 threads, 16GB ram) and MSI GE60 15.6" from 2012 (i7 8 threads, 8GB ram, GT650M) - both with removed CD drives replaced by second storage drives, both with 500GB SSDs for OS, both are totally usable till nowadays, honestly only contrast I can see is higher-resolution 1080p screen on MSI, and backlit keyboard on MBP, obviously MBP has better build quality, yet overall connectivity is similar as well,

for me, it's a bit mystery Windows 10 in Parallels 16 performs actually better than Windows 10 on physical machine of similar HW specs

I think this is one of the reasons those MacOS vs. Windows wars still exist, because for most people it's not really possible to buy both rigs of equal specs/quality simultaneously and compare side-by-side, frankly I don't remember many people who would voluntarily spend lot of money on Windows PC/laptop, unless they were hardcore gamers

 

nice one lad, perhaps you can help me....i am new to bait threads, should i go for outright argumentative comments or go with a bit of subtle nuance like yourself...and you should know having been a member here for nearly 8 years

 

Wow, you need to chill lol

 

I cant begin to tell you just how wrong you truly are. I CAN tell you that I cannot count on my hands and feet together how many grammy award winning multimillion $$ studios Ive been in with Windows running the show. Macs USED to be the pros choice about 20 years ago. The early 2000s took that prestige title away from Apple. And after Jobs died, Apple died. Their products are mediocre at best now while their Windows counterparts are 5x cheaper and more efficient. I think the best way to put it is....Macs are for those who wish to have a basic reliable computer. No more, no less!

 

Yes true. Windows is one big (or lazy) compromise. But it is what buisinesses want and they are MSs most valued customers.
What comes with it is that it is not optimal for no application.

That's why Unix used to be so fast & stable. It supported virtually no hardware out of the box, but I had to have a driver for each device and in most cases re-link the kernel for new hardware. The result was a very lean and by today's standards incredibly fast & stable OS. If all programs for Windows were available for iX systems, it would be a dream. But this is not likely to happen as long as most musicians want to use their machine for everydays needs (wich results in lazy compromises...).

 

Luckily it is quite easy to install macOS on regular PC Hardware. I use both Windows and macOS. Some stuff simply do not work as good under macOS compared to Windows (StudioOne, DS Thorn suxx under macOS imo*) And the other way around working to long with Windows gets depressing
For coding stuff I also prefer macOS

*I hope that once things get converted to Apple Silicon things get better under macOS, maybe then I am totally ready to work (again) more under macOS

 

Tell that Hans Zimmer

 

So first, Hans Zimmer doesn't even know on what system he is working as someone is setting up everything for him ... second... i dunno if we can really talk about "pro" when you see that's not really him who is doing all work as he's got an all crew for that too....

 

Guys, this is not a thread Windows vs Mac...
There are two questions from OP:

1) Over the last few months visiting the 'sister site' I have noticed that there are fewer and fewer Mac OSX posts for software and more Windows software being posted.

2) Someone mentioned briefly that Mac OSX is fading out and people are favouring windows more nowadays but I didn't take much noticed of him.

Short answers:
1) It has always been like this
2) Mac is exactly at the same place it have always be.

"Long" answers:
The answer is very simple: There are not more Teams / Cracker for windows than for Mac.
But several thing make the difference for someone who wants to use cracked software:
- Windows users are much more willing to test and contribute sending soft with license
- Recent mac system is much more complicated/specific to developer and to crack software.
See the efforts the developers had to do to adapt to Catalina, and read R2R nfo about it.
- Windows Teams are much more active, see R2R and VR.
- There are much more people all over the world using Windows than Mac.

That's all.

Outside of cracked software for music, Mac is exactly where it always was.

PS: Guys dont go the Win vs Mac, please, this would be off topic.

 

Last edited: Jan 8, 2021

My 2 cents. I have 2800 plugins on my Mac. If you can't work with that.
Plumbing school might be for you.
Hundreds of eq's, compression, verbs, synths, It goes on and on.
I built audio PC's for Giga Studio users and then VE Pro streamers for 18 years.
I know Windows pretty well. But honestly I hate it in every way.
The Mac operating system is just way to cool to ever change over how many cracks are available.