They've never worked like I thought they should, possible due to the hardware or the way they have been manufactured and driver issues etc. Or maybe I've just had bad luck.

 

The plan is to get a kick-ass 8-core Windows desktop PC (Haswell E?) for home, and a MacBook Pro for mobile/composing duties.

Best of both worlds, or giving myself more headaches?

 

It all depends on how well you mesh with OS X, personally I couldn't stand the thing. I would test drive a Mac and then a comparable Windows 8 PC and see how they stack up. Go down to a large chain and see what works for you. If you decide to pick up a PC and want to make sure to make a good decision on hardware come back and post what you were thinking of and we'll make suggestions on specs and ways to fine tune it. Really any decent processor like an i7 paired with a decent amount of memory, a good GPU (not integrated) and a decent soundcard (not integrated) should be just gold. If you're going the Mac route you won't really need suggestions as it's this Mac or this Mac. Personally I don't see why a new Windows 8 PC would perform worse than a Mac particularly for music production where most DAWs perform better on that platform. I would say stick to Windows but maybe a Mac is just what you've been looking for. I don't know what DAW you use but Cubase projects open seamlessly on Mac or PC so transition is no problem. It could work well but then you have to manage 2 different sets of software and could have different issues on different platforms. It also depends on whether you use warez because if you do then you'll know that PC is king here.

 

i agree with sir silly sausage, enjoy them both!


the same old arguments about pc vs mac are like playstation vs xbox: if you really enjoy playing video games, get them both!

if you can afford it, and enjoy making music, why not have both PC and MAC?

i've used both mac and pc and enjoy them each for different reasons-

im sure there are things on both systems you will find you cant do on the other

PC is my choice now because i simply cant afford my own MAC lol

i also have to chime in and say i have PC and only have had minimal DAW crashes, and each one was due to faulty plugins

good luck and i hope you enjoy your journey, let us know how you like it once you settle into your new MAC

 

I enjoy them both ( i work as a network/sys admin full of microsoft ) but i really enjoy OSX more for music use.

Agregate devices, network midi, unplug the devices without quitting the daw...

Osx is a lot more music friendly to me.

But Windows is cool too, it's a choice !

 

Thats funny someone ask a question (What in your opinion are the essential Mac VST/VSTi's etc?)and no answers beacuse it was another topic in the post which was "switch from PC to Mac"

So the answers he get is like "go for it" "you nerver look back" "You decide to go PRO"(well if i see PRO in a product i am pretty sure it is NOT PRO beacuse real PRO stuff NEVER have the name PRO in it) etc etc

So to go back to the REAL topic which Vst vsti is especially good and should i go for on my new Mac except the obviouse Logic etc etc..

I also a new to Mac but i gonna KEEP my PC i am too experience with that have used one since the early 90:s since win 3.1.1

And as many in here say i haven´t have any crashes except some crashes related to my audio drivers but it is nothing to worry about and i dont get that people say they have lost all their savings..

It never happend to me i once formatted my C-drive and forgot to do a backup before the format.

Well i got it all back with the excelent program get-data-back only some Mp3:s did not work out of thousands of files.

B.t.w Mac also crashes so thats a myth that it so stable as everyone say.

So is that myth that say Mac is faster it is the other way around PC is much faster..

So back to topic which Mac ONLY appz should i try?

 

Yeah a mac will crash if you push it too hard, just like any other machine.

And like you said Logic is so obvious that it's kinda stupid to mention. On the other hand there's a lot of stuff within that app to explore so when you're just starting out it should keep you busy for a while.
But when I check through the stuff I use right now for recording and producing music, I think pretty much all the stuff except Logic can also be found in versions for Windows.

One little app I would recommend though is Audio Hijack Pro. It's a simple but genius thing, one of my most used and def in my top 10 list. Actually all the stuff from Rogue Amoeba is good.
TwistedWave can also be nice if you want something really simple now and then, like an audio 'notebook' for basic ideas.

 

Moving from PC to MAC is like a rich mans son deciding he wants to be a hobo. It's like wtf? I can't even...

 

What is Hobo??

For me it was the option of having to build a new computer (wich was the original plan)

(My current Pc is built 2006 and has a Core2Duo 6600 cpu 8GB DDR2 memory 800mhz(maxed)And a very cheap graphic card and only sata 2 disc speed)

And make the newly build PC a hackintosh..

Anyway i saw a used Mac Pro for about the same price as what it would cost to buy a new mobo,cpu and memory.
So i just decided after some thought to buy it as it was way underpriced.
Normally it would have cost atleast the double in fact it was the same price as buying a low budget PC with old specs.

Anyway i am not gonna abandon PC at all and no i am NOT rich.

I was only very lucky to find this machine for that low price.

And i also think it is gonna be more and more >Mac Pro avalible as non musician people move to iPad:s and Laptops so they find their desktop not to be used at all and just collects dust.

But still used Mac are so overpriced just beacuse it was expensive when they bought it doesnt mean it has to cost so much 5-10 years later on.

Especially since Apple refuse to make anything older then 5 years backwords compatible.

I have seen people asking for ridiculous prices for a used G5 and even G4:s.

 

Never been a Mac fan but been running audio-macs since 2001 with a G4 titanium powerbook...

emagic selling off to Apple and unhappiness with Cubase SX was what forced me to leave PC-land for Mac.

Nowadays I run a hackintosh as a studio PC and a Macbook Pro as a laptop.

The reason why I choose a Macbook Pro is simple. It's serviceable and easily replaceable. It's much easier to find replacement parts if your laptop has failed in the middle of a trip. The OS itself is also much more portable. I was able to just swap the hard-drive to another similar Macbook Pro and be up and running within the hour. Wouldn't be possible with a Windows-based machine as they are usually much more hardware-diverse.

That said, the reliability of Macbook Pros is a myth. I have a 2006 HP nw9440 workstation laptop that has suffered TREMENDOUS amount of punishment including a fall from a bike going 25 mph. The case is literlly DESTROYED but the thing just keeps working. There really are more reliable PC machines than macs, but Macs are common, that's what I prefer about them.

Give me decent multi-display capability in ProTools for Windows (yes, I know about Skootch) and bring back Logic for Windows (yes, one can dream) and I'll immediately throw my macs in the trash. Overall, Windows is a better-optimized system for daily tasks, file management, etc. etc.

Just my 5c.

 

Those systems are frequently used with specific hardware, such as older ProTools HD cards and a G4 system can be used with an older PT24 system and with amazing results. Those systems are really ROCK steady and very-very nice sounding. I know quite a few guys who still run G4s and G5s with the TDM-based hardware which can be bought for dirt-cheap but was top-of-the-line some 6-7 years ago.

It still sounds world-class today.

 

I've been a die-hard Mac-head since the mid-Nineties. Unfortunately, once the iPod/iPad/iPhone came out, and after Jobs died, the company really went into the toilet. Eventually, they're going to just stop making computers altogether and focus on their portables. Mavericks is crap. I currently run Snow Leopard -- the last really decent operating system before Jobs stopped running the show (and the last 32-bit-friendly system for older hardware) -- on an old black MacBook 2.4 GHz with 4 GBs of RAM and a 500 GB hard drive (last upgrade I can reasonably make is to a 750 GB drive, coming soon!). I can do fairly decent audio/VI work on it, though I've never used Logic. I run DP 7.24, and now that 8 can run on Windoze, I have to wonder what the hell I'm doing on a Mac at all. Most software upgrades at this point require Lion or better, so, eventually, I'll be shit out of luck, even though I'm fairly certain my laptop, which is a year shy of qualifying for the software requirements for anything after Lion, is perfectly capable of running Mavericks (Apple's also big on bullshit stories in their software requirements, like when they were giving out upgrades to Snow Leopard for $25, but ONLY if you had Leopard; otherwise, you had to buy a full install for $120. Turns out this was a complete lie that even Apple wound up fessing to, and you could use the $25 upgrade disc to upgrade from any older version of OS X). My advice, pains me to say, is get a really fast PC and have a copy of XP on it. Unlike Apple, Microsoft is at least savvy enough to know there's too many XP users out there and they're not getting rid of it anytime soon. Have a separate boot partition for 8, so you can run apps or whatever, and have the XP partition to do all your audio work on.

 

I'm making music mostly on 1.6GHz C2D laptop. Yes I do have super strong i7 desktop and another 3.06GHz laptop, but the great thing about "slow PCs" is pushing their limits. I like how my desktop is fast, but it's incredibly boring to work on it, since everything is calculated at blazing speed.
1.6GHz C2D is incredibly powerful in my standards when running fully optimized OS. In 2007 they were powerful, so why not now? Usually running 45-50 tracks in Reaper at 256s latency, clicks and pops only occasionally.
Optimization is the key, and always was with windows.
(with full Reaper support in linux, gentoo might pull even 80-100 tracks without latency issues)

Personally, I like the PC platform the most and not planning to go either OSX or ARM . Maybe one day OS/2
Too bad there aren't PC-based tablets (with WinXP)

 

Only reason i had jump the mac book ship, its the mobility. Only downside is that the only mac pro that i had buy.. has a starting point of $2,500

I been thinking in getting the Msi Gs70.. Thats the problem with PC laptops. There's rarely dedicated companies that focus on sound/media design but it's either a hard core gaming laptop that weights alot or a crappy slow 2014014 hours of battery.

I think.. next year will be expansion of thin laptops, since there has been a huge increase towards that.. with companies such as msi, ibuypower, razer, etc...

Even though most of them have similar builds and i think msi gs70 is probably the best one for $1,800. I still can't decide if i should wait another year to see a better market for thing/powerful laptops.


Now back to the MY PC IS BETTA THAN MAC topic.

It's been stated before... There's probably no big difference between OS nowadays.. People think xxx brand is better or better build.

i7 + 16gb ram + ssd + audio interface = e-peen competition

Lets be realistic... 99% of the products in your house are from CHINA.

 

There are, but of course not with WinXP. I don't want to work purely on a touchpad, so those new hybrid devices are quite a possible solution.