Should I buy a Mac

bz£ · Post by **bz£** » Fri Apr 08, 2005 10:30 pm

Spud wrote:I was just responding to what the guy said, Roymond. He accused us PC users of being too dumb to insert page breaks into our documents.

And he's right, in a way-- spend a few months tinkering with TeX and you'll come to appreciate what a difficult job formatting is. Of course his whole premise is wrong: that typical typists should be doing all the work themselves. Let me write and I'll let the experts take care of the appearance... and I'm quite content to acknowledge Don Knuth as an "expert."

PDF is okay but it's basically an end-product: useful for documents that you want to give to people, but you don't expect them to make changes.

It's fun to play around with fonts and stuff, but it's not particularly productive. (And I still use PC-Write occasionally! But I never wrote anything that would qualify as "book" length.)

roymond · Post by **roymond** » Fri Apr 08, 2005 10:35 pm

I just wrote something pretty much book length. What the hell was that? I have to get back to producing music one of these days.

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 7:39 am

Rabid Garfunkel wrote: Fonts.

Yeah, it could easily be the fonts. Luckily at work I have a Mac, a PC, an SGI, and a Sun, so I can move my document to whatever platform is the best

The only way I've got that Mac to crash on demand is when I had the old OS9 Eudora for my email and I tried to get it to open attachments in OSX applications. Killed the comp faster'n anything.

I used to hate working on the Mac but OSX is nifty. Oh, and I have a 3-button mouse on it and I can use it.

Southwest_Statistic wrote: the fact that most Microsoft Word users are dumb enough to just keep typing into the next page instead of using a page break..

Then what happens when you're typing a 100-page document and you add 3 lines to the first page? Oh, you have to go and manually move all those f-ing page breaks. No, thank you. This is ridiculous advice.

Roymond: I did once see a picture of a scupture made entirely of old Commodores, I think they were. Funny.
-bill

the Jazz · Post by **the Jazz** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 12:11 am

If you get a Mac, you have no excuse not to go the extra couple hundred for Logic Express. There is no excuse for using garageband unless you are a garage band.

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 6:09 am

the Jazz wrote:If you get a Mac, you have no excuse not to go the extra couple hundred for Logic Express. There is no excuse for using garageband unless you are a garage band.

Well I've decided on the Mac - just haven't actually bought it yet - if you'd care to elaborate the difference between Garageband and Logic, I'd appreciate it (although I guess I do consider myself a (one-man) garage band - and I see no shame in that)

draft · Post by **draft** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 8:07 am

Caravan Ray wrote:
the Jazz wrote:If you get a Mac, you have no excuse not to go the extra couple hundred for Logic Express. There is no excuse for using garageband unless you are a garage band.
Well I've decided on the Mac - just haven't actually bought it yet - if you'd care to elaborate the difference between Garageband and Logic, I'd appreciate it (although I guess I do consider myself a (one-man) garage band - and I see no shame in that)

Garage band is somewhat loop based. Some people dig it, and some people get bored with it. It's probably what you would call not exactly a composer's program. Logic is a bit more about midi and recording. It also, I believe, records at higher rates and in general is a way more powerful program. Garageband is kind of for kids........ ducks

I have myself laboured over this decision and the only reason I went PC was because I could get a lot of free software. Times are changing these days for Macs and they are such awesome machines to use and soooooo user friendly. If I was going to do it all again I might have gone Mac. I'm happy with my PC, don't get me wrong, but Macs are pretty sweet. Just keep in the back of your mind that Macs are somewhat proprietary and by virtue make you pay through the nose for all their software, but I have some friends who have gotten around that. As I said times are changing.

There is two schools of thought involved. For ease of use, go mac. For the ability to change and alter your system go PC. If you get a Mac, Logic and protools are meant for it, so as long as you have some dough to buy then do it, but if not, PC land has an awful lot of free software around. I'm sure there are many users in SF that haven't paid for any of their software. I'm a cubase user and I bought it. I wanted the support. So once you get serious about it then it's worth buying into. Macs are designed around this concept. A good majority of pros in the market use Macs and protools along with logic. Cubase still works fine on a Mac though.

Leaf · Post by **Leaf** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 8:57 am

Geez, who's the noob?

This is the first, and mostly likely the only time I'm gonna use that term as a descriptor!!!

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 9:18 am

Leaf wrote:Geez, who's the noob?
![/size][/i]

Mr Horse-Rooter may be a "noob" (as the kids say - I'm unlikely to ever use that term again either) - but the advice is pretty much what I was after.

Let's face it - I'm old, and lazy and rich - the easy-to-use stuff is what I want. I lost all of my artistic integrity years ago.

Leaf · Post by **Leaf** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 9:25 am

Caravan Ray wrote:
Let's face it - I'm old, and lazy and rich - the easy-to-use stuff is what I want. I lost all of my artistic integrity years ago.

....need a pool boy?

jack · Post by **jack** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 11:22 am

i just bought a new computer last night. it was a mini mac.

i just want to say that i have been doing technical publishing now for about 10 years, always working cross platform. i've spent thousands of hours on PCs. and i've never had the desire to own one. i've never owned anything but a mac. i had a 4/40 mac classic. then i graduated up to a 200 mHz performa. when that became obsolete, i bought an imac G3, which i still use and on which almost everything i've ever recorded has been done on.

and now, i will soon have a mini. i guess i'm biased.

draft · Post by **draft** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 11:37 am

Those imac G5s are sweet. They take up such a small footprint, quiet...... shudders...... nice machines.[/nerd out]

Rabid Garfunkel · Post by **Rabid Garfunkel** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 12:48 pm

jack wrote:i just bought a new computer last night. it was a mini mac... i guess i'm biased.

Word to that, brother! Heh. Really wildly amazingly sweet little machines. The hardest thing to deal with 'em is not using it as a coaster.

And to return to the fire currently in progress, Señor Ray, brother Lietchy here on the boards is/was a Garageband user, and gets/got good sound out of it. And it's free, heh.

the Jazz · Post by **the Jazz** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 3:33 pm

Logic Express is relatively inexpensive (get someone with a student ID to buy it for you from a university store or something) and has quality softsynths, a good range of effects, and many, many presets for said synths and effects for anyone who doesn't like to tinker. And, it's got much more powerful audio recording and editing abilities. Plus, if you want you can use Garageband to sketch out a piece or record your raw audio, and then very easily import it into Logic to reduce possible suckage. It's like the difference between using MS Paint and Photoshop.

jack · Post by **jack** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 3:48 pm

fluffy seems to think garageband is ok too, and i trust his judgement. he's done some pretty good stuff with it.

once i get my mini, i'm going to really play around with garageband, and see how it compares to my protools setup anyways. seems like alot of folks think it's "lite" software but i've also heard otherwise. guess i need to find out for myself what all the fuss is about.

Rabid Garfunkel · Post by **Rabid Garfunkel** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 9:54 pm

the Jazz wrote:Logic Express roolz! Everything else droolz!

Damn, d00d, you've got one mother-huge hard-on for that app. You on commission or what?

Calfborg · Post by **Calfborg** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 1:46 am

what's with every mac having only a single cd drive? even the powermac g5 seems odd to only have one cd drive. it's difficult to find a pc without two cd drives. i understand the single drive use in the imac and mini mac, but the single drive on that massive powermac tower doesn't seem right. even if it is only for design's sake. i have a feeling the single mouse button would drive me insane after using a pc, unless there is some sort of simple equivalent to the two-button functions. having never actually used a mac, i don't know, so how are the comparable right-click functions incorporated sans right mouse button, if they're incorporated at all? the single button just appears too simple.

roymond · Post by **roymond** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 7:55 am

Calfborg wrote:i have a feeling the single mouse button would drive me insane after using a pc, unless there is some sort of simple equivalent to the two-button functions. having never actually used a mac, i don't know, so how are the comparable right-click functions incorporated sans right mouse button, if they're incorporated at all? the single button just appears too simple.

I don't understand why they don't ship with multi-button mice. They work just as they do on WIN PCs. Holding down the control key brings up the same menu, but obviously it requires the other hand, which is stupid. I use a standard little two button with spin wheel mouse, which is great. You can assign any function to the buttons and also to the wheel (like scroll between open pages for fast editing across documents).

Freddielove · Post by **Freddielove** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 11:08 am

I thought the disc on the mac mini spun to slowly to record high quality audio. Please correct me if I am wrong, those minis are sweet.

Freddielove · Post by **Freddielove** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 11:16 am

Oh, and Garageband is solid program, though you can hit the ceiling with it early. Nice collection of soft synths, multiband eq, compression. The drums sounds kind of suck. Everything I have done on my own and with Buff Speed has been recorded with it, with varying degrees of succsees.

It has been a good program to start with, not knowing jack about recording, or ever having written a proper song, you know verse chorus verse stuff with lyrics, before SF.

Where I would say it really lets you down is in the mastering phase, though that probably has a lot more to do with lack of decent reference monitors / knowing what you are doing.

MalachiConstant · Post by **MalachiConstant** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 1:22 pm

Calfborg wrote:what's with every mac having only a single cd drive?

Just out of curiosity, why would you need two? If you're duplicating CDs a lot it might be useful, you can still do that on a mac, you just have to copy the disc image to the harddrive then burn it to a blank CD. If you get a superdrive you can burn/read CD-R and DVD-R.

Calfborg wrote:i have a feeling the single mouse button would drive me insane after using a pc, unless there is some sort of simple equivalent to the two-button functions.

All you have to do is buy a three (or more) button mouse and plug it in. Right-click and scroll work out of the box. I think the reason they only ship one button mice is to force developers not to rely on right-click contextual menus for basic functions.

Post by **Lunkhead** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 1:43 pm

The mouse thing is incredibly stupid to me. I actually think most beginners would be better off with a one button mouse, personally. The concept of "right-click"/"left-click" doesn't make sense to many of the people I've helped with their computers. But way more confusing than having two mouse buttons that do two different things, I think, is having two mouse buttons that do two different things, but not actually giving people the second f'n button! Using Ctrl-Click instead of Right-Click is so much more confusing to people. What the hell are they thinking? I suspect this is an area where Steve Jobs has laid down the law, regardless of how stupid his idea is. I always tell people they will have to buy another mouse, but the good news is that a new mouse will cost you $10, and you'll probably want to get a new mouse anyway because you'll want to get a scroll-wheel.

As for the single optical drive, that's a tough one. Probably just having one drive is simpler and easier to deal with for most people. Also there may be IP related concerns about making it that much easier for people to directly copy CDs and DVDs. Anybody who cares about making direct disc-to-disc copies is probably advanced enough to be able to figure out that they can shell out <$100 for an external optical drive if they need to, though. I think people who just want to use their computer as is probably wouldn't care about the sound quality lost in ripping music to MP3 before being able to write it another CD.

I think the Mac Mini's hard drive is indeed a laptop drive, not a 3.5" hard drive, though I'm not entirely sure about that. It's probably slower than a 3.5" drive, but it might be usable. I don't have experience recording on a laptop, so I can't say. You could use an external FireWire drive if you're concerned about speed, though.

Plat · Post by **Plat** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 2:16 pm

My Mac mini just arrived a few days ago (I ordered one as soon as I knew I could get the new OS for $10), and I just wanted to drop a token of excitement.

We already have a PowerBook G4 and an iBook G3 in the apartment, so it wasn't entirely new to me. GarageBand certainly feels easy to use (sliders to enhance/quantize timing, and pitch? Automatically fixing waveforms to fit your tempo without messing up the pitch? Free with hardware? Built-in qwerty soft-keyboard? Sweeet)! And the soft synth sounds lots nicer than Quicktime's.

Though most apps run zippily, 256MB of RAM seems too small to have an enjoyably complex GarageBand experience. It runs fine on my 867mhz G4 Powerbook w/640MB RAM (compared to the 256MB 1250mhz G4 Mini). RAM is cheap though, with a generic 1GB stick for $99 and the good stuff for $150. Then it's just a matter of opening the Mini up with a putty knife, a fun non-warranty-voiding project.

But the real reason I bought it was to use as a (VERY) quiet, small, Web/application server. These factors are important to me as my server room is also my small "recording studio".

As I measured power consumption, it typically ran at 18-20 watts (like a headless powerbook), with a max of 28-30 watts when ripping CDs or booting up. This is pretty awesome compared to my 70+ watt full towers, or even a 75-watt 19" CRT monitor or even the 30-watt 19" LCD. Or my 50-watt 15" HP laptop.

The only catch is that I've also got an external 3.5" USB drive enclosure (and hard disk) to use as its main disk, since I've heard bad things about smaller drives' lifetimes. Plus then I can back it up and swap in a new one without breaking out the putty knife.

But I digress. To summarize: the Mini is fun, quiet, easy on your energy bill, and GarageBand feels very friendly for a "free" application (yes, older users have to buy iLife '05 separately). But we'll see what happens after the warranty's up.

Should I buy a Mac

Re: Should I buy a Mac