Apple versus PC

[Smellhound]

Reading your other thread you don't sound that unhappy with Windows, but are seemingly willing to be talked out of using it?
Not sure where to go with this? There are advantages to either OS, both sides will overplay the stupid shit, PCs being cheap (a good PC laptop is not cheap), or PCs crashing all the time which isn't the case anymore. The things I can think of off the top of my head that are better on a Mac are the USB audio integration (RME say they get lower latencies with OSX), and audio MIDI integration in general is easier. IMO VSTs tend to be more stable in 1.0 releases on Windows, but that's changing too.

Both sides have issues, but both sides have good points too. IMO Apple makes better Mid High end laptops than any PC company, (thought the over 3K market PC wise has some insanely cool laptops), and if my other DAWs weren't Mac only I would always get PC desktops, as building your own is soo much cheaper! One thing that Apple does with their laptops that is a bit annoying for power users like us though is they worry an awful lot about battery life, and IMO that's the reason you see them avoid the quad core chips on their laptops until every other manufacturer switches in some race for the best battery life.... bleh.

Spot on...I've been thinking the same thing about battery life. It's great when you need it but relatively unimportant for studio work. And yes, I am pretty loyal to PCs but almost every other DJ/producer I know is on Mac (including my studio partners) so completely switching over makes collaborations more efficient.

[Machinesworking]

And yes, I am pretty loyal to PCs but almost every other DJ/producer I know is on Mac (including my studio partners) so completely switching over makes collaborations more efficient.

Then read the post from Piplodocus above. Though I wish Apple would make a desktop replacement laptop, they make laptops. Honestly I'm always surprised at people who can waste a brutally new processor? I'm on a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo, everything is slow on this 3 1/2 year old laptop compared to pretty much any laptop in the $1000+ range!

I would switch if it made collaboration easier, but it's easy enough to render audio files and work that way. Just don't be one of those PC users who switches for arbitrary reasons and nit picks at OSX because he isn't used to the Apple workflow, then whines about how much better PCs and Windows are. They're as annoying as the guys who screwed their PCs up so badly they think Apple is perfect after switching.

[Smellhound]

For the record: I'm typing this from my few month old 2.66GHz i7 MBP, after being a PC person since the days of DOS, and the IBM PC/XT/AT. I also run Win7 on this for MS Visual Studio and a few games. Also put Ableton on the Win7 partition out of curiosity a couple of weeks ago, and got pretty much EXACTLY the same ableton processor usage % value when running the same project on both OSX and Win7.

I'm really surprised you are getting the same CPU meter levels. For me it's a difference of at least 25% (performance test was about 35% OS X and 63% Win7). According to someone who responded to another thread I created about that (linked to above), there are several Boot Camp issues that cause latency & CPU spikes. Did you have to do any tweaking to get it to cooperate?

[condra]

I was using Billy Mitchell for years until Steve Wiebe showed up, and I haven't looked back since.

Forget about the gummy substance. It's all about Core Audio.

[Smellhound]

I was using Billy Mitchell for years until Steve Wiebe showed up, and I haven't looked back since.

Forget about the gummy substance. It's all about Core Audio.

Haha, this analogy doesn't really work but it's still awesome. Well done.

[gosinisha]

any normal person focused to audio could say - who cares? as long it does what you want it`s good. i had macs and pcs, both are okay. recently on pc vista64 + live8, can not complain, solid as a rock.

[The Carpet Cleaner]

What does deadmau5 use? then you have your answer.

[Khazul]

And yes, I am pretty loyal to PCs but almost every other DJ/producer I know is on Mac (including my studio partners) so completely switching over makes collaborations more efficient.

Then read the post from Piplodocus above. Though I wish Apple would make a desktop replacement laptop, they make laptops. Honestly I'm always surprised at people who can waste a brutally new processor? I'm on a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo, everything is slow on this 3 1/2 year old laptop compared to pretty much any laptop in the $1000+ range!

I would switch if it made collaboration easier, but it's easy enough to render audio files and work that way. Just don't be one of those PC users who switches for arbitrary reasons and nit picks at OSX because he isn't used to the Apple workflow, then whines about how much better PCs and Windows are. They're as annoying as the guys who screwed their PCs up so badly they think Apple is perfect after switching.

My production partner uses an old MBP, I use a Win7 PC. He is on Live 7 still, Im on Live 8 suite. What actually most gets in the way of directly sharing projects is the slightly differing sets of synth/sampler and insert plugins we use (ever that he has a Virus TI snow and I have a Virus TI keyboard is a pain). The fact that he has a mac and I have a PC never even comes into it beyond how the hard drives used for transporting stuff are formatted (and increasingly we use drop box for that too) - ie use FAT32 rather than Window NTFS or the mac native format - same for large USB keys we use etc. I do find it slightly annoying navigating my way around a mac on the odd occasions that I do somethign on his laptop.

In practice it comes down to him doing an export all from Live 7 and me loading the audio files into Live 8 here. I think the seapration of this process actually works pretty well, as he tends to create a very very rough mix, and its less distracting for me to have a load of audio files to mix down. Even when he exclsuively uses synths that I have, and therefore I could load the Live 7 project as-is, we typically dont. For stuff going the other way, its nnearly always small audio files, ffor eg I might have recorded a house piano part, or some funky baseline etc - ie single parts, or perhaps give him stems as guides to work off etc.

Anyway - different platforms have hardly ever got int he way of sharing, it allways more fundamental things like same plugins, same DAW version that actually get in the way of sharing a live project. When he does an audio export for me, he does allways give me the original live project directory as well in case I need to get at the midi of something, or go and tweak one fo the parts for which I do have the same plugin (generally I have a superset of what he has, but he uses omnisphere alot and I dont have that for eg). Excepting that some plugins are missing, I never have any other problems loading Live 7 mac authored projjects into Live 8 on my PC with Win 7/64.

So, go for a mac if you really like what the mac hardware and what mac OS have to offer, or you really want to get logic and use that along side Live (which is actually a very good reason), but dont get a mac just because thats what others have - this is about what you have to work with and what is going to give you what you want - not everyone else.

I thought about getting a high end Mac Pro for a while for similar reasons, what it cost me to build this PC and the resulting performance vs the then situation that no amount of money in the world would buy me an equivalently high perfromance Mac Pro system kind of sealed my choice to stick with a PC even though, the only real temptation was the option to run logic and perhaps eventually consider an apogee audio interface, but some day Ill buy a good RME audio interface instead as I need to replace my current one soon.

[LoopStationZebra]

especially since ableton is written to be highly multi-threaded

No, it's not.

[UncleAge]

I run Live on both a pc and a mac with only one real difference. Power.

Interesting.. why do you continue to use both platforms?

The iMac I've had less than a year. All my old projects are still on my pc and I'm much more familiar with the behind the scenes stuff than the iMac. Add to that the fact that I haven't convinced myself to split with Vegas and it pretty much leaves me on two different systems. I don't mind it much.