PC or MAC

Pasha · Post by **Pasha** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 11:49 am

esky wrote:It's strange how some people got brainwashed over the last years. Apple products sometimes are shipped in really poor quality...like chinese cars...with a very high percentage of "monday units", no matter if you buy an ipod, a macbook or whatever.
And customers...they buy an ensurance from the manufacturer against that...now...think about that...uuaaahh...

Today's electronics are made in Far East and China, all of them.
Yes you're right you can always get a lemon, especially a Monday Lemon.
Macbooks and Macbook Pros are manufactured in China, while iMac and Mini's Mac Pros are manufactured in Ireland. When I say manufactured I say 'assembled'. All the crap, inside every PC's Mac's or whatever comes form Taiwan or China. It's a cost thing. Intel does research in the US but after that... massive production is outsourced. So I'm an happy Macbook user that crossing fingers didn't have a problem since day 1 and it's almost 14 months old. I bought Applecare which it's a non sense in EU because we should have 2 year warranty. I had a discounted price of 270 Euros instead of 319 and a lawyer would have charged me more, plus Applecare gives me three years support wise. I bought an ATI Video card for my PC in 2003. It burned out in 2005. I had to go for a replacement and it was so hard to find another one because 2 years time are such an huge amount of time in the IT industry. AGP was no more, now we have PCI-Xpress. Intel changes the pin layout with every CPU so you have to change Motherboard as well. RAM, is the same story. So what's left? Buy whatever you like but instead of thinking about hardware, buy a software platform that's hardware independent. Ableton runs on OS X and Windows and this makes it the best for me. In the future we do not know what the industry will have ready for us, what crappy OS... I have decided to stop by for three years, starting November 2006. I will get the Live upgrades if worth it but I won't change computer. If I will be pushed to change I might wanna buy a PC again because as an Apple Customer I was dissatisfied by their arrogance. I changed shop and wrote a letter to Apple. People buy from people not from companies and hardware is manufactured by people running machinery not by companies. You can have Dell's Acer's Toshiba's but it doesn't matter what you buy you are never guaranteed that everything will work. Go ask how many people got problems with their Firewire chip. You can't dissect every laptop you buy to find if it sports a suitable set of chips (USB-FW not potatoes

) and nobody I know let you test your new lappie for a week before buying it. So one reason to go Apple might be the drivers. If something is certified CoreMidi or CoreAudio you run with native drivers and you are sure that whatever FW-USB chip Apple has decided to use should work with more probability than a PC with XP. The problem with Microsoft is the drivers and it'll always be. Too many HW vendors to support, lack of standards.

- Best
- Pasha

forge · Post by **forge** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 11:58 am

actually I'm really looking forward to this new 'hyperBIOS' or whatever it's called where you'll be able to just run your programs without even booting into an OS - that appeals to me!

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 12:05 pm

forge wrote:actually I'm really looking forward to this new 'hyperBIOS' or whatever it's called where you'll be able to just run your programs without even booting into an OS - that appeals to me!

hmm. Well first up i suppose it boots to its own little os since it will need memory management and such (hence its an OS). Besides don't expect it to run PE files but rather its own format of somekind, and probably rather limited amount of app's.

forge · Post by **forge** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 12:16 pm

thefool wrote:
forge wrote:actually I'm really looking forward to this new 'hyperBIOS' or whatever it's called where you'll be able to just run your programs without even booting into an OS - that appeals to me!
hmm. Well first up i suppose it boots to its own little os since it will need memory management and such (hence its an OS). Besides don't expect it to run PE files but rather its own format of somekind, and probably rather limited amount of app's.

surely there will come a point not too far off where it will be possible to do something like that?

Lo-Fi Massahkah · Post by **Lo-Fi Massahkah** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 12:18 pm

Never thought I'd get drawn into this but...

zappen wrote:ditch apple, those ".mac" fanboys can't shutup...

Actually everyone speaking for Mac in this thread are rather balanced in their pros and cons. Now I guess this statement makes me a ".mac fanboy".

Go figure.

-M

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 12:29 pm

forge wrote:
thefool wrote:
forge wrote:actually I'm really looking forward to this new 'hyperBIOS' or whatever it's called where you'll be able to just run your programs without even booting into an OS - that appeals to me!
hmm. Well first up i suppose it boots to its own little os since it will need memory management and such (hence its an OS). Besides don't expect it to run PE files but rather its own format of somekind, and probably rather limited amount of app's.
surely there will come a point not too far off where it will be possible to do something like that?

Yep but then it will be a full blown os and then there is no point in it

The idea is that you can boot up in a second and then do common things like browsing and so on. When you start to want more like printing, it will require printer drivers running over USB etc etc, and then it just ends up being another OS instead.

Patch · Post by **Patch** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 12:31 pm

Actually, for me, those Mitchell & Webb adverts kinda sum it up...

Apple = Thinks he's cool (But is not...)
PC = Doesn't care if he's cool (But actually IS...)

And that, my friends, is my first and last comment on the whole MAC vs PC crap.

forge · Post by **forge** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 12:39 pm

thefool wrote:
forge wrote:
thefool wrote: hmm. Well first up i suppose it boots to its own little os since it will need memory management and such (hence its an OS). Besides don't expect it to run PE files but rather its own format of somekind, and probably rather limited amount of app's.
surely there will come a point not too far off where it will be possible to do something like that?
Yep but then it will be a full blown os and then there is no point in it
The idea is that you can boot up in a second and then do common things like browsing and so on. When you start to want more like printing, it will require printer drivers running over USB etc etc, and then it just ends up being another OS instead.

I would love more than any thing a way of only loading up exactly only the things I need on demand as I need them

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 12:45 pm

beats me wrote:

Yeah, we used that thing a couple of years ago!

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 12:48 pm

forge wrote:
thefool wrote:
forge wrote: surely there will come a point not too far off where it will be possible to do something like that?
Yep but then it will be a full blown os and then there is no point in it
The idea is that you can boot up in a second and then do common things like browsing and so on. When you start to want more like printing, it will require printer drivers running over USB etc etc, and then it just ends up being another OS instead.
I would love more than any thing a way of only loading up exactly only the things I need on demand as I need them

Perhaps a custom linux distribution would come a bit over there. Actually, since you would be able to make a minimal dist just for music production it would be darn cool if more stuff supported linux.. You could have an extremely minimal os and leave tons of resources to your music

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 12:58 pm

When talking about laptops/notebooks (where's the difference anyway?) there is one argument speaking for Macbooks in our context: It has been used successfully by many musicians even if cramped into some rack on a hot stage! This does not mean that others can't do it just as well, but we don't have the shared experience of several thousand worldwide users for other products like we have for Macbooks.

On the other hand there are some things speaking against current Macbooks:

RME Support wrote:Attention Fireface users...

It appears that latest Macbooks are being equipped with the infamous Agere FW chipset, which is responsible for the FW issues with the new iMac. A german dealer reports problems with various FW audio interfaces (also Presonus), both in OSX and Windows (Bootcamp). Detailed information about the FW chipset is only available under Windows, OSX does not reveal this.

At the same time, a customer claims to have talked to Apple about the iMac issue and having been told Apple was aware of the issue and working on it. I can't confirm this, I'm just passing it on.

RME Support wrote:Hello,

as already stated in the thread 'Workaround for Fireface iMac Problem'

http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=974

there is a new FW 800 chip on the market from Agere, which seems to be incompatible (not only) to RMEs FireWire audio, and requires workarounds for successful operation.

The reason Apple used this chip instead of the former TI solution is easy to find: half the price and a lot smaller. So it is not astonishing that this chip now also begins to show up on Windows computers. We got our hands on a PCIe FireWire 800 card from Unibrain using this chip, and found the exact (!) same problems under Windows as under Mac OS X using this card.

Our examination of the problem showed that the Agere chip causes the Firefaces to issue a FireWire bus reset shortly after start of data transmission (isochronous mode). We tried a Motu 828 for comparison and found this to be affected as well (everything seemed to work, but playback did not start).

Therefore we have to declare this chip and all related products as incompatible, and expect a fix (if any) from Agere's side, by either firmware or driver updates.

RME Support wrote:I just received this from a Fireface user (David Berry):

"Following posts on the RMS forum on the website and on the Apple forum regarding the problem using an RME Fireface interface with the new metal iMac I have managed to create a work-around solution so that people can still use there Firefaces and iMacs together.

After some experimentation I have managed to get my Fireface 800 working perfectly. It seems there is a problem with the iMac connecting directly to certain Firewire devices (apparently Apple know that this is a problem and are presumably working on a fix). It is easy to get round the problem by using an external harddrive to act as a hub (I use a Lacie Firewire Drive). Providing your harddrive has two firewire ports on the back you can get the harddrive to mount and then plug the Fireface 800 into the back on the other port. Bizarrely -- but more importantly if you are a musician -- the fireface cranks up and everything now works fine. I have tested playing all sorts of sounds out of the iMac - Music/DVD/Logic and it all works perfectly. I presume there is a fault in the driver or something on the iMac - but for now at least we can get on writing music until a fix is released..."

Personally I am waiting for the announcement of the new Macbook Pros probably this January.

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 2:01 pm

forge wrote:surely there will come a point not too far off where it will be possible to do something like that?

Nope...

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 2:15 pm

noisetonepause wrote:
forge wrote:surely there will come a point not too far off where it will be possible to do something like that?
Nope...

Exactly

forge · Post by **forge** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 2:54 pm

thefool wrote:
noisetonepause wrote:
forge wrote:surely there will come a point not too far off where it will be possible to do something like that?
Nope...
Exactly

why not?

zappen · Post by **zappen** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:07 pm

Lo-Fi Massahkah wrote:Never thought I'd get drawn into this but...

zappen wrote:ditch apple, those ".mac" fanboys can't shutup...
Actually everyone speaking for Mac in this thread are rather balanced in their pros and cons. Now I guess this statement makes me a ".mac fanboy". Go figure.

-M

if 5-6 posts with just ".mac" in the first page are balanced for you, in their pros and cons (wich?), then it's balanced also my post.

it looks like those ".mac" users love to act all unite as photocopies, but without arguments.. it's quite spam frankly