Why use a G4?

bencodec · Post by **bencodec** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 3:28 am

I would say a large part of it is history. as little as 4 years ago using a PC for audio was a laugh. PCs had limited software, slower hardware, and a terribly buggy OS to deal with. apple got stuck in a contract with a chip manufacturer that didn't want to make chips anymore and they slowed down a bit, but that is a fairly recent development.

I think you see a lot of apples around at gigs as the people using them are used to them and have been making tunes with them and the platform for years.

there are still several incredible music apps that are mac only or in the case of some recent PC ports are still more stable and well developed on the mac platform.

Yes, the G4 is long in the tooth, and apple needs to sort out their chip production, buut you've just picked macs only weakness... where should we go with PCs...

Angstrom wrote:A large part of it is marketing / branding IMO

Microsoft branding says " Home users can get email and send pictures to their grandma, you can use Word to do your business letters "

hmmm, woohoo!

Apple branding - " you will be cool, stylish and funky - listen to music, create and be cut above the mainstream"

the general market perception they create is that they are underground and iconoclastic, whereas microsoft sell themselves as the establisment.

You can see where the appeal would lie for people in the creative industries.
Obviously there are other factors, but like I say, a huge part of it is marketing.

I have two PCs with XP on, one desktop - one Laptop .. both stable. I also have a 17" powerbook - also fine.

somehow I always get roped into fixing peoples computers, oddly a lot of them are Macs which is odd, because as everyone knows they never break .. weird.

j · Post by j » Thu Feb 10, 2005 3:28 am

who fucking knows!!!!????(shitz sure are expensive)

that being said ....abletonz...can you please genius out on the optimization for Mac G4z already?

(toomuchSakeandSmoke?)
j

p.s. is anybody gettin off on Danny the Dog as much as I Be?

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 3:49 am

bencodec wrote:buut you've just picked macs only weakness... where should we go with PCs...

lets get some weaknesses then...

price:performance? , can't go there
variety? can't go there either
stability? nupe (if you've used XP, its quite stable)
build your own to save $? no complaints there either.

all thats left is security. and "power" users know how to secure their machines. but do "power" users know how to shoehorn a G5 into a powerbook? not yet so far.

MarkH · Post by **MarkH** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:48 am

Think of it this way.

You want to buy a Ferrari from Apple and they have 3 models to choose from. You can't really do much to them once you roll them off the lot, but you know they'll perform decent and won't break down.

You now visit another dealer (PC) who shows his larger selection of Ferrari vehicles which drive faster than Apple but rely on parts from other vendors besides Ferrari. The dealer tells you hist Ferraris performs twice as fast as the Apple Ferrari, but maintenance must occur more often and it requires a bit more TLC. But if maintained properly, it will always perform optimally and be better than the competition.

Mbazzy · Post by **Mbazzy** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 8:21 am

I switched from PC to mac and documented it here : http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... t=switcher

Now that my main PC DAW has died , I replaced it as well by a Mac G5.
I know it sounds mellow, but for me the working-with-a-computer-feeling has disappeared from musicmaking since I switched ...

Sandor Vennink · Post by **Sandor Vennink** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 8:33 am

polyslax wrote:Still I guess the question remains... Why is the pro market so Mac heavy? (with the notable exception of Kraftwerk)

Is it all flash, or might they be on to something?

Ah well, in the mean time another 'neutral' bystander has thrown us into the hell of a platform debate.

Sowwy..

My other hobby is overclocking. In that scene you get the AMD vs Intel discussion like you get PC/XP vs G4/OSX here. But still there are good reasons to get AMD over Intel and the other way around. The same goes for the issue here.

I had the exact same thought you just wrote down..and that is: Is there something they know that I don't about these macs?

I just hope the shortsighted people will try and see past "it looks better" or "macs rule!"

Coming from this overclocking standpoint speed is very important to me and we all know A64 (Clawhammer) and PM (Dothan) are VERY fast compared to G4. So its a bit hard for me to drop 2000 euro's (vs 1200 euro's) on a slower machine and therefore I would like to know what makes it special.

I'm dutch yes..

jamief · Post by **jamief** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 9:09 am

Well,
ive been using macs since 1997 and i have to say i have spent a lot of money on the macs themselves and the added hardware and interfaces.

Are they better ?- no they are different
Is OSX amazing ?- well its different not any worse or better than Xp and OS9 was pretty groovy too.
Are Apples machines more stable - No not now.
Will using a mac help you make better music ? - nope !
Are they they worth the money? G5s well just about, Powerbooks - nope underpowered in comaprisson with Pc laptops buy a huge amount and in my opinion a waste of money. ( ive owned one from new and sold it).

I,m increasingly tempted to but a fast Pc laptop which will come in a round the £1400. A G4 powerbook will run at 20% of the speed of that machine for the same price.

Oh and finally by the way - no matter what anyone infers that OSx is better or Xp is shite Ableton looks the same but runns much better ( at the moment) on Windows.

Is it worth getting a G4 -in a few words no not unless its cheap (secondhand)> dont waste your time with the existing powerbooks.

Oh `and remember some mac users are terrible snobs - they have to justify having spent the inflated amount of monet someway and it usually comes across as " i have the best machine and you need to get one of these " The Truth is you don't .
proofs in the pudding
Mylo wrote his current albulm on a Pc in his bedroom.

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 9:32 am

MarkH wrote:You now visit another dealer (PC) who shows his larger selection of Ferrari vehicles which drive faster than Apple but rely on parts from other vendors besides Ferrari. The dealer tells you hist Ferraris performs twice as fast as the Apple Ferrari, but maintenance must occur more often and it requires a bit more TLC. But if maintained properly, it will always perform optimally and be better than the competition.

I know most of you only use your computers for audio work, but the instructions for configuring XP to go online via a Bluetooth/GPRS capable phone (something I do quite often) is a couple of pages. On OSX you type in #99* into Internet Connect and tell it to use Bluetooth via a pop-up menu...

Plus, I can spend ages doing things in the terminal that I could do in the Finder in half the time. Much gaiety.

-Paws

xzusa8ky · Post by **xzusa8ky** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 9:53 am

Hi!

If you know what you are doing, the mac will turn even the fastes PC to a toy if you compare stability and workflow! PC's sucks, Windows sucks and offcourse microsoft sucks! If you work on a Mac for more than just 2 min you will notice that the OS X is much more than Windows, and it's much more than just Mac Vs. Pc! Offcource a G4 is not as fast as the fastes pentium, but that's logical! The G4 was build by motorola years ago! You can only compare Pentium 4 with G5 prossesores! Stay in your PC world if you want to support a Fuck'd up company like microsoft, and offcource I hope you will enjoy the virus front to.....Someday they all gonna work on mac in the studio! Let's see in a couple off years.....Apple here we come!

regards

xzusa8ky

Amberience · Post by **Amberience** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 10:18 am

Its all conjecture, so none of this is any help at all. YOU have to decide whats right for YOU.

But if it helps, I use G4's at uni. I can't use them for long because I'm just not a MAC person. They crash a lot, but that could be because everyone is using them, thus resulting in less stability.

My PC hardly ever crashes.

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 10:23 am

Amberience wrote:But if it helps, I use G4's at uni. I can't use them for long because I'm just not a MAC person. They crash a lot, but that could be because everyone is using them, thus resulting in less stability.

Crash as in kernel panics? Or crash as in software bailing out?

I'd hazard a guess that your system administrator doesn't know what he's doing..

-Paws

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 12:12 pm

noisetonepause wrote:Crash as in kernel panics? Or crash as in software bailing out?

I think in a live situation either one would be bad! I imagine shouting at the audience : "hey, my Mac crashed ... but it's software rather than the Kernel, so keep dancing !"

I think the key thing is that Macs crash if you don't know what you are doing, or you use flaky software (same as a PC would crash in those circumstances)

The bigger problem is that Mac users are told to buy a Mac for the ease of use; they don't want to be a geek and they aren't that interested in digital housekeeping & safety ... they are told they don't need to be.
Macs never crash, they are rock solid stable and idiotproof ... you can throw away that manual!

Which as we can see from Amberience's post (and my experience), it just isn't true. Set a bunch of people who aren't "computer sensitive" on a bunch of Macs and watch them slowly die. They aren't idiotproof .

Komplex · Post by **Komplex** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 12:20 pm

Angstrom wrote:
noisetonepause wrote:Crash as in kernel panics? Or crash as in software bailing out?
I think in a live situation either one would be bad! I imagine shouting at the audience : "hey, my Mac crashed ... but it's software rather than the Kernel, so keep dancing !"

I think the key thing is that Macs crash if you don't know what you are doing, or you use flaky software (same as a PC would crash in those circumstances)

The bigger problem is that Mac users are told to buy a Mac for the ease of use; they don't want to be a geek and they aren't that interested in digital housekeeping & safety ... they are told they don't need to be.
Macs never crash, they are rock solid stable and idiotproof ... you can throw away that manual!

Which as we can see from Amberience's post (and my experience), it just isn't true. Set a bunch of people who aren't "computer sensitive" on a bunch of Macs and watch them slowly die. They aren't idiotproof .

Maybe they are just designed for idiots (in more ways than one)...

(I've gotta stop stirring shit on message boards today hehehe)

Sandor Vennink · Post by **Sandor Vennink** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 12:24 pm

My intrest was really in the hardware.. I found this performance topic on this forum where you can see how the macs stack up to the PC's..

Well.. no mac for me. 2000 euro's and it isn't even half as fast as my piece of shit desktop PC.

An A64 3000+ isn't really that fast.. it's TWICE as fast as a G4!! How on earth can you guys drop so much money on a machine like that? I really don't understand...

No offence guys! Everyone is intitle to his or her taste and I completely respect that. It just doesn't work for me so I've found out with this topic.

ultrasource · Post by **ultrasource** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 2:18 pm

Well Sandor,
Everyone purchases things for a different reason. I'm on this powerbook because I've found that to edit video, update websites, run photoshop, and work with music, i'd need a machine that I can rely on. My powerbook has been nothing but great to me and I earn a living because it is stable. I own both pc's and macs and I prefer macs to pc's for a variety of reasons. None of those reasons has to do with Live 4.0 so I'll leave it at that.
I believe we are all swayed by marketing no matter how much we think we aren't. Hence, Apple targeted the creative folk and IBM catered to the suits. We all know you can make music on an IBM and run a business on a Mac but it isn't very clear from either company's advertising.
Can I present a clear attraction to the mac platform for me? I bought an iMac G4 a couple of years ago for $1800 and when I wanted a portable, I sold if for $1300 a year later on eBay. Thanks to their premium price, the mac has resale value.
Sheer power isn't the only variable in purchasing a computer. I wanted a platform that I didn't need to tweak. I got that and I've never looked back.
That all being said, it does truly suck, especially when you see the abe's with powerbooks, that Live runs so inefficiently on macs. If it's not cleared up in the future, I think, ultimately, that ableton will suffer.