Apple iPad. Meh.

[leedsquietman]

yup, good summary !

[davepermen]

Hey Russ, I am one of the Dell Inspiron generation My Dell Inspiron actually rocked and my XPS stacks up well too

The reason Dave why Apple has a strong foothold in pro audio is because Microsoft have conceded it to Apple years ago. Microsoft gear everything to the Office and Gaming communities. They don't give a crap about Pro Audio, it's a tiny market.

Apple have written core audio, core MIDI and AU plugin infrastructure into the heart of the o/s at a low level with OSX and revised it with most major updates.

In Windows, we have Steinberg to thank for providing ASIO and VST, because Microsoft's offerings (DX and WDM) are just very poor and aimed only at the gaming community where low latency and pro audio performance is not required. Thankfully ASIO and VST are good protocols which pretty much match Apple's equivalent protocols performance wise.

Microsoft's MIDI protocols were last updated with Windows 98, and there are 2 competing standards MME and DirectMIDI. They did introduce WaveRT with Vista, which is better than DX but not as good as ASIO and not supported by many vendors.

What does this mean. Well yes, you pay more for Apple, it might not do Halo 4 as well as a PC, but it is easy to set up and has much fewer driver issues. It's not flashy but 'it just works'. Most professional studios run Mac, and Protools HD in pro studios is about 75-25 in favour of Mac. High end interfaces such as Metric Halo, Apogee etc are only available on Mac. So in terms of pro recording Mac is a very good platform with very few performance differential issues.

This is not to say a PC doesn't have some advantages or can't be set up to be a great system, but it requires a bit more effort and a bit more careful selection of devices to make sure driver issues and performance is not a problem.

As good as an operating system windows 7 might be, it still has MIDI from 1998 and it's native audio system is lacking compared to OSX. However much dislike people have for Steinberg, they cannot deny that without ASIO and VST, windows would not be acceptable as a pro recording medium at all.

true except for the driver part (which is similar to the live8 unstable part). that depends on the hw vendors. in my case, where i use the soundcard + midi ports from my dj backend (so traktor with audio 8 dj for me), it's installing win7, installing traktor+driver, and it works 100% without any flaw in all of the systems i have tested on.

yes, microsoft has not focused on it, but that doesn't make it much worse. the variety of products available, on the other hand, makes it at least a valid option.

[leedsquietman]

This is what I mean about drivers though - Traktor may well have great drivers, but if you use some other application or hardware device, it varies. More so on PC because of having 2 MIDI protocols and audio driver formats. It's much easier to develop for Mac, it's one standard protocol for audio and MIDI.

PC has more freeware VST plugins available, often made with PC based apps such as Synthedit, but when it comes to quality paid plugins, they always come with audio units as well as VST. VST can also be used for Mac too in some programs such as Live. Until VST3 is widely implemented (just starting to pickup but Live only offers VST 2.4 at present), AU is a better plugin format because it supports native sidechaining and multichannel audio better.

I was hoping Microsoft would release their own low latency audio protocol and especially standardized, improved MIDI protocol with win 7, but alas, it was not to be.

BTW - I agree that the IPad is pretty meh.

[davepermen]

This is what I mean about drivers though - Traktor may well have great drivers, but if you use some other application or hardware device, it varies. More so on PC because of having 2 MIDI protocols and audio driver formats. It's much easier to develop for Mac, it's one standard protocol for audio and MIDI.

PC has more freeware VST plugins available, often made with PC based apps such as Synthedit, but when it comes to quality paid plugins, they always come with audio units as well as VST. VST can also be used for Mac too in some programs such as Live. Until VST3 is widely implemented (just starting to pickup but Live only offers VST 2.4 at present), AU is a better plugin format because it supports native sidechaining and multichannel audio better.

I was hoping Microsoft would release their own low latency audio protocol and especially standardized, improved MIDI protocol with win 7, but alas, it was not to be.

BTW - I agree that the IPad is pretty meh.

jup. as i said, your points where mostly valid. in the pc land, we have much more options, but not all are good. i guess that's one reason why people buy mac: they believe by doing so, they now can only get good options. live 8 still crashes on macs non-the-less. macs can't save you from every trouble, only fallback solutions can do that.

yeah, it would be nice to see microsoft implement another audio engine. but they specifically had to disallow direct hw audio after creative fucked up so many systems for so many years with the crap they delivered. not microsofts fault, but not that fine for us.

and yeah, iPad is pretty meh but it will win in the longer run anyways. see there: http://gizmodo.com/5458531/the-ipad-is- ... -we-needed

in short: it's not ment to be a good ereader, or a good netbook, or anything really. it's ment to be a device that people not having a solution at all might like to buy.

it looks like a device for my grandma. and when all those old guys presented it that slow (they where reaaaally slow and repeating often yesterday), it looked like an old-guy device for old men. it doesn't feel like a device by geeks caring about technology. only about old men trying to create a device to be easy and dump enough to use without using the brain. oh, and to sell music, videos, and books en masse

[andydes]

See what I mean? Now you want to turn this thread, in which you clearly have no interest yet insist on spouting your anti-apple nonsense, into a mac vs pc flame war.

Just stop jumping on other peoples threads to spout bollocks and inflammatory remarks.

Nobody gives a fuck that you don't like Apple products, we're doing fine thanks. We don't need our eyes opened, we're grown men who can make sensible choices.

To say that Mac are not compatible with the music making world is just shit,utter shit.

nothing more, nothing less.

Since the thread as a not very impressed with the ipad, this comment doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Perhaps the apple fanboys should be the ones to gtfo. But then I'm not interested in platform wars either. It's just like all the sega vs nintendo, C64 vs amstrad, Amiga vs ST bollox we had in school.

But now I'm here, i think as a lemer alternative, it'll be great. But that's not exactly what it's intended for. As a general web browsing, multimedia device, I'm far from blown away so far. Perhaps it will take off, but it had better have a lot more functionality than an iphone. Can you, for instance, actually download anything that doesn't come through itunes?

[davepermen]

See what I mean? Now you want to turn this thread, in which you clearly have no interest yet insist on spouting your anti-apple nonsense, into a mac vs pc flame war.

Just stop jumping on other peoples threads to spout bollocks and inflammatory remarks.

Nobody gives a fuck that you don't like Apple products, we're doing fine thanks. We don't need our eyes opened, we're grown men who can make sensible choices.

To say that Mac are not compatible with the music making world is just shit,utter shit.

nothing more, nothing less.

Since the thread as a not very impressed with the ipad, this comment doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Perhaps the apple fanboys should be the ones to gtfo. But then I'm not interested in platform wars either. It's just like all the sega vs nintendo, C64 vs amstrad, Amiga vs ST bollox we had in school.

But now I'm here, i think as a lemer alternative, it'll be great. But that's not exactly what it's intended for. As a general web browsing, multimedia device, I'm far from blown away so far. Perhaps it will take off, but it had better have a lot more functionality than an iphone. Can you, for instance, actually download anything that doesn't come through itunes?

it's actually fun that we in here have the highest chance of having great usability of this device (lemur replacement) and still all "meh" it

it's an absolutely useless device for most of us, having a portable laptop, and a phone (as an ereader it's big fail anyways). but as a mini-lemur, it could be very well. as long as you don't press the home button but that wouldn't stop sound so it's no big drama as well

[Sage]

It's amazing how little imagination people have, as soon as someone writes a customizable ipad app that communicates with max4Live over usb every ones gonna be drooling watching youtube vids of it. But until then all they can say it's "it's just a big ipod touch"

Yeah, the majority of the public out there all use Ableton and Max4Live.

The only people I've seen excited about this product has been musicians, everyone else is baffled by what it offers apart from being a big Ipod Touch.

[LoopStationZebra]

So, so much anger from the Dell/HP/Microsoft users. lol. Better luck next time, lads. Uh oh. What's that I hear? Nothing coming out of your speakers!

Check those drivers! lol.

[LoopStationZebra]

it's actually fun that we in here have the highest chance of having great usability of this device (lemur replacement) and still all "meh" it

By 'we' do you mean you and the 2 other twits that have no imagination?

[davepermen]

So, so much anger from the Dell/HP/Microsoft users. lol. Better luck next time, lads. Uh oh. What's that I hear? Nothing coming out of your speakers!

Check those drivers! lol.

can't hear ya, my drivers work and blast the sound out veeeerrry loud

the anger is not against the device (which is meh, but can be useful.. like, uhm, most of the things on the world..), but against the hype surrounding such stuff. i don't like hype.

we bash in here very often dj worship. why not bashing apple worship? i've got from numourous pages now daily since some months new news about the amazing apple tablet, flooding my mailboxes, making it actually hard to find real facts about news in the it world. this gets quite insane (but is perfect free marketing from apple. they're great at that)

By 'we' do you mean you and the 2 other twits that have no imagination?

no, by we i mean all the ones in these forums, who could use f.e. a lemur style app for great stuff. i said 'we' would have the biggest uses for the device, compared to all the others out there who would just show their great (now really great as in bigger) fart apps

[leedsquietman]

Hey, I like Apple products, and would happily buy an Apple computer if I could afford one at home

But the IPad is not likely to win the Nobel Prize for Technology or Innovation.


Plenty of music coming out of my Dell laptop but not via the built in speakers, fortunately (that would be tinny and 'orrible)

[UKRuss]

here we go...

Dave's 'dut chit dut chit' music sounds the same as mac users 'dut chit dut chit' music to me.

but he's a young PC Geek and he doesn't care! He does whatever wants, he's a rebel! He'll post where le likes and say what he wants and knock one out over PC Weekly magazine shouting, 'I wish this was a mac, I wish this was a mac, then the touching would stop!'

[LoopStationZebra]

here we go...

Dave's 'dut chit dut chit' music sounds the same as mac users 'dut chit dut chit' music to me.

but he's a young PC Geek and he doesn't care! He does whatever wants, he's a rebel! He'll post where le likes and say what he wants and knock one out over PC Weekly magazine shouting, 'I wish this was a mac, I wish this was a mac, then the touching would stop!'

[davepermen]

here we go...

Dave's 'dut chit dut chit' music sounds the same as mac users 'dut chit dut chit' music to me.

but he's a young PC Geek and he doesn't care! He does whatever wants, he's a rebel! He'll post where le likes and say what he wants and knock one out over PC Weekly magazine shouting, 'I wish this was a mac, I wish this was a mac, then the touching would stop!'

thanks for the pretty flame rhyme. i would appreciate it if it would be innovative *smile*

i'm no rebel. i just look at all my choices, not following the marketing yhpes

[UKRuss]

try being a musician, the choices are much easier.