Why use a G4?

[4rest]

the pleasure is mine.....XPlite lets you fully costumize XP to your needs without having to be a "PC geek"

check it out and see how fast and stable a computer really can run!

[12micsn1]

I know everyone has there reasons for the computer they use. My only gripe is that Mac has far less application support then PC. If your a PC users you know this not the case.

[Angstrom]

all computers are shit, lets face it. None of them ever offered to defragment my hardrive over the weekend!

Are we really moving forwards here?


now that's a music machine!

[Harris.Andrew]

I know everyone has there reasons for the computer they use. My only gripe is that Mac has far less application support then PC. If your a PC users you know this not the case.

Right, that's why I use a Mac . . . only good software gets ported Seriously, if you want the no-headaches route . . . . the only programs that don't work well under OS X are MS apps like IE and Media Player (slow and a several updates behind PC).

As for processor speed - The G4 is over-the-hill, it's getting phased out, it's not in the same league as the fastest PC chips . . . or the G5 for that matter. There are economically reasonable ways to get a hold of a G4 system . . . I would suspect that you can probably get equivalent PC power for less, but not several hundred dollars less.

[smutek]

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)

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.

Interesting.

Counterpoint. I have been using macs at school for about four years now. When I first started we were using os9 on g4's, then we upped to osx on the g4's. Now we have 3 large labs of g4's running 10.3.7 a large lab of g5's on 10.3.7 and a small lab of g5's. There are also two other g4 labs on different campuses.

In all of this time I have never had a crash at school. Not only that, no one in any of my classes has ever crashed their machine. I have not even heard a story of anyone crashing. I can confidently say that the macs at my school do not crash, and obviously there are a wide variety of people using them. If they do crash it is with such infrequency that in four years I have not heard a single story, complaint, or rumor. And mind you I take classes every semester using macs.

I also have 2 macs at home, a g3 and a g4. I have an maudio quattro, if I turn it on without restarting it will, 90% of the time, crash my g4. I attribute that to the quattro.

So, other than the problem with the quattro, I can honestly say that my macs at home do not crash either.

[smutek]

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.....

Good points.

I bought my first mac for use in design work, not music. For my day job I shoot and edit digital photographs using photoshop on a windows pc running xp then upload the images to our website.

My powerbook absolutely smokes the machine I use at work for this type of application. At work I generally have photoshop running, IE, and the application we use to upload images to our site, and throughout the day the machine just chokes and slows down. I have to pay close attention to how much I have going on so I do not run out of virtual memory.

I am also the designer for a nonprofit group and do a fair amount of freelance work. At home, at any given time I may be runninng illustrator, photoshop indesign, iTunes, safari, mail and fontbook all at once with absolutely no problems. And that is on my "antiquated" g4.

Also, I hate working in the windows os. That is just my preference though.

Yes, it has been proven time and time again that Live is much more efficient on a windows computer. That is not enough to make me want to switch, not even close.

As a matter of fact, I will be coming into some money at the end of this year and I plan on buying a g5, and I may also be fortunate enough to be able to afford a dedicated audio laptop.

It will also be a mac, and the only audio tool I use is live.

I am by no means trying to diss windows users, and if it seems that way I apologize in advance. Like many others I feel it is a matter or personal preference.

When it comes to music I am a mere hobbyist, an extremely passionate and dedicated hobyist, but a hobbyist nontheless. On the other hand I do earn my living with my computer so I felt compelled to express my experiences.

For me osX is the only choice.

[smutek]

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

Or you could just accept that Mac's aren't as stable as the hype leads you to believe.

No, they really are. Atleast in my experience.

[tommy2000]

Could someone explain to me why I see a lot of Mac's on performances? Is there any special reason I should know about?

I'm asking this because of the price difference between say a G4 and an A64 laptop.. It's huge! Performance wise not worth the money if you ask me.. So I'm thinking, why do I see all those mac's? Just for looks? (yes, they do look nice )

Now lets not say Mac or PC is better. I want to know about advantages of a G4 and what might be a reason to get one.

tnx guys!

I think the phrase "mindshare is marketshare" helps explain it too. I believe the perception has as much, if not more, with the adoption of Macs. I also think that many folks see the Mac as the "no-brainer" music machine first, cost and cool eye candy factor running a close second, then performance coming in third. Why not too...if the machine does what you want, then you're happy with whatever performance you're getting, regardless of actual cost/performance ratio compared to a PC.

I own both, and use Win XP and Mac OS X daily for a variety of tasks, professional and personal. Last year, I gave up on OS X as a music OS...too many vendors still trying to catch up with audio units, overall instability of OS X compared to OS 9, finding music apps on the PC that were as good if not better than on the Mac...but most of all price. My Intel music platform performs flawlessly, used almost daily, fast and stable with all kinds of VST's and DXi stuff...all on a system that is easily 1/3 the cost of a new G5.

Growing pains or troubles installing/running music apps on the PC vs. Mac. Not really, sometimes have had to hunt down where an install app put a VST or something like that, but nothing major. Really, the system works like a dream.

That said, the G4 is nice to look at, as you said. OS X isn't a bad OS, but to me, it's as viable a music OS as WinXP. Build quality on Mac's are nice, and there still is a lot available for software, music and otherwise, Downside is the cost, you're paying a lot for the name.

Good luck to you, whatever works best for you will be a fine choice. Live runs on both OS's, so you're living in a blessed world anyway.

Tom

[JAMM]

STABILITY : ....the people who are playing live know how important that is!
And i DON,t say a windows laptop isn,t stable! i only saying a mac is stable!
GOOD LOOKS! a dark stage... the Apple label glowing.... i love it!
SPEED ......but fast enough for me.
greetz Jamm.

[Amberience]

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

Or you could just accept that Mac's aren't as stable as the hype leads you to believe.

No, they really are. Atleast in my experience.

And in my experience they're not

But hey, thats all I have, thats all you have. I said originally in my first post that it was a personal choice between the two.

[AdamJay]

a dark stage... the Apple label glowing.... i love it!

you said it , not me...

[sqook]

a dark stage... the Apple label glowing.... i love it!

As do I. =)

Not everyone does, though... when I saw autechre play live, they put electrical tape on the back of their laptops to mask the glow... heh.

[AdamJay]

i think autechre supports No Logo (nologo.org). its a great community and subsequent book worth reading.

not that apple falls into line with "corporate logo bullies", but one could argue manufacturing in taiwan while printing misleading things like "designed in California" on their machines does mildly lump them in with Nike printing "Freedom" on shoes made in Vietnam.

I'm certainly not one to argue that point though. Can't really use a computer these days without it being manufactured in Taiwan.
I will say apple has the most attractive logo of all laptop manufacturers, the problem is some folks buy macs just cuz that glowing logo on stage makes them feel like they are fitting in with other performers. And in reality, it really does not matter at all.

[ultrasource]

I have a feeling my glowing apple logo is taking 30% CPU away from Live wtf?

[plonkman]

that`s just the shit OS heh.. (ok bad joke)