Ableton Forum

hi !! i use an ibook 700 with 640 mb ram.. it runs very nice when i clean up my systemfolder and defrag my harddisk in os9.. under x is the performance slowly.. it makes me happy under 9 and i dont need x for live performing but oms often sucks.. i used it with an oxygen 8 keyboard and there are a bug with sysexdata for the fader from the keyboard.. can anyone help me.. ?? no problems with a uc16 from evolution and my good old jl cooper faderbox !!

very good: i had never a crash with my system (only under version 2.01) but this was yesterday and the new version runs fine and fast. no pops and other artefacts.. i would try the newer ibook 800 ..but 700 mhz is fast enough.. lix

p.s.: i use in add to my ibook a g4/867 mhz and a P4 2,45 mhz... the pc is very nice but the mac works "smoothly" its the better maschine for !!me!! and i like the 2mb L3 cache .. my ibook has a very long batterietime ..ca. 4 hours while live editing.. and this doesnt make my old pc notebook under win98...

Good news as I'm getting an ibook this weekend specifically to use with Live (have a Tibook for everything else). It sounds like I'm better off running Live in OS9...any suggestions on how to set the ibook up optimally? ie: should I partition the drive for samples/live capture, etc?

Best, Jamie.

no disrespect, but you already have a tibook and you are getting an ibook for live?.
its clear to even us mac users that a pc laptop is imensly superior and cheaper for using specificly for Live (only), not to mention the extra pc software you could use. What made you go this route???

Good question. Probably my absolute disdain for PCs, and my faith that Ableton will soon get Live up to speed for us Mac-heads. I agree that PCs are kicking Apples butt nowadays, however, I feel it's important to continue investing in a company that I believe in, rather than jumping ship for a short-term advantage.

Best, Jamie.

I have to admit i had similiar feelings not too long ago, but after reading all the threads here and on other mac sites its clear that even after optimization at least with live (growing to be my most important app, actualy already i just don't want to admit it since i've spent so much money on other programs) our apples still won't perform in a robust fashion. I now believe that it won't be until probably 2005 or 2006 that the macs with totoaly different insides along with osx will catch back up and probably surpass. (of course who knows what windows will be doing then)
but right now i think its just throwing away money. it would probably make things go faster by buying IBM products or AMD since thats who is gonna pull apples butt out of the slinger. I'm making myself depressed. anyway what my rambling is trying to say is we will all replace our computers after two years anyway, and its not that hard to find a pc laptop
quality enough to last at least that long. seeing as how a pc will give us effortlessly more than twice what a mac will on its best day I think its worth it if its for using live primarily. aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhh

'aargh' indeed. It's quite a horrible mess we humans continually build for ourselves.

Here is another perspective: I have used macs in making live music for a few years now, and continue to see others do the same with great success. I've also found a decent percentage of users on this forum completely happy with their mac portables and LIVE.

I take most comments made on forums, like this one, with a grain of salt, knowing full well that most people are happier running benchtests than actually using their machines for producing music. What do benchtests tell me? How far an individual was able to push a program on a particular rig. Great...I'm happy for them. But I have never found myself wanting to run a 16 track symphony, with eq and reverb on every strip, during a performance. If I did, I would probably have split it between two machines just for safety reasons alone.

My other field is photography. The same ideas are exchanged on those forums...continually running resolution tests on lenses to argue which is the 'best' one. In most cases, these findings do not relate one bit to why I chose a certain tool for my artistic endeavors.

I'm not saying that the ideas exchanged here are useless, but they are not the definitive answer for all of us to follow.

Best, Jamie.

very wise Jamie, probably the best post on the subject i've seen thus far on this forum, I can only hope after all this talking to you that you didn't change my mind

Yes, I've actually now decided to make my own laptop out of Lego

Best, Jamie.