Ableton Forum

I have been building my own PC's since I was a teenager for the past 10 years, ran Linux, did programming, and overall value the deep power that is possible with a PC system when done with DIY perspective.

Right now I am working close to 70 hours a week, and have very little time or patience for monitoring a computer.

My position is I have had several laptops (along with my desktop which is my studio center), and I never used them because I always went back to the desktop.

Now I am debating getting a macbook pro 17" and having that be my only system. I have owned 3 mac laptops in the past, and they proved too slow (all g4's) compared to a homemade PC rig.

Has anyone who is deeply experienced in building PC's and has relied on it and gone ahead and made the switch?

Can you outline your story?

Heh, my story is a lot like yours....


I used to run exclusively unix, either using sun gear (which I still have a bit of a soft spot for, I admit) or building my own PC's and running linux on them. Eventually I also reached the opinion that I should be spending more time using my computers rather than fixing them, as much fun as that was.

I stuck with the mac during the PowerPC days; even though the chips were woefully underpowered, the mac gave me the ability to run all the software I used to run on linux, plus lots of cool shit like ableton live. Once I was using the mac for both my regular programming work and music stuff, there was no reason to keep linux around anymore. Sorry linux.... you had a bright future, but you just couldn't "grow up".

As for the hardware hacking side of it... well, if you get a laptop, there is a very limited amount of hardware hacking that you'll be doing on it in the first place. Wtih desktops, you'll find that the mac philosophy is an odd mixture of open standards and closed components.... meaning that, you can use a really large amount of generic PC hardware in your mac setup, but there does come a point once in awhile where you need to pony up cash directly to apple. However, it's definitely possible to buy a "barebones" power mac and top it off with 3rd party stuff.

My advice is, if you're already down with the mac UI, but just have issues with slow hardware, give them another shot. The intel jump was really a big step forward for apple, and it definitely changes the way that you work with OSX.

Just check that all you favourite VSTs are available as UB versions on Mac and than any hardware (soundcard etc) have compatible and reasonably stable drivers.

And prepare yourself for the hassle of uppgrading/changing license/buying new any payware VSTs.