Need Mac OSX software (v10)

[trancetheory]

I'v just decieded I'm gonna switch my laptop and PC for a Mac iBook with OSX 10, since its based on *inx, my favorite OS, and as they have such a fantastic reputation I thought I'd give it a go, heres what I'm looking at right now (I'm not rich, so it has to be in this price range!)...

Apple iBook G4 - PPC G4 1.33 GHz - RAM 512 MB OSX 10.4
HD 40 GB - CD-RW / DVD-ROM combo (~£500)

HDD isnt an issue really, coz I have external USB drives for storage

Basically all I want to do is be able to plug my XL1 synth in and my keyboard, and run Cubase SX and some synths/samplers/fx, using it for both music production and live performance

Obviously I'm gonna need a sound module of some kind to plug into it, any ideas? Edirol do some nice ones which I'm looking at, dont really want to spend more than around £250, but of course I'm more interested in the quality than the price, and if I can be convinced I'm happy to wait a while an save more... am looking for somthing with 2 midi in/out and a few audio in/out, pherhaps somthing with built in Soundfont memory? (do i need it? whats the noise ratio and latency like on built in mac hardware? does it even have built in midi? lol)

Well also I need software, I have loads of windoze software, but maybe some of the wikid producerz on here that use apple mac could burn me a DVD with Cubase & some nice synths/samplers/fx'z.....I know your not supposed to share software, so does a promise to buy the stuff I really like help?

Much as I'd love to get another sequncer, I love Cubase, and I really dont have the time or energy to learn anything else right now!

Any ideas on the setup peeps?

Maybe I can be convinced to stick with a PC? I know itz allot cheaper for the power you get....I dont know allot about Mac to be honest, so maybe I'm going down the wrong road?


Tell me what you think! Am sick of windoze, I never use it except for makin music, so I'd really love to get over to Mac if its worth it...

 

[Faction]

That's a handsome price, but I'd get a bit more RAM in it.

Personally though, if you know about PCs and have the software, I wouldn't bother.

 

[Reconstructed]

It seems to me that you already have everything you need to make music on your PC, so why switch? When you boil it down all these programs and operating systems ultimately give you the same thing - 2 ears, speakers and some records to make

 

[trancetheory]

true true I know, but therez 2 reasonz I want to change, 1) I cant stand windows, my job is IT, and I use Linux all day every day pretty much, I love it, so would be nice to use it for music production aswell (ie OSX) 2) I want a change, I love the look of iBooks...I need a new laptop, but I dont really want a PC laptop

Well I had been told that the noise from a Mac is lower than a PC? cant find any evidence to back this up, so I dunno lol

O I have a 3rd reason, the iBook I want is only 500£!

 

[Andrea]

Miszt, my flatmate wants a mac too, that price is sweet can you tell me were you found it and if ya know of other macs about same price range?

BTW I wouldn't chage to Mac if I were you, but if you are then I'm interested to know what you going to do w/your PC, I mean I'm trying to get one meself and maybe you are getting rid of yours?

Lemme know mate

bom!

 

[jackrabbit]

Hi Miszt
Firstly if you have legit software that is avalable for mac also like cubase you should be able to get a cross platrorm deal. I use Cubase SE which does not come with any synths but is capable for most stuff as long as you dont need midi clock and external midi to effects(reasons i wish to upgrade for). Does only cost £99.

As far as an i-book goes you will be limited to very few audio tracts and only the less prossesor hungry vst's(rules out most of the big boys toys).
If you can streatch budget a bit go for as big a power book as you can afford ar an G5 i-mac(much better performance per buck) and fill the thing with extra ram. Fine tuneing like partitioning should be done when instaleing start up disk.
At the end of the day your choice should be evaluated by your musical needs.
In the current issue(166 i think) of Future music mag there is a very handy comparason table and info on macs+pc's for different musical needs.

As far as software goes there is a huge arkive/download links of free + comercial stuff for mac's at http://www.macmusic.org/home/?lang=EN

G4 i-mac, novation x-station, korg electribe, cubase SE, various plug-ins

 

[JPsychodelicacy]

my g4 ibook is silent :iyes:

Depends which PC you get though, doesn't it?

The machine itself may be quiet, but my ex-gf's Powerbook makes a God-awful amount of noise through the internal audio bus and the USB terminals. It's certainly no quieter than my ThinkPad in that respect.

Miszt, OSX may have a nice Unix back-end, but trust me, the GUI is as awful as any MacOS in history... and you can only get a certain amount of stuff done on the command line. Add to that Apple's extortionate overpricing (in terms of bang for buck), the comparitive scarcity of *cough* certain kinds of software, plus the fact that Apple themselves are dumping the PowerPC architecture in favour of Intel and you may *really* want to think about at least holding off for a while.

XP's not that bad, and the GUI feels far more solid and useable than MacOS to me. It may have less 'cool' factor, but MacOS has always felt like I had to 'trick' it into doing what I wanted,.

*Personal Theory Time*

I think that it's only a matter of time before Apple scale down their footprint in the computer hardware market, and it simply becomes a choice between 3 major OS's for Intel equipment (Windoze, Linux/Free/OpenBSD etc. and MacOS).

I *suspect* that's why they're driving the promotion of iPod and other 'lifestyle' accessories as hard as they are.

The first generation of Intel Macs will have a hardware dongle on the motherboard that MacOSX Intel will look for, but I wonder how long it will be before that's either circumvented, or removed due to market demand.

We shall see...

J.

 

[JPsychodelicacy]

Hehe - don't worry dude, just playing Devil's Advocate.

I have a personal love/hate relationship with the things... not unlike the relationship I have with my ex (for whom I do most of my Mac-based maintenance these days).

It's all up to you.

J.

 

[Monkey Do]

After being a hata for years I finally own one.

I've installed Linux on it.

 

[Missing-Link]

my ibook is loooovvveeeellllyyyy

 

[trancetheory]

thanx for all your thoughtz peeps, my mind is now made up, itz gonna be a 12 or 14.1 inch 1.4Ghz Ibook, with 1.25Gb ram (would prefer a 12 inch, but that may not be practical for music, need to mess around with both for a while before I choose)

Speak to ya soon Andrea dude, sorry I missed this thread for a lil wile lol

 

[6, 24 Lotus]

IMO mac OS is sleeker. more pleasant to use.

However

what you are buying into is elitist, sofisticated gear. they do stuff like put notches in their USB cables so you can only use them on mac equipment (tip of the iceberg)

cracked softs are MUCH harder to find for mac OS
on the PC their are teams of crackers doing their best to outdo each other into cracking the apps first. with so much a smaller userbase, i dont see this happening on the mac platform

that aside, i'll never switch back to PC
Tiger Rocks!

 

[ChrisCabbage]

Ah - but you'll all be switching to *PC* though next year if you want a *new* Mac eh!?

 

[makdaddy]

Ah - but you'll all be switching to *PC* though next year if you want a *new* Mac eh!?

it'll still be a mac tho eh :irazz:

 

[JPsychodelicacy]

IMO mac OS is sleeker. more pleasant to use.

IMO the precise opposite. Any system based around a one-button mouse (and regardless of being able to use a multi-button mouse with it, the GUI is designed around one) is going to be inherently long-winded. I like being able to use keyboard shortcuts for everything.

Also what's with the same graphical device (Trashcan) being used for deletion of files and "Eject floppy/CD"? It's just illogical to me.

i dont see this happening on the mac platform

It does happen, it's just a fair bit harder to come by. I think the unwritten rule is that if you're wealthy enough to buy a Macintosh, you're wealthy enough to buy your software...

FWIW I'm an Amigan originally, and think that the combination of AmigaDOS and Intuition (Workbench) was one of the nicest, most seamless cases of GUI/CLI integration I've ever seen. We used to joke that Windows '95 finally did what Workbench '85 was capable of (pre-emptive multitasking). MacOS didn't get out of its co-operative multitasking rut until OS X.

J.

 

[ChrisCabbage]

Amiga (goes all dewy eyed).

What a dream of an OS that was.

In terms of the kernel itself, it was pretty-much bullet-proof. Simple and it *worked*.

As you say JP - proper multitasking from the word go. Microsoft didn't even properly do that IMO with Windows '95. It's arguable that it's *still* not as good, or at least not as elegant.

I had one of the desktop systems with a 68040 and a massive 20megabyte hard disk - went like sh*t off a stick!

BTW Imak - put a Mac sticker on a PC and it's *still* a PC!

:p

 

[trancetheory]

it'll still be a mac tho eh

nope, not really, itz *inx! :P hehe

what you are buying into is elitist, sofisticated gear

I would agree thats what it wants to be, but considering OSX is a mish-mash of *inx, BSD and GNU software, all nicely interfaced with a Apple Mac GUI, its not really is it

Any system based around a one-button mouse

Agreed, but I will, as you say, be pluging my logitech into it, therez also the fact that an interface is only long winded to use because of what your used to, one thing I notice about macs that I dont like tho, is that you get 1 or 2 ways max to do various things, whereas in windoze you can do the same thing 10 diffrent wayz, very usefull, but I'm used to *inx, so I dont mind

BTW Imak - put a Mac sticker on a PC and it's *still* a PC!

Yep, but at least it wont be running Windoze lol

My main reason for switching to Mac is the fact it is Unix, which I love and also the fact that they are well known to be allot quieter than a pc......plus the fact, the lil White ibook is just plain sexy!

(ok, so pherhaps only a geek can find a computer sexy, but hey lol)

 

[JPsychodelicacy]

Yep, but at least it wont be running Windoze lol

I use Cygwin as my CLI under 'doze (essentially BASH for Win32). I have strong reservations about lumping OS X in with the Free/OpenBSDs and the Linuxes of the world because they're building expensive closed-source interfaces and applications on top of an open-source engine, thus (to my mind) completely negating the point of Free Software!

Purusha - my little A1200 got a 68040 board, 8 Megs of Fast RAM and a half-gigger HDD before my Uni mandated a switch to Wintel. Did I get a little teary giving the 1200 up as my main machine? I do believe I may have... :iredface:

Incidentally another thing that rankled with me about Apple was their ads in AF and CU immediately after Commodore's demise essentially saying "Now your platform's toast, how about spending 2 grand on a less-capable machine?". These guys must have written the book on 'How to lose friends and influence nobody'.

J.

 

[Goz]

Incidentally another thing that rankled with me about Apple was their ads in AF and CU immediately after Commodore's demise essentially saying "Now your platform's toast, how about spending 2 grand on a less-capable machine?". These guys must have written the book on 'How to lose friends and influence nobody'.

:lolololo: :lolololo: :lolololo: :lolololo:

Is that the persecution complex kicking in again m8?

:irofl:

 

[JPsychodelicacy]

:lolololo: :lolololo: :lolololo: :lolololo:

Is that the persecution complex kicking in again m8?

:irofl:

It wasn't the smartest move they could have made, to be honest... I've never seen so many letters of complaint.

I'm still kicking myself for not buying Mark from Blue's spare A4000...

J.