I'm another one for PC. You need to inspect details of the audio interface you plan on using to be sure it will work with the specs your PC will have. After that you're good. There is an urban I legend that things "sound better" on Macs. That is false. Macs tend to have better quality stock 1'8" mini ins that's about it.

I've never experienced this.. which software were you thinking of?

All the multi-platform software is exactly the same cost for windows/mac version.
And other than that, what else do you need?
Not to mention, Logic Studio is one of the biggest bargains in music software around..


Just get whichever one you can afford, its not going to make you a better producer or not. Try and research your audio interface before you buy if you go windows.

I'd say go with where your budget fits, I think one thing that hasn't been discussed here is durability and long term investment. i have no doubts that my macbook pro could last me a good 6 years *at least* doing audio production and photoshop stuff for printmaking/art work documentation stuff. however, I have reservations about how a bugdet laptop from best buy or dell (everyone i've ever known with a dell laptop has gotten a lemon) would fair in that span of time. I do think that if you play your cards right and do some smart shopping and research that you can do what you need just fine on a relatively inexpensive pc. all that being said macbooks and macbook pros are getting cheaper and the battery life is getting pretty crazy and the new 13" pro has a firewire port again. I do agree with everything that has been stated about macs above and go on record as saying that i fucking love os x, but don't feel that you *need* one to make music.

Hmmm well, I've just realized this may actually differ a lot per country, but the Adobe Creative Suite 4 costs about 300€ more than the PC version. Then again Adobe products are never cheap here (it's usually the dollar amount, but in euros).

Another example is that games for example tend to be more expensive for a longer time. It takes years before they end up as budget Mac titles.

(Red Alert 3 -> PC: 19,99€ , Red Alert 3 -> Mac: 41,95€ , that's double the price for the same version (no special edition).
Same story for Black & White 2 and many other games.)

Of course the latter doesn't quite relate to music production.

But you seem to be right in that most multi-platform titles these days have more or less the same price. Corel Painter X is a good example and there are more and more multi-platform applications that fortunately have the same price. It certainly wasn't always like this, or at least I used to think so.

Ah OK yeah,

I hadn't thought of games.. I guess in that regard, the reason games remain more expensive on macs is because they just dont sell anywhere near the volume of copies sold on PC... I think also on mac, there is not much competition between different games of the same style - so people kind of will buy at whatever price anyway, because they have no choice..

But yeah, I guess I was only thinking of music apps and plugins.

i feel like macs are the nice guy with the dirty secret

and pc's are like the whores with the heart of gold

Hahaha, yeah!

I feel like people that buy mac's have to justify it to everyone for why they've bought one. I will never buy one on my own accord ( except I might have to have one for a job, graphic design and most companies require it goddamnit!). I'm a strong pc user and I do lots of music with firewire, lots, heavy gaming, heavy photoshop/illustrator work, lots of multitasking and HD movies and all. I have a 4 yr old desktop that I updated to blueray, filled with ram and added a top of the line video card to update my system all for under 300 bucks. Never had a crash, never had a serious problem. If you're not an idiot and can take care of your computer ( I use xp) then you should be fine. Most of my friends that have had macs have had them in the shop gettting repaired quite a few times and my gf just switched to pc because her laptop got sent to apple 3 times and they kept fucking up. Im a lil' bias I guess, it's mainly the price difference, I do not feel it is worth it at all. If they were to come down in price to their competition then I would maybe give it a second look but until then no for me.

Hmmm, I honestly doubt that's why people talk positive about Macs. Most people I know that have a Mac, àctually also have a PC. They usually really use Macs for the applications that run a lot more stable on the Mac OS, for professional purposes. There's a reason why companies tend to go for Mac more and more and more or less always did when it comes to movie, games and music production.



Consider yourself lucky then, lol, as I make games, music, art and 3d stuff all the time and had countless of issues with my PC. I can definitely take care of my PC, I'm enough of a whizzkid to claim it's really not my fault, because hard disk crashes really can't be prevented when Windows is running the show.

Macs aren't exactly immune to crashes or freezing or software bug issues either though and there seems to be more Mac viruses these days too. But it's honestly nothing compared to the PC platform.



What's keeping me from going for Mac entirely, is the fact that I am very much into PC games. But my parents got Macs and my brothers too. They don't have them for all that long yet (about 2 years), but they never ever had issues.

In comparison, I am still waiting for my mainboard to come back from a repair and had it send in over 2 months ago. Guess there can be lots of issues with both types of computers really.

Obviously if Macs would have costed about half of what the high-end desktop versions costs, I probably would have bought one already. I do think they are very pricey for what they give and to some extent I definitely would agree that it's difficult to justify such a huge amount of money for a Mac with all it's limitations too.

But Macs, and Apple's entire product line for that matter, have always been rather exclusive and expensive. If you want it, you'll have to pay... guess that makes them as bad as Microsoft, wouldn't you agree?

If I would ever buy a Mac, I would definitely make damn sure the system is able to dual-boot into Windows, so I can continue to use Windows-only applications as well. As needless to say, that would mean you got the best of both worlds.

the main reason pcs are in virtually every bedroom studio is the fact that cubase sx and fruityloops, craked, is the preferred software.

the reason why professional studios, both audio and video, rely on mac, is the stability.

i recently ordered a third mac pro to the studio facility im running. why?

in january 2007, we bought an iMac to check how stable macs are, we placed it in a public area and let teenagers borrow it to read email, use the internet, create music, edit photos and so on. For the last two and a half years, we only had to do one thing to keep the computer running. we had to delete stuff from the harddrive when it was full.

of course, occasional errors, and a few greyouts (mac equivalent to bluescreen) have occured, but the mac just force-closes the application, or reboots, and then its back to normal.

for studiouse we got the mac pro, mainly because its built rock solid, and highly expandable. the current setup is quite simple, 2-3 gb memory, one systemdisk and one audiodisk, easily expandable to 8 (2009version) or 16 (2008 version) gb of memory.

i expect them to last twice as long as our pc who we currently are replacing. Our new mac pro is replacing a 2 year old pc who is rubbish at this point, it got quite noisy after a year, and sloooow. errors occurs more frequently as time goes by.

and did i mention, they are beautiful to look at?

Nothing left to add to that.

If only it would be 500 to 1000 balls less to purchase. :p

By the way, this reminds me, as silly as the 'they talk good because they need to justify their purchase', would be 'they talk bad about it because they can't afford it' argument.

haha certainly not. I could afford it, and I am going to have to buy a mac for graphic design jobs as most companies use them. I just couldn't justify buying one when my PC hasn't failed me and it's pretty much the center of everything at my house. I don't have a problem with macs, just Mac snobbery that a lot of hipsters have ( I know someone with a mac tattoo if you can believe that ), and the price difference. Those are my main gripes. Oh and the whole firewire thing wtf.

nothin wrong with a mac tattoo,

getting a tattoo saying "PCs are shit, macs are teh best" would be a bit different.

How many people have some other tattoo that identifies some brand/team/etc that the person likes?


I think there are mac snobs, but I dont see any in this thread.

Depends a little on where they have the tattoo, but yes nothing wrong with that I guess.

I had my 'I luv Microsoft and Linux too' tattoo removed recently though.



Very true, but I also think some PC owners are or might initially be a bit fearful for the switch. I know I am. Some applications, lots of games... there's a downside to going entirely for Mac as well, aside from the price.

http://vodpod.com/watch/1269524-apple-i ... ews-source

at least the onion sees through them