this whole thread covers what has been vexing me for more than a month. i went to guitar center to buy a usb mixer, i got talked into buying the apogee duet because it has a very awesome sound card, then i got home and found out/realized that my newish apple macbook DOESNT have firewire anymore because usb 2.0 is faster - WHAT THE FUCK, also there is no convertor for this scenario... i spent 500 on the duet and all i ever did was take it out of the box and look at it once... if you want to buy it for 450 pm me ... you can record 2 mono tracks simulteneously and its sound is grand and leaves alot of headroom

Use Reaper. It's far better than Garageband. And it's free, unless you decide to license it, which is only $60! If you don't want to pay, the only nerfing to the program is that you have to wait 5 seconds for it to start. Seriously, that's it. Otherwise it's a functional DAW.

It's a little confusing because it's an opensource program, but don't let that and the fact that it's "free" stop you. Ask a computer programmer about Linux, it's kind of the same deal.

Oh yeah, you do need a physical interface. EMU has some USB stuff for as little $150 or so, and their stuff usually sounds pretty good. Better than Behringer or M-Audio if you ask me.