New to Mac please suggest all the things I've been missing!

[pdxindy]

New to Mac please suggest all the things I've been missing!

Once a year when Apple "updates" its operating system, your DAW and plugins become obsolete and all developers of plugins and DAWs must set aside everything else in order to resolve those issues.

Welcome to the brave new world of Apple and its own ecosystem!

Complete rubbish...

First, and most importantly, nobody makes you update. If you install a freshly released full OS upgrade on a production machine, then you are an idiot and deserve what you get.

I wait 3-4 months minimum until whatever bugs/issues arise get fixed then update and have never had any significant problem.

[pdxindy]

As for Logic/Cubase , I have both, but use Cubase which runs great on a Mac. Unfortunately you can't demo Logic as you can with Cubase.
For the price Logic is a steal, IMO the only VSTI worth mentioning is Alchemy, the others including the EXS24 need updating. The new Drummer is very cool. Swings and roundabouts, don't listen to fanboys on either side both are top notch.

Sculpture is a fantastic synth. Logic is worth getting just for Sculpture...

[pdxindy]

Be sure to also check out Alfred as a quick launcher (instead of Quicksilver), YummyFTP (instead of Transmit) for FTP and Sublime Text (instead of Textmate) as your editor.

I have both Sublime and Textmate and slightly prefer Sublime.

Never used YummyFTP but Transmit works very well.

[mcnoone]

Really exicted to try out numerology but not sure about what other mac only options I should check out. Any suggestions?

You might want to check this site out, as it has a lot of mac only audio making software.
http://www.macmusic.org/software/?lang=en

[fgimian]

Be sure to also check out Alfred as a quick launcher (instead of Quicksilver), YummyFTP (instead of Transmit) for FTP and Sublime Text (instead of Textmate) as your editor.

I have both Sublime and Textmate and slightly prefer Sublime.

Never used YummyFTP but Transmit works very well.

Yeah, Sublime has a thriving ecosystem, it's heavily used everywhere in coding circles. It's pretty much open all day long for me and it works incredibly well. Also, it works on Linux and Windows which is a huge plus (we use Windows desktops at work).

I own both Transmit and YummyFTP and indeed both are awesome. Rate limiting is the main point where YummyFTP is superior, but this may not be a feature many use and Transmit definitely has the better UI.

[Gamma-UT]

Just had an email from Noodlesoft - apparently Hazel turned ten today. So it's 50%-off until 3am EDT Wednesday: https://www.noodlesoft.com/store

[Zexila]

New to Mac please suggest all the things I've been missing!

Once a year when Apple "updates" its operating system, your DAW and plugins become obsolete and all developers of plugins and DAWs must set aside everything else in order to resolve those issues.

Welcome to the brave new world of Apple and its own ecosystem!

Complete rubbish...

First, and most importantly, nobody makes you update. If you install a freshly released full OS upgrade on a production machine, then you are an idiot and deserve what you get.

I wait 3-4 months minimum until whatever bugs/issues arise get fixed then update and have never had any significant problem.

It's not complete rubbish, because developers do need to prepare themselves for early adopters and almost every new update brings something new to the table for them.

Mavericks is obsolete now, you need to abandon it if you want to continue using Logic or Cubase, sure, Rommelaar exaggerated a little, but he is not talking complete nonsense here either.

[pdxindy]

New to Mac please suggest all the things I've been missing!

Once a year when Apple "updates" its operating system, your DAW and plugins become obsolete and all developers of plugins and DAWs must set aside everything else in order to resolve those issues.

Welcome to the brave new world of Apple and its own ecosystem!

Complete rubbish...

First, and most importantly, nobody makes you update. If you install a freshly released full OS upgrade on a production machine, then you are an idiot and deserve what you get.

I wait 3-4 months minimum until whatever bugs/issues arise get fixed then update and have never had any significant problem.

It's not complete rubbish, because developers do need to prepare themselves for early adopters and almost every new update brings something new to the table for them.

Mavericks is obsolete now, you need to abandon it if you want to continue using Logic or Cubase, sure, Rommelaar exaggerated a little, but he is not talking complete nonsense here either.

When the OS is upgraded your DAW and Plugins do not become obsolete. That is wild exaggeration bordering on lies.

and as a user, if developers do need to make some changes, that is not a problem for me. Like I said, after some months all the developers update their stuff if needed and then I upgrade. I've never had any significant problem using that approach. Just wait a while and it is all sorted. If you upgrade immediately, you are essentially being a beta tester (foolish on a production machine) and have no basis for complaint.

I started using Ableton Live and for example u-he Zebra on OS 9 on a G5 mac. Since then I have switched to OS X and the many iterations up until now (El Capitan) and I am still using Live and Zebra and it all works better than ever. (which is the opposite of obsolete)

My current MBP is an amazing machine and the most productive computer I have had to date. All my focus is on the tasks I have the computer for... not on the computer. The only issue that has come up is the trackpad became out of adjustment so I dropped by the Apple store and they fixed it while I waited at no charge.

If you want to play with computers, don't get a Mac. If you want to get work done with the minimal focus on the computer, then Mac's are great.

[Zexila]

When the OS is upgraded your DAW and Plugins do not become obsolete. That is wild exaggeration bordering on lies.

Agree, he really exaggerated that quite a bit.

I started using Ableton Live and for example u-he Zebra on OS 9 on a G5 mac. Since then I have switched to OS X and the many iterations up until now (El Capitan) and I am still using Live and Zebra and it all works better than ever. (which is the opposite of obsolete)

So you use same version of Live still on El Crapitan?

U He is known for keeping things updated even for legacy users, no news here, right now U He is 10.5+ even for newest stuff, if majority of developers did that, we wouldn't have an issue here, but why would they support something Apple don't care and isn't supporting anymore.

My current MBP is an amazing machine and the most productive computer I have had to date. All my focus is on the tasks I have the computer for... not on the computer. The only issue that has come up is the trackpad became out of adjustment so I dropped by the Apple store and they fixed it while I waited at no charge.

Well, right now there's a guy that have perfectly satisfying Mac too, version of OS or DAW, but he is left behind too quickly, that's the real issue here, you are moving on and following Apple, he have no need for it.

If you want to play with computers, don't get a Mac. If you want to get work done with the minimal focus on the computer, then Mac's are great.

This is kind of straw man argument right here and actually not true that much, you can get PC and have similar experience, there's builders that will support you same as Apple, we aren't in 90s anymore, that stuff isn't really applicable anymore, I don't like Windows, but it's perfectly capable OS for non hassle audio.

[mcnoone]

I don't like Windows, but it's perfectly capable OS for non hassle audio.

You're idea is missing the fact that windows doesn't come with the quality or the amount of software, and even language options that mac os does from the time of purchase.
Windows users have to go about downloading this and that before doing anything with audio, and they have to buy some $300 or so version of windows just to become multi-lingual. Mac os is multi-lingual and the os is much cheaper than windows os.
Macs already come with a daw, and instruments. A much better midi/audio setup app, not to mention movie/video making software, better photo editing, and music listening software to name only a few.
All of them built for the os from within the same company, which insures almost flawless compatibility.
It doesn't get that hard drive bloating that windows gets either. Background processes don't seem to effect the overall system operations, yet windows always does this. Especially if you are running iTunes on windows.
It's not that windows isn't capable. It's just that it isn't capable, right out of the box. While mac os is.

[chk071]

I don't like Windows, but it's perfectly capable OS for non hassle audio.

You're idea is missing the fact that windows doesn't come with the quality or the amount of software, and even language options that mac os does from the time of purchase.
Windows users have to go about downloading this and that before doing anything with audio, and they have to buy some $300 or so version of windows just to become multi-lingual. Mac os is multi-lingual and the os is much cheaper than windows os.
Macs already come with a daw, and instruments. A much better midi/audio setup app, not to mention movie/video making software, better photo editing, and music listening software to name only a few.
All of them built for the os from within the same company, which insures almost flawless compatibility.
It doesn't get that hard drive bloating that windows gets either. Background processes don't seem to effect the overall system operations, yet windows always does this. Especially if you are running iTunes on windows.
It's not that windows isn't capable. It's just that it isn't capable, right out of the box. While mac os is.

Do you actually believe all that?

[subsynq]

Actually the truth is somewhere in between. Windows is pretty much okay for audio just out of the box, provided that you install your audio interface's driver. The exact same thing happens with macOS. Indeed Apple's CoreAudio structure is the better interface, in that it provides a low-latency API for developers to use, while under Windows you have to rely on Steinberg's ASIO, where the drivers' quality varies, so your experience (performance-wise) depends a bit more on the manufacturer/driver developer. (And I say performance-wise, because if a driver doesn't work, it doesn't work, regardless of the OS, period.) I've seen Cubase broken (performance-wise) on a Mac for a long time, and customers waiting eagerly for a fix.

HDD bloating? As long as you defragment after several periods of continuous writing/deleting, you are fine. Otherwise, you don't need such maintenance tasks. With SSDs this need disappears altogether. Things aren't half as bad on the PC side as mcnoone presents them.

Regarding updates, I'm with Zexila. Updates DO break things, on both platforms, however from personal experience Windows are a bit more compatible/tolerant to older software. I've seen Vista x64, and even WinXP x64 drivers working beautifully on Windows 10 x64 with a bit of tinkering, while my Audio Kontrol-1 doesn't work with anything more recent than Mavericks. The driver actually prevents my machine from booting those unsupported OSes. Hell, Apple even broke their own DAW (Logic 9) while it was still current, with the release of OS X Lion!!! I've seen lots of bad things happen after Windows updates, I've seen hell break loose after OS X updates, it's not even funny, so this shouldn't be a point at all when talking about a production environment.

Macs DON'T come with a DAW and instruments; you have to grab at least MainStage/GarageBand from the App Store to get started. As for overall 3rd party software quality, 99% of all plugins already have a PC/VST port, and for those that don't, there are approximate equivalents.

All in all, both are very valid platforms to get work done, you just pick what you think will suit you best. They're computers; they're almost equivalent; they are made to get things done. Macs imho just have a more pleasant OS experience and that's about it. Windows keeps getting better at it, tries more and more to keep up.

I started using Ableton Live and for example u-he Zebra on OS 9 on a G5 mac. Since then I have switched to OS X and the many iterations up until now (El Capitan) and I am still using Live and Zebra and it all works better than ever. (which is the opposite of obsolete)

You were plain lucky that these apps got updated. Do you even know how many technologies became obsolete when Apple switched CPU architecture? Do you know how much software wasn't ported over, INCLUDING drivers and hardware synth editors? As for PCs, no big change happened, pretty much everything works as long as we're not talking about 16-bit software, for which support got dropped with the release of 64-bit Windows.

PS: Changing the Windows display language is as easy as downloading an update, a "language pack", which comes with handwriting-OCR-etc support On the other hand, I haven't seen even a greek version of Finder since the days of a translated 10.5.something. Just checked the latest El Cap build, doesn't have one either, just switches the date/time display.

PS2: MacOS finishes some major update... Logic rebuilds its plugin cache... Validates every single AU from scratch... "xxx incompatible audio units found"... This should ring a bell to many people here.

[Zexila]

I don't like Windows, but it's perfectly capable OS for non hassle audio.

You're idea is missing the fact that windows doesn't come with the quality or the amount of software, and even language options that mac os does from the time of purchase.
Windows users have to go about downloading this and that before doing anything with audio, and they have to buy some $300 or so version of windows just to become multi-lingual. Mac os is multi-lingual and the os is much cheaper than windows os.
Macs already come with a daw, and instruments. A much better midi/audio setup app, not to mention movie/video making software, better photo editing, and music listening software to name only a few.
All of them built for the os from within the same company, which insures almost flawless compatibility.
It doesn't get that hard drive bloating that windows gets either. Background processes don't seem to effect the overall system operations, yet windows always does this. Especially if you are running iTunes on windows.
It's not that windows isn't capable. It's just that it isn't capable, right out of the box. While mac os is.

I said audio, for consumer multimedia, Linux Mint does seems to offer amazing experience out of the box for free (without dedicated hardware), hard to beat that, also Windows offer basic multimedia stuff and there's cheaper OEM's too, machines are way cheaper too, you made it look like there's Logic X, Final Cut&Co shipped gratis with OS X and Mac, you need to buy all this stuff, download and install, just like on Windows machine.

But that's not the point, isn't it, it's some old running "fact" from more than decade ago that should be updated with reality a little, especially if you get your PC tweaked from dedicated audio builder, just like you did with cherry picked Mac by Apple.

Sure, OS X needs less tweaking, but newest ones aren't really examples of good OS went awesome, it's the opposite, Windows 10 actually outperforms few other versions and OS X, none of the new OS X can 10.6.8 which is the same age as Windows 7, that's freaking sad and Windows 7 is still supported too.

I'm Mac guy and until something replaces Logic 9 for me gonna stay that, have PC too which I don't even use, but plenty of audio app's are there for Windows, there's that famous DAW benchmarks that shows true colors of both OS-es for low latency audio, it's hard to believe in some old running fact in this day and age, sure, you just unbox a Mac and don't think much, but let's think a little, you still need to worry about updates, drivers and everything else, Windows guys maybe have lost 10 minutes tweaking their OS (or had it already tweaked by a guy/company that sold them dedicated machine), not a huge difference.

I'm with Zexila.

I'm with you on everything.

[chokehold]

F*ck Windows.
Hail Jobs.


Now, back to topic.

System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Zoom
Activate "Use scroll gesture with modifier keys to zoom" and pick modifier key; I prefer default (Ctrl).
Hold Ctrl + shove mouse wheel back + forth.
Life saver, if you're like me and you don't want to start squinting and leaning forward from your comfortable near embryonic position at 4 a.m.

In App Store, search for "BetterSnapTool". Get over it and fork out the $3, it'll be worth it. I wonder why Apple are constantly masturbating over their new split screen mode, when this thing is so much better and so way more flexible, has been for years. Couldn't live without it, actually one of the first Mac apps I ever bought.

Pixelmator for something like $30. A powerful and well-supported (they helped me with an instant bugfix build) image editor, can do pixels and layers and fx and shapes and vectors and PSDs and PDFs and all that. If that's what you need.

There are also Affinity Designer (vectors + shapes) and Affinity Photo (photos, duh) that split what Pixelmator does into two apps, each a bit more dedicated than Pixelmator but (imho) also somewhat more tedious to learn and use. And more expensive, yet they can't seem to "snap to grid". Weird world.

Apple Motion for $50 or so. It's advertised as basically a "transition maker for $300 Final Cut Pro", but you can use it as a bog standard video editor on its own. I do. It has layers, masking, titles, particle emitters, automation + keyframe tweening, FX (even AUs for audio), behaviours, yadda yadda. A hundred times better and more powerful than iMovie, but rather somewhat slow/CPU hungry at times.

The Unarchiver. Free app that, well, unpacks archives. Not just .zip files like OSX, but also things like .7z and .rar files. Quite useful.

Keka. Can pack and un-pack all sorts of formats, the most interesting features would be that it can split huge archives into smaller-sized volumes and that it can get rid of unwanted .DS_Store etc. Mac filesystem trash that only serves the purpose of annoying touchy Windows users when they unpack your archives. (Onto a trojan riddled hard drive.) If you don't download it over the App Store but over the website (just Google it), you can get it for free and donate at will.

ScreenFlick or ScreenFlow if you want to do screen recordings, webcasts, etc. Not much to say about these, at least one should be on every modern "media creator" machine. QuickTime Player can do screen recordings, but I think it can't capture non-system sound or something silly. And who launches QuickTime Player anyway when you've got...

VLC. Yup, just like on Windows. Looks and behaves somewhat differently, but plays back anything and lets you configure it until your fingertips bleed. (As anything Windows related would.) Doesn't support AU plugins (afaik) but has an on-board compressor, so if you've had it with those silly volume jumps in modern movies... this is the one you want.

Nightingale. You can't delete iTunes, but you can ignore it and use this free app instead, at least for music. Hasn't quite reached bliss level yet, but already makes a lot more sense and is far more straight-forward to use than that iTunes hog. Can auto-watch folders and all that, has a built-in EQ and all sorts of other interesting bells and whistles. Supports themes and layouts, or at least layout-changing themes.

Last but not least - the space bar. Highlight any file in Finder, like a .pdf or an .mp3 or an image. Hit the space bar - instant preview. PDF will let you browse the file, mp3 will start playing, the image will open up. Hit the space bar again, be done with it. No need to launch any 3rd party application and to Alt+F4 out of it later. Just space/look/space, done. I have no clue how Windows users can still live without something so simple, effective and utterly helpful.

Oh, and never visit macappdeals.com... you'd just find excuses to need something you find there every now and then.

[Zexila]

F*ck Windows.
Hail Jobs.