My DAW PC hates me though I shower it with nothing but love..time to switch to a Mac?

[Sascha Franck]

Macs are slick machines... but Apple has abandoned their power-users.

Unfortunately that is pretty true. And (apart from the price) the reason why I got a 2010 "cheesegrater" MP just recently. Given Apples "standards" this is by far the most customizable machine they ever had (easy access to drives, RAM, PCIe, fans, even the CPU can be upgraded more or less easily).

And while I can sort of understand their idea of going for "unified" hardware, to make sure everything is compatible/stable, not being able to swap memory and drives yourself (at least not in case you're an average human being), not offering space and connection options inside their Mac Pros, etc. - well, that's quite another level of dumbing down things and planned obsolescence.
I have been upgrading the internal harddrive(s - exchanged the optical drive in favour of a second harddrive, another thing not possible anymore) of my Macbook around 7-8 times. Always got a new, bigger and faster one once they had acceptable prices. A matter of a few minutes, the only slight annoyance being the waiting time until the old drive was imaged. Almost completely impossible on any actual Mac. Ridiculous, especially when SSD prices are dropping like mad.

[Tronam]

I don't think Apple has completely abandoned their power-users... yet. The iMac Pro has been a dream machine for music production, at least for my needs; Dead silent, beautiful display, plenty of ports and more power than I could ever need for a long while. Of course that comes at a cost and not just monetary, but also expandability aside from external TB3 hardware/enclosures. If their rumored "pro focused" Mac Mini and overhauled modular Mac Pro next year reflects their listening to the current userbase, then there might still be hope. They stated that they've hired what is essentially a team of professional content creators to serve as advisors to the design group, so hopefully this input will bear out in upcoming hardware.

[topaz]

Hey Sascha, long time

I did the same, by the time I priced up a decent PC (and then the hell of having to reformat all my drives etc) I went for:

Mac Pro Mid 2010
12 core 2 x 3.06 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
32GB ram
256 SSD

Love it.

best Matt


[quote="Sascha Franck
[/quote]

Unfortunately that is pretty true. And (apart from the price) the reason why I got a 2010 "cheesegrater" MP just recently. Given Apples "standards" this is by far the most customizable machine they ever had (easy access to drives, RAM, PCIe, fans, even the CPU can be upgraded more or less easily).

And while I can sort of understand their idea of going for "unified" hardware, to make sure everything is compatible/stable, not being able to swap memory and drives yourself (at least not in case you're an average human being), not offering space and connection options inside their Mac Pros, etc. - well, that's quite another level of dumbing down things and planned obsolescence.
I have been upgrading the internal harddrive(s - exchanged the optical drive in favour of a second harddrive, another thing not possible anymore) of my Macbook around 7-8 times. Always got a new, bigger and faster one once they had acceptable prices. A matter of a few minutes, the only slight annoyance being the waiting time until the old drive was imaged. Almost completely impossible on any actual Mac. Ridiculous, especially when SSD prices are dropping like mad.
[/quote]

[fmr]

They stated that they've hired what is essentially a team of professional content creators to serve as advisors to the design group, so hopefully this input will bear out in upcoming hardware.

This is the usual marketing BS we get used from Apple. Why would they need to "hire what is essentially a team of professional content creators to serve as advisors to the design group" when they could have that from a much larger group AND FOR FREE?

All they would need to do is ask their user base what they want. They didn't, like many other companies, because they don't want to know the answers (or they already know what those answers are, but are not interested in fulfill them).

What they want is to be able to later justify their (probably questionable) options with the allegation that "it was what our team of advisors" asked for.

Of course...

[Sascha Franck]

This is the usual marketing BS we get used from Apple. Why would they need to "hire what is essentially a team of professional content creators to serve as advisors to the design group" when they could have that from a much larger group AND FOR FREE?

A-f***ing-men!
It's how long now? Like 10 years or so that professional users are asking them for a professional machine that a) is expandable and b) has a long life, even if you stay up to date with software (and external hardware).
But what they're coming up with is the EXACT opposite. Their machines are way less expandable than ever before and with their ever changing "standards" they're putting a major burden on both users and software developers. Need a new machine (as you can't upgrade the old one)? Prepare to pay a premium for whatever solutions to keep your older additional hardware functional or to buy new stuff.

And what about them releasing a new "major" OS about every year? All these OSes do (apart from some true major revisions I can understand, such as the step from PPC to Intel or from 32 to 64 bits) is to add a handful of fancy gimmicks - and, well, incompatibility of older hardware and software.
Mojave? Yeah, sure - everybody has always been asking for an OS to change its color along with the hours of the day. Because everybody (especially professional users) is spending all their time in front of the computer staring at how marvellously your desktop background changes from noon to midnight. But hey, if you own an older Mac Pro, to enjoy the great new world of the dark mode, expect to pay another premium for a new GPU. Oh, apparently AU validation is working properly now. Was broken in High Sierra - but lets rather not fix it but just release another nonsensical OS update.

There's plenty of good things that can be said about Apple when you're actually making use of what only they have to offer (as in my case Logic) or if you're rather non-computer-savy (OSX is in fact pretty much idiot proof, something that can't be said about Windows anymore, especially not in case you plan to keep your machine clean and lean). But that doesn't justify all their greed.
A computer for more than what I paid for my car? Pardon? For the price of an iMac Pro I can built 2-3 super high end Windows workstations that will blow everything away. Heck, I could probably even have them built for me.
And in case you want to upgrade that iMAc Pro, you can simply throw it away. Need another display? Again, throw it away.
Bleh!

All this is exactly the opposite of what power users are asking for. And Apple doesn't need any experts as consultants to learn more about it. Unless they are greedy but dumb twats living in a cage (which I actually sometimes suspect...), in which case one shouldn't buy a highend computer from them.

[Tronam]

I’m not aware of their “Pro Workflow Team” being marketed anywhere. It was just something which came up during that tech journalist round table discussion where Apple talked about a new Mac Pro and display that’s in development for 2019. I totally agree that taking a serious look at global user feedback is vitally important, but the workflow group they’re talking about is also working directly with the hardware design team in Cupertino. This can only be a good thing because it seems like they’ve been in some kind of reality distortion bubble over the past 5 years.

[Sascha Franck]

Apple talked about a new Mac Pro and display that’s in development for 2019.

Let's do a little price guessing for that combination. 20k? And if you want 4TB of diskspace 22k?

[jancivil]

People pay far more than I paid for this computer I'm using for one synth.

I personally find 'you can build your own computer for far less' as dull as discourse gets here. I can't, you can't build this computer at all. You can build a computer to run windows but I wouldn't want it. I wouldn't want it for free, ok? I wouldn't use it if you paid me a salary to use it because life is short.

Anyway, this machine is rendering video literally incredibly fast. I have my whole arrangement up in real time now with no hitches, no break ups, major demands on a computer as far as my experience goes, and this just works. I find it funny - funny ironic I mean - the same people that can find a negative bullshit review and act like that's authoritative bitching about marketing. What does the machine do? Someone spends four grand on a tool and you have to insult the intelligence and you need bullshit to get there.

It is a box you can't do anything to yourself anymore, I get that. But I'm not a luthier and I finally just paid people to set my guitar up. I'm not handy. I'm not interested, the subject of computer guts bores me.

[Sascha Franck]

It is a box you can't do anything to yourself anymore, I get that. But I'm not a luthier and I finally just paid people to set my guitar up. I'm not handy. I'm not interested, the subject of computer guts bores me.

Invalid comparison.
Exchanging the hardrive on a decent computer is as difficult as putting new strings on a guitar (probably even easier).
Would you buy a guitar in case you had to pay a premium each time you have it restringed?

[tapper mike]

Sascha, Always good to read your posts.

I fully agree. I've built about 8 computers through the years two for myself One of mine still running linux (built in 95) and another still running '98 (built in Y2K). My current main desktop is Win10 and a Dell because I had the money and was lazy.
Assembling computers from parts is actually easier than assembling ikea furniture for me.

If/when I've had a problem with software in the past it was the software not the hardware.

[Tronam]

Apple talked about a new Mac Pro and display that’s in development for 2019.

Let's do a little price guessing for that combination. 20k? And if you want 4TB of diskspace 22k?

I would hope not, unless the new monitor pushes higher resolutions like 8K. As expensive as the iMac Pro is, at $5000 it includes a 27" P3-color 5K 10-bit display running on Xeon processors with ECC RAM and NVMe RAID SSDs. It's unusually one of the least overpriced Macs in their lineup. Assembling an equivalent component PC ends up being roughly the same.

[Sascha Franck]

As expensive as the iMac Pro is, at $5000 it includes a 27" P3-color 5K 10-bit display running on Xeon processors with ECC RAM and NVMe RAID SSDs. It's unusually one of the least overpriced Macs in their lineup. Assembling an equivalent component PC ends up being roughly the same.

While that might be true, what if I just don't have the need for such a screen because I might prefer working on 2-3 smaller ones?

[Tronam]

Sascha, Always good to read your posts.

I fully agree. I've built about 8 computers through the years two for myself One of mine still running linux (built in 95) and another still running '98 (built in Y2K). My current main desktop is Win10 and a Dell because I had the money and was lazy.
Assembling computers from parts is actually easier than assembling ikea furniture for me.

If/when I've had a problem with software in the past it was the software not the hardware.

I built PCs for years, not just for myself, but as a side business from the mid 90s throughout the 2000s dealing with just about every component manufacturer and every iteration of Windows 95, 98, 2000, ME, XP, Vista and Windows 7. After Windows 8 I eventually grew weary of the whole process. If only I could get back all those hours spent researching components, tweaking BIOS settings, reinstalling Windows, troubleshooting hardware compatibility and USB plug'n'play issues, .DLL conflicts, and the registry editor. I simply ran out of geek mojo. I just want a computer that's whisper quiet, stable and dependable out-of-the-box that will work for years. Apple provides that and I'm willing to pay more for it. They also hold their value; I sold my previous 3 year old iMac for roughly 70% of what I originally paid for it. There's very little return on investment like that with PCs, but their open ended flexibility is without a doubt their greatest strength. I've considered building a new one, particularly for gaming.

[Tronam]

As expensive as the iMac Pro is, at $5000 it includes a 27" P3-color 5K 10-bit display running on Xeon processors with ECC RAM and NVMe RAID SSDs. It's unusually one of the least overpriced Macs in their lineup. Assembling an equivalent component PC ends up being roughly the same.

While that might be true, what if I just don't have the need for such a screen because I might prefer working on 2-3 smaller ones?

Indeed. Aside from their woefully outdated and truly overpriced cylindrical Mac Pro, they have nothing to offer professional users outside of their all-in-ones and top end laptops. It's a bit of a bummer. Mid-tier, user upgradeable towers used to be such a core part of Apple's computer lineup.

[Sascha Franck]

I built PCs for years, not just for myself, but as a side business from the mid 90s throughout the 2000s dealing with just about every component manufacturer and every iteration of Windows 95, 98, 2000, ME, XP, Vista and Windows 7. After Windows 8 I eventually grew weary of the whole process. If only I could get back all those hours spent researching components, tweaking BIOS settings, reinstalling Windows, troubleshooting hardware compatibility and USB plug'n'play issues, .DLL conflicts, and the registry editor. I simply ran out of geek mojo.

I have not exactly been building PCs as a side business (ok, I *did* get paid every now and then), but I configured and maintained a whole bunch of them (which includes having built quite some from scratch), mainly for audio production tasks. So I know exactly what you're talking about. And yes, I have to admit that this is *way* less of an issue on Macs.
System clutter, while as well existing under OSX, will also simply not get in your way as much as on Windows. All those registry related issues, massively slowing down a machine, requiring good caretaking every once in a while - not really required on OSX (it's a good idea to do some housekeeping, though, but there's some excellent helpers such as the free Onyx).
You can get a machine running as stable with Windows and you can keep it cluttered as little, too. But it's more work and you need to aquire more knowledge (such as in spending quite some hours surfing the web, and it'll be different solutions for different PCs, whereas it's usually the same things for all Macs).