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

[jancivil]

But as to the topic of the keyman's troubles, real time performance doesn't happen just thru the specs of any given machine either platform. It's a hard nut to crack.

That said, the project I just completed was pretty rich, I had stability throughout and no audio breakups at all with latency compensation which worked quite well. With no audio interface, just using the onboard and Core Audio. Yes, I'm bragging.

So 4 grand, that's just so much money! And you could well have spent it better on one hardware synth.

a funny kind of concern trolling, isn't it.

[Sascha Franck]

In my case, my 8 year old PC has finally bit the dust and while I would like the option to pick up an iMac, I don't have the funds. They really are insanely priced.

Well, as said before, if you get a good deal on a machine such as I own (a 2010 Mac Pro), it's not necessarily that expensive. I've just seen one of them on eBay for $750, no SSD but 32GB RAM already. Slap in a 500GB SSD (around 90 bucks) and that's a really nice powerhorse, unless you really need to run huge serial processes (in that case multithreading is irrelevant). I mean, it's got 12 cores, if you'd use the latest Logic (or Reaper), you can get LOADs of things going without running into much limits. Can be expanded with USB3 (I just did that today), you can use a PCIe audio interface (ocassionally sold for exteremely decent prices, yet often still supported, such as those from RME).
Given that I'm a Logic user, also making a lot of use of the internal plugins (which are very efficient), I would have a hard time to get as much done for the same amount of money with a Windows box. Sure, I might be able to get a better machine for around 1000 bucks - but there's no way I'd get a sequencer and even remotely the amount of plugins and content that I got with Logic for less than another 1000 bucks.
Quite obviously, things are looking different when you already have the software side of things sorted. In case I'd be a Cubase (or whatever Windows-compatible sequencer) user and had, say, a license for the latest NI Komplete, I'd likely not get a Mac but a PC instead. But if your current package of software could do well with a fine allround pimping, a Mac isn't all that much of a pricey adventure anymore. And well, just to mention: Logic Pro X has been released in 2013 and ever since there's been quite some substantial updates - all for free. You don't get that with any other sequencer.

Really, I'm the very last person trying to convince anyone to go for Apple products (in fact, I loathe most of them and I also loathe the vast amount of their business strategies), but still, it is possible to put things into perspective.

[egbert]

@ Sascha
What is the situation with regard to OSX upgrades on that 2010 Mac Pro - does it support recent OS/Logic versions and if so do you expect that to continue?

[Distorted Horizon]

Please tell me it's not just me.

That love shower you give to your pc. Is it.... Golden?

[dellboy]

Well, as said before, if you get a good deal on a machine such as I own (a 2010 Mac Pro), it's not necessarily that expensive.

Is it better to go for the latest machine (2012) or would an earlier model be ok ?

[Sascha Franck]

@ Sascha
What is the situation with regard to OSX upgrades on that 2010 Mac Pro - does it support recent OS/Logic versions and if so do you expect that to continue?

Obviously I don't know. I'm on High Sierra and that's working fine (apart from a few minor quirks which aren't related to my computer). To update to Mojave (Apples latest, which seems to adress some of these little quirks), I'd need a new GPU already. But compatible ones start at around €100-150, so that's not too much of a drama, and as Mojave is quite new, I'm not in a hurry at all. Usually, you can stick without updating OSX for quite a while until 3rd party support is dwindling - I just switched from OSX.6.8, which is almost a decade old and it was only a while ago that certain things got annoying (no more browser updates and things like that). The lastest Logic is also still running on Sierra (predecessor of High Sierra), so I should probably be fine for the next 1-2 Logic updates without doing anything else to the computer or OS (I may get that GPU and get Mojave, though).

Is it better to go for the latest machine (2012) or would an earlier model be ok ?

Honestly, I don't exactly know - but I think they're basically the same machine with different CPUs. The 2012 one is supposed to deliver 24 cores (on two processors), no idea whether that's really happening. In certain benchmarks it's really not all that much faster. But then, I really wouldn't happen to know. I got a great offer for mine and so that's what I got. Perfectly happy with that choice.

[Sascha Franck]

Is it better to go for the latest machine (2012) or would an earlier model be ok ?

According to this site, the differences are to be ignored.
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_ ... marks.html

[rod_zero]

for 15k you can almost buy 2 Moog one, it seems madness to me to spend so much on a computer if you are not doing science or engineering which requires top notch CPU's, it is like a ripoff directed at amateurs who don't know better.

Hilarious. You can have two whole synths or you can have a computer which will support a number of DAWs and all the synths you can think of, but you're going to choose two hardware synths as the hill to die on here. Because only scientists need multicores and a lot of RAM.

I don't know who is using 12 core machines but I can imagine it for fully orchestrated composition where someone is doing proper desking of strings and getting into the spaciality using MIR Pro by VSL. 24 logical cores. I don't know, that's more than I've ever tried to do. I do know that with my Mac Pro 4.1, 2009, 8 core and 24GB RAM I was never going to handle what I just brought in with that use case. SSD is pretty meaningful here, in my experience.

I'm not sure you know better, frankly.

The fact is that if you only care about the CPU you can build your own and avoid Apple tax and the expensive screen.

If you need a CPU farm for orchestral stuff you could build several 2000 USD custom PCs with i7 and be a happy camper, much more power than a single 15k iMac Pro.

[jabe]

Prior to Windows 10, I'd worked out that I could create a batch file to close down specified Windows services, safe in the knowledge that they'd all restart on reboot. This meant I was free to take chances and to try to close down any service. Anything internet or network or antivirus related would go, as would those irritating ones that check whether Google or Adobe or other software has changed in the last 10 minutes. If I intended to have a music session, I could run the batch file. Alas, I was nowhere near finalising the batch file when W10 turned up, and I not have dared to try with that. I should look into it now that my DAW of choice is only available as 64-bit and I only have one 64-bit machine.

[jabe]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yr4KaU6-PE

[jabe]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8

[Jace-BeOS]

Can you leave out the anti-Apple crusading?

[dupont]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yr4KaU6-PE

Thiefs. I understand why this is a 1000 billion $ company !
Will never buy a mac again.

[dupont]

Can you leave out the anti-Apple crusading?

I think this videos are very interesting on the contrary. If It the truth why tell it is anti Apple crusading.
It's very helpfull for the musician community if it can avoid it to be ripped off by thousands of $.
This is not off topic this is a tread PC vs mac.

[Sascha Franck]

Can you leave out the anti-Apple crusading?

I think it's a good thing to inform people.
And fwiw, similar things as in this video (and the follow-ups you will get on YT) happened to me.
- Macbook battery blown up. Well, it exflated... or whatever you may call it.
- Certified Apple reseller/repairshop telling me my Macbook was completely damaged (the logic board that is)- but it wasn't, which I unfortunately only found out years later. Luckily, it was covered by insurance, but still.
- Within 1.5 years I had to replace the "Super"drive (Apples name for their sub-par CD/DVD drives) 2 times, the last one lasted for 2 months only so I decided to replace it with a second HDD on my own and use an external Samsung DVD drive (that was 2010 and the Samsung still works as on day one).
- The Macbook fan had to be replaced but Apple was of ZERO help because the machine was more than 5 years old. They didn't even help me to find a 3rd party supplier. Imagine having a 5 year old car and the company telling you they wouldn't know where you could get a new exhaust. Had to order one from China which took 4 months (!), because Apple isn't using any standardized fans but something esoteric, so you can never just replace the fan alone but always need to go for a complete fan/enclosure combo.
- Common knowledge, but my iPhone 3GS is rendered electrotrash. Couldn't update iOS anymore, so most (and finally pretty much all) apps weren't supported any longer. I wanted to continue using it as a navigation system and MP3 player for the car, but in order to update the Navigon apps map content, I would've needed a newer version - which I couldn't install because of Apples artificial restrictions. Otherwise the thing would've served me well until this day.

You can read about any of these issues all over the web.
And everybody with any plans of jumping into the Apple ecosystem (which is what this thread is all about) should be informed about those issues, simply because they're not "Oh sorry, will never happen again, we promise!" events but a central part of how Apple is treating customers.
Yes, quite some of their products work great. But once they don't work great anymore, expect to pay a premium to get them back.
Yes, you get a lot out of the box. But once you're not happy with that and wish for some upgrades, expect to pay a premium again. Wellknown things are RAM, drives and what not. But it's also 3rd party supporters that are charging premium prices. Want to watch DVB-C on a computer? A decent USB stick working fine under Windows costs you around 30-50 bucks (cheap ones even start at 20). For OSX, the cheapest I could find so far is over 100 already. And lets not even start with Thunderbolt cables. 50 bucks for a 2 meter cable - err, yes... An Apple keyboard (wired) will set you short 70 bucks. The wireless one is around 120. Etc.

Seriously, this is stuff you need to be aware of. Apple support is either bad or expensive, sometimes both. Servicing computers is either impossible, stressful or expensive (my current Mac Pro being an exception because I can do everything on my own and so far most parts are available for decent prices - more expensive than for a Windows box, though).

And yes, all this is coming from someone who has pretty much exclusively used Macs for the last decade (and I will continue doing so for the time being). As a Logic user, I feel I'm getting a lot of value out of the Mac/Logic combination. And there's plenty of very positive things that can be said about OSX, the way you can deal with drive images (especially with bootable ones) is just plain gorgeous and Windows isn't even remotely close, not even when using 3rd party software. Literally saved my ass once and came in more than just handy several times. Malware and things truly slowing down your machine to an unfixable level hardly exist, so that's all fine and dandy.
Yet, as always, you need to put everything into perspective, and when it comes to Apple, you need to be aware of how they treat customers.