PC or Mac for recording?

Do you use PC or Mac for recording

  • PC

    Votes: 343 51.9%
  • Mac

    Votes: 217 32.8%
  • Both

    Votes: 80 12.1%
  • Other

    Votes: 21 3.2%

  • Total voters
    661
I use PC cos ive got one. I would LOVE a mac, because i love them, and i love logic. And they dont bugger up half as easily as a PC does. But the Windows/Mac/Intel chipset thing is gonna take over i reckon. I heard rumours that Bill Gates owns apple, and the increasing Windows/Mac support shows that these might be true.

I think that one day, this argument won't exist because there wont be Windows. There wont be Mac.
There will be the all conquering virus free WINMAC! which will hopefully have logic with VST's.
Hmmmmm.........
 
i'm surprised i didn't see more pro Mac responses. most cats i come across steadfastly claim Macs. i am fortunate enough to be a tech and have enough computer knowledge to know basically what most have said here. both are computers. there are fewer and fewer differences now than what may have been at one time.

i was just thinking about this today and have come to the conclusion that Macs are for cats who don't really futz with computers. i like both, but i prefer PCs because i can build one to my exact specification. i can dig in it and not void any warranties. i don't like not knowing what brand components are in my system and not being able to fix hardware issues. add to this the cost of a Mac and i'm cool until i get some major influx of income on a regular basis...

stability is a non-issue for me. it depends on the configuration and usage of the system. i have extensive unfortunate experience with Macs crashing while trying to complete projects for classes. these Macs were solely for audio recording and were G5s.

besides, it has been proven to me time and again, it isn't so much the tools that are used as it is the user and what is created.
 
Poigan said:
besides, it has been proven to me time and again, it isn't so much the tools that are used as it is the user and what is created.

Took the words out of my mouth. PC's and Mac's are pretty much the same things... COMPUTERS. They work on the same principals with very similar parts. And here's the real shocker Macs are NOT more reliable. Mac's are well built computers, not all pc's can make that claim. but a well built pc and a well built mac will run just dandy. Unless you fuck it up. Which %90 will do. Mac's are just fortunate enough because nobody really cares about writing mac spyware.

As far as being user friendly... If you use PC's mac's are not easier to use. If you have never used a computer Mac's are little more firendly. I love those new Mac comercials with the guy using the pie chart to describe a vacation. Like PC's can't use pictures. They act like they're all comadores or something. so I guess the message of the add is "If you are stupid... buy a Mac!"


That being said... I use them both and to tell you the real truth. It just depends on the individual computer being used and the ability of the user.
 
man to be honest, if you can tweak out a PC for your purpose, then it's just as good as a Mac. A mac crashes just as hard as a PC. The whole point is that it *works*.

Especially if a business relies on it. (Ex. A recording studio). If the computer is down, then the entire studio is down.

However, jumping from to studio to studio, I see where apple put thier advertising money. For those studios that are DAW based, in my opinion, it feels like 60-80% of studios today (project and commercial) favor macs. Not really because they are the end all be all of production computers, but for the same reasons you buy a brand name without really knowing how it works.

That may always change tommorow.

But to be fair to Mac, a company can give you a better guarantee if they know exactly what specs the general consumer will have (a pre built mac).

So for example, I wouldn't be too sure how Digidesign, or Steinberg can advertise "a really stable software layout" on a computer stuffed with assorted parts (privately built as opposed to licensed). Which is why digidesign has the disclaimer on thier website.

So of course, Digidesign can establish that relationship with Apple and then offer its clientel a good spec for Mac users.

I suppose when you're spending that much on a studio anyway, it's easier to get a decked out G5 from a brand name, rather than making a PC for less, but also in potentially dangerous waters. You get a warranty on the parts, but not the whole package. There's really no way a company can guarantee that.

I've always crossed platforms (G4, G5 to PC) and to me, both seem about equal.

The determining factor for me is customer support and software licensing. Some great software will be strictly Mac only and vice versa. Mac receives certain software fixes/updates earlier than PC and vice versa. You would just have to know that trend based on track record. Then you can make a better desicion for your purpose for the now, but also in the future.

So what I've gathered over the years is that if you are flawless (at least good) at building computers, go PC. But if you have no idea what specs do to your production software and how to make the most of it, save some serious cash and go Mac.
 
Last edited:
mrT said:
And here's the real shocker Macs are NOT more reliable. Mac's are well built computers, not all pc's can make that claim.

Mac's are just fortunate enough because nobody really cares about writing mac spyware.

As far as being user friendly... If you use PC's mac's are not easier to use.


"If you are stupid... buy a Mac!"

there are many contradictions in this.
macs arent more reliable? yet it is a well built computer versus the PC's? so what exactly is more reliable?

nobody cares about writing spyware for mac because the average person uses a PC ie, 95% of the population.

i agree-PC users have a hard time switching to mac.

so if your stupid, buy a mac, but your going to have a hard time with it, meaning that you were stupid to begin with. its not mac users that are stupid, its the people that think they can use them the first time the hit the power button because they are a PC expert or whatever...

i am really good with PC's, ive been using them since 1995, breaking them and fixing them out of terror that my dad would kill me. in 11 years ive developed extensive PC knowledge. i switched to a mac last year and, well, i havent had a problem yet that i had to fix. you cant mess anything up on a mac, like delete system files or something stupid like that. i am not an expert at fixing macs, and i will never be one because there are no problems to fix.

the bottom line is; macs arent cheap and most people cant use them because they dont have the budget..
 
TragikRemix said:
there are many contradictions in this.
macs arent more reliable? yet it is a well built computer versus the PC's? so what exactly is more reliable?

nobody cares about writing spyware for mac because the average person uses a PC ie, 95% of the population.

i agree-PC users have a hard time switching to mac.

so if your stupid, buy a mac, but your going to have a hard time with it, meaning that you were stupid to begin with. its not mac users that are stupid, its the people that think they can use them the first time the hit the power button because they are a PC expert or whatever...

i am really good with PC's, ive been using them since 1995, breaking them and fixing them out of terror that my dad would kill me. in 11 years ive developed extensive PC knowledge. i switched to a mac last year and, well, i havent had a problem yet that i had to fix. you cant mess anything up on a mac, like delete system files or something stupid like that. i am not an expert at fixing macs, and i will never be one because there are no problems to fix.

the bottom line is; macs arent cheap and most people cant use them because they dont have the budget..

I didn't say that I thought Mac users were stupid... that's just the impression I got from the commercial. And in general Mac's are not more reliable than PC's. but They are more reliable than CHEAP Pc's... Sorry for the confusion.
 
ok, i gotcha. i think its interesting that apple is having commercials at all. thats a new thing for the computer world. windows or mac havent really had commercials on TV in the past. it just goes to show you that mac is really stepping up the competition.
 
TragikRemix said:
ok, i gotcha. i think its interesting that apple is having commercials at all. thats a new thing for the computer world. windows or mac havent really had commercials on TV in the past. it just goes to show you that mac is really stepping up the competition.

I think they're just trying to keep up with it... Almost all of the "Mac" people I know are those who use them in their industry anyhow (music, graphic design, photography). And anymore the same software can be run in XP. I think they just stick with them because of the aestetics. How un-arty would it be to have an ugly old PC?
 
Oh, please. Can I chime in on the PC vs Mac debate? We can do ford vs chevy and coke vs pepsi later.

PCs are my tool of choice because I am 100% screwdrver guy and I can fix them and break them and fix them again. That's me.

I do data recovery on the side and it seems to me that XP will only run for about a year because it is so wadded up with spyware and shit that it has to be reloaded. Also, everyone buys the cheapo dell that has the shittiest hard disks manufactured in them. So, in my opinion, the garden variety PC in the wild is a shit-piece.

I run windows 2k on all my computers at home. i buy expensive memory and use seagate hard drives. Maxtor and western digital are crap. Unfortunately, seagate bought maxtor and now they all are going to be shitty, I assume.

There certainly are exploits and virii that target macs, so don't count on your security through obscurity forever.

I always thought Macs were girlie computers. A few years ago, I worked with this hacker guy. His name is Mudge and at the time he was one of the most dangerous guys in the world to microsoft as he'd written l0phtcrack, this bitchin' app that would bruteforce the encryption on the windows SAM file. When I first met him, he got this sissy MAC laptop out of his bag and I started teasing him about it. It turns out that the MAC has a unix command line and is a kick ass hacker platform.

So, Macs aren't completely gay. Almost, but not completely. A PC laptop is a huge waste of money, so if I were getting a laptop, I'd get the mac. Hopefully I can get my warez to work on it. I'm just a script kiddie, so if I can't use my tools, I'm pretty lost.
 
A PC laptop is a huge waste of money, so if I were getting a laptop, I'd get the mac.

How do you figure? It's the exact same hardware. My brother just bought a Lenovo Core Duo based machine that has the EXACT same specs as the macbook (except being about $700 cheaper)

XP will only run for about a year because it is so wadded up with spyware and shit that it has to be reloaded

I have an office full of machines that had the orginal XP(2002) installed on them which have been updated to current over the years and get used 8 hrs a day with no problems or rebuilds. Why? Good software policies

Its actually a pretty simple formula, dont vist any site that has to do with: Warez, Cracks, porn, or that offers anything for "free". Spyware is 99.9% an end user problem, when u click "I agree" to some sketchy ELUA of some sketchy program, the best OS in the world wont help u
 
yeah well i can look at all the porn i want cause of my mac! ;)

office computers are typically on a well encrypted network, with firewalls and such, no?

my home network, sure, i encrypted the network, but that only stops people from using it; it doesnt stop bad crap from coming in.

spyware gets on any machine (PC). i fixed my cousin's laptop last night and i only went on google.com, msn.com and ebay.com, just to make sure all the IP configurations were right, and i downloaded ad-aware from downloads.com. it was a fresh format/install of XP, and i found 6 registry keys and 4 files.

i did it again about 2 hours later and i found another 6 files.

another thing; Spyware will get on a mac running XP. the hard drive is partitioned and the partition is formatted for MS-DOS, which is the weak link in the entire OS. go figure; the building blocks of the OS are its weakest link...

mac is based on UNIX which is much more complex and powerful. THATS the main difference between mac and PC.
 
mac is based on UNIX which is much more complex and powerful

Unix is more complex than windows? LOL. Tell that to the 170+ Million lines of code that is windows. I can boot freebsd off a 1.44 Mb floppy

Windows Xp is based on VMS, so what? Whatever an OS is modeled after has little to do with the end product

And if you want to get technical, OSX/Mach is derived from BSD, it is not a unix machine and there are some big differences in architecture.

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/2q00/macos-qna/macos-x-qa-3.html

Here is what Torvalds had to say about Mac "unix"

These days it is personal preference only. Both Windows and OSX run on the SAME hardware
 
studiomaster said:
I can't afford a Mac, except G4 towers. But don't want a slow poke. So I'll stick with my fast PC.

that is the reason people use pc.

Mac is the reason i am poor, i admit it.
 
altitude909 said:
Both Windows and OSX run on the SAME hardware

excuse me?

put PC memory in a mac- it works briefly and crashes. i purchased memory for my imac and it was not mac compatible and it crashed every 5 minutes.

what about HD's? they have to be HFS compatible. not all of them are.

video cards? they have to be either mac compatible built, or PC cards that are flashed.

so your saying you can put mac on your PC? let's see it. i would seriously like that, i would do it to my PC.

the hardware might look the same but it doesnt always work.
 
altitude909 said:
I have an office full of machines that had the orginal XP(2002) installed on them which have been updated to current over the years and get used 8 hrs a day with no problems or rebuilds. Why? Good software policies

Its actually a pretty simple formula, dont vist any site that has to do with: Warez, Cracks, porn, or that offers anything for "free". Spyware is 99.9% an end user problem, when u click "I agree" to some sketchy ELUA of some sketchy program, the best OS in the world wont help u

How many nodes on your network? There are over 100,000 on mine. And the indonesians like to look at some wacky poon.

I am talking about the garden variety PC user. Not your little police state lab environment. try and enforce your policy on my dad. Or your dad. Or your friend's dad. Pop ups have "OK" and "Cancel" boxes on them that both do the same thing. John Q Public is too stupid to use XP aeseptically. With the D.R. biz, 99% of it is as I described. I have repeat business from folks who reloaded their shit a year ago and it's wadded up again from p2p and spyware.

You know goddamned well that a fricking PC laptop is worth exactly dick a year after you buy it. That's why I won't buy another one. The most expensive laptop in the world is a shitpiece in 2 years.

I definitely support your policies, but enforcement is impossible.

I agree with you in essence. I used to be a little network nazi, too. We have content filtering and firewalls and antivirusand IDS and everything else you can think of here and still some fuckin' douchebag brings his laptop in from home and pollutes my network. For some reason I can still post here and type "fuckin' douchebag" though.
 
excuse me?
iMac Specs:

17-inch widescreen LCD with 1440x900 resolution

1.83GHz Intel Core Duo with 2MB shared L2 cache

512MB (single SO-DIMM) 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM

160GB Serial ATA hard drive

Slot-load 8x double-layer SuperDrive

ATI Radeon X1600 graphics with 128MB GDDR3 memory

Built-in AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth 2.0

That is a PC which you can run windows on. There is no such thing as "mac only" hardware. Ppl have already figured out how to run x86 OSX on any computer
 
yes, they 'figured it out'. its not like they took it out of the box and it just works.

i think it will all be one conglomerated OS eventually; and i dont mean the PC will improve. Mac will become a crap OS, and PC wont improve. computers will be cheaper than behringer dynamic mic's.
 
altitude909 said:
That is a PC which you can run windows on. There is no such thing as "mac only" hardware. Ppl have already figured out how to run x86 OSX on any computer


You'd have to be a retard to run XP on MAC hardware, since PC hardware is so much cheaper (and uglier). Also, I am not aware that Apple has changed it's licensing agreement to allow anyone to sell non-apple hardware with OSX installed. I honestly don't know. I assume that it has not changed because if you want an Apple, you buy from Apple. You can't get some shitty e-machines version at best buy.

I see your point, but you're one of those guys that tries to disprove every generally-accepted truth by throwing out some one-off anecdote to the contrary.

You can run XP on a mac. Big whoop. No one's doing it. You can run OSX on a PC, but you can't buy it and as far as I know it only comes loaded on an apple. How do you install it? Why would you? Maybe the world has changed, but I thought Apple's whole business model was to keep control of their product from the factory to the customer.
 
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