can I swing a Mac?

[clevodrummer]

I recently scored a Korg D888 digital 8 track recorder. I cuurently mix down to a Masterlink which is really simple. Along with the Korg came Cubase mixdown software. My computer is a Fisher Price sans dvd capabalities.

I am dreaming about a Mac down the road if my biz ever gets out of the gutter.

I want to purchase a computer for the sole use of mixdown, period.

I probably would only be able to spend between 500-700 dollars. I think I will have to keep dreaming about a Mac, but is there anything out there in my price range which one would suggest I research?

thanks,

clevo

 

[pipelineaudio]

500-700 can get you a hell of a powerful shuttle style PC right now, won't get you much in the way of mac

is there some mac only software you need thats pushing you that way?

 

[apush]

500-700 can get you a hell of a powerful shuttle style PC right now, won't get you much in the way of mac

is there some mac only software you need thats pushing you that way?

check craigslist for your area often. two or three times daily. You'd be amazed by the deals on computers you can find on certain days.

 

[brzilian]

I recently scored a Korg D888 digital 8 track recorder. I cuurently mix down to a Masterlink which is really simple. Along with the Korg came Cubase mixdown software. My computer is a Fisher Price sans dvd capabalities.

I am dreaming about a Mac down the road if my biz ever gets out of the gutter.

I want to purchase a computer for the sole use of mixdown, period.

I probably would only be able to spend between 500-700 dollars. I think I will have to keep dreaming about a Mac, but is there anything out there in my price range which one would suggest I research?

thanks,

clevo

You could get the 1.83 Core2Duo Mac Mini for $599 with the stock 1Gb of RAM and buy 4Gb of RAM from someone like Crucial or OWC for $99 (never buy RAM from Apple). That will be pleanty of horsepower if your're keeping the same workflow you had with your 8 track.

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APP.../RSLID?nnmm=browse&node=home/desktop/mac_mini

My older 1.66 CoreDuo Mac Mini keeps up with Logic Express 8 just fine with only 1Gb of RAM. It kept up with Sonar and Cubase also when I ran XP under BootCamp.

 

[MessianicDreams]

My older 1.66 CoreDuo Mac Mini keeps up with Logic Express 8 just fine with only 1Gb of RAM. It kept up with Sonar and Cubase also when I ran XP under BootCamp.

I have this exact computer and only start to have problems when mixing 35+ tracks in Pro Tools.

 

[rayc]

Can I swing a mac - from a chain or dog leash? YES!
Wow, sounds like you're making life complicated for yourself. Why?

 

[hardwire666]

Mac is kind of pointless now. The golden age of the mac has deffinetly come and gone. PC, and mac are now equal competitors is a saturated market. Apple should pull back on there prices a bit. For 500-700 bucks you can get about twice the PC you would get form a mac in that same price range.





http://www.newegg.com

 

[brzilian]

Mac is kind of pointless now. The golden age of the mac has deffinetly come and gone. PC, and mac are now equal competitors is a saturated market. Apple should pull back on there prices a bit. For 500-700 bucks you can get about twice the PC you would get form a mac in that same price range.





http://www.newegg.com

You're missing the point, its the OS people are going for...

Golden age of Mac come and gone??? Are you for real?

Explain why Apple's Q1 results blew all other PC makers results right out of the water then...

 

[legionserial]

Explain why Apple's Q1 results blew all other PC makers results right out of the water then...

Marketing. Hype. Product placement. Drones who are slaves to advertising respond to the whole ipod generation marketing thing very well. It's hip. It's trendy. Macs make some people feel like they are keeping up with the jones'. I know people who know nothing about computers at all, barely know how to work them, but act like an authority on the subject when they swear that macs are better than everything else, when all they do is surf the net and download music, yet the only reason they can give for saying macs are better is that they are 'cooler'. That is a direct result of the aforementioned marketing, hype and product placement.

That and mac stuff is often made by a sole manufacturer. PC stuff is made by a whole bunch of different manuafacturers. So logic dictates that company by company, mac is going to have better sales figures. The PC manufacturer sales are spread out more somewhat.

When you look at the sales figures, you have to remember that, unlike us, most consumers don't buy a computer of some kind with a specialist purpose in mind beyond writing letters and sending emails...so sales figures don't necessarily reflect 'better'. The whole mac vs PC debate is no more than a matter of opinion. I personally hate using macs. Some love them. Some hate PC's, I prefer them. That's life.

 

[pipelineaudio]

Explain why Apple's Q1 results blew all other PC makers results right out of the water then...

Apples to oranges

apple represents 100% of those legally authorized to sell apple

If we compare them (100% of people legally able to sell apple vs 100% of those legally allowed to sell pc's) it would be a slaughter.

If we only compare the top 5 of those *brand name * (never mind the huge specialty and DIY market)selling pc's we see

http://www.systemshootouts.org/mac_sales.html

Q1:2008

1 HP 13,251 19.1%

2 Dell 10,913 15.7%

3 Acer 6,914 9.9%

4 Lenovo 4,814 6.9%

5 Toshiba 3,069 4.4%

? Apple 2,289 3.3%

 

[dgatwood]

Mac is kind of pointless now. The golden age of the mac has deffinetly come and gone. PC, and mac are now equal competitors is a saturated market. Apple should pull back on there prices a bit. For 500-700 bucks you can get about twice the PC you would get form a mac in that same price range.

No, you really can't... not if the form factor is a consideration. Here's a parts breakdown of the best prices I could find for the parts in the Mac Mini ($599). To make things fair, the rules here are: 1. no eBay. 2. no used products. 3. comparable vendors for RAM and HD (not dodgy PNY crap).

Core 2 Duo CPU @ 1.83 GHz: $103
Mini-ITX motherboard: $194
80 GB SATA laptop drive: $35
1GB of memory: $25
24x laptop combo drive $33
Mini-PCI 802.11/Bluetooth card: $35

We're at $425 before the case and that doesn't include an OS, nor the total of about $50 shipping from the six different companies I had to pick from to get the parts prices that low.

Add a mini-ITX case and a copy of Vista even at the OEM price and you're paying probably a hundred bucks more than the Mini for an untested machine with a dodgy VIA FireWire chipset that still won't run Mac OS X.

Now you can build a machine in a desktop form factor for probably $100 less, give or take. Maybe $150 if you really work at it, but that's probably pushing it. Again, that's building it yourself. Good luck finding a vendor that will sell it prebuilt for that, though.

 

[pipelineaudio]

You cant say "no dodgy PNY" because using dodgy dogshit parts is exactly what apple was doing for a bit there which caused the whole firewire and usb audio complaint that is dogging them now.

If you could name every part on a mac mini and also have it available for PC and not propreitary, then we could have a real comparison

Here's a much more apt comparison, though still not fair because most of these use real name brand parts, but http://www.pricewatch.com/computer_systems_windows/core_2_quad_q6700_win.htm

Under 500 for a quadcore

 

[brzilian]

You cant say "no dodgy PNY" because using dodgy dogshit parts is exactly what apple was doing for a bit there which caused the whole firewire and usb audio complaint that is dogging them now.

If you could name every part on a mac mini and also have it available for PC and not propreitary, then we could have a real comparison

Here's a much more apt comparison, though still not fair because most of these use real name brand parts, but http://www.pricewatch.com/computer_systems_windows/core_2_quad_q6700_win.htm

Under 500 for a quadcore

The Mini still gives you Gigabit Ethernet and you get a decent DAW app for free (as well as video editing and DVD authoring software)

$100 says those systems sound like freakin' jet planes too...

Hardly appropriate for a recording environment.

 

[dgatwood]

You cant say "no dodgy PNY" because using dodgy dogshit parts is exactly what apple was doing for a bit there which caused the whole firewire and usb audio complaint that is dogging them now.

I'll grant you FireWire, but USB audio complaint? Haven't heard about that one. Apple uses the same Intel USB silicon as everybody else does, and it is built into the chipset. I can't imagine any non-software problem with that being physically possible....

On the RAM issue, I have a pretty good idea what manufacturers sell RAM to Apple from having cracked a fair number open over the years. They're pretty major vendors, not fly-by-nights.

Also, if you've ever read Apple's RAM specifications, the tolerances are pretty tight. A lot of low cost RAM tends to have problems with not retaining data in sleep mode, among other things, so Apple just plain couldn't use much of the dodgier stuff even if they wanted to.

Last I tried, many PNY RAM parts wouldn't even start to work in Macs. According to my PC133 Mac, the PC133 PNY RAM identified itself as being PC100 in its serial ROM. At least I think that was PNY RAM. I could be remembering wrong.... Dodgy doesn't begin to cover that sort of shenanigans....

Here's a much more apt comparison, though still not fair because most of these use real name brand parts, but http://www.pricewatch.com/computer_s..._q6700_win.htm

Like I said, if you don't care about the form factor, you can do better. I said you couldn't come in significantly less in that form factor. Also, that product has no Gigabit Ethernet, no FireWire, no 802.11, and no Bluetooth, so you need to add about $80-100 to that price, bringing it a lot closer to the price of the mini:

802.11g adapter (USB): $20
Bluetooth adapter (USB): $15
GigE card: $20
FireWire card: $30

 

[pipelineaudio]

I'll take the extra 100 for the quad, I think its about worth it

On the USB issue, you'll see that some Dell models and the Argere chipped macs had some major issues here. Even CEntrance didn't seem too interested in trying to write a way around it AFAIK

 

[hardwire666]

You have to throw form factor out the window because it's not a part of the original question. He just said he would really like a mac, and knows that its most likely just a dream with a budget of $500-700 dollars.

Much like just about every other "How much computer can I get for XX amount of dollars" question that pops up here.

The golden age of the Mac IS over, they no longer reign supreme over the PC on the performance side. PC and Mac are now equal in performance, all I meant is that he shouldn't count out PC. Because with a price range of 500-700 you can go to newegg, and build your self one rockin PC. And get ABOUT twice the machine you would get with a mac (meaning you just get more computing power for you buck) that's in the same price range. Form factor was never a variable till the Mac mini was brought up. I also stated my opinion on mac as being pointless, that's because it's over priced, but that goes along with any prebuilt machine in my opinion. It was just opinion which I am allowed to have. I'm not saying PC is better than mac, or Mac is better than PC. I'm saying they are now the same, but PC lands on the side of affordable. As where Mac is not.

Further more I never specified on a PC "brand", and that's because I don't recommend buying prebuilt machines. Same argument, over priced. If I ever do recommend a prebuilt machine its because the person says they just don't want to deal with putting it together. They want to buy it and be done. Then in which case I recommend Mac, or Dell depending upon what software they are going to use, what they are familiar with, what there future needs will be, and how much they can afford to spend.

My original post could be construed as Mac bashing, but quite simply it wasn't. It was price bashing, and that is that.

As far as market information is concerned, that says nothing for the performance of a product vs. the price of that product. That just shows that a company marketed its product well, and are now reaping the benefits. I could take that same information, and use it to say that it proves that most people believe the more it costs the better the product.

In the end Mac used to be a standard in the industry, and still is for some. Problem is the industry needs to let that go because the idea that one is better than the other as far performance is concerned is just not true.