thekidsgirl said:

HELLO!!!

Novabreaker said:

On the high end, people who do build supercomputers are abandoning AMD/Intel for Apple/PowerPC based systems and gain a considerable price/performance advantage.

On the low end, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have abandoned or are abandoning Intel/AMD for PowerPC based video game consoles because of the significant price/performance advantage.

Both of these are very competitive markets, and in both cases, the trend is away from Intel/AMD and towards PowerPC. If Intel/AMD offered a price/performance advantage, don't you think someone would be exploiting that to a competitive advantage? Isn't it telling that even Microsoft abandoned Intel/AMD to go PowerPC with XBox 2?

You assume a higher clock speed Intel/AMD processor is faster than a PowerPC based mac just because the clock speed is faster. And you also make the mistake I spoke about earlier in assuming a faster clock speed always means you get things done faster.

Finally, when you talk about building computers from scratch instead of buying a prebuilt system from Apple, Dell, HP, etc, you are failing to put any value on your time when you calculate the price. And you also mistakenly assume that most people would be able to do something similar. 99% of people who buy computers want to just plug it in and have it work and keep working. Yet most of these people buy windows machines which are virus prone yet fail to factor in things such as
- the cost of virus software
- the cost of their time to run virus software
- the cost of their time to recover when a virus does hit

MY GD and G4 Running Digital performer have been greeat for music. My PC has crashed several times/ On the flip side my G5 was alittle sluggish with third party RAM installed and when I used a older monitor with it.

DP does allow me to use VSt plugins. G5 or G4 are hands down better for music production but I have to admit if i could not afford them you can get teh same sATISFACTION OUT OF pc'S they just need more attention, but that attention does offer the user a technical know how in addressing those problems.

I use the MACS because they are hassle free. Buy a two button mouse though(-:

Now does anyone have the footage of when Lisa and Wendy were on the MAC site talking about there studio and the MAC?

bassmaniac said:

The MAC vs PC debate is kinda stupid. It is like the old The Time vs Prince debates from high school. There is room for both. I actually do run Cubase SX and Sonar on PC for friends that come over with those files. I like that I have Reason on both MAC and PC and it looks the same on both. Chuck D uses Sonar and makes great music, Shania Twain uses a MAC, nuff said. Prince has used PC in the past and MACs he just happens to be riding the MAC wave rightnow. I steared my daughter to a PC because it is cheaper for a College student to keep it going. I f it breaks you can find fixes everywhere.

Now I miss my Amiga tha twas a computer. opps I'm dating myself(-:

When did Prince ever use a PC in the studio? As far as I know, he's always used macs.

alandail said:

there is picture floating around of alphabet street on the studo monitors. It looked like PC to me but I could be wrong

alandail said:

Your argument would only make sense if Apple was selling its products directly as separate components available for the common consumer used on some sort of an imaginery cross-platform system. However, that is clearly not relevant.



Might be. But that's got nothing to do with Apple over-pricing their main product. Which is a fully functional personal computer with an already bundled OS, not a single chip.



That's not the point at all. All I am saying is a Macintosh with a fast processor is way more expensive than a PC with the equal amount of processing power. That's an entirely different argument.



Most consumers with some common sense will do this on their free time. "Value on your time"? Is your time really that valuable? I am NOT talking about corporate applications, only reaction to the stupidity of the non-professional DAW builders of still haning on to that "Macs are so much better for audio production" -guideline that still infests these circles.

I assembled my computer in a single afternoon. Just attach the parts together, put the cards into slots, connect the wires. There! It really isn't that hard. Windows XP and Linux kernels are these days totally plug'n'play anyway, with at least what could be considered very effective bundled drivers, even if you were dumb enough not to be able to insert the driver CD into your CD-ROM.



I'm sorry but the percentage of said individuals is nowhere nearly as high as that.



Nobody buys exclusively a Windows machine when they buy a PC. You can always install GNU/Linux on it. There is a freedom of choice, which doesn't really exist with Apple products.
[Edited 3/15/05 2:34am]

I think on the most part PC users tend to remain PC users and Mac users tend to remain Mac users.

I use a Windows based PC. I have thousands of $$$ invested in software which I use on my PC. Now just because someone says that a G5 is by far the best machine to be doing what I do on, I will still buy a PC when it is time to upgrade.

The fact is, the PC does exactly what I need it to do and I can run all my software on it. There really is nothing a 3GHz Pentium cant do that a G5 can and the differences are either miniscule or cosmetic.

The machine I use is a tool. Nothing more and nothing less. It drives my software and it stores my data. Just because one machine may do it all a nanosecond quicker really shouldn’t ruin my life.

As for the argument that you can only make good music on a Mac is nonsense. you can make good music on a single instrument with nothing but a tape recorder! Good music is good music. A 3 grand peice of equipment wont make bad music good.
[Edited 3/15/05 4:21am]

bassmaniac said:

I'm right there w/you! One of these days I'll dust off the ol Amiga 1200 in the basement and see if it still powers up...

amyhr said:

You mean you don't still use it on at least a weekly basis?!?

End of debate: PCs and Macs are both total crap. Take my word, had Commodore not went out of business - investing in all of their really silly business moves, like the C64 console version - they would have come out with the best computers known to mankind and would rule the earth. And my personal home computer would still be backwards compatible for running Jumpman straight out of the box!

Novabreaker said:

oh, I'm sure the percentage is actually higher than 99%. Most people want a computer to be a tool. When's the last time you had to assemble a hammer?



Nobody buys exclusively a Windows machine when they buy a PC. You can always install GNU/Linux on it. There is a freedom of choice, which doesn't really exist with Apple products.
[Edited 3/15/05 2:34am]
[/quote]

You have choice on the mac too - you can run Linix on a mac too - there is nothing at all about Linux that is Intel specific. But why would you bother with Linux on a Mac when MacOS X itself is built on Unix? That's how the mac ships with stuff like apache. MacOS X is really the latest version of NeXTStep, and NeXTStep has been Unix based since before there was even a Linux. Shoot, the World Wide Web and HTML were invented on a NeXT machine.

screw the studio, just give me the Guitar!!

alandail said:

Saturday. For real! I was doing the kitchen. The head was detached so I had to fix it with tape.

And if you cannot build your computer from components you don't deserve to use it. Bah.



Sigh. You are aware that Linux does not really really run on a Mac? There are a few attempts to create mac-specific distros, but not much has come out of them. You can get Linux on a Sinclair Spectrum too, if you want to go down that path. Somebody even installed Linux on a copy machine once.



Because compiling Linux (-optimized) applications on anything else than Linux is a nightmare. And all of the major apps, do not really run on anything else than proper Linux (it's a kernel specific issue). And whoever said PCs have to be Intel?

But props for Apple for not stripping off all the UNIX features from the end product. I'm sure Microsoft wouldn't have done the same.



And NeXTStep deserved to die. Seriously, do you even remember how much they were charging for the whole XT-experience in the early 90s? Whee! Graphical userface! Oh, I forgot: you could get a stripped-down version even for the price of a standard family automobile. How Mac.

Novabreaker said:

(Just becouse I'm in an arguing mood...)

I have it on very good authority that the PowerPC platform in general (and Mac systems specifically) make much, much better GNU/Linux systems then 90% of the Intel/AMD based systems out there (you've heard of "Yellow Dog Linux", haven't you?)...

Novabreaker said:

Double Sigh. You are aware that Linux DOES REALLY REALLY run on a Mac? You have heard of Yellow Dog Linux, have you not? http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/

What part of UNIX did Apple strip out? It's all there that I can see. Seriously, I'm a UNIX admin professionally, and there's no part of UNIX that I can't find what I'm on my Mac.

Yeah, NeXTStep was seriously overpriced, but they were also far more innovative then you appear to be giving them credit for...
[Edited 3/15/05 10:23am]

Novabreaker said:

Ah, but I can, and I have (well over 50 systems from scratch - motherboard, CPU, memory, jumpersettings, ide cables - all of it), and I could again if I wanted to, but the overall Mac experience is worth the difference in price between what I could through together, and what I could get either new or in the used market...

Novabreaker said:

Ahm, which "major apps" do you speak about? The only one I can think of is OpenOffice, and that's almost as bad as MS office anyway. Apache? Nope, compiled and ran fine on my Mac. ImageMagik? Nope, compiled and ran fine on my Mac. GIMP? Nope, compiled and ran fine on my Mac. MySQL? ditto. Granted, Linux specific applications which are programed specifically for Linux and require Linux specific libraries won't compile very nicely on anything other then Linux, but most the "major apps" are a lot more crossplatform then that. All I do is "./configure && make && make test && make install" for the OpenSource apps I've installed on my Mac, very similar to on the Linux (and Solaris, and HP-UX, and AIX, etc) systems I administer/run...

Novabreaker said:

Yeah, I feel bad about not using it more often. Commodores problems had a lot more to do with the CEO's interesting, innovative calculation for giving out bonuses:
CEO Bonus = 3 X quarterly loss
The console was actually Amiga (1200) based (thus the name "Amiga CD32"), and I have one! It's actually seen more (though not much more) use in the past three years then the old 1200. It beat all other 32-bit systems to the market, and was actually gaining steam (at least in Europe) before Commodore execs decided to bankrupt the company. I often dream of how much better place the world would be if the Amiga had been allowed to evolve naturally...

Jon said:

I have to agree with this in general, but add that people have a natural fear of change, and of things that are different. Plus, large monetary investments are difficult to turn your back on w/o earth-shattering benefits.

However, part of the argument is not necessarily one will do it quicker, but that one will do it better (i.e., let you do your work w/o getting in your way).

But I'm 100% with yea on that last point!!

I can't believe I just posted 6 replys in a row to this topic, and not one of them is even remotely on topic!!!

amyhr said:

Yes, and everybody in the Linux community says it is far too unstable. I doubt it could run with much success any of the programs that require i.e. the pre-emptive multimedia kernel. There are no reports it would have worked with applications like Ardour or Rosegarden. I am trying to keep this on topic, without that much success either.



Why sure. See the answer above.



I meant they could have done that. Make it really restricted and pretend it's all theirs.



I was like 12 at the time.



There are some serious advantages when getting to build your computer from scratch when building a recording setup. Of course, most of which in the end are financial. You'll get to invest in proper music gear instead.



Try getting Ardour compiled with the vst-server and LADSPA support, linked to a modified version of Wine and you'll see what I mean. I think it requires about 60-70 different packages all together.



Ditto. Plus it has some serious library conflicts.



I am constantly referring to audio applications. But hey, if GIMP compiled on your system - great. It doesn't compile even on my Mandrake system if I try to do it from scratch.

The Linux audio/multimedia end of things is really far beyond the standard compiling routine. I think I have managed to get like two audio programs to compile like that. Plus, RPMs for this kind of programs are often/always architure and distro specific and so far I haven't seen these programs being RPM'ed for Yellow Dog.



There was one for the C64 as well. Needless to say it wasn't a hit. They made some major losses with that thing.



Me too. It's nerdy, isn't it?

again, only if you don't put any value on your time - not just the time assembling the machine, but the time researching what components to buy, the time shopping for the best deals, etc. I could build a computer with no trouble at all, but by the time I factor in my time - time I could spend doing billable work or time I could spend with my family, it's more expensive to build a machine. And the machine I build from scratch just plain isn't going to work nearly as well as the mac I can customize and buy in 5 mins from http://store.apple.com and then have up and running in another 5 mins after it arrives.

This is on my Powerbook. Let's see Windows do this.....oh, that's right it can't.

Novabreaker said:

'everybody', like Linus Trovolds, who's primary desktop is a PowerMac G5 running Linux (of course)? I'll admit to not knowing about the "pre-emptive multimedia kernel", but I've actually not heard that Linux for PowerPC (& Mac) is far too unstable anywhere else. In fact, I've seen many, many references on the web, as well as personally knowing a couple people who run it on Powerboosk and such, to it being a solid performer, especially for server and development type applications...

As far as keeping on topic, sorry, my bad (just saw a good argument and had to jump in, guess I just got tired of fud, outdated, and mis-information. really, "I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing" as the PSB would say). Must admit, however, that I don't know too much about audio apps. I'll have to defer to others (and yourself) when it comes to those. I'll do some head bashing for pennence...


you young pup , I was closer to 17 at the time...


That I don't remember at all, was it ever released? Got any links? I used to follow Commodore pretty close, but missed this one, I'd deffinately be intreste in learning more about it (why? I'm not sure)...

{sorry, double post}
[Edited 3/16/05 7:00am]

chookalana said:

No one cn argue with you there. This would have been a great apple comercial

amyhr said:

Everybody knows Linus Torvalds doesn't know a thing about Linux!

There have been lengthy articles about this on the various Linux magazines. That's where my "knowledge" on the subject comes from. Of course, I haven't tried it myself. Of course, people around the web must be as and more prejudiced as I am as well.



Oh, that's a good point. Linux just might run better on Macintosh laptops than it does on PC laptops. Actually, that wouldn't surprise me at all.

I actually have an old Powerbook in my closet stashed somewhere. Too bad it's so old it won't start up anymore. I loved "Macninja", that game sucked major ass, but it was the funniest thing to play while being drunk with friends.



That I don't remember at all, was it ever released? Got any links? [/quote]

It's not that fondly remembered. You can try this one, http://www.zzap64.co.uk/z...c64gs.html

Some future alright.

Novabreaker said:

Ah, NOW I remember it, don't think it was released in the US, but looks like it enjoyed(?) limited release in europe (where commodore was always strongest). I DO remember my Commodore 128, which I sold to buy my first Amiga 500. Now I want it back. would make a better desktop then this Windows XP system I have to use at work!

TonyVanDam said:

That first photo, looks like it could launch a spacecraft!

Prince frequently visits studio Paisley Park?