Plugin Limit on Mac vs PC

[BONES]

http://musicxpc.com/products/c2/c2_performance.htm

They've been using old G5s. Nowadays they should've taken Dual 2.5 Gigs, which means you gotta add 25-30% more to each number of instances.

And they are using P4 3GHZ which is not the latest Intel CPU either. So you might construe that the test is a few months old, no?

Also, with a G5, you can still organize your photos and play back mp3s (Are they kidding? - A dedicated music machine that can't play back mp3s?)

Of course it can still do all that shit, its just a PC with a few tweaks not some custom-built DSP thingy.

[Germ777]

My PC runs more plugins than your PC...

Yeah, but my Plugin is bigger than yours

[Hink]

My PC runs more plugins than your PC...

Yeah, but my Plugin is bigger than yours

that's not what I heard

[BONES]

I chose a Mac based on the reputation. IMO, it is well deserved. I love mine. If I had chosen on price alone. I probably would've chosen a PC, and loved it.

But the real question is: What is its reputation based on? Marketing hype? The superiority of the one-button mouse? Or maybe the G5 processor, based on an old IBM server chip? Seriously, give me one objective advantage of a Mac over any other computer. C'mon, just one. I mean, you said "for example" and then talked about Mercedes for chrissakes.

At the end of my day, its all moot because I have a PC that never gets anywhere near 50% CPU load. Ever. No matter what. What did it cost? About US$1500 [without monitor]. Is it as sexy as a G5? Easily and its a fifth of the size. But, do you know what the best bit is? It has all the things I wanted, not what some dumb c**t thought might appeal to the largest chunk of his/her market. I chose the MoBo chipset, I chose the CPU, I chose the brand of RAM, I chose the HDD, I chose the graphics card and I decided how many buttons I needed on my mouse. Even Mercedes are smart enough to offer a base-model and let you customise it to your own specifications.

[Sascha Franck]

When you think about it, BONES has a point here.

[Urs]

What is its reputation based on?

My personal view: Workflow.

I chose the MoBo chipset, I chose the CPU,

Good point, on a Mac you can't chose the MoBo. However, what if you wanted to have a Motorola cpu, how do you get that onto your MoBo?!?

I chose the brand of RAM, I chose the HDD, I chose the graphics card and I decided how many buttons I needed on my mouse.

Uhm. You don't have a choice for that when you buy a Mac?!?

Urs

[jones-y]

I chose a Mac based on the reputation. IMO, it is well deserved. I love mine. If I had chosen on price alone. I probably would've chosen a PC, and loved it.

But the real question is: What is its reputation based on? Marketing hype? The superiority of the one-button mouse? Or maybe the G5 processor, based on an old IBM server chip? Seriously, give me one objective advantage of a Mac over any other computer. C'mon, just one. I mean, you said "for example" and then talked about Mercedes for chrissakes.

Since when is reputation objective? Did I say my decision was based on objectivity? I didn't know enough to be objective when the purchase was made. If I had, I probably would've gotten a PC. Did you miss that part?

Do you have a non-confrontational side somewhere under that beer belly?

I'll give you one advantage, troubleshooting doesn't end in reinstall...

[jones-y]

When you think about it, BONES has a point here.

I'm sure you never thought you'd say that...

[BONES]

What is its reputation based on?

My personal view: Workflow.

What? Maybe if you're used to it but I dread working on MacOS. In fact, I much prefer Linux as I can completely customise the way the OS looks and functions but I find Windoze much easier to work with.

Good point, on a Mac you can't chose the MoBo. However, what if you wanted to have a Motorola cpu, how do you get that onto your MoBo?!?

How does anyone? Aren't they out of the Apple picture these days? Isn't it IBM all the way now?

Uhm. You don't have a choice for that when you buy a Mac?!?

According to the Apple Store I can choose the amount of RAM [not the brand], the size of the HDD [choice of two, not the brand] and I can choose from two different flavours of the same two video cards. BTW, none of the choices available for HDD or video card would have been within coo-ee of my list of preferred options when I was building my new PC - I went for a 10,000RPM WD Raptor SATA drive and nVidia Quadro4 workstation graphics. I also think that the Live graph was probably done with an older chipset for the Athlon64's and is well below the performance of my machine.

I'll give you one advantage, troubleshooting doesn't end in reinstall...

I dunno, when I worked in a graphics department with two Mac's and two PC's, the maintenance headaches were pretty close to even. In fact, the guy who used the Mac's most of the time preferred to use the ancient G3 over the dual G4 because the G4 was so unstable. It ended up being the scanner/video capture machine.

[Sascha Franck]

I'll give you one advantage, troubleshooting doesn't end in reinstall...

I thought so too, really. I thought that was one of the good things on OSX.
And, I also thought, buying everything out of one hand would be a good thing regarding stability.

Well, as for the reinstall, just watch the LUG. "Only install Logic 7 on a clean system - the only thing working for me" and the likes are content of a LOT of posts there. But yes, that's up to Logic 7 which apparently was a rushed out release as there seem to be NOTHING but problems (ok, a few people are happy, but MANY aren't).
Anyways, no matter how you put it, I have to agree that system maintainance is quite easier on Macs than on PCs. But, it seems to me that under OSX I actually have to care about it more than under any of my PCs - by now, I had to repair disk permissions several times allready on the university Macs that I happen to maintain. Even if nothing has been installed.

Regarding my expected stability: Well, I bought two 2x2 G5s for the uni, on one of them the HDD f**ked up on the 5th day of using it (and yes, it's just physically damaged, I had it tested at some dealer).
On the second of them, the HDD seems to f**k up right now allready as well. Fortunately we got two external Lacie's and I allready mirrored the system onto them (which admittedly is pretty cool, way better than using Norton Ghost or so on Windows), but it seems Apples HW quality assurance (or selection of parts) is very poor these days.

[Urs]

What is its reputation based on?

My personal view: Workflow.

What? Maybe if you're used to it but I dread working on MacOS. In fact, I much prefer Linux as I can completely customise the way the OS looks and functions but I find Windoze much easier to work with.

Well, I'm a drag'n'drop guy. Hence I prefer multiple application windows (instead of all documents open in subwindows of a mother window), like, I'm dragging pictures from browser windows into iChat, or Photoshop or Mail, or any other way, same for audio files.

Then, the Finder's column view. Just effing great to navigate. I wouldn't wanna miss that. - Btw, the two major drawbacks of MacOS file work are gone: You now can copy/paste files, and in file dialogs you can click a target file if you want to overwrite it.

Then, I use to have about 10 applications open all the time, like XCode, Photoshop, BBEdit, Logic, Mail, Safari, CurvusPro, a terminal for octave with an XTerm (X-windows client) for GNUPlot, iChat, Console, iTunes... but I shut down the machine only every 2-3 months, without affecting the OS's snappyness. Dunno if this works better than other systems. But I wouldn't wanna know how Win's Taskbar would look, distributed over 2 monitors and 2-3 rows of open documents... The Dock however looks as usual, and I can navigate easily between documents with the Dock, cmd-Tab and Exposé.

As I said, this is my personal view, YMMV.

Good point, on a Mac you can't chose the MoBo. However, what if you wanted to have a Motorola cpu, how do you get that onto your MoBo?!?

How does anyone? Aren't they out of the Apple picture these days? Isn't it IBM all the way now?

Well, I imagine a PPC 7400 would be cheap these days, and with its AltiVec it would be a good performer for Logic Node & ES2...

Uhm. You don't have a choice for that when you buy a Mac?!?

According to the Apple Store I can choose the amount of RAM [not the brand], the size of the HDD [choice of two, not the brand] and I can choose from two different flavours of the same two video cards. BTW, none of the choices available for HDD or video card would have been within coo-ee of my list of preferred options when I was building my new PC - I went for a 10,000RPM WD Raptor SATA drive and nVidia Quadro4 workstation graphics. I also think that the Live graph was probably done with an older chipset for the Athlon64's and is well below the performance of my machine.

Right, the Apple Store doesn't give you many options.

In the past, I just added a 2nd video card when I needed more power. Today I don't need anything beyond the ones installed in a G5. I have bought 2 GB of Infineon RAM recently (makes 2.5GB in total, which I'm gonna expand to 4.5GB next spring...) Well, you can just add any HardDrive, SATA or Firewire.

But admittedly, you have to ditch some stuff that you get when you buy a Mac. First of all, you gotta trash the mouse and attach a trusty MS Intellimouse.

Btw. for some reasons, you can get Macs more customized in German shops, with way more options than in the Apple Store. A friend of mine just bought a video machine with 2 fast HDs, 4GB Ram and ATI's latest x-something model.

Reg. the Live graph: Live IMHO isn't the best application for performance tests as it doesn't benefit from the second processor in a dual cpu machine.

Cheers,

Urs

[BONES]

I wouldn't wanna know how Win's Taskbar would look, distributed over 2 monitors and 2-3 rows of open documents... The Dock however looks as usual, and I can navigate easily between documents with the Dock, cmd-Tab and Exposé.

The stupid dock drives me nuts. It pops up when I'm trying to click on the status bar and when I want it to come up the f**king thing never does or I click and open the wrong f**king thing. It shits me to tears and I've tried all sorts of options and they all suck. Being a 3D guy, I never have more than one or two apps running and I never leave my computer on when I'm not using it. I also like working with maximised windows and that is something that MacOS doesn't understand. But, as you say, to each his own.
With two monitors the Windoze Taskbar usually only appears on one of them. I also must admit [but please don't mention it to Bill] that I like the revised Start menu in XP. It has an area that displays the icons for the last applications you used and, as I have set mine to 9, pretty much every app I use is right at my fingertips, even with maximised windows. XP is really such a huge step up from 9x.

[mauseoleum]

http://www.blanos.com/Benchmark/

rendering. boxes in similar pricerange show similar results.

[putte]

The superiority of the one-button mouse?

come on bones, at least in this you should know that you´re talking bollocks.

The stupid dock drives me nuts. It pops up when I'm trying to click on the status bar and when I want it to come up the f**king thing never does or I click and open the wrong f**king thing. It shits me to tears and I've tried all sorts of options and they all suck.

.. now you´re even getting childish. if you would have to use the dock for more than a few hours you´d get used as everybody else. so even you would be able to manage it.

but most of all: just dont use a mac, bones.

putte

[Sascha Franck]

come on bones, at least in this you should know that you´re talking bollocks.

No, he isn't!
A "top of the line" computer shipping with a useless piece of shit such as a one button mouse?
They just CAN'T be serious about that freaking shitty thing (which doesn't even work properly used by normal hands).
What a waste of stuff.