why they love to hate logic

[DHR53]

Mr. JMH... please provide me with some examples of your work? ...and I'll decide who is a wanker...

http://homepage.mac.com/dhrooser/Menu7.html

[egbert]

( various expletives deleted) I have been making a living as a Designer for 20 years, all on a Mac.

Hmmm - that is impressive!

Do you have any software suitable for designing something like - say - a muzzle for your potty mouth?

Hey - expletive deleted - no it couldn't be - is that you Dick?

It's been tragic not having you to kick around all these years ...

[DHR53]

Like I said... show me?

[egbert]

I'm going to do a course in Sonic Arts.

On the course they use Macs, MAX/MSP and Logic. I was taken on a tour of the facilities. The Macs were shown off with great pride. I was informed that by the time I start the course next September they will have upgraded the 50 odd Macs to dual G5's. I asked whether I would be able to use my PC software to create 'Sonic Arts'. I was told that Mac's are the 'professional' standard and if I wanted to develop as a 'Sonic Artist' I'd need to use them and the software that goes with them.

I am involved with an educational institution which teaches computer based stuff - multimedia, design etc and the same situation applies - no PCs on site and even though most students have PCs at home. Don't know if this issue persists with OSX but they didn't even have the freeware Mac OS 8/9 extension to preserve long file names from Joliet CDs - if you were working in Director or something and brought a lot of files in on CD they would all be truncated to 8.3 filenames. Useless.

And wtf do Apple not have this built in in the first place - you don't need to be a conspiracy theorist ...

The thing is - these sorts of places often have overworked and underpaid computer support staff and instructors who know the Mac and they are not prepared to take on the burden of learning and supporting both systems. They also get economies of scale on purchasing Macs and rotating them around so that some classes always have the latest greatest and others have the hand me downs.

The idea that the Mac is the "Pro" choice has the obvious historical origins and persists largely because ignorant twats like to imagine themselves to be members of an elite.

[DHR53]

...Apparently your school knows something you don't!... The bank I used to work for had a support staff of 15 people to keep the 50 PCs and servers running... We had one person to keep 25 Macs, 2 servers and 4 printers running... Me! ...ignorant twat indeed!

[kuniklo]

Now correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this the type of snobbery and narrow mindedness that leads us PC users to tear a strip off of Emaple at every opportunity? In a world where 98% of computers have Windows this presents an amazing opportunity to create and share instruments and sounds for the purpose of Sonic Arts. But I am told I must learn a system that just 2% of Luddites cling to. This is because they have decided it is the so-called 'professional' system.

I agree that this is really annoying. The zealotry of the Mac faithful put me off macs for a long time. These people aren't doing Apple any favors. I think Apple realizes this - I suspect it's one reason they stopped running the switch ads. It's better to sell something on its own strengths than it is to try to sell it by attacking the competition. I have no intention of ever drinking that cool-aid.

That said, I think Apple has finally managed to come up with a very compelling hardware + software platform. For me it's the most exciting thing in consumer computing since the Amiga. Microsoft has also helped out by letting windows stagnate for 5 years between releases while focusing on .net etc.

[nuffink]

...Apparently your school knows something you don't!... The bank I used to work for had a support staff of 15 people to keep the 50 PCs and servers running... We had one person to keep 25 Macs, 2 servers and 4 printers running... Me! ...ignorant twat indeed!

Which bank? I've worked for a few and never seen a Mac.

[LBN]

[kuniklo]

Well that and the fact that the number of useful plugins not available for mac but available for pc is bigger than vice-versa.

That's certainly true and overall I think there's a much healthier third party plugin economy on the PC.

However, I think the third party stuff on the Mac is by and large more interesting. The PC only stuff seems to be more bread & butter stuff like Voxengo & Kjaerhus. Very nice plugins, certainly, but not exactly revolutionary. On the Mac you've got stuff like Numerology, Sonasphere, Girl, and Metasynth (still os9 only unfortunately). These tools seem to really push the boundaries a lot more. Also the smartelectronix guys have said they're dropping pc support for several of their plugins. I suppose Audiomulch would be a good counter-example. I think there's a lot of unrealized potential in Synthedit but I don't anything really ground-breaking has come out of it yet, certainly not anything to compare to the best Reaktor ensembles.

It will be interesting to see if Apple's gamble on audiounits pays off. The potential is certainly there - make it a lot easier for developers with a more modern, consistent and flexible plugin spec and free them from the drudgery of all the host-specific tweaks that vst plugins require. Hopefully this attract more developers. So far developers seem to be struggling with their AU ports but it will be several years at least before it's clear how successful this strategy will be.

[nuffink]

A good, old fashioned, Mac vs PC flamewar is pretty rare around here. That photo, on the other hand, has been used repeatedly by all sorts of dullards.

[DHR53]

First Union and currently Wachovia ...probably 25 macs there in 3 departments

[nuffink]

First Union and currently Wachovia ...probably 25 macs there in 3 departments

You'd better hope they don't outsource the advertising.

[DHR53]

Actually they always use outside sources for creative... I'm a freelance designer... But that wouldn't change my hardware and software requirements, or most of the printing companies and Ad agencies I work with... The fact that I can do my work and my DAW stuff on the same platform quite well seems to bother you? ...What am I giving up anyway?? There is all the NI stuff, all the Linplug stuff, Sampletank, Spectrasonics, Ultrafocus, DPs stuff, GMedia, ReFX, U-He etc. etc... You'd have to come up with a pretty compelling arguement to make me get rid of Logic, Reason and my Mac G5 and go all PC... Haven't heard anything so far... I think it's pretty funny that PC people even bother to defend one of the biggest Corporate entities in the world who admittedly have been convicted of forcing YOU to use their products! If it wasn't for Apple, you'd still be looking at text-based display's at 320 x 160 resolution...

[nuffink]

Actually they always use outside sources for creative... I'm a freelance designer... But that wouldn't change my hardware and software requirements, or most of the printing companies and Ad agencies I work with... The fact that I can do my work and my DAW stuff on the same platform quite well seems to bother you? ...What am I giving up anyway?? There is all the NI stuff, all the Linplug stuff, Sampletank, Spectrasonics, Ultrafocus, DPs stuff, GMedia, ReFX, U-He etc. etc... You'd have to come up with a pretty compelling arguement to make me get rid of Logic, Reason and my Mac G5 and go all PC... Haven't heard anything so far... I think it's pretty funny that PC people even bother to defend one of the biggest Corporate entities in the world who admittedly have been convicted of forcing YOU to use their products! If it wasn't for Apple, you'd still be looking at text-based display's at 320 x 160 resolution...

Backing out of the banking argument (which you started) with as much grace as possible.

[Sascha Franck]

If you're starting from scratch and looking to buy a high end system + software the price difference isn't as much of an issue.

But how many people are doing so?

I see it that way: Right NOW it was a pretty clever move for both Apple and Emagic to join. And it might still pay off until, say, in 5 years (please don't take any numbers literally), maybe more, maybe less.

But then, one thing that I can ensure you about (at least when it comes to Europe, namely Germany, might be different for the US as Apple's market share should be quite higher there...): Emapple will lose pretty much 100% of what they had in the educational and newcomer market.
And no, I wouldn't call such a statement unrealistic.

Fwiw, I am teaching at the local music university and I'm the one being responsible for the new media lab and studio computers.
I have also been configuring music computers since quite some years, serving both hobbyists and professionals.
Regarding both issues I have made quite some investigations.
Personally I thought that it'd be nice if people being taught in our media lab would be able to reproduce what they learned at home. So I had to find out what computers they were eventually using allready.
Long story made short: Almost everybody I know of, each student and most musicians allready own a computer. Be it for office/internet/gaming and whatever stuff.
Now take a wild guess and tell me what those computers are. Right on - they are Windows machines by around 100% (ok, maybe 99%)!
For the record: Recently, especially since XP was released, almost any stock PC could be turned into a reasonable DAW more or less easily. Sure, nothing fancy, but VERY reasonable.

Allright, what do I recommend to someone allready owning a PC and starting to get into, say, homerecording?
Do I recommend shelling out quite some more money to buy a Mac?
Defenitely not!
Just look around K-v-R - people are like "Hi guys, I recently bought a copy of CM, installed Muzys on my PC and have a question".
THAT's how people get started these days. Nobody is using 4-tracks anymore, proceeding with expensive studio hardware and so on. People are buying, say, an Audiophile soundcard for 70 bucks, install something from a mag or from the web (or something coming with the soundcard) and go ahead with what they allready own (a Windows PC that is).

OK, now, whenever it turns out those people would like to get deeper into music and recording, what do you think they will buy in case they plan to, say, realize a small semi-professional recording setup?
In case their previous PC experiences were pleasant (which is pretty much likely these days, things have changed a LOT through the last 2-3 years), will they buy a Mac? Just to run Logic, even if they allready may have bought some Windows sequencer?
Hell no! NO WAY!

So, who will actually buy Logic in 5 years? Yes, there will be some studios that are using it (or at least Macs) allready for a long time. There will be a few people coming from schools such as SAE who might buy a Mac as well.

But IMO the vast majority of people won't even bother thinking about whether AUs are better than VSTs, whether there's more revolutionary stuff for Macs, whether the OS (at least under the hood) is better - all they will do is having a look into their wallets. And assuming´I am halfway right in that almost everybody and his mum is allready owning a reasonable PC (I'm pretty much sure I'm correct on this) they would just spend 100 bucks on an audio card, perhaps another 100 on a MIDI keyboard and eventually another 200 for some software.
That's 400 bucks to turn your PC into a more or less kickass DAW instead of spending at LEAST 5x the money for a halfway reasonable Mac DAW (as they would have to buy the computer as well).

So, kuniklo, in a way I would agree with you - IF someone started all the way from the start, with no proper computer present allready, the killer price Logic is sold for (IMO completely unbeatable by any comparable combination of similar products) *might* eventually compensate for the higher price you'll have to pay for a Mac. Fine.
It's just that people allready own PCs (personally I don't know ANYBODY without one anymore).
That's what might spoil the Emapple deal sooner or later.

And no, all that has got nothing to do with my personal decisions - I WILL buy a Mac more or less soon, as I am a Logic addict.