OsX Support

[dellai]

Thanks Tom for this rather marketing techno story, it gives me some inside of how OS manufacturers think in this industry.

But for what its worth, I would give you my vision of how things are working for me, just from a creative perspective. I certainly don't want to devalue your insights with it but rather give you an explanation of how I work and manage to learn the system.

I am a creative, at least that's how I feel, I grow up with macs and it took me years to understand computers and what I could do with them. I managed to work fast with macs and became quite confidential with them.

I use to have a lot of hardware synths and sampler stuff and then certainly I found this beautyfull piece of hardware which we all like on this forum and things where working so good for me that I have sold all my synths and sampler stuff. I still think creamware is the best thing I have bought in my life, but at this point I can't use it other than in windows XP or nextgen Vista systems.

I am not disappointed in creamware, I am disappointed that I can't use my creamware cards anymore, it might be my own fault, but I am not a technical kind of guy. I feel sorry that I sold my hardware synths and sampler stuff to switch to this potentially working solution for me.

A friend of mine uses windows XP for DAW purposes and the only thing I ever hear is all kind of horror stories about it which I never experienced with my macs. He is talking in a kind of computer slang which I certainly can't understand, talking about IRCUE's, managing images of his systems and on and on.

I like the forgiveness macs give me, I never had any problems with them. I could really do anything with them and still my sounds and recordings sound like a charm, without doing anything technical at all.

Mac is about buying a box and everything works, thats what I love about them as a non technical guy. However, I agree on you that things are not that well anymore or what it used to be. An example of this you will see in Adobe Illustrator, you can't use it anymore since they forced me to update to a recent version of osx and it takes ages to get a fix for it.

The last thing about it is that I bought a lot of VST instruments which come in mac and windows flavor on one cd. Off course that is great but try to get your settings back in windows xp and how you use them in your songs, it does not work that way at all.

I don't blame anybody, I just want to create music without the technical stuff and problems which apple and creamware never use to give me.

And the last important thing that I would like to say about it; I don't want to use the dust buster anymore, creamware did the cleaning of my wires and synths perfectly for me, without sneezing

[hubird]

Astroman loved macs in the past, and knows every detail of it's inside and history
The new 'policy' of Apple forcing people to buy new macs is something that I can't judge, it seems a bit sour to me to put it that way

The old operating system -in a world of more and more complicated computer functionality- needed a real update to -for once and all- isolate the operating system from the user part.
I don't have to restart the system under OSX(classic!) when the bug in the Gaussian Blur plug of Photoshop shows up (freezes OS9 at a setting of more than 3,5 pixel)

Two devellopments introduced by Apple are discutable if you wish: PCI-E and the switch to Intel.

After all those years that Apple invented time after time great new stuff, one should forgive them the PCI-E move.
It probably had it's reason, but I'm not a technology whatcher

The Intel switch, well, they were forced to, as Motorola failed in the chase after clock cycles.
Apple has to be priced to have prepared the switch in secret, years ago already, they did the job with light velocity.

I don't wanne open a pc-vs mac discussion, but you can't say that someone who prefers to work on mac is 'waving the mac flag', or is just after 'looks'.

There is still a huge different between a mac and a Windows pc, if you know to value it, or if you are 'not a technical kind of guy', as dellai says (me eighter!).

The Operating system is great, clean and user friendly (Vista shameless copies the looks at least).
And the hardware is terrific and designed to work with the specific OS, which is crucial.
IRQ, Registry stuff, Standard/ACPI, HT, these problems just don't exist on mac.

The thread 'Zero problems users' shows that you can mace music on pc perfectly, but it's still true that you need to know what you're doing.
With every new move you must try to find the best solution, like mobo, Bios settings, etc.
After working on mac for years I really was asking myself when I got a member of Planetz, what are they talking about all day, a mobo, what the hell is a mobo??...
it turned out to be crucial!

I am investing a lot of mony at the moment, to be able to run my cards in my studio, via ADAT between two macs.
I hope Creamware will support the Intel macs in the future, I just don't hope that will be soon, as for the mony and time I'm putting into it now

[astroman]

well, that quote about '...Apple forcing customers to buy...' isn't to be overestimated as it's a couple of years back already. Yet it bears an enormous symbolic significance.

It's true that OSX is a bit more forgiving on the application side of errors, but the much praised 'memory protection feature' of unix only holds as long as the application deals with itself. As soon as a device or driver (read system memory) is involved it will crash as deep and thorough as any other system would

Not to be misunderstood:
OSX is a good system (got to live with what 's available...) and imho it's not even questionable that it's lightyears ahead of any flavour of Windows.
But that is more based on the fact that it's so hard to release something worse than the latter...
Which on the other hand does NOT exclude the fact that (almost arbitrary) Windows versions can be made to be 'productive' - however crappy they may be.

I use Win98 to boot SFP, write and edit some VDAT files and maybe listen to a couple of mp3s that deserve better playback - and that's about it.
I don't need more than 512 MB on that machine, so why bother that it doesn't adress more ?
GaryB has methods to make XP systems work reliably under the hardest conditions - live. You start with a quality base and just kick out out as much of the gimmicks as possible and then don't change it anymore - and it will be rock solid.

I am convinced that 95% of all problems are related to install this, test that, remove another one, how about the new... kind of system operation.
They don't do it in an industry production line, so you should stay away from it, too - if your system has to be productive

the mobo/chipset/irq orgy is a natural follow-up of the ... I want the best and the fastest for the least amount, a no-go in itself, spiced with some pointless marketing/review bs (we're all so informed since google rules the world - their stock crossed the 500 Euro btw, ouch) .

There really isn't much difference between the effective complexity of XP and MacOSX for a so-called end user (with few technical skills).
He or she will fail on upgrading a Mac Mini as well as trying to setup an XP network out of the box.

On the old Mac you could, and to make this clear and unmistakeable I'm talking OS 7 here, as that's where Apple's reputation regarding stability and (practically non-necessary) service is about.
Waving the Mac Flag is a synonym for these days, which are (very) long gone.
It were exactly the sales figures from those years that made Apple's product policy change, as the following note shows:

Don't laugh about it (i.e. you update heroes) - I know for sure that the most popular local newspaper in my area still uses Mac Quadras under OS7 for a certain stage of the current (!) production - everyday.
There have been countless attempts from 'consultants' to sell something new to the department, but they all failed to present a software ( out of their all-so-mighty-portfolio) that simply does the job...

don't make life harder by following an illusion based on memories - and thus restricting your choice of tools.
You can install XP on an Intel Mac, you can run both systems parallel (with virtualization software) or even execute Windows apps under OSX (with a software faking the system calls) - they cannot be that different

cheers, Tom

[hubird]

- OSX... it's not even questionable that it's lightyears ahead of any flavour of Windows.
- Windows... OSX - they cannot be that different

lovely

[astroman]

what a brutal cut... excellent pick...
the first comment was related to the technical base of the system, the 2nd about how they handle 'user' interaction

cheers, tom

[hubird]

yes...no offend, couldn't resist

[hubird]

apple customers are happy to pay money for
nothing with blissful faces and almost religious fervency

strange then that so much firms that have to operate in an extremely commercial market like DTP,
medea etc. where every penny is counted, yet choose for Apple...

You really think that I spend my (spare) mony on bling bling aspects,Stardust?

I go for the combination of very good (combined) hardware run by an obviously well-considered
operating system...put together by the same... brains.
That's no bling bling, tho it's gold
A perfect Xeon with Xp still is ...Windows!
IRQ chaos, registry hassle, everlasting ACPI layer doubts, Hyperthreading, chaoticly organized system- and user files,
mobo compatibility, cooling problems, you name it and I don't have it

Without Garyb the whole pc world would collapse!
Kidding

A pc is an abstraction, it is - so to say - what you put together.
It's normal then that looks don't matter, as there isn't a concept involved.
A mac is a product, it's presenting the firm's name and concepts (about quality).

I could imagine some envy between two brands, but not between an anonymous compiled (possibly good working) product and a brand.

Would you be challenged to defend a (good but basic) beer from Aldi's discount against a quality brand?
Would you ever mock at a Fender strat, a Jaguar or a Warsteiner bottle because it has looks, a name and a price lable on it?

Why would you?
It just doesn't make sense.
The looks (should) represent the content, it just works that way.

Besides, the looks of a mac are not just 'outside', a mac is wonderfull put together, hardware wise, take a look by yourself
Speaking about design, the tight alumnium case of todays models perfectly fits the heavy cooling demands of todays processors...

Hm, you must love macs, as you hate them

lol

[kylie]

Would you be challenged to defend a (good but basic) beer from Aldi's discount and a quality brand?

never, boy, never, insult aldi (food!) products!
well, the beer isn't my cup of tea, as lots of other brands you can get in a high price fancy food shop, too, but they have lots of quality food there, and I prefer their mints over after eight forever...

Besides, the looks of a mac are not just 'outside', a mac is wonderfull put together, hardware wise, take a look by yourself

there are several pc brands that can put hw together as well. maybe apple is still one step beyond, though.

apple has only moved from their (almost) own hw and os to standards like intel and freebsd. things that have been there before, and thus they just profited from innovations that other people did (at these points). what apple indeed added to the innovation was:

- excellent hardware design (I don't talk about the shiny outside here)
- adapting a stable os to their needs
- adding their own extensions to it that make the intel bsd box (you could get anywhere else) a mac. period.

for me, there is a big pro and a big con:

pro: hw and os work (mostly) hand in hand, as apple controls whats inside and whats not. the chance that everything thats inside works as expected on delivery is considerably higher (as with the price).

con: you are always limited to certain hw. if it's supported - great. if not, well, your problem. and some hw is even more expensive than the ordinary stuff for pc, be it a tv card or something like that, unless provided explicitly for both, mac and pc.

don't get me wrong, I think they did a great job on the mac pro.

after all you can read here in all these threads...
you can not have both this moment. it's scope, or it's intel mac. and I don't want to have a g5 or g4 anymore, since there is the new one. agree? when apple announced the intel deal, I even reconsidered buying one, once my pc was old enough to be replaced (as I do at reasonable intervals). but as long as cw and apple are blocking each other ("you don't provide pci slots, so why should we supply drivers?" or "you have oldfashioned hardware that we happily got rid of, and no driver model for unixoid os'es, so why should we care?") you gotta have a pc (or, well, a mac with pci and os9, if you like).

so why change?
it's like wanting to ride a roadster, but not finding a way to stuff a buggy inside (apart from wife and son...).
I have no use for it right now... (although I'd like to have it )

-greetings, markus-

[astroman]

the ipod is the only one with the I-dunno-how-it's-called control...
I'd buy it for the gimmick alone, but I don't need one anyway

A & A have indeed more in common as one might expect - Steve Jobs getting richer and richer, the Albrecht Bros getting richer and richer...

I know I've already mentioned it, but I'll do it again because that quote from Ma Albrecht is almost unbeatable ...the more people suffer economically, the better our business...
I'd rather extend it a slight little bit with: who buys at ALDI has few needs to complain when he's sacked
...his employer just choose a more affordable offer

greed is gorgeous, Tom

[katano]

shuffle control?