well, it's not
that expensive to own a Mac, but I remember a model that was capable of a similiar noise level...
the funny thing is that they offered a 'silencer' kit and of course there was a small flood in 3rd party noise-reduced airflow 'improvers', but the main problem could be fixed by a simple firmware update - as it turned out a year (or so) later...
(ok, Apple offered the exchange free of charge, at least for a certain period, but it's not the brightest version of inner-company-communication...)
anyway - I'd choose OSX anytime over Linux, I haven't tried one distribution that didn't p*ss me off for some reason - and I really mean the p-word.
I know the brand of SUSE since Ataris were the latest and greatest, and this company/community entered the IT stage to offer 'a userfriendly, alternative operating system'.
On one side directed towards the unaffordable Apple machines (back then), on the other against the technically inferior M$ experimental GUIs.
That was more than 20(!) years ago.
A million free-lance open-sourcers and 10 times more lines of code later you still get confronted with all that device techie bla bla, sooner or later - you
cannot avoid the obscure stuff that
no 'user' is interested in.
The guys are cute, but in the end it breaks down to the same vapourware promises one is used by the big M
go to an Apple Shop and fiddle around with one of their machines - that is a full BSD Unix with the shell only 2 folders away and man-pages and all the 325 grep, awk, tcl or whatever 'utilities' - but as a
user you don't even notice that it exists and you
never need it.
To know about that part of the OS doesn't hurt and is certainly helpful in many cases, but it's not required.
And those who want the full dose of tech and control, well, they know where to find it
That is what makes OSX great and outstanding among all it's x-relatives imho. It's difficult to tell, but it took Apple probably just 3 years to make a 'unix' a Mac OS...
btw I bought the Linux version of Codeweavers Crossover more than a year ago to run a specific developement package - crash.
The Mac version (OSX) runs like a charm...
I'd rather bet on open source versions of audio apps under osx than under Linux.
I've compared PC 'barebones' similiar to the MacMini design and didn't find them significantly cheaper than Macs. First of all it's the Apple DVD drive and memory that's a bit more expensive, but considering the OS and the better design of the box it's nothing dramatic.
Doesn't help with SFP, but Linux doesn't either...
cheers, Tom
