How many of you are *REALLY* music lovers?

I would lean toward buying a Mac but more software is available for the PC. For example ETF5, my measurement software, "may or may not work with an emulator" - according to their web site.

Also, there's a wider choice of PCs & peripheries and the learning curve (for me) will be less steep with another Windows OS.

Anyway, all this talk is rather academic as my PC purchase will have to wait for more speaker sales.

PS: I'm back to England for 4 days but, as we're homeless until January, I will not be online. Have fun y'all and try not to fight too much amongst yourselves while I'm away (are you listening you Mana boys?).

 

Common 7V, just imagine how creative you could be on something like this?



Mind you I did see a nice attempt by sony in John Lewis this week, looks like a kind of morph between a desktop computer and a portable, looks nice.

Don't assume the software you need is not available, Apple Macs OS is now built on UNix which means literally thousands of software apps out there typically free covering just about everything.

 

Theres something about the look of that thing thats really horrible.. other bits are kind of inspired looking.

I think its the speakers which look like little remote controls.... I just wanna pick them up and squish my thumb thru the speaker cones!

I do like the fact there are no wires though


Im sure it beats the hell out of the piece of junk Im typing this on though!!


Chris

 

Ha ha!
you are all wrong... I have owned several Macs, the last of which was a G4 tower. I just got sick of Apple screwing me around with forced upgrades that I had to pay for and lack of legacy support for software (upgrade to Jaguar anyone?), and the fact that even though the they were ridiculously expensive, they were quickly losing pace to PC's as Motorola just couldn't get their chips to run quick enough. I had always had a PC as well, the hardware was much cheaper and easily upgradable, and it ran the same software loads faster (even the mighty Photoshop). Even now that Apple are using the IBM PowerPC 470, AMD64 chips are cheaper and faster, and as far as I am aware Panther is still not a full 64bit OS, it can manage memory access in 64bit and a few other management tasks but not everything.

I am not a Mac or PC zealot, I buy whichever I think is the best value at the time, and I'm sorry but if your PC is holding back your creativity you are just plain stupid. Most of the software is exactly the same for both platforms (except it costs more for the Mac) so in what way are you being held back? It seems to me that at the end of the day, all Garyi is saying is "Hey look, ain't my Mac pretty!" which has got nothing to do with how good it actually is...

Style over substance mate...


The Moog

 

I think we are getting OT but nevertheless I wanted to write a few lines.
I think it's good that you have made your decision, choosing a company rather than another.
About forced upgrades I don't think that that's not only a problem of Apple. What about the "forced" upgrade for example for NT and 98? About support you cannot say that Microsoft is better.
Concerning expensive: do you know how much time it's needed to write an OS and if the amount of users is much less than another company then it must be more expensive. I think rather that you are one of these guys who want everything for free and when something is not working as you expect, you are the first who shouts all over the place. I think everybody should do the same with you: pay you nothing for your work and shout at you when you do something wrong. I would like to see you then! Well anyway the OS upgrades from Apple are not more expensive than the ones for Microsoft (at least here in Switzerland). And at least you can copy the OS on different computers and you don't need to call somebody with a long code when you install a new HD.
It's not Apple's problem if Motorola never supported them. Actually yes: Apple should have changed partner.

Fair enough except for "easily upgradable?????". My experieces with everybody I know is a slight different but who cares: if you believe so ...

I will write some lines about this later.
Just a few questions:
- 470???
- what has 64bit OS has to do with quickness?
- how do you know that the G5 is slower and cheaper than AMD64?

When you buy a HIFI unit, do you care for how it looks like? Maybe you're not, but there are lots of members here who do! The look has an importance to people and sometimes you pay for it. I admit, I don't care at all how my HIfi looks like.
The best value is certainly one factor in a decision for buying something but other poeple maybe have others (look, dependencies..).
Have you ever thought what OS MS would have had now when Apple wouldn't have been existing? Maybe it is good that such companies exists in this world and to support them even if they are (or think there are) some disadvantages is maybe not the worst choice.
The creativity depends also in the knowledge of both OS. It seems though that common users need much less time to learn to work on Apple computers than on PC. Also the amount of personnel needed for a company to run PCs is higher than with MACs.

 

Hiya there Titan,

OK OK, this is a hifi website and not a computer one, so I'll be quick here. To be honest I was just reacting to the comments made suggesting that you need a Mac to be at all creative, and then people saying that if I thought that PC's were even as good I must never have used a Mac, which all seems to me to be very narrow-minded.

NT and 98 are still, as far as I am aware, supported. MS are still putting updates up for these OS's on their website anyways. All of these upgrades are freely downloadable, whereas the upgrade for OSX to 10.2 was £130 wasn't it?

OK, so "easily upgradable" is a personal opinion, but there is a vast swathe of components out there made by loads of different manufacturers that you can choose from to put into your PC. With a Mac, you gotta buy their stuff. Not as much choice, not as much competition.

The new "G5" processor is actually an IBM PowerPC 470. 64bits has everything to do with speed if your software supports it... for the same clock speed you have twice the bandwidth of 32bit. Now, that doesn'rt show at the moment, because none of the software is properly optimised for 64bit, so the only advantage that you see with current software is greater access to memory as you can use 64bit word length commands. Finally, the only industry standard metric to measure processor power is the SPEC set of benchmarks. AMD's Opteron squarely betters Apples G5 in these metrics, and I can buy an Opteron system for a fair amount less than a comparably configured G5 system.

OK, people go out and buy hardware based on more than performance. Yes, the G5 looks nice, but these days PC's are no longer confined to beige boxes either...

Just a final comment to summarise. Buy the machine that you want and be happy with it. Don't suggest that because someone doesn't have what you have is somehow less "creative" or less anything. There is enough of that "mine is bigger than yours" in the hifi world...


The Moog

 

Moog you sound like one of those PC people who knows they plumbed for the wrong thing.

Jelousy is a bad thing mate

 

Heh heh,
yeah, that must be it! I have the use of a G5, but I am really happy with what I chose. You should be too Garyi mate and not feel the need to try so hard


The Moog

 

thread hijack alert!!!!

Speaking of antiquated OS, Im running win 95. I have Win 98 on CD rom waiting to be used..(full version, not the upgrade version).

Anyone know a way of installing it without losing all my other documents and stuff??? - just changing the OS?

one of you computery types must know if its do-able!

Chris

 

Please compare what you get for the upgrades!!!!!!

Nope. Wrong. IBM PowerPC yes, but not 470. Hint: beginning of next year they will present the 980 (90nm PowerPC).

Wrong. Only faster if you need to do calculations over 2exp(32-1) and when the application needs more than 4 Gigs. For example the niches of video editing, scientific, architectural, engineering, and graphics and prepress industries could benefit greatly from the move to 64-bit.[/B][/QUOTE]

Not true. Already over 3 months ago IBM released compilers which take complete benefits of the 64bits and Apple released a development tool kit which makes applications for this architecture. Companies like MS and Adobe, who never were Apple-friendly haven't started to recompile their stuff, actually some of their software doesn't even take advantages of the G4 possibilities. Apple is making an effort in writing his own software to replace the shitty job of those companies (see Safari for Explorer and Final cut Pro for Premiere). I want to remember you that most of the Apple software are 64 compatible (which doesn't mean faster). You know why the OS is not completely 64bit? In order to be able to run on the G3s and G4s. Once Apple will let them down they won't need to have an OS that can be friendly enough to run either on 32bit and on 64 architecture at the same time.

Well I supose you need to get better into the subject of benchmarks, especially when measuring on 2 totaly different architectures, components, OS and software. Please keep in mind the policy of Adobe and MS which I wrote before. Even PS which Apple keeps on referring for benchmarks is NOT optimized for any processor in Apple computers. Strange enough some benchmarks give the G5 slower than the G4 for this application. So be carefull about benchmarks independently where they come from. About the price: you should try to compare when the configuration is really comparable. Not when a PC-magazine says so. I am talking about the top model not the lower ones.

...but mine is bigger than yours!!!

 

This is a rather pointless argument. Use what makes you happy.

But http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html shows Mac as a minority taste, not as minority as Linux, but minority. Nowadays as a 'style' or 'fashion' it rather falls between two stools.

If you're at all technically competent then the PC platform offers much more, Windows for the modernist, Unix for the antiquarian.

Paul

 

Have you ever noticed how its nearly always the Mac fans who start these arguments. PC owners are usually content enough with their decisions and working in a large IT team at work, most of them dont even care enough about Mac's to slag them off, but for some reason, Mac owners are always a lot more vocal.

Then again, I'd be a little bitter if I got half as much memory, processing power and hard disk space as I could get in a PC for half the price and still have it in a fancy box.

 

He he!

This is fun isn't it... not hifi but fun! Is it the PPC 970 then (thanks for the clue!)? I do apologise. As soon as 64bit is a standard and enough people have it, it will be used and properly coded for and 4 gigs of memory ain't that much any more... I've got 2 in my "crappy" PC so in a few years time I think 4 gigs will be pretty standard. After all, would you want to go back to 16bit?

You can argue that benchmarks ain't fair, but I was just pointing to one (SPEC) that is seen as the industry standard for computing power across a multitude of architectures and OS's and Apple themselves used it on their advertising...

Like I said, use what you are happy with. I made a decision based on my own reasons (power vs expense mainly) and am happy I made the swap, but if you prefer yor Mac then great for you. The thing that started all of this off was the comment that you couldn't be creative on a PC as it was somehow holding you back.. I fail to see how this is as the software is pretty much exactly the same on both platforms, the hardware merely being something to run it on...

Anyway, I am far more interested in my hifi, and if we are gonna get into measuring contest I bet my speakers are better than yours


The Moog

 

Yea but I bet you PC case isn't as cool as Pauls!

 

I love this, and so true in TOO MANY instances, it me laugh out loud - Matrices, Labels, Misprints etc etc ( I really must listen to it at some point....). I have bought music over a period of some SIXTY YEARS, and I still find new recordings that I enjoy in many genres, both from the past and currently: Rock, Pop, Electronica, Folk, Country and World, Jazz and Easy Listening, Soul and Reggae plus some sound and interesting classical music - and YES, I DO listen to it. As the O'Jays sang, 'I LOVE Music'.

 

I listen to music for some three hours every evening, as I don't watch television. I also often have music playing during the day, but I'm not a fan of background music, and end up listening to it, and not doing what I was supposed to be doing.

As to the minutiae of recorded music, I couldn't care less about the music label, pressing matrix, misprints or whatever. If I like it, I'll buy it, if I don't I won't. In that respect, Spotify has saved me hundreds if not thousands, as before, if I fancied an LP, then later CD, I would buy it, then in many cases find that there are only one or two tracks of interest. With Spotify, I can play the whole album through, and only buy it if I would be upset it if disappeared from Spotify. I have some 200 albums in my Spotify library, none of which would especially upset me if they went away. By the way, I don't do playlists or individual tracks, I buy/listen to albums, but then my listening is mostly Classical, then Jazz, with Rock/Pop/Folk/Blues a fairly distant third.

In terms of listening hours, I suppose it's mostly BBC Radio 3, then my own CDs all ripped to a HD and played through a Squeezbox, then LPs which I still play a few times a month (mostly Quadraphonic LPs)

Anyone else into Quadraphonics?

S.

 

I also forego the TV... and last played live (local buskers night, guitar... and what passes for singing!) on Sunday night. Hifi playing as I type.

Quadraphonics def not my thing but (you'll know already prob) there was an ongoing series on ancient quad stuff over maybe 5 months in "hi fi world".