Sunday, March 16, 2008

The Switch: Mac better than PC?

I, for one, definitely disagree. Feeling frustrated. Please bear with me, I need to get it off my chest.

Every Mac user keeps telling me that I don't like Mac because I'm used to a PC. At first, I gave them the benefit of the doubt. I thought I had to take the time to get to know the software. But the evidence is striking.

I use my system for audio engineering: recording, mixing, ... I come from Windows XP with Steinberg Cubase SX 3 and I switched to Leopard with Logic Studio 8 (with a Presonus Firepod).

The design of a Mac is great. You've got to give them that. Every other PC or laptop that I have is just ugly compared to the MacBook Pro. Personally I have some problems with the "This is the best for you"-attitude. Many people think that you should limit the user's choices and that Windows is too complicated because it leaves too much choice. But I miss it on a Mac. I'm used to customizing everything and Time Machine for example is too limited for me. Maybe I'm not the intended user? "Mac is for simple people".

When I opened my MacBook Pro yesterday (it was in stand-by) it crashed and showed a dialog like: "You need to restart. Press and hold the Power Button". My Windows XP box never crashed. So I think Apple is in no position to use a blue-screen as icon for a windows-share on the network.

Logic is so buggy and is more complicated to me (OK, I work with Cubase longer, but come on):
1) Working with tempo changes is a real pain. Takes inside a take-folder move around (and using undo only makes it worse).
I nailed the perfect take, saved the project and closed it. Next time I fired it up, it had shifted approximately half a beat. First I thought I did it by accident but it has happened to me so many times that it's just not possible.
When I create a Tempo Curve Logic shows a dialog "Logic Pro has unexpectedly quit. The current project has been saved as ...". What the ...? Cubase never crashed.
2) When I hit Play, I sometimes get a dialog saying that there was a system overload. Look, I use this machine on stage. No jokes like this please. It's a 2.2 GHz MacBook Pro with 4GB RAM and a 7200rpm hard drive with no other programs running. Don't tell me that's not enough.
3) Yesterday, our bass player came over to record a few songs for our next demo. In the middle of the session a dialog appeared "The Device/partition HD/.../Logic/..." can't be found. A file chooser appeared and it's current location was the folder that couldn't be found. It's right there !
4) I wanted to assign a different input to a track. Apparently clicking on the button that shows the current input doesn't do the trick. That's not intuitive (if at all possible).
5) Upgrading from Logic 8 to 8.0.1 rendered some Take folders unusable. The recording needed to be done all over again. Not funny if you know how long it takes to Mic a drum-kit, adjust all levels and play the line until it feels right.
6) Changing the transition between takes of multiple tracks is not possible (and was with Cubase)
7) The GUI has some small bugs also. While recording there sometimes are gray lines in the recorded track.

Yes, I have tried turning it off and on again.

The only thing that is better is the absence of occasional "clicks" during playback, but I think that's just because I didn't use the correct settings for my audio interface. Here Mac gets 1 point for working better out of the box.

For those that are interested: The Presonus Firepod was worth every penny. Works great and has a nice sound.

So what should I do? Go to ProTools and throw away my Presonus? I think I invested enough. Anybody some experience with Cubase for Mac?

Maybe I should just look for another hobby?