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?
posted by T-ars at 17:05
5 Comments:
Looks like I'm not the only one.
Comforting on one side, but I'm not happy with Apple releasing such crappy software. I thought the main reason for switching to Mac was software that just works.
The right thing to do seems to be going back to Mac OS X Tiger and Logic Studio 7. Who said Microsoft did a bad job releasing Vista?
Come on guys, fix this and release Logic 8.0.2.
21:05
Actually back in the days (prior to ripping off the FreeBSD kernel) Mac OS was a very very sad experience. It got so bad that even bluescreen windows 95 or the crappy win 3.11 were superior to Mac OS. There is even a futurama episode making fun of it (the one were bender gets stuck on planet filled with human killing robots). So yes Mac OS X probably was a lot more stable coming of the line but in the meantime they already changed platform to Intel and UI library if I remember correctly. So alas .. It seems that the latest release OS X was quite crappy, perhaps all their resources when to the iphone ..
20:24
I have to agree that Leopard had some severe bugs. Bugs that were solved in the latest system update.
For Logic Studio 7, I don't have any experience. I'm not into music. But I can compare with Aperture. A little. I know that a previous version of Aperture was crappy too and Apple fired the entire team. Aperture now seems to work quite well.
For time machine: if you have a disk crash - like I've had a couple of weeks ago - you'll notice the power of Time machine. After one hour (half an hour to install leopard, another thirty minutes to restore from Time machine), I was up and running again.
Ok. Almost. The changes I made in the /etc/hosts file, ssh, samba and apache config were lost. Time machine only makes a backup from your /Library, home folder, /Applications folder ... not from the "hidden system folders". So true, being a bit more customizable wouldn't hurt.
And still. Mac users mostly end their complaints with "but it's still far better than Windows".
I'm sorry I can't calculate you in. But if you're trying to be more objective: you're really having troubles with only one application. What about the rest of the software and the OS?
14:57
Quote:
[And still. Mac users mostly end their complaints with "but it's still far better than Windows".]
I noticed that and I don't know why they keep doing that. Almost looks like their blind to serious bugs. I think Mac users should look at it from a distance and realize a lot of software is just poor and demand quality for such a price.
Quote:
[But if you're trying to be more objective: you're really having troubles with only one application. What about the rest of the software and the OS?]
I agree that most of my frustration goes out to Logic, but still. Yesterday my Command-Tab was broken. I saw the running processes and I could choose one, but it didn't get focus. As I'm a real keyboard-dude, that's not convenient (also looks like a lot of things can't be done with the keyboard).
And some more bashing on Logic:
- I was able to make Logic crash on a friend's Powerbook a few weeks back (with creating a Tempo Curve). So it's not just me.
While watching tutorials I even discovered 2 more bugs.
- When you launch Apple Loops from withing Logic, the comment of the loop is "reator: Logic Studio" instead of Creator. How silly is that? Even the instructor in the Tutorial was amused.
- In the end he mentions another bug and how to work around it. Pretty low if you need tutorials to explain how you can work around bugs.
And there's that stupid startup sound. No sensible way of turning it off (not in the OS anyway, you can install third party software). Always makes me think about this sketch.
"You switch it on and it goes DaNaah! ... Don't DaNaah me!"
16:30
I've been getting some questions from people whether I'm still unhappy about the Mac. After working with it a little longer I'm feeling better ;-) Things are mostly working now, but my point still stands: I don't think Mac is better than PC.
15:19
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