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Melda releases statement suggesting Mac users finally consider switching to Windows

There is a dogma behind computer choices. That’s the fact. Even AVID has a list of PCs they suggest buying in case you don’t want to spend 30/45 mins building one. I am one who has become so frustrated with Macs and their latest OSs that moved on to Windows and been happier since - except for the UI (still fugly). But of course the dogma will exist unless Apple really derails hard and forces even the die-hard deniers to consider alternatives.

Nonsensical arguments include pricing, ease of finding parts, assembly complexity, crashing, antivirus, and firewall issues. My windows is online all the time and I don’t have any third party antivirus installed. I also don’t go to dodgy sites and neither should those who use Macs. I only turn the wifi off when I need to use VEP.

One word: Dogma.
 
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I think it's the having to rewrite from scratch some of these programs that is annoying them. And I think it is probably harder on the one or two man operations where they basically lose money rewriting this stuff. And it may not be Catalina that is so much the problem but that even if they rewrite it for Catalina, if the use OpenGL, they are going to have to rewrite it again for the next upgrade. You know. Next year.

It's funny because the only big Apple fan in my family is my sister. And all she does is surf the web, write emails, listen to music and watch movies with her computer. I guess I don't get why they need to change the OS so much every year that developers have to fix their programs? I think of them more as a hardware company, I guess. From the user perspective, it doesn't really seem to have changed much. (Not talking Logic of course)
 
Mac user since 128k dumb system. I usually wait a good year before updating, sometimes I skip a version. I'm fine with High Sierra for now. It bricked my nice Canon scanner. After a little research, turns out Canon and Epson can't be expected to update drivers with only two or three people on staff. Things are really hard for them. And, you know, no one in the graphics industry uses macs so why should they bother? So I hauled my old cheese grater up from the damp dusty basment where it's been sitting for five years and set up a scan station. Booted right up. Did some scanning. Man that thing is loud. Anywho. Looking forward to the native Ipad sync thingy in Catalina.
 
I'm a recent Mac convert, (this year), after having used Windows since it began, and flirted heavily with Linux as well wanting to change the corruption in the world by myself (wasted LIFE). I have come to the conclusion to MANY of the points in this well written article as to my experiences of Windows VS Mac. I don't care what they cost, the OS is worth every penny IMO. Can't wait for the Pro:

Why I Hate Windows...
 
I think it's the having to rewrite from scratch some of these programs that is annoying them. And I think it is probably harder on the one or two man operations where they basically lose money rewriting this stuff. And it may not be Catalina that is so much the problem but that even if they rewrite it for Catalina, if the use OpenGL, they are going to have to rewrite it again for the next upgrade. You know. Next year.

Extremely costly for them. Actually to us, because in order to pay for their time to do that they are going to have to come out with an update to their software that has less new features for the same price. So we pay for it ultimately.

It's funny because the only big Apple fan in my family is my sister. And all she does is surf the web, write emails, listen to music and watch movies with her computer. I guess I don't get why they need to change the OS so much every year that developers have to fix their programs? I think of them more as a hardware company, I guess. From the user perspective, it doesn't really seem to have changed much. (Not talking Logic of course)

I personally don't think Apple needs to handle it the way they do, there are lots of other ways to bring out innovative new capabilities without having to always cut the legs out from under everyone using the old stuff before. This is a pattern with Apple though going back decades. They feel entitled to do so, and they will continue to do so. It was one thing when it was Steve Jobs pushing some ingenious innovative new thing out there, but those days are gone.

As to why the new changes.. Well I personally think they are doing away with KEXT so that they can absolutely control everything that we are running on our mac. Why would they want to do that? Because they want to sell us services, content, and want to control the pipeline absolutely. Also the elimination of KEXT is quite likely to end a lot of hackintosh use in my opinion. There will be a few motherboards that don't need custom KEXT hacks and may keep working for a while, but many existing hackintoshes will stop working completely, and the ones that do work...it will be that much easier for Apple to plug those holes. Like for one thing its quite likely my 5,1 MacPro, which as of now can do a hack install of Catalina if desired, may not be able to run Catalina and beyond completely without KEXT hacks. So the 5,1 really will be deprecated and much more difficult to hack around it. I don't want to say impossible, almost nothing is impossible but if it gets hard enough to hack, then people won't bother anymore.

Apple can much more easily plug those kinds of holes when the boot partition is read only and custom KEXT's don't work. They are most definitely going to be locking down on that. That's why they are doing it. They aren't going to make your sister's life any easier whatsoever. Hopefully the vast majority of people in her shoes won't really miss anything either though... She'll never know the difference between a KEXT based driver and the new systems extension API.

The notarization API will help protect her from getting ransomware
 
Extremely costly for them. Actually to us, because in order to pay for their time to do that they are going to have to come out with an update to their software that has less new features for the same price. So we pay for it ultimately.



I personally don't think Apple needs to handle it the way they do, there are lots of other ways to bring out innovative new capabilities without having to always cut the legs out from under everyone using the old stuff before. This is a pattern with Apple though going back decades. They feel entitled to do so, and they will continue to do so.

As to why the new changes.. Well I personally think they are doing away with KEXT so that they can absolutely control everything that we are running on our mac. Why would they want to do that? Because they want to sell us services, content, and want to control the pipeline absolutely. Also the elimination of KEXT is quite likely to end a lot of hackintosh use in my opinion. There will be a few motherboards that don't need custom KEXT hacks and may keep working for a while, but many existing hackintoshes will stop working completely, and the ones that do work...it will be that much easier for Apple to plug those holes. Like for one thing its quite likely my 5,1 MacPro, which as of now can do a hack install of Catalina if desired, may not be able to run Catalina and beyond completely without KEXT hacks. So the 5,1 really will be deprecated and much more difficult to hack around it. I don't want to say impossible, almost nothing is impossible but if it gets hard enough to hack, then people won't bother anymore.

Apple can much more easily plug those kinds of holes when the boot partition is read only and custom KEXT's don't work. They are most definitely going to be locking down on that. That's why they are doing it. They aren't going to make your sister's life any easier whatsoever. Hopefully the vast majority of people in her shoes won't really miss anything either though... She'll never know the difference between a KEXT based driver and the new systems extension API.

The notarization API will help protect her from getting ransomware

I wonder how many (if at all a factor) of the new productivity/connectivity/continuity features are factors in the need for increased security.
 
The new productivity features have nothing to do with what is aggravating Melda and causing most of my software programs to send me emails telling me not to upgrade to Catalina yet.
 
It is always very annoying to me that Apple seems to not want me to change to it. I was thinking of getting a MacBook Pro about 3 or 4 years ago when I started having extra spending money. Logic looked interesting. Was going to even pay the crazy prices. But that was when I found they were soldering the SSD to the motherboard, they cut back the number of USB/thunderbolt ports, and a thunderbolt hub was almost impossible to find for under $100. The fact I can't change out my drive really bothers me. I can live with not being able to upgrade the CPU or RAM.

So, reading a lot of these discussions made me decide to look into a turning my two year old self-built computer into a hackintosh. But now I am wondering if it is worth it? Then again, I don't need to use the most current OS. I was initially under the impression Apple forced upgrades similar to Windows 10 based on discussionson other forums. But then I was told it's not true.

It kind of sucks that they don't use the same file structure as Windows. I will either have to duplicate a lot of my Kontakt libraries or cut them down if I try this experiment. Because my laptop is Windows.
 
You can always try to make a hackintosh for the fun of it, but don't depend on it just yet, in my opinion. Also, if you really want to build a hack its usually important to get a "blessed" motherboard that is known to be easy to do it. But if you have an old computer with nothing else to do and time to spend on it, then why not, you can check out OSX and see what all the fuss is about. If you're reasonably happy on windows, I'd personally stay there right now for your primary computer. In a couple years look at it again. Regarding MacBook's, I would not touch another one of those with a ten foot pole.

For me its really simple, I'm using my 5,1 Mac Pro for as long as i can and will enjoy OSX Mojave and LogicPro to the fullest for as long as I can. I will not buy another mac until they come out with something comparable to this. There is not one single Apple computer model in production today that I would even remotely consider buying...and this is coming from a guy that loves OSX and hates Windows, but nonetheless, I won't touch the hardware they've been putting out for the past five years. IN order for me to buy another mac, they have to come out with something like my 5,1, only better and no more than $5,000. Or I'd settle for used one for no more than $3000. Barring that, I will either build a hackintosh down the road or regretfully switch to windows. But its entirely possible that in a couple years the hackintosh approach may be severely hampered by these architectural changes. I could always run Mojave on a hackintosh for a bit longer then the 5,1 can last...due to being able to get something with AVX and faster single core performance...ok. But it will only be 2-3 years max before LogicPro requires Catalina and beyond to stay current with it.. so... That's the direction Apple is going..it doesn't look good frankly...but still I will wait and see... I would not head towards Apple from Windows right now, other than experimentation... In a couple years we can talk again.
 
Could depend on your DAW. Some crash if there are too many errors loading. Others just disable the plugins. The big problem might be if it was created in a 32 bit DAW, not so much if you were using 32 bit plugs. This came up in a discussion about using subscription services and probably should apply to Apple users as well with lack of backwards compatibility. Always bounce stems when you finish/are happy with tracks. Its easier to port them to a new DAW/computer if you do. I wish I had done it a long time ago.
Thanks mate.

I still don't understand why loading a project created in a 32-bit DAW might not load into a 64-bit DAW (same one, obviously) in Catalina. AFAIK, it's only the parameter settings of plugins that're stored in the file. Same goes for all other settings of the project; the various algorithms / modules of code that create the DAW's environment and allow it to run are all stored in the (in this case) 64-bit version of the updated app itself.

If I'm missing a potential stumbling block, I'm keen to hear about it 'cause, as I said earlier, it's gonna be a Helluva lot of work to resave all these old unfinished projects. Hardly any have any audio, so no option to just drag those in; they're mostly MIDI driving external ROMplers and whatnot, with FX plugins on mixer channels.

I'm assuming it's just plugins not loading but don't know for sure...
That's what I'm hoping, mate; thank you for responding.

I'd like to think that the author of that article was kinda-peeved and maybe grinding some sort of an axe. Then again, there's always the click-bait factor...
 
You can always try to make a hackintosh for the fun of it, but don't depend on it just yet, in my opinion. Also, if you really want to build a hack its usually important to get a "blessed" motherboard that is known to be easy to do it. But if you have an old computer with nothing else to do and time to spend on it, then why not, you can check out OSX and see what all the fuss is about. If you're reasonably happy on windows, I'd personally stay there right now for your primary computer. In a couple years look at it again. Regarding MacBook's, I would not touch another one of those with a ten foot pole.

For me its really simple, I'm using my 5,1 Mac Pro for as long as i can and will enjoy OSX Mojave and LogicPro to the fullest for as long as I can. I will not buy another mac until they come out with something comparable to this. There is not one single Apple computer model in production today that I would even remotely consider buying...and this is coming from a guy that loves OSX and hates Windows, but nonetheless, I won't touch the hardware they've been putting out for the past five years. IN order for me to buy another mac, they have to come out with something like my 5,1, only better and no more than $5,000. Or I'd settle for used one for no more than $3000. Barring that, I will either build a hackintosh down the road or regretfully switch to windows. But its entirely possible that in a couple years the hackintosh approach may be severely hampered by these architectural changes. I could always run Mojave on a hackintosh for a bit longer then the 5,1 can last...due to being able to get something with AVX and faster single core performance...ok. But it will only be 2-3 years max before LogicPro requires Catalina and beyond to stay current with it.. so... That's the direction Apple is going..it doesn't look good frankly...but still I will wait and see... I would not head towards Apple from Windows right now, other than experimentation... In a couple years we can talk again.
I always enjoy your informative posts on Apple stuff, Dewdman. I will miss them though - it’s time to accept that your future is Windows.. 😉
 
Maybe this is a developer frustration thing? Im happy with Catalina on my office mac and my iPad pro (haven’t upgraded my studio mac just yet due to developers compatibility work). But Catalina is rock solid and performs well.

Can’t imagine being swayed back to Microsoft products anytime soon (ever). Life is too short.
 
There has been some migration of PT users going to Windows.

It seems those who have older software like Live 9 and Finale 25 would have to upgrade software. I guess this is where the real costs will be.

The wonderful thing about audio forums is it removes the delusion Linux users from the debate.
 
Well it used to be PT was much more stable on Macs, but in the last couple years it has been pretty even. PT hardly ever crashes on me now. Part of that is because I have a computer that actually supports it. I think the problem I have when looking at Macs is thinking I need the same specs I would need for a Windows computer. Because they do lock down the system, they can make the OS more efficient. So where 16 GB of RAM is barely sufficient in a Windows computer to run a DAW, it is more usable in a Mac.
 
I've been using Windows since 3.1 and macOS since Panther. I started making music with Cubase and Windows 2000, studied sound engineering with Pro Tools and G5s, but switched to Logic in 2007 and finally to Live around 2011 or so. I have been using macOS for most of my computing life in the past 12 years (except for gaming where macs are crap). I make my living building software and I consider myself an expert macOS user.

A couple of weeks ago I was considering getting a new machine for music production since I wanted to decouple my daw machine from my 5K iMac that I use for work. In part because Apple forces you to upgrade macOS if you want the latest Xcode version and in part because iMacs have shit cooling and are not designed for sustained CPU work like audio.

I didn't want another iMac 5K and it didn't make sense to invest in an iMac Pro for a hobby. The upcoming Mac Pros look phenomenal but again these are way too expensive for a hobby. Since the Apple laptops are a disaster right now my only option was an i7 Mac Mini with an eGPU (the integrated Intel GPU is not enough to run 4K 60Hz without audio stutters) which would put me around $2200. But while the i7 Mini has plenty of CPU power for my use case, thermals are terrible (less performance and more fan noise) and other than the RAM everything is soldered on.

I also didn't want another hackintosh. I built my first one in 2010 and since then I've built about a dozen hackintoshes for me and friends over the years. It's very easy to get 80% of the Mac experience but that last 20% can be a big headache.

I ended up trying Ableton Live on my gaming Windows machine with my Audient audio interface... and to my surpise it was fine. Latency was as good as in my 5K iMac at the same buffer size. Audio was perfectly stable. Performance was a bit lower but that was expected since the CPU on my 5K iMac (i5 7600K) is about 30% faster than the i5 6500 on the gaming machine.

So after much deliberation I decided to build a Ryzen machine for daw and gaming. For about $1500 I will have a machine that will be 3-4 times more powerful than my 5K iMac and 2 times more powerful than the i7 Mac Mini CPU wise (yes you read that right). And since I have complete control of the hardware I've picked silent components and this machine will run cooler at max CPU performance than my iMac 5K runs at idle (about 50ºC). Yep.

Windows is certainly uglier than macOS but for opening a single app or a game it is perfectly fine. In fact I'd argue used like a workstation it's better than macOS. Hardware wise a desktop Windows machine is a much better investment than any mac, even the upcoming Mac Pro. Not because of performance but because you can select/upgrade/customize/replace components with total freedom at a much better price.

People in this thread have argued that people choose Windows because of specs and whatnot but IMO the attractive of Windows is hardware flexibility. As much as I love macOS the Mac hardware situation is simply ridiculous and has been for many years now.

Edit: Ooops I meant to say "3-4 times more powerful than the 5K iMac".
 
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I've been using Windows since 3.1 and macOS since Panther. I started making music with Cubase and Windows 2000, studied sound engineering with Pro Tools and G5s, but switched to Logic in 2007 and finally to Live around 2011 or so. I have been using macOS for most of my computing life in the past 12 years (except for gaming where macs are crap). I make my living building software and I consider myself an expert macOS user.

A couple of weeks ago I was considering getting a new machine for music production since I wanted to decouple my daw machine from my 5K iMac that I use for work. In part because Apple forces you to upgrade macOS if you want the latest Xcode version and in part because iMacs have shit cooling and are not designed for sustained CPU work like audio.

I didn't want another iMac 5K and it didn't make sense to invest in an iMac Pro for a hobby. The upcoming Mac Pros look phenomenal but again these are way too expensive for a hobby. Since the Apple laptops are a disaster right now my only option was an i7 Mac Mini with an eGPU (the integrated Intel GPU is not enough to run 4K 60Hz without audio stutters) which would put me around $2200. But while the i7 Mini has plenty of CPU power for my use case, thermals are terrible (less performance and more fan noise) and other than the RAM everything is soldered on.

I also didn't want another hackintosh. I built my first one in 2010 and since then I've built about a dozen hackintoshes for me and friends over the years. It's very easy to get 80% of the Mac experience but that last 20% can be a big headache.

I ended up trying Ableton Live on my gaming Windows machine with my Audient audio interface... and to my surpise it was fine. Latency was as good as in my 5K iMac at the same buffer size. Audio was perfectly stable. Performance was a bit lower but that was expected since the CPU on my 5K iMac (i5 7600K) is about 30% faster than the i5 6500 on the gaming machine.

So after much deliberation I decided to build a Ryzen machine for daw and gaming. For about $1500 I will have a machine that will be 3-4 times more powerful than the i7 Mac Mini (yes you read that right). And since I have complete control of the hardware I've picked silent components and this machine will run cooler at max CPU performance than my iMac 5K runs at idle (about 50ºC). Yep.

Windows is certainly uglier than macOS but for opening a single app or a game it is perfectly fine. In fact I'd argue used like a workstation it's better than macOS. Hardware wise a desktop Windows machine is a much better investment than any mac, even the upcoming Mac Pro. Not because of performance but because you can select/upgrade/customize/replace components with total freedom at a much better price.

People in this thread have argued that people choose Windows because of specs and whatnot but IMO the attractive of Windows is hardware flexibility. As much as I love macOS the Mac hardware situation is simply ridiculous and has been for many years now.

This is likely why these conversations go nowhere. Windows users are often talking about hardware and cost, and macOS users are talking about software/OS experience. Neither one is really better than the other, as much as its just a matter of preference and priority. Glad you found the system that works for you in the end.
 
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