An old man frustrated by modern technology.....

I share your frustration GoH. As an aging soon to be old man myself, I'm desperately trying not to get set in my ways in regards to anything. At the moment I save any and all hardware and OSes I have licenses for and hope for the best. I really don't like anything Win8+ and as for Apple hardware, it hasn't been interesting to me since the early 2000s. Why pay a lot of cash on something that is increasingly less user friendly when just about anything else would get the job done for far less?

 

Producing music, you say? Yeah, Mac Os still have some very nice software there.

Like that uberawesome sequencer called Numerology :C

 

A friend of mine is a musician and DJ, the kind whom actually lives quite well from his music. He ordered a custom built very powerful PC buying the best parts money could buy. In the end, he is always working on his tracks using his MacBook Pro. He basically said to me: "I know I bought this machine, but, damn, why should I bury myself in my studio while I can do the exact same thing on my couch with my family around?"

 

I'm not THAT old only 35 but in terms of marketing and focus groups I'm no longer trendy and thus ANCIENT. If I'm old enough to remember what typing "Dir" in DOS is I'm too old for these tech companies to cater to.
Even then some of the design decisions made by these companies are just boneheaded. Look at that surface pro PC thingy...which you just know is a dry run to make XBOX a PC brand rather than a console so investors the only 35+ plus people these tech companies care about pleasing get their wish.

Who thought that the tiles in Windows 8 desktop was a good idea?

And the price of these trendy divices....clearly aimed at Trust fund kiddies.

Yeah I want to produce Hip hop instrumentals, maybe even lay some bars down myself. I also have a love of house music and can never find anything with the sound I want, might as well give it a shot myself. That's why I was aiming to get a Mac but something I was planning to make music on, something I may not stick with Macs were just too expensive. At least with a Beefy laptop if all else fails, I can write papers for my Psych classes and play Indie games off steam and any Japanese Doujin games I can get my hands on if the music thing doesn't work out.

 

We're nearly the same age, I'll be 35 in four months. And you hit the nail on the head, Apple is all about style over substance nowadays. It's a shame.

 

iphones and ipads are crap.
The iPad mini I use is at times unresponsive and sometimes after an update it bottle necks and freezes.
iPhones are just plan unresponsive no matter what.

It amazes me that people still support apple. But I guess sheep will follow the Shepard.

Thing with computers now though while the OSes are complete shit now, the Hardware is amazing. All the Chipmakers stepped up their game.

 

Well, if you manage to find a mid-2012 MacBook Pro (not retina), they aren't expensive, very reliable, you can upgrade RAM and put a SSD in for the same price than a PC (and even do it yourself, it is easy as hell), then you get Logic for a start and then all major music apps you would need after.
Advantage : these machines resell for high value and you always find parts to repair if needed. You can also install Windows, both through virtualisation or directly just like a regular PC. Same goes for Linux or FreeBSD. It's an universal, reliable, durable and powerful enough machine.

I wouldn't dare to go the PC route with a laptop. Only PC I go with are towers I build myself. But for laptops, too much problems, not enough reliability and optimisation, no resale value at all, that's just a loss of money.

 

I have had a MacBook pro through work, never touched a MAC before and I have been pleasantly surprised by how well they work.
Theirs a few niggles to get used to, I fooking hate gesture controls but am starting to come round to them, once you know them it does make working quicker.
However the price they paid for my MacBook Pro was £2,000+ - that's a lot of money for a laptop in my opinion

Would i buy one...............hell no
Would i use one...............yes, the one ive had for 7 months works great

I have alot more problems using Windows (used to be head of tech support so I know my way around a PC) and all the little things that can go wrong in the background, on windows once something goes wrong, other things tend to follow and eventually you end up re-installing the O.S. not even had the slightest hint that anything has got confused on the MAC and i have used it as my main machine for a while now.

All this - you cant do anything on a MAC? really? what the hell are you trying to do, on mine I have done:

Audio work
Video Editing
Standard office stuff (MS Office etc.)
Games + Emulators
Adobe Creative Cloud
Usenet + Torrent downloading
Accessing my home servers to transfer data etc.
Plus tons of other stuff I cant even remember, if I could do it on a PC then I have found I can do it on a MAC.
Sometimes things can be done easier, sometimes now but thats the same as I found with Windows.
Virtual Machines
Boot Camp (if something 100% cant be done on a MAC then this will solve that, simple dual boot - also works perfectly)

I quite like having both now

 

This was my initial reaction as well.

But after thinking on it for a while, I realised that I hadn't used a USB port on my laptop for a few years. Between wifi, bluetooth, Google Drive, AirPlay, and all that kind of stuff, the idea of ports being "ESSENTIAL" is something I'm starting to re-evaluate. At worst they're probably moved to the category of "handy to have, but could live without" in my mind. Gaming desktop is a different story, but it's a different beast with different goals and requirements, not even worth comparing.

My last two phones were NEVER connected to a computer. The only thing their USB ports were used for was charging. Honest to goodness.

And maybe this isn't the usage pattern of a compulsive tweaker (gotta root lol need those multiple battery gauges and clocks lolol), but I don't think it's far off the mark for a lot of people.

YMMV of course.

 

I'd build a PC IF I HAD ROOM which I don't the area I'd put a desk is already cluttered and I'm not using my TV as a monitor.
I have thought of buying used Macs since they're cheaper, I still might, but I'm not sure.

Considering I'm going to DJ with this thing and I'll be buying sequencers at some point where am I going to plug them in?

 

I don't understand the hate Linux gets here.

If you don't wanna game, just install Ubuntu or mint, and with Chrome/Firefox, Libreoffice and Thunderbird, you can do 99% of what people do with Macs or Windows PCs anyways, plus some geek stuff.

VM/dual boot Windows and you can game too...

This is ASSEMBLERgames, not PHPgames. We should all be little geek power users.

 

I'm not opposed to Linux, I just don't know if it suits my needs.

 

You could buy a $500 Panasonic Toughbook from a business liquidation lot and turn it into a Hackintosh / tri-boot Windows, OS X, and Linux off of an SSD.

 

It probably does really.

 

Yes and no. I'm pretty fine with my 3rd gen iPad from 2012 but i never updated his iOS further than to 7. So i can't use newest apps but, well, i already have tons of apps that work on it, so i decided to use what i can instead of updating it which will turn it into slow piece of s***t because Apple always never optimize newest OS releases for old hardware, be it tablets/phones or Macs. Actually, it's music making related apps that made me ipad user (and - I say it - most of them are created either by enthusiasts or by well known companies like Moog; so yep i dont cate about Logic whatever or Garage ever or else from Apple meh), at least around that time, as i got tired of DAWs on PC with endless VSTs. But sorry that's not for this thread, considering that your Mini nearly doesnt work and that you're debating between Windows/Linux/Mac OS/Hacintosh/Whatever in first place.

As for music on Linux, i only know that people use there Pure Data, but i doubt it would be useful for anything listenable.

 

I rolled my eyes

http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13451832/microsoft-apple-hardware-videos-comparison

 

That surface studio looks amazing, now that to me seems like something new and not just another ipad or laptop

 

Don't support Levono and their shitty practices, even if they make good laptops. If you want top quality but don't want to pay Apple, look at the Dell XPS range.

 

XPS used to have best displays (not only nice IPS, but also wide color range, wider then macbook pro etc.), not sure if they still do now.

 

IMO the XPS range is the best high end laptops out there behind Apples.