Apple Boot Camp - Great for Fence-Sitters

I realize there is a significant amount of Mac disdain in this community, and why not? They are overpriced, elitist-targeted, status-driven, whatever, whatever.

BUT....For someone who is just getting into digital recording, and who looks at Sonar, then looks at Logic, then looks at Cubase, then looks at DP, the idea of not having to choose based on hardware is really intriguing.

Sure you will pay for this priviledge. But in the long run, maybe you will save. In my case, I'm running Sonar 4 Home Studio XL to "learn" the ins and outs of digital recording. If I wanted to switch to DP or Logic, I'd have to abandon Sonar completely. Now I don't have to. I grab a Mac Mini, buy a copy of XP (that's one of the extra costs involved), and dual-boot the machine. If (when) Sonar 6 comes out, and it looks like it blows away DP5, I'm covered. If (when) Logic 8 comes out and looks to blow everyone else away, I'm covered.

Another scenario - being involved with other producers who use Sonar, OR DP, OR Logic...I'm covered, as long as I'm willing to learn the software. Seems like a prudent move to me. Especially when the big intel-mac desktops come out. Spend a little more now, but a person who wanted to, and had the time, money and patience, could become an expert at a number of major DAW platforms - i.e. Sonar, AND DP, AND Logic, AND Cubase.

Not to mention, the ability to run Project 5 and DP, for example, on the same machine (transferring the work, of course, is another story).

Mac-bashing aside, I think this Boot Camp idea is a major coup for Apple, and could convince this PC loyalist to consider buying Mac hardware.

Yeah, forgot about Pro-Tools M-Powered. Of course it runs on either Mac or PC, but theoretically you could run Sonar 5 and Pro Tools HD on the same machine, just not at the same time. That would be amazing compatibility on one machine.

Quote from movie "Tommy Boy"..."I'm picking up your sarcasm".

Personally, I wouldn't buy a Mac for the purpose of dual-booting between media apps. I've always had a Mac for Mac apps, and a PC for Windows apps, and it's not bothered me a bit...
For me, the primary thing is that I can use them at the same time this way... on two separate machines.

However, my wife does translation for various clients who use (religiously) one or the other. This has always led to a 4 machine household + my laptop. Kind of goofy...

The possibility of getting her a dual-use machine is indeed a fascinating one...

If they'd just put a two-button mouse on the laptops I'd seriously think about getting one to replace my laptop as well.
Still, I'll never get rid of my need to build a custom DAW every couple of years (and the time is approaching).

But... that would make this a 3 computer house, which I'd definitely prefer.

Been running Cakewalk, Sony, and Macromedia products for almost a week now on my MacBook Pro without any major hitches. If you use the internal sound card for Sonar, you'll need to use 32-bit MME drivers to avoid "audio device is in use" errors.

MacINTEL?
MACrosoft?
MacWINtosh?

Wonder what I should call it?

I guess the best thing to call it is a savings of about $3000 in Mac software.

ORIGINAL: Muziekschuur

You could add a firewire audio device. Like an RME, M-audio or Presonus one.


Muziekschuur

Do they work?

ORIGINAL: ooblecaboodle

of course, you can always run osx on a standard pc....

Are we sure about this? Part of the bit that Boot Camp does is give Windows the necessary drivers for the controllers and cards onboard...
I was thinking last night that I'd much rather just run Mac OS X on my PC than buy a Mac to run Windows on, but currently I think we would be a hindered on quite a few hardware configurations, simply because OS X doesn't have any drivers for them.

Is this not correct?

I'm also a little bit curious about the Unix kernel on OS X for Intel being compiled specifically for Core processors. Most Unix distros (and Linux) come with a default 386 kernel (when on Intel) to get you started and running (and then you can get or compile a more appropriate one), but I don't know about Macs version... don't see why they'd have a reason to throw in a default kernel for an OS that's designed to run on a specific processor (the Core processors).

I may be totally wrong about this, of course. I haven't tried doing it, and I see that some people are running the Intel version of Tiger on PC laptops.
Are these using the Core processors?

And then, of course, there are the kernel modules...

In any case, I'd definitely be up for buying a 600 dollar Dell laptop, and running Vista, OS X, and Linux on it... that WOULD be sweet.

Are we sure about this?

100% certain.