I have recently had an interesting set of circumstances that pointed me toward a laptop. For this reason I gave Mac a second very in depth look. I am making my own backing tracks for stage as a worship leader at a church. This isn't anything new for churches, but it's a new thing for me. I have used lappys as synths on stage 10 years ago. I wanted something that would let me load heavy samples and run tracks as well.
 
A Macbook set up the way I wanted  would have cost me 2700.00 or more. Probably closer to 3000.00 I looked at all the specs of all the mac computers in great detail. Several things that were deal breakers. Not many Macs are sold new with two hard drives or with more than 8gb of memory. Since i want to load Kontakt and use a daw at the same time I needed that extra memory and hard drive. I don't want to take chances on stage my computer won't be up to the task. They don't tell you that most macs also have 5400 rpm hdds in them.
 
To be fair, you also need to watch the specs of PC laptops. Not all that are said to be high performance really are.
I guess many people who use  macs live might have smaller more uncomplicated mixes running. 
 
Some of the things I really liked about the new Macs are the adaptable strip at the top of the keyboard. You can set that up to control a daw. I like their program called mainstage which lets you build a nice set of synths up. Mainstage is an offshoot of Logic X. I like the way the macs use core audio and core midi. Probably a little more efficient in some ways than some of the windows drivers. A lot of the work you need to do running music on stage is probably initially easier. A PC can be told the same things. Might not be as intuitive. The new screens on the macs are impressive. 
 
In the end though I just couldn't justify it since I was the one spending the money. I ended up with a high performance laptop for a little over 950.00 on sale. You can't touch that in macland. If anyone is interested what I bought here it is. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834268441 The hardware in this laptop beats most Macbooks hands down. This lappy is competition to the Alienware line from Dell. You can spend over 3000.00 for a PC lappy too. I believe I got a powerful computer for very little change. I'll let you know how it all pans out.
 
If you look at these be careful though. The HP OMEN line has various hardware configurations. Many of them, like the one I seen at Besy Buy had only 8gb of memory in it. 

You're lucky you got that laptop when you did. Sold out now. Good luck with it!

Tim ,
 
It sounds like you just scored a very nice PC for a decent price good luck w it .
 
Kenny

Thanks the Maartian and Kenny! 
 
They delivered this thing fast. I didn't pay for 2 day delivery, but it was on my doorstep the very next day.
So far I am impressed. I loaded Ableton for windows on it. Ableton has a very nice set of tutorials to get you started on that program. I'm already up to speed on the the basic operation of it and ready to start building backing tracks on my desktop PC. I build a prog rock Christmas kind of backing track in Mixcraft 8 Pro and played it this past Sunday. No click. I wrote it as a wav to a usb drive and played it through my Juno stage which has a usb stick song player. All went off without a hitch. With the Juno you can switch sounds while the track is playing. 
 
I'm glad I went with Ableton. I might even compose in it, but right now I'm thinking I'll use something else and import the files. Chop them up into sections and fire them off with my controller. Sonar is still wonderful for putting compos together.
 
The computer is still a novelty for me. It feels odd sitting in the living room when I'm so used to being in the studio working on stuff :). So far I love it all round'.
 
I hope you guys had a nice holiday and I'm wishing you all a happy new year!
 
 
 

I was looking at those Mac Mini's in GC.  They have a 1.5ghz CPU. What software runs on that?   

My sister bought me an iPod nano when they first came out, it was great, but soon after I put iTunes on my PC I noticed it was a troublemaker on my computer.  I spent about 2 years having iTunes for this ONE DEVICE on my computer, and finally decided to purge it from my system.  What I found was any music that I bought through Apple was unsalvageable, unless I put a ridiculous amount of work (or money) into transferring it to MP3.  Settings were not very customizable... Apple doesn't like not being in control!  That seems to be the theme with Apple, they take a LOT of control out of the users' hands so you can't make personal modifications to your system.  They may make very high quality gear, but it's never really yours, is it?  You may own the hardware it's on, but the Software is still under the control of the giant corporation.  Windows has kind of gone that way, but ultimately, their OS still has ways that you can make very specific modifications IF YOU KNOW HOW TO.  Your PC is yours to do with as you please.  You want to majorly screw it up, you have that right.

It's the control-thing I have a big problem with when it comes to Apple... not the quality of their stuff.

The only thing I'm finding out so far with Ableton and a PC is that there are more nice hacks for the mac version because that's what everyone uses. Don't ask why because they will just tell you, " that's what everyone uses".
 
I can still do what i need to do with the PC no problems. Ableton lets you load two copies, so I have one copy on my desktop and another copy on the lappy.
 
Ableton is really good at grabbing any audio from anywhere. It even has a sampler if you can't find what you want.
It can then take that audio and do pretty much anything you can imagine, so I guess I'm more hyped at this point about Ableton than I am about the OS or the computer I'm using it on. 

You may try to run MainStage on your PC: https://www.macworld.co.u...s-on-pc-3632329/ 

Or not.
 
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So far it isn't the computer holding me back. Fleer- Mainstage on a PC? Interesting. Cantabile is yet another prospect. The better version of that can play backing tracks.  What it doesn't have though is cues and metronome tracks that change per song.
 
You can change tempo and pitch on the fly with warping in Ableton. Drop any audio onto a midi track and use it. Don't need ARA in it.
 
I'm getting too far off the subject matter though. This was about Mac/PC. I hate to admit it. In this case if I could have found an Apple with the right specs for about the same price I would have probably bought an Apple computer.
This is because Ableton has more support and extras like templates people have made for Apple.
 
A Lot of people have done a lot of work with Apple computers to make the stage/live performance thing work well. It really isn't about the hardware as I see it.It has more to do with the development behind it. At some point everyone just decided Apple was best. Admittedly at one time it WAS better. It can be hard to change views which had some validity in the past.
Now , as I see it, the only advantage is that more people are working on that platform based on the early idea that Apple was better. The difference isn't like night and day though depending on what you plan to use it for. Once set up the difference is probably not discernible. The main difference is in how you made it do what you wanted it to do.
 
Playing devil's advocate here, I wouldn't say Apple is "easy . This is usually the expectation for those who buy Apple. It doesn't always work that way.It mostly does though. You still need to go through whatever process it is you need to things happen. Apple isn't going to write the music for you.