thinking about switching to Mac from PC

[wedge]

What do you guys think?

The switch to Intel chips will be transparent to users. It'll be as if it'd never happened, at least in the short term. Apple has already developed an excellent PPC emulator for the new Intel chip sets, so you'll be able to run your current software on it. Nothing really momentous -- like being able to run windows on your mac -- will happen for a while, probably. I say, if you have a mac lined up that you want now, get it...

[darjama]

I don't think I'd want to try to run multitrack audio applications on an emulator, even a very good one. Seems like it would take a lot of wasted CPU cycles at the very least.

Really, the new Intel Macs are an unkown quantity, and if you want to keep your music applications up to date (the original poster did mention upgrading was important) it could be an issue if you buy a PPC mac now. If you don't mind the possibility of not being able to obtain updates after 12-18 months, then nevermind.

[JES]

I think this is a lot of fearmongering. Those of us who remember the switch to OSX also remember that support for OS9 audio software was available for a looooooonnnnnnggggggg time. At least for those people who had decent support in the first place. If I'm not mistaken, there are some companies who still support OS9. Anyway, I was very slow to move to X and my wait was rewarded with excellent stability and a rocket-ship of a dual g5 machine (the dual 2.5). I couldn't be happier with my setup and I plan to use it for a very long time before upgrading to a newer computer.

If they do have to start recoding for the Intel chips, it'll be a year or more before all the kinks are worked out on the audio end. In the meantime, a lot of users will hang back on their old machines.

If it were me, I'd buy now or soon and get the advantage of a system that works. In 3-5 years, which is the cycle for most people to replace computers, that will be enough time for the Intel stuff to get figured out. I wouldl NOT buy anything off the first run of Intel Macs if I wanted a stable system for audio and therefore would not wait for the first Intel Macs.

Or, if you're relatively happy with Windows and just sick of crashes (Macs crash too, though I will say that my recording Mac has never crashed while I was recording something), I'd recommend that you invest the money in one of those Windows PCs that are tuned for audio (which, IIRC, are priced comparably to top-end Macs). Then you can benefit from the lack of a learning curve on my OS and software and take a few days to learn to keep my audio house in order.

Honestly, if I were starting out today as a blank slate, I'd have no loyalty to Mac for audio (though I wouldn't use anything else for my work computer). I'd just go with whatever works. That said, I'm a big believer that the studio is like an instrument, and there's no reason to give up some of the knowledge one's acquired on one's instrument if it's not necessary.

--JES

[Ethan Holdtrue]

What do you guys think?

The switch to Intel chips will be transparent to users. It'll be as if it'd never happened, at least in the short term. Apple has already developed an excellent PPC emulator for the new Intel chip sets, so you'll be able to run your current software on it. Nothing really momentous -- like being able to run windows on your mac -- will happen for a while, probably. I say, if you have a mac lined up that you want now, get it...

I dunno dude... Linux has been working on emulators to carry windos software over on to it's platform for a looong time and it's still pretty crappily done.

[wedge]

At Apple's last show-off shindig, they demonstrated an Intel Mac already working, running OSX and other apps. It looked pretty stable and effective to me... Also, rumor from those "in the know" seems to coroborate that it's a very efficient emulator... But we won't know for sure until they ship...

[marcthepirate]

Intel is wonderfull... which is why everyone uses AMD now. Riiiight.... Because Intel is wonderfull is that why you find so many Intel chips in low end computers such as Gateway or Dell?

I don't get your use of "everyone" using AMD processors when the "low end" OEMs you list are two of the largest PC manufacturers. Also, the reason why the "low end" computer manufacturers do not ship AMDs is solely on the fact that: #1 AFAIK, Intel has highest silicon fabrication output in the world, and #2 this allows them to offer huge discounts to high-volume OEMs, but only under the restriction that they only ship PCs with Intel processors. Dell knew that if they shipped just one PC with an AMD chip, Intel would cut their discount, and AMD wouldn't be able to up their production to make Dell a fully-AMD shop. Note: this might change in the near future, but the point still holds: the fact that commodity PC manufacturers typically offer Intel processors has nothing to do with questionable SPEC2000 benchmarks or blatant fanboyism.

For the record, this all started when Intel started production of the Itanium, based on the IA64 architecture, which, Intel has had over 25 years to mull over why the x86 architecture isn't as clean or as powerful as they could design, and IA64 was a really, really good attempt on their part. Unfortunately, Microsoft didn't feel like porting Windows to a new architecture, and decided to use the hack known as x86-64 as the base for their 64-bit OS. For the past few years, Intel has had to play catch-up (to an inferior technology), and that's something they as a company are not used to, but they're adapting quickly.