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Open Mic: Do You Use Mac or Windows on Your Production Machine?

Open Mic: Do You Use Mac or Windows on Your Production Machine?

on May 2nd 2012 with 13 comments

Each week we open our mic to readers and lurkers alike to come out of the woodwork and tell us your thoughts and opinion, your experiences and mistakes, what you love and what you hate. We want to hear from you, and here’s your chance.

The choice of operating system can be a hot issue that people have strong opinions about. We’ve asked the question before, but let’s make it official with a poll. Which operating system do you use on your primary production machine?

 
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Adrian is writer and editor for Audiotuts+ and Envato Notes. He has been playing keys and acoustic guitar for three decades, and has six kids. Follow him on Twitter at @envatoaudio.  

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  • Michael

    Strange that iOS wasn’t an OS option. I’m sure it gets more love than Linux.

    • http://adriantry.com Adrian Try
      Author

      Good point, Michael. I wasn’t thinking of mobile devices when I did the poll, but iOS definitely seems to be very popular.

  • Davlet Linares

    Mac OSX! It’s stable, reliable, simple and handy! I’ve been using WIN for many years before, and the only good thing about it is… nothing!

    • http://www.sasanmusic.com Sasan

      I had exact the same experiences!! I absolutely agree 100%!

    • http://www.feelklang.com feelKlang / Steffen Brucker

      YES YES YES !

      masteringstudio-stuttgart.de

    • http://soundcloud.com/chm-1 chm

      I’d say that windows can be pain in the ass with hardware interfaces(asio4all 4 instance), and all the strange things going on around it, but still a lot more of great free vsts on windows than on mac.

      • mmGhsot

        I agree. I started with a win-based system, and it “worked”, but I was constantly spending time debugging drivers, hardware configurations and buffers. I bought an iMac and haven’t looked back. Whether or not it’s better, I don’t know, but out of the box it seems to be more tuned up for audio production. It is true, however…I miss a lot of the awesome free VST’s that I could use on my windows machine.

  • Meecah

    I haven’t had a lot of experience using OS X so I can’t say much about the software. But I’m a firm believer that in capable hands a PC will always be more powerful than a mac for the same amount of money. People get these misconceptions that a Macbook Pro is a better machine because they compare them to $300 PCs. If you pay the same amount of money and know what you’re doing I honestly believe that PC is more powerful and more efficient than a mac. But that’s just the hardware side of things, I’ve never known anything other than Windows and Ubuntu as my computer OS. I’ve toyed with the idea building a Hackintosh, and if I ever bought a mac I would most definitely use Bootcamp to dual boot OS X and Windows.

  • hoosas

    you get alot more for your $$$ with a PC.

    Apple scare me. Pull the wool over our eyes.

    I had one. It broke within 2 years. PC at half the cost and double the power is yet to fail.

  • Anthony

    I paid 500 a year ago for a Sandy Bridge i5 2500k with 8 gigs of ddr3 ram. Running windows 7 and Ableton, I have yet to max out cpu or have significant issues with crashing. With a NI Audio2DJ running audio, I run 5-10 vsts without issue, without even needing to bounce tracks to audio. Big resource hog vsts. Why would I spend money on a Mac? Whenever I have to fix something on my GF’s mac, I want to beat my forehead into the wall. The damn OS is designed for end users with zero interest on modifying anything in the OS beyond installing applications and drivers, which makes it a living hell for anyone who does want to change anything beyond that. Finder fills me with rage everytime I see that ugly little icon. As a former Linux Junkie (before getting into DAWs and being forced to move to a OS with more software options), I want to love the UNIX system below OSX.. But I can’t. With properly developed ASIO drivers, there is no benifit to using coreaudio. So, again.. Why spend more money? I’m not sure I understand why there is so much love for OSX still. Back in the days of xp and Vista, I could understand, it was ugly, inefficient, and crash prone. SInce 7, it seems to me the situation has been remedied.

  • Matt

    What you don’t get with PCs that you do get with Macs is stability. Sure, Macs aren’t 100% perfect, and may cost more for the equivalent PC spec, but a Mac will last much longer, crash less and be far less susceptible to viruses which can kill a PC, no matter how good a spec. I know a lot of people who have bought PCs that have only lasted a couple of years, before having to replace it!

    I work in a school running the music tech and when I started everything was PC-based, and was a complete nightmare! Things went wrong all the time which wasn’t great for student’s work. I managed to get us a Mac for our recording studio and things vastly improved. We then got Macs for the rest of the music department, then Art jumped on board and Media Studies! We’re now an official Apple training centre and so much better for it! Everything just works now (for the most part), which is how it should be! I vow never to buy a PC in my life time ever!

  • http://www.yooronyaa.com juronja

    As far as I see the situation this is just another war, who or what is better! It really comes down to what you prefer or what U are used to! But I have to point out, that in my experience the people who go with mac’s have far less knowledge of computers (software and hardware). In the studio where I work part time I just noticed last week that nobody knows how to install osx or even software, like Ableton. I asked, why don’t you guys install it, and the answer was, “we have to tell this guy who knows and always installs us software”.

    The same guys also had a small dj gig, and there was a debate wha they use mac’s. They all have macs, cause they are better and more stable. The were pointing this out a few times this night. Well they also say Serato is more stable.. so on and so on. What happened on the gig was that they mac and Serato crashed big time, so the guy who still plays on vinyl saved their gig.

    On the other hand I know a guy who runs windows7 in his mastering studio.

    So what’s the fuss.. you use what you prefer to use, the same absurd war is going on with which DAW is better. Each software can be good or it can crash, be it win, mac, linux, or any other.

    I use Windows because I know it inside out, hadn’t had any mayor problems, which would convince me to find a substitute.

    So I say personal preference! Nothing more, nothing less!

  • Lertad

    This is a bit late, but with the announcement of the Microsoft Surface and their accelerometer keyboard which can detect different key stroke weights, surely this is an opportunity to create awesome MIDI Keyboard and music production apps.