charlie2 wrote: ↑Sun May 10, 2020 3:00 pm
One tech guy said theres problems with drivers and other issues w pcs which is why he recommends macs.
Does anyone agree with that,?
The biggest difference, in a philosophical sense, between Macs and Windows, in my opinion and experience, is that Apple tends to force you into their world of both hardware and software, while Windows allows you to mix and match according to your preferences. There are pros and cons of each approach.
On the Apple/Mac side, the basic hardware and software are designed by one company, who basically assume you will use their stuff. They design with a certain set of principles, such as ergonomics, user interface standards, and sometimes limitations, to suit what they believe the best solutions are at any given point in time. This is how you get, for example, early dropping of the diskette drive ("so you want to load that old software, or your old data, that was on one???"), iPhones without the 1/8" headphone jack, etc. While those decisions aren't necessarily bad since they move toward a future vision in the present, they can leave you high and dry and/or force you to do a bigger (i.e. more expensive) upgrade than you wanted to do if you only wanted to get more power in one area. And the lack of backward compatibility can make third party product vendors have to scramble to deal with any incompatibilities caused by the latest changes.
On the Windows/PC side, compatibility with a large universe of third party products, even the basic computers underlying the Windows operating system, is a huge thing. This also means flexibility in choosing your components, along with backward compatibility, are key parts of the philosophy and practices. While you can buy off the shelf PCs, from a huge number of different vendors, you can also often choose your own third party hardware, and, of course, software, from an even huger number of parties, and those third party products have to work across basic PC hardware from an extremely large number of sources. Even on the CPU front, you've got various generations of Intel and AMD CPUs. And, of course, you can get varying levels of quality in hardware and drivers, and some of the vendors will either go out of business or stop supporting older hardware products when really major changes in driver models emerge. This can be a problem if you're choosing your own components, rather than relying on someone who either makes an off-the-shelf system designed for your needs or who really knows what they're doing for building custom systems.
As I mentioned in my earlier response, I've been a PC guy. I've used lots of generations of PCs over the year, having built my second PC (with the help of someone who'd built similar systems before) back in the days of the 8086 CPU, used some off the shelf PCs for music making at some points (including one that was an absolute lemon that stumped Korg, for whom I was beta testing an audio interface at the time), though for a few decades now I've exclusively used PCs I've built myself for making music. When I do an upgrade, it is often the case that lots of components from an earlier system end up making their way to my new system because I only have to replace the things I want to upgrade in most cases. And I can do things like pick a mid-tower case designed expressly to run very quiet (nice to have in a home studio where you're recording vocals in the same room with the computer), whatever motherboard and CPU combination puts me at that "knee" in the price/performance curve when I'm building my latest computer, whichever audio interface suits my needs, my choices of monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and so on. This typically results in a much more capable system than I'd get for anywhere near the same price in Mac-land, and one that lasts a good long time, and costs less to maintain since only what is needed gets added or replaced. For example, I built my current PC late in 2014, and it's still plenty powerful for running all the latest DAWs, virtual instruments, and plugins. I might have to add yet another multi-terabyte disk at some point in the not-too-distant future, though, as the 2 TB drive meant to primarily be for sample libraries (but also housing my photo library, among a few other things) is down to about 300 GB of free space. But I can just add another drive (or a few additional drives) because I've got plenty of space in my cabinet.
The key with drivers and stability is really to pick quality products from quality companies that have been around for a while, and who aren't trying to sell you upgraded hardware every couple of years. Those that are heavily consumer-focused, especially printer companies, where they bank on it being cheap to replace the printer and selling you their latest ink, will be the key areas where driver issues are encountered. I've rarely had any driver issues with music/audio-oriented products.
charlie2 wrote: ↑Sun May 10, 2020 3:00 pm
Not only am I running the latest ver of pt but I'm concerned bout the external hard drives I have from my old pc.
I have a glyph drive which holds my pt files plus around 7 more other drives which also holds them plus finale files. They're mostly seagates w a buffalo and my book too.
My MAIN WORRY is not being able to transfer all these files to a mac.
Can you tell what my chances are in transferring my files to mac? That's my MAIN concern!
I'd check the manufacturer's site for specs on the specific models of drives you are using to see whether they indicate compatibility with Mac, including the version of OS X you'll be using. Also, there may be some file system format considerations. PC file system recommendations (e.g. FAT, NTFS, etc.) have changed over the years, too, so beyond just making sure the drive itself is supported in OS X (and at the Mac hardware level), you may need to consider whether OS X can read the specific format you're using. Even if it doesn't there might be some third party alternatives for importing files. Large removable hard drives are pretty cheap these days, though, so probably the worst case is doing a one-time consolidation (still on your PC) of files from old drives onto a new drive that you know will be supported and is using a format that is acceptable on the Mac side.
Of course, beyond the possibility of reading the files themselves, there will be the question as to whether the Mac application software you are using can read all the older file formats. That could be true even on PCs (e.g. I don't have any current applications that can read my old Passport Encore notation files -- an earlier version of Finale Allegro could, but not current Finale -- and my MasterTracks Pro Audio files are now useless; on the other hand, current Cakewalk by BandLab can still read files from way back at Cakewalk Pro Audio 9, and even earlier, though I only started using Cakewalk at CWPA9).
If you have specific concerns, such as Pro Tools files, you'll probably be best off contacting the application developer whose file formats you are concerned about. But I'd strongly suggest keeping your PC around until you're positive you've been able to migrate everything you care about migrating and decide what, if anything, you are willing to just risk losing.
Rick
