Hunt

We just learned last night that my son's summer composition program suggests that they bring a laptop with Sibelius, so this just moved up to the top of the list for us. I think that means I won't have time to really look at the Rain computers after all.

BEK

Hartt is requiring a Mac laptop for my daughter, and when we visited Northwestern all the students we saw were using Macs.

SJTH

Berklee also requires students to have a Mac--and loads them with recording/mixing software

BassDad

cjm,

If you are in the market for a portable recorder, I suggest that in addition to the Edirol R-09 that you also look at the Zoom H2 and the M-Audio MicroTrackII. They are similar units with varying plusses and minuses at three different price points.

Beethoven's 10th

I strongly recommend getting a Mac over a PC.

I make my living with music and use both a Mac and a PC. I only use the PC to run GIGA Studio, but have imported most of the best GIGA sounds into the EXS-24 for Logic (Mac) to avoid the PC as much as possible. I find the PC much more cumbersome and more likely to crash than the Mac. I have 2 kids in music. They each use Macs. (One of them is at Oberlin where it must be 10 to 1 in favor of Macs.) Almost every professional musician, composer, engineer, etc. I work with uses Macs. They are much more reliable than PCs and are not as susceptible to viruses. Even programs that have both PC and Mac versions run better on the Mac, especially Pro Tools, which is the industry standard for recording and editing music. The great majority of music schools use Macs.

That being said, although almost every music professional I know uses Macs, I work with an extremely successful, world-class musician who has always used a PC. Several young (25-35) musicians use PCs because Macs used to be so much more expensive, so when they went to college they bought PCs. It's just, having used both for music, my humble opinion that the Mac is the better choice, and very competitive price-wise, especially with iLife, iSight, and all the other programs and features standard with the Mac operating system. Also, don't forget that ever since the Mac switched to Intel processors, it can run Windows and all of the PC programs. So, you can have your cake and eat it, too.

One last comment. No matter which system you choose, for college you should get a laptop. Here is a good explanation of why Mac laptops have become so popular lately:

Macworld | The new rules for buying a Mac

don9992

PCs handle music just fine. Macs are still the odd ducks of the computer world for all real world applications and they cost way too much for what you get. I can't imagine why anyone would buy a Mac.

thumper1

Another Mac music user here. DS did a ton of research before he bought his Mac. He knows music students all over the country. He had been using a PC. He chose the Mac and has been extremely happy with it. don9992....there are folks in the real world who are using Macs.

neumes

Real-life Mac user here, too. We are a 3-Mac family and the fourth member--our Vocal Performance major--is converting to Mac for his graduation present, his choice. No coercion on our part, honest. He wanted a PC for games back in 9th grade but he doesn't do games anymore, at least not the huge power/brain sucking games like WOW, just low-grade games like Minesweeper... The rest of us are into architecture/graphics/writing/photography/music--recording, listening, composing. A publisher I work with (400-person company) uses ALL Macs for the design department and PCs for wordsmiths. My Mac laptop is four years and counting. It may have cost more than a PC laptop, but I have NEVER have had any problem with it, seriously. It's been dropped and fallen on (in its case, admittedly) and I use it all the time, take it with me everywhere. A real workhorse. (Powerbook G4)

Beethoven's 10th

My daughter is a reporter for a major newspaper with several thousand employees and they use Macs exclusively.

Berklee College of Music won't give you a choice--you must use a Mac, and if you don't already own one powerful enough, they will add the cost to your tuition. They realize how important Macs are in the professional music world. This is from their website (the last sentence says it all):

Why is a computer required, and why an Apple Macintosh?

For over a half a century, Berklee College of Music has been committed to preparing our students for the musical, technological, and business necessities of the world in which they will enter. It has become increasingly clear that to continue this commitment, Berklee students must be well versed in computer technology, and specifically, music technology.

Berklee uses Apple Macintosh computers throughout our curriculum because much of the software that supports our curriculum runs exclusively on the Macintosh platform. In addition, we have found that students who have experience working on the Macintosh platform at Berklee are better prepared when they enter the music profession, where the Macintosh platform and the same software used in our coursework are prevalent and vital tools.

don9992

The problem is that people who use Macs aren't well-versed in computer technology. Computers are, essentially, appliances to them. I say this based on over 18 years in desktop and network administration. In business, the only departments that normally use Macs are advertising and even then it's normally because they're the only computers the users have ever touched. There is nothing a Mac will do that a PC can't for a fraction of the cost.

Beethoven's 10th

To don: You say "There is nothing a Mac will do that a PC can't for a fraction of the cost."

Well, I don't think a PC can run a program that is ONLY written for a Mac.

For example, the vast majority of film composers use one of two programs for writing and sequencing: Digital Performer or Logic. Both programs are ONLY available for the Mac. If you are an aspiring composer and are trying to break into this business, you'd better know both of these programs. If you want to get started as a composer's assistant, programmer, ghost writer, arranger, orchestrator, or do orchestral mock-ups, etc. you must work on the same program as the composer. It doesn't matter that there are good sequencing programs for the PC like Sonar.

So stop being so narrow minded. When Tascam introduced the GigaStudio, it was unique and it ONLY worked on a PC. So I bought a PC just to run that program. It still only works on a PC, although Tascam just announced a GigaStudio plug-in for both PC and Mac. The point being, your argument is irrelevant, because there are too many programs that are only written for the Mac. And, as I mentioned a few posts ago, the Intel based Macs can run Windows, but PCs can't run the Mac operating system.

I'm not disputing your claim about the predominance of PCs in the business world. The same is true in the medical world, and many of the sciences. But this thread is specifically about which computer is better for a music major. I don't think your arguments are very compelling for a music major.

BassDad

I don't want to fan the flames of a religious war here, but I think the answer lies somewhere between the positions taken by don9992 and Beethoven's 10th. There are certainly niche markets like film composing where the Mac has such an overwhelming market share that it would be foolish for a student not to go that way. Likewise, if almost all of the music students at the school that you will attend are using one type of machine, it makes a lot of sense to go with the flow. However, not all schools are that polarized.

For the typical instrumental or vocal performance major who maybe wants to learn to do a little recording and editing, typset a few pages of music for a theory class, sequence some simple MIDI files and perform similar basic tasks, there are solutions on both platforms that are more than adequate. Life may be very different for composition or music tech majors, where the Mac may well turn out to be the platform of choice.

Computers tend to need replacement every four years or so and switching from PC to Mac or vice versa is not really that hard. Even if the mouse clicks and keyboard shortcuts may differ from one program to another, the basic concepts of how to do a good splice, how to lay out notes on a page to make life easy for the performers and how to produce a tight yet not mechanical-sounding sequence remain the same regardless of the tools used. We have a couple of each platform in the house with quite a variety of software and, while some of us are marginally more productive on one than the other, we can all get the job done on either. Some programs are definitely better than others for certain tasks and they tend to get used regardless of what hardware they happen to be running on.

thumper1

>>The problem is that people who use Macs aren't well-versed in computer technology.>>

I'm not wishing to flame the fire either...but I'm not well versed in the mechanics of my car either. BUT I still own and drive one. The computer for most people is an appliance. The platform means little...it's the programs themselves that matter. As long as your computer runs what YOU want it to do and YOU are comfortable with its use...it doesn't matter if it's a MAC or a PC. We have both in this house.

tango14

BassDad,

Thanks for reinserting a little calm. Let's face it. To say a PC or a Mac is "better" than the other really doesn't advance the discussion. Most tasks can be performed on either machine, and it is a matter of what the user is familiar with, what kind of support they have at work/school, and perhaps a few niche markets like you mention.

H & I did our dissertations on a mainframe computer at a major university in the days before PCs when you had to type in every single bit of code. We've had PCs and laptops for more than 20 years and have always been able to do anything we wanted on them from basic stuff like wordprocessing to graphics to the heavy duty calculations H does to editing CDs/DVDs of S's performances.

I avoid Macs if I possibly can and wouldn't buy one simply because I find nothing about them intuitive and have difficulty performing the most basic functions. However, I have friends who use them exclusively and feel similarly about a PC.

BTW our PCs have lasted an average of over 4 1/2 yrs, and I've only ever had one hard drive failure (at work), although I have needed to replace a monitor and lost a couple of laptop screens before the machine itself needed replacing. However, I do scan for viruses/spyware and clean/defrag religiously.

The questions that have been suggested here are great: (1) what is it going to be used for; (2) what kind of budget do you have; and (3) what is the environment at the school--what support is provided? Beyond that, to each his own!

Hunt

Don't forget: what software do you already have? The fact that we already have Sonar and Sibelius (plus other stuff) for PC is pushing us toward a PC. I know we could get Bootcamp and Windows, but that would drive the price up even more.