Musicians and Macs: Perfect together

Milkfilk, it wasn't your imagination on the USB driver. And that's what this article misses entirely -- it's not aesthetics that have kept Windows XP from catching on as a music OS; it's driver issues. Windows USB driver support has some serious issues, one being that it doesn't recognize the same MIDI or audio device if you happen to switch from one USB port to another. (There are even rarer instances where the problem will happen on the *same* port. And don't get me started on the related 10 registry entry issue.) I know plenty of die-hard Windows musicians, and I'm totally dual-platform in my own work, but then, most musicians I know aren't "snobs" as this article suggests -- don't know who they're talking to.

If Microsoft can't address these driver issues, that reason alone will keep people on the Mac for music.

The article rather sucked - it made out all Mac musicians to be shallow, non-technical types who chose it for the pretty. There are plenty of solid technical reasons to use Macs for music - including having only one driver standard, that is high enough quality for professional work, having low latency quality audio and midi software on every mac, and, of course, because Macs are the only things that run Logic these days.

Let's get specific.

How about 10.4 lets you combine sound cards with aggregate devices. Two line-ins = happy. Windows can't even dream of doing something like that without some non-free mixing app. I have three sound cards in my PC and it makes me red in the face that I can only use one at a time.

When I plugged in my Virus TI, OSX labeled it Virus TI as a midi instrument (no driver). An obscure german keyboard! When I plug it into XP the driver explicitly says "only on Windows do you have to plug it into the same exact USB port otherwise you'll have to click this New Device! Continue Installation? dialog." I'll admit that this "same usb port" weirdness is new to me on Windows, it might just be my synth's driver.

How about some more practical reasons that they're better for musician:

- The Apple Remote can be used to control patch programs on stage without having to dick around with the keyboard. This is pretty huge if you have an instrument strapped to you body.

- Lack of ad/mal-ware, virii, and windows registry rot make Macs easier to maintain for musicians who (in my experience) tend to not be computer power users.

I'm sure I could think of a few more that are better than "Macs look cool, and since musicians are cool they like cool stuff".

More Drummer Jokes (I love them because I'm a drummer)
http://gimp137.tripod.com/myfun.com/id18.html
http://www.users.bigpond.com/prodigalson/drummer.htm
http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/jokes/#percussion

what do you call a drummer without a girlfriend?



Homeless!!!

I, by the way, am a drummer. And a Pollock!!

I am also a full-time musician. I use macs because of the ease of use. Many of the same (or similar) programs are also available for PC, but for some reason their functionality is vastly inferior. Finale, for example works great on the mac and just sucks the big one on pc.

As a musician and a long time Mac user, I can agree with most of the stuff he's saying. The main reason I use one is because it works perfectly, so I can focus my computer time on creating stuff rather than troubleshooting. And even though I'll admit that all of my Macs are sexy (except maybe the 8100 in the closet) I wouldn't admit it to other people because then they'd just call me a "typical Mac user." Totally lame.

Fishes,
narco.