Mac or PC

[Bijo]

Here is the deal though. The thing that attracted me to the Mac PC was the program they had called Garageband. I am really into editing music and stuff, you could even say it is a hobby of mine. And the PC just lacks those types of hardcore programs. But unless someone can provide me with a good music editing program for the Windows Xp, then I guess my new computer is going to be a PC.

I am not so familiar with Garagaband, but from what I have heard it is not really that good nor deep. If it is about editing and you are not someone "professional" (which could have many meanings by the way) then I would suggest a program like Audition from Adobe. Used to be Cool Edit Pro from Syntrillium before the corporate schmucks bought them out. Very intuitive, little hassle, good program to get things done quickly. Supports VST, DX, VSTi too recently (I think, in 3.0). Its editing mode (which is destructive) is very easy and intuitive to work with, unlike many other programs. I'd say, if you want to **** around with stuff, use Audition, 'cause it's very good for what it is. If you want to get serious, you can still use Audition or get something "bigger" like Cubase or Sonar (7).

[Lemur]

All of this Mac vs. PC talk is making me feel like it's the nineties again ...

[Banquo's Ghost]

As one of the token Mac users here, even I would agree that if you are hardcore gamer, the PC is the way to go. There are some good games that run natively on Macs (Civ IV being my favourite) but not many compared to the Windows environment. Most Macs are not as upgradeable as generic PCs (the Mac Pro certainly is, however).

Parallels, which is the virtualisation software you may have read about, does not really do 3D games well at present. Boot Camp requires you to have a separate partition, and both need a full copy of Windows to run Win games (which is pretty expensive on top). Sadly, Apple's implementation of X11 is rubbish, so despite Mac OSX being Unix based, WINE doesn't run at all well, so you can't use Linux as a free guest OS under Parallels to run games.

Garageband however, is a very sophisticated piece of kit and well worth having if you are into music production. But then Macs have always excelled for creatives.

I love Mac OSX and hate having to work with Windows, but I do miss the range of games. However, the ancient games I like to play often have a Mac port (BG series for example) or will run under Parallels (MTW). I've had M2TW run nicely on my Macbook Pro under Boot Camp, but I chucked that because it was so poor, challenge-wise. So, no loss for me, as I haven't seen a decent strategy game produced for years aside from CIV, and that's on my Mac!

As ever, it's the tool that works best for you, and if you game, there's no contest, as the others have said. Anyway, as a hardcore gamer you won't be going out much, so you won't need the cool looks of a Mac