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Scott Dorsey Scott Dorsey is offline
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Default Keep the Mac or eBay it?

John Williamson wrote:

Apple software is based on a *nix kernel. That's about as close as it
gets to being a *nix system, as the UI and other stuff is pure Apple.
The hardware is now mostly Intel based, so you can, in theory, use any
x86 compatible operating system.


It's kind of the opposite. Internally, it's based on the Mach microkernel
which isn't really very Unixlike at all but which offers a Unixlike API.
What you get with the Apple is the Unix UI, that is to say a real command
line shell and the Software Tools environment.

Apple has a cheesy GUI on top of this, but you don't have to use the GUI
for anything other than running your DAW itself. You can stay on the command
line like a normal computer.

Now.. Apple has chosen to do some stuff, like managing USB devices, very
differently than other Unix dialects. If you are used to how NetBSD
or Linux handle audio streams, OSX does them all differently.

If what you want is a seamless production environment, take the hit to
your wallet and get Protools. It "just works", and projects can be
worked on in just about any studio or mastering suite that uses it.


Protools has -finally- got to the point of just working with Protools 7.
Before that, you couldn't expect to get out the same data you put in if
you just loaded a file and didn't edit it but saved it. But the bloat
set in long before then. Still, we use Protools because that is what
the customers want.

Alternatively, many people use the Adobe suite, where the audio and
video tools work very well together. It is now "Software As A Service",
though, so unless you keep subscribing, it stops working.


And that is a catastrophic problem if your computer is kept completely
isolated, which any DAW should be.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."