I really used to like Apple. Ten years ago they did so many things right. CoreAudio was one such thing. Never was it easier to use audio interfaces, OSX was once designed especially to the needs of professional musicians. There was Garageband, there was Logic Pro (the mighty 7.2 version) and there were many other things i really liked so in 2008 i switched from Windows XP to Apple.
It took a while but then i embraced the Mac OS and got my first experiences with a UNIX system. I liked that every thing Apple did at that time just made sense and was functional. Macbooks just looked nice and when i first saw the inside of a Mac Pro the clean design blew me away.

But times they are changing. Now every hipster has the iphone – ipad – Macbook combination for no purpose and Apple seems to destroy every single reason i once liked them. The upgrade philosophy is a joke, the prices way to high. Yes, i am a longterm user. My Mac Pro is from around 2009 or 2010. This thing is still a beast but i can’t run the actual Mac OS on it any more so i don’t have access to new software.

So for some time now i’m looking for a change and there are some different ways to go.

    1. Linux

My every day system ist running ubuntu studio. So in theory i already have an alternative. And yes, things look really promising in the Linuxworld. We have some DAWs, we have some editors, we have some plugins. You can do a full production with open-source software which is really awesome.
But still there are some things, that won’t let me feel good about the full Linux switch:
– Ardour, the Pro Tools of Linux has no full latency compensation yet. I do a good amount of bus-treatment in my mixes so i have a problem here. I could do a work around and bounce the bus groups and work with them as new tracks, but i won’t have full access to every parameter at any time this way. Possible but not a good workflow.
– Though companies like Focusrite for example do a remarkable job and make their audio interfaces Linux-ready, driver support is still a struggle.
– The plug-in situation is not better. There are some very good plug-ins like the Calf-bundle but the big names in the industry like Waves still don’t support Linux.

I will test, if i can do some good mixes within linux but i think i need a system that is more supported by the industry.

    2. Windows

I don’t want to go back to bloody windows. I was happy not to have to struggle with virus protection and endless driver installations within my unix systems. But i miss the VST comunity. I now have a second harddrive that runs Win10. Additionally i found software that helps minimizing the data collection and i just do my mixing there. Unfortunately Ardour for Windows has some issues yet (the developers themselves say, that Ardour for Windows is experimental, so no blaming here!) so i’ll need a new DAW. For what i do, Pro Tools seems to be the choice and that means money to be spend.

    3. Apple

Yes, i could just upgrade to a new Mac but as mentioned above, Apple is not an option any more due to it’s product policy. I just don’t have enough money to buy a new machine every other week.

For now i’ll test if i can go with Linux and prepare a switch to Windows. Time will tell.