Mac OSX Mavericks

wibble

Clarky said:

ICBM said:

I'd stay where you are until you have to move - Snow Leopard was a very good OS. Lion was a mess - there were still unresolved issues right up to the last update - but Mountain Lion seems rock-solid for me, and I don't think I need any of the new features yet since I'm on a desktop which is only a couple of years old and won't need replacing soon.

If your machine can't run Mountain Lion I'd probably avoid Lion. I am definitely interested in any good feedback on Mavericks though, since I might want to get a new laptop at some point.

I'm on Mountain right now...

more than once I've considered going back to Snow

?

digitalscream

OK, I'm only posting this to help anybody make the decision if they haven't already moved across...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/28/apples_massive_software_update_fail/

It seems that iWork doesn't do a lot any more...Apple are possibly the only company I know of who can upgrade their software by removing features...

stonevibe

Sorry but Logic hasn't really been worth using professionally in years and I'll include the part when Emagic were charging for each plugin separately in that statement as well (£99 for ES-1, £349 for EXS24 etc) and it was ropey as hell in terms of audio stability back then. It was really only its MIDI engine and sync capabilities that made it decent alternative to Cubase.

Logic is a great bit of software for getting a quick mix together as it has a relatively decent audio mixing environment, but it is really a consumer product these days in terms of the way it is sold and supported.

I personally do not know any professional studios that would use it in a real world recoding environment,

But then I spent about five years of my life setting up and selling Pro Tools rigs for a living to most of the major recording studios in and around London before I worked for my current employer. Granted this was getting on for 10 years ago. 

For me Logic is what it is, 

A cheap but usable recoding package for the home user / semi-pro. 

It has never been perfect and I include the days of Notator in this statement (though I do actually miss its MIDI stability some days).

I have a feeling that Reaper is probably the best low cost DAW at the moment with Logic a close (ish) second.

digitalscream

stonevibe said:

I have a feeling that Reaper is probably the best low cost DAW at the moment with Logic a close (ish) second.

For what it's worth, our drummer's a Logic guy. We needed to render the stems from a MIDI drum track he'd put together in Logic, and it was a ballaching process involving creating a whole ton of extra tracks, aux sends etc. He was astounded when I did the same thing with a few clicks in Reaper on my machine, and utterly gobsmacked when I told him a) that it's an 8MB download, and b) it costs £36-ish.

Clarky

ICBM - I picked up on your comment as to how good Snow Leopard was

not so long ago I upgraded to Mountain Lion..

thing is, I seem to prefer Snow Leopard..

my mac seems to be faster / better performing on Snow Leopard

ICBM

Clarky said:

ICBM - I picked up on your comment as to how good Snow Leopard was

not so long ago I upgraded to Mountain Lion..

thing is, I seem to prefer Snow Leopard..

my mac seems to be faster / better performing on Snow Leopard

Do you have a way of going back? You'll most likely need a full Time Machine restore. Not without its hazards and annoyances… I'd be inclined to make TWO backups first, just in case (hard drives have been known to fail at the worst possible moment) and you'll lose anything you've done since then, unless you also back those documents etc up separately and then reload them after the restore. I think - experts may correct me! That's what I did when I reverted to an earlier version of Lion, anyway. Took most of a day but it was worth it to have the whole thing running right again. You will have a real problem if you've upgraded your iPhoto library I think - the old version won't open it.

There will come a point where some stuff you want won't run under Snow Leopard too. I have that problem with my two old pre-Intel machines which I've upgraded as far as I can - Leopard - but they just won't run a lot of current stuff properly, including most web video. It can only be a matter of time before they become fairly useless even though one (eMac, ten years old now!) is a very well-made machine and runs beautifully.

Clarky

good points....

I was simply thinking of installing Snow on an external drive..

make sure everything work, then copy that onto my main drive..

hmmmm.... I need to give this some serious thought..

ICBM

I'm definitely sticking with Mountain Lion for now. It seems stable and there's nothing I need Mavericks for yet. I use Garageband and Mail so I'd be concerned about issues with those, and although I don't use iWork (I use MS Office), the comments in the link above reinforce what I'd heard about it being a bit of a Windows 8 For Mac experience.

It does piss me off when they just change stuff without trailing it or giving you the option - even just the latest version of Safari where they changed the background from black to grey without any means to set it as a preference, as well as the loss of the page flow view. There are still annoyances about iTunes 11 (not just the removal of cover flow) that I wish they hadn't changed.

Still prefer it to Windows though.

wibble

digitalscream said:

wibble said:

Google requested API changes since they don't use IMAP the same way as everybody else does!

Anyway there's plenty of other email clients you can install if you don't like the default Mail.
Airmail is good.

Aye, but that doesn't account for the problems with FastMail or Exchange.

In truth, I neither know nor care about it, 'cos I use a system that actually works Just posting it in here as an FYI in case anybody comes across similar problems.

so the fastmail 'problem' wasn't a problem after all, they were just quick to blame Apple!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/31/mavericks_mails_spamspewing_flaw_was_scripted_by_redfaced_user/

octatonic

stonevibe said:

Sorry but Logic hasn't really been worth using professionally in years and I'll include the part when Emagic were charging for each plugin separately in that statement as well (£99 for ES-1, £349 for EXS24 etc) and it was ropey as hell in terms of audio stability back then. It was really only its MIDI engine and sync capabilities that made it decent alternative to Cubase.

Logic is a great bit of software for getting a quick mix together as it has a relatively decent audio mixing environment, but it is really a consumer product these days in terms of the way it is sold and supported.

I personally do not know any professional studios that would use it in a real world recoding environment,

But then I spent about five years of my life setting up and selling Pro Tools rigs for a living to most of the major recording studios in and around London before I worked for my current employer. Granted this was getting on for 10 years ago. 

For me Logic is what it is, 

A cheap but usable recoding package for the home user / semi-pro. 

It has never been perfect and I include the days of Notator in this statement (though I do actually miss its MIDI stability some days).

I have a feeling that Reaper is probably the best low cost DAW at the moment with Logic a close (ish) second.

I've been working with Logic professionally since 1992 (and been through all the dramas of the XS key, plugin costs and Apple buyout) and I know dozens of guys who do too.

I'm one of the original beta-tester guys under Emagic too.

I run very large mixes and it is rock solid.

The only task I give Pro Tools is the tracking of live (multi-channel) drums.

I'm not saying that Logic doesn't have a few issues, but it is a totally professional product.

There are problems with Pro Tools too (say, memory usage under V10).

I don't know many guys that use *just one* DAW.

Part of being a producer/engineer in 2013 is being able to use most of the big DAW's.

digitalscream

wibble said:

so the fastmail 'problem' wasn't a problem after all, they were just quick to blame Apple!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/31/mavericks_mails_spamspewing_flaw_was_scripted_by_redfaced_user/

Fair enough - good on them for owning up to the gaffe.

Deijavoo

I'm certainly no pro, hobby is the correct term but I know a few professional studios and musicians who swear by Logic. I always believed it to be a case of "pick your poison" and get good with it. 

I also know two studios that swear by Sonar, admittedly one is about to move to Pro Tools.