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| MakeMusic Forum > Public Forums > Finale - Macintosh - FORUM HAS MOVED! > MAC as opposed to Windows | Forum Quick Jump
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m139139
Registered Member
      
Date Joined Sep 2007
Total Posts : 62
|  Posted 8/11/2010 8:16 PM (GMT -6) |   | | I've been a Windows user for 12 years and am thinking of switching to a MAC.
Can anybody please tell me what the advantages are in using a MAC as opposed to Windows?
Thanks in advance.
Mimi 
Mimi- Finale 2010-b, Windows XP, Compaq Presario PC, 80 GB
Cats, Sci-Fi, Audacity 1.2.6. Organist, all kinds of music.
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m139139
Registered Member
Date Joined Sep 2007
Total Posts : 62
| Posted 8/11/2010 9:17 PM (GMT -6) | | | Philip,
Thanks for your reply.
Mimi- Finale 2010-b, Windows XP, Compaq Presario PC, 500 gb, 80 GB, 250gb Seagate external drive, Cats, Sci-Fi, Audacity 1.2.6. Organist, all kinds of music.
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m139139
Registered Member
Date Joined Sep 2007
Total Posts : 62
| Posted 8/11/2010 11:49 PM (GMT -6) | | Michael,
Thanks for your reply
Mimi
Mimi- Finale 2010-b, Windows XP, Compaq Presario PC, 500 gb, 80 GB, 250gb Seagate external drive, Cats, Sci-Fi, Audacity 1.2.6. Organist, all kinds of music.
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Dr. Wiggy
Early music: modern methods
   
Date Joined Jun 2006
Total Posts : 12628
| Posted 8/12/2010 1:41 AM (GMT -6) | | | |
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Skjalg
Accordion man
Date Joined Nov 2000
Total Posts : 927
| Posted 8/12/2010 4:46 AM (GMT -6) | | OCTOECHOS said...
BUT, I have found that Finale works much better on Windows, and it is more Windows-program than OS X. It is my opinion. I worked between 2000 and 2008 on XP.
I agree. I switched to Mac a year ago. Finale for Mac feels like a sort of Mac-adapted version of the Finale Win. For one thing, Finale for Mac do not have editable speedy entry shortcuts. You'll need extra software to customize it. No big deal, but you get a sort of feeling that Finale is native Windows software and that the Mac version is an adaption.
Skjalg Bjørstad, Norway
_____________________________________________
Finale 3.0 > 2009b, Macbook, 4 gB 120 gB, Oxygen 8v2, Yamaha CP33, Echo AudioFire2 | | Back to Top | |
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Michael Mortilla
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2006
Total Posts : 2378
| Posted 8/12/2010 11:28 AM (GMT -6) | | It's also a matter of balance. If all you do is Finale and nothing else, I guess it doesn't matter what platform you are on. In most professional production studios I know of doing music, film/video, and graphics, Macs are the machine of choice. In most "business only" accounting/inventory based businesses, PCs seem to rule.
Reliability is a big factor as are viruses and as far as I can tell, Macs have PCs beat by a long shot in those regards. I have no point of reference for Finale on a PC as every composer, arranger, orchestrator, and artist I know in L.A. as well as across the USA are on Macs. Some do use both platforms which may be the best of both worlds. For my, it's a Mac or paper and pencil. I'm just sayin' ... :)
OS X 10.5.8; Dual 2.0 PPC; 4GB RAM; Finale 2011; Digital Performer 7 | | Back to Top | |
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musicofnote
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2001
Total Posts : 490
| Posted 8/14/2010 10:16 AM (GMT -6) | | Speaking from a platform point of view, you will find when switching to a Mac, you'll be constantly asking, "Why didn't they do this like that...?" Neither platform is intuitive, despite what marketing will tell you. Both are an acquired taste, and neither has it's OS user philosophy consistently implemented - many anomalies that no one seems able to explain the logic of.
Be that as it may, from a support standpoint, it's much, much easier to support a room full of Macs, even if they are alos running Windows on them, than a room full of Macs. The virus thing DOES play a role, because when one strikes, you have hours of either cleaning and/or nuking/reinstalling ahead of you. I had a 3-week battle with the Trojan Gozi a couple of months ago. It too the help of three system engineers to finally rid the mission-critical machine of the beastie. None of the available commercial anti-virus program could either correctly detect it nor remove it. You simply do not have this problem with the Mac and IMHO will not have it in the foreseeable future.
And if things do go really bad, between TimeMachine and/or various cloning procedure which are non-geek friendly, you can be up and running in a matter of a couple of hours if you did your protection homework. These make Ghost for Windows look pale and complicated.
As to using Finale under Windows or Mac, I can only say, that Windows and it's way of not really likely to work in multiple languages to be a great disadvantage inasmuch as I often have multilanguage text input in vocal music that is EXTREMELY awkward for me under Windows. I've not used Finale for Windows since Finale97.
Here's wishing you as painless a transition as is possible.
greetings
Leonard Cecil, ACSA
IT-Support / EDV-Coordination
Ethnological Seminar
University Zürich
Switzerland
and
(formerly) Music of Note - Music Notation Workshop
http://web.mac.com/support.notation/Site/Welcome.html
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Finale 2008 & 2009 on:
1-MacBook Pro w/2.66 GHz, 4GB RAM, OS 10.6.3, XP SP3, Win7
1-iMac 24", 2.8 GHz, 4 GB RAM, OS 10.6.3, XP SP3
and otherwise:
1-Mac Intel MacMini Server 2.53 GHz, 4 GB RAM, OS 10.6.3 Server (OD Master) | | Back to Top | |
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gracenote
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2007
Total Posts : 339
| Posted 8/14/2010 3:07 PM (GMT -6) | | To each his/her own. I watch people zip around a Windows platform like it is no big deal. I zip around my Mac barely thinking about all the shortcuts and keys I am pressing. The more used to an interface, the more you enjoy it.
What I appreciate about the Mac:
1. Incredibly easy sharing and networking. Windows is a pain to set up to share files.
2. Garageband and iTunes. It is very easy to take your Finale ideas and turn them into recorded music and share them on the internet.
3. Finale on the Mac is excellent and, despite some missing features, has more than I will ever fully use. MakeMusic seems to continue to support the Mac platform. No complaints from me.
GN
Specs: iMac 20“ Intel, 2.4ghz, 4GB ram, OS 10.6.x Snow Leopard; iBook PPC 1.2ghz, 768M ram, OS 10.4.11
Finale 2011, Yamaha PSR 520, MIDIMAN 1x1 | | Back to Top | |
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Dr. Wiggy
Early music: modern methods
Date Joined Jun 2006
Total Posts : 12628
| Posted 8/15/2010 3:42 AM (GMT -6) | | Intuitive is a relative term. An interface is only intuitive if it is like something that you used before. One of the good things about Mac is that it encourages developers to follow its Human Interface Guidelines, to ensure a consistent feel across all parts of the experience. When people talk about OS X being intuitive, they mean they the interface for one part is very much like the interface for all the other parts. So when you open up a dialog or control that you've never used before, you can see instantly how it works.
One of the major advantages of OS X is the capability to automate stuff. There is Automator, which allows you to piece together various tasks, like building blocks (no programming skills required). There's also Applescript, an "English-like" scripting language which can instruct the whole OS and most apps -- even Finale supports open, print and quit!
There is also, as Motet point out, the whole Unix underpinnings, so that you can write powerful Unix shell scripts or Perl or whatever else. You can even combine Applescripts and Unix scripts.
Then there's Folder Actions, so that a script or Automator action will run whenever a file is added to that folder.
Finally, there's Spotlight, a fantastic search tool. Finale supports Spotlight, so that you can search your hard drive for all Finale files in the key of F major!
Finale 2011, 2009c, 2Ghz iMac; 2Ghz MacBook, 10.6.4
Edirol FA-66; M-Audio Oxygen 61; Yamaha PSR-410
Ancient Groove Music
www.ancientgroove.co.uk | | Back to Top | |
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minstrel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2000
Total Posts : 190
| Posted 8/15/2010 1:03 PM (GMT -6) | | I've been a Finale Mac user for a long time but recently switched to Windows (switched to Sibelius too, but maybe not permanently - I'm still "bi"). You can get a speedy Windows machine much, much cheaper than a comparable Mac. This was my main reason for switching to Windows. I have a 4 year old PC that is very fast. I had the choice of buying a new Mac for around $4,000 or updating some software on my Windows machine for a few hundred. In my opinion, Windows is a better value.
Windows is also much more keyboard-centric, while Mac is more mouse-centric. If I were starting from scratch I'd choose Windows except that my favorite sequencing program - Digital Performer is on Mac.
-- Brian | | Back to Top | |
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minstrel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2000
Total Posts : 190
| Posted 8/15/2010 1:20 PM (GMT -6) | | Michael,
I found that I couldn't update to the latest DP on Mac since I still have a PowerPC running OS X 10.4.6. This is the first time I've found this problem. I think I have 7.1. Yes, I know about MOTUNation. I probably should have bought a new Mac a while back. I'm also finding it's much easier to run virtual instruments on my Windows machine - Kontakt, Trilogy, Akoustic Piano, etc. all load without a problem on my PC. They choke my Mac (2 Gb RAM).
I've also found that the process of going from Wave to MP3 is much quicker on Windows - especially with Sibelius, which generates .wav files faster than realtime. On Mac I was using WireTap pro. On PC I use dbPowerAmp where you can batch .wav to mp3 conversion and set up filters that automatically normalize the file and delete the original .wav.
I bought Cakewalk Sonar Studio for PC, which seems nice, but it is depressing trying to learn a new sequencer and move away from DP.
-- Brian | | Back to Top | |
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Vicman
Registered Member
Date Joined Aug 2010
Total Posts : 3
| Posted 8/15/2010 1:47 PM (GMT -6) | | The program works pretty much the same in either machine. There are advantages on either side. For example, the PC employs the Windows Menu Commands (those underlined letters found in all menus). If you don't have a quick key written, for example, just hit <alt>FA for "save as", etc. The Mac doesn't do this. However, file sharing on a group project is what Macs eat for breakfast. Copying and proofreading from home via a server can be almost embarrassing on a PC. Even if you manage to get to the server or Idisk, you can't see or change file colors, which are universally used to show what state of progress a set of parts are in. (I've had to ask a friend to change the color for me...) The Mac has server friendliness built in.
BTW, I'm not biased toward either platform. I'm typing this response from an old XP machine...
Vic Sagerquist | | Back to Top | |
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Dr. Wiggy
Early music: modern methods
Date Joined Jun 2006
Total Posts : 12628
| Posted 8/15/2010 2:16 PM (GMT -6) | | minstrel said...
You can get a speedy Windows machine much, much cheaper than a comparable Mac. This was my main reason for switching to Windows. I have a 4 year old PC that is very fast. I had the choice of buying a new Mac for around $4,000 or updating some software on my Windows machine for a few hundred. In my opinion, Windows is a better value.
So a Windows PC is better value because updating software on your existing machine is cheaper than buying a new computer.
And $4,000? US dollars?
You can get a MacMini for $699. iMacs start at $1199. Even MacPros start at $2,400.
Without wishing to get into yet another Mac v.s PC flame war (too late!), comparatively specced Windows hardware is roughly the same price as the equivalent Mac. Yes, you can buy laptops for $199 -- but they are not going to be anywhere near the standard of a MacBook.
Vicman said...the PC employs the Windows Menu Commands (those underlined letters found in all menus). If you don't have a quick key written, for example, just hit <alt>FA for "save as", etc. The Mac doesn't do this.
Err... Save As is <shift><Cmd> S.
And if you want traverse the menus with keypresses, like you used to do on computers before they had mice, then you can use <ctrl> F2.
You can also customise keyboard shortcuts in System Preferences.
Finale 2011, 2009c, 2Ghz iMac; 2Ghz MacBook, 10.6.4
Edirol FA-66; M-Audio Oxygen 61; Yamaha PSR-410
Ancient Groove Music
www.ancientgroove.co.uk | | Back to Top | |
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minstrel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2000
Total Posts : 190
| Posted 8/15/2010 3:23 PM (GMT -6) | | It's ok. I've been using Macs & PCs for a long time. My music stuff has been exclusively on Mac for years and years. But as a software developer, I do have several bones to pick with Apple:
- Change of architecture from Motorola to PPC to Intel required numerous major software rewrites. Whereas software written for Windows 3.1 pretty much works on Windows 7 and all in between. All of this for Mac software that commands a much smaller market share than its Windows counterpart.
- Arbitrary (despite Jobs' claims to the contrary) banning of Flash from iPhone. Apple is shooting itself in the foot. Android is taking over and iPhone will likely be relegated to a relatively small market share within a few years. It's deja vu. This excluding kind of philosophy has relegated even today's Macs to a still small market share. They've never really caught on as business computers.
- Apple is always forcing you into the latest hardware by purposely making older hardware & software incompatible. Just look at the elimination of SCSI support on today's Macs, and the lack of USB on iPad as examples. I still think iPad is a big iPhone looking for a reason to exist.
- Cutesy, pseudo hip marketing: "genius bar", "magic" iPad. Come on, don't make me vomit. It ain't "magic." It's a toy.
No need to respond...
-- Brian | | Back to Top | |
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