Should I buy an Apple laptop?

As somebody who's spent a lot of time with InDesign CS2 and 3, and many years with Quark 6.5 and even dabbled in Quark 7, I can say for sure that InDesign has more features in it's little pinky then Quark can dream of. I'm still impressed enough with drag and drop from the desktop, don't even get me started with Ink Density Previews! For the record, Quark 7 handles one of Quark's traditional drawbacks, which was every single option brought up a dialogue box instead of just letting you do what you need to do...now Quark 7 pops up these little mini-palettes right out of the measurements palatte, it's their solution, their way of avoiding InDesign's major drawback, which is having thousands of palettes floating everywhere. It's pretty slick, but it's not enough.

For the record, Adobe has dealt with InDesign's palette overload with their complete redesign of the user interface in CS3, something I found really annoying at first but now love. The idea now being that palettes more seamlessly pop in and out of the sidebar.

And for anybody who wants to learn Adobe stuff, this website is pretty amazing:

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/

When I got CS3 I sat there and went through a bunch of the videos. A great website, really useful.

i work at an agency and the print team has been trying to move to indesign for over a year and it's been pretty slow going, in part because some of the actual production houses they deal with still only accept quark files.

Quark were bafflingly bad at responding to users or updating their apps. I once saw an list of the wont-fix bugs in 4.1, and it was epic.

Quark threw an amazing amount of programming effort into Xposure (a Photoshop competitor) and Immedia - a poorly-planned multimedia package that was "supposed to leverage the Internet." That was the actual language they used at Macworld in 1996 - I remember asking one of the sales droids there what exactly they meant and they couldn't answer it.

I still remember when Quark 5 (think it was 5) was released at the same time as InDesign 2. Guess which one ran natively on Mac OS X. Quark couldn't answer when they were going native because by then they had fired all their programmers and offshored everything to India.

Somewhere in there, I was doing some consulting work for a large print-shop and ran head-on into the $999-per-seat upgrade price for Quark. In lieu of dropping $30,000 (the Quark rep wouldn't give volume discounts to anything under 50 seats) they switched to ID.

I can't remember if Immedia actually shipped.

This is a reply to esoj, way way up thread.

Avid it has to be said are changing in their attitudes having lost a tonne of money in the last 18 months. This is my experience of avid. I am a broadcast engineer and everywhere I have worked has been a customer, partner, integrator or conpetitor with avid and frequently more than one of those. Currently I work for somewhere where we have one product that competes with one bit of avid and integrates with another and another product that integrates with the avid product we compete against.

Avid have been on the back foot as regards apple for a while now. Xpress on the mac lagged xpress on windows for a long time because avid hated the idea of users having systems with both avid and fcp and then the users forgetting they have avid. Avid also fights tooth and nail to keep apple out of the newsroom, there, there is no newscutter for the mac and never will be because avid don't want anyone getting the idea that they can throw in a few fcp stations for a few extra users and to make sure people stay with newscutter they often throw in iNews for free to seal deals. (There arew fcp newsrooms out there in case anyone is wondering)

In adition to all of this avid have long had closed video standards (the oh so incongruously named Open Media Format). Even since they have transitioned to the truly open standard MXF you still need to either buy their transfer manager or a third party rewrappering tool before it becomes an MXF that anyone else's edit system or video server can actually use.

So, yeah it is conjecture that avid/digidesign deliberately drag their feet deliberately on mac development and tbh they fired a huge bunch of developers last year, however, given the rest of what they get up to I find it plausible.

a propos of nothing much ... stet: i still remember that time you and i found ourselves in a small room with a bloke from quark and DIDN'T HIT HIM IN THE BALLS.

For a while between 5 and 6 most of Quark's updates and new features where al about adding web support and the ability to output html documents from Quark, while InDesign focussed on novel ideas like the ability to preflight documents and preview output separations, i.e., they were actually talking to graphic designers and print production people and listening to what they needed.

not to forget the epic leap between 4 and 5 of ... tables.

thinking about the time i've wasted on quark 5 brings me out in a rash

I never knew anybody who used 5. We all went from 4 to 6.1. 5 was only good for saving files down from 6, to 5, to 4 so people could work in 4. We used to have to do that to release files.

ph34r

http://www.guidebookgallery.org/pics/splashes/quarkxpress/5.0-demo.png

Well, teacher is mates with a bloke from D1g1d351gn, and has written an angry letter. Waiting on response. Logic is OK for class, so I'm getting a Mac. Unlike Pro Tools, I can use my own USB box. hmm.

use tracktion

sounds good, but couldn't turn work using it in.

Ok this is not about laptops but it was the best thread I could find. I need to buy a new desktop; do I buy a 2 ghz mini, or do I buy an imac (maybe the 2.66 ghz one)? the only thing holding me back from the imac is that I already have a (pretty new) lcd monitor. keep in mind my primary desktop machine is a six year old dell running win xp and it is fine for most of what I do but is starting to get slow and is probably going to fail for mechanical reasons soon.

i guess my question is: are the drawbacks of the mini (slow hard drive, lack of graphic expansion capabilities) really that big? I do some web development and use computers for music (not creating, perse, just juggling mp3s around and crap)

okay well i just bought a mini because it was cheaper and figured that would be the responsible thing to do. if it's too unbearably slow for me then I can return it.

For what you described, I think you picked right.

yay!

Use some of that saved $$$ to pack it full of RAM, though.

well it only takes 2gb so I did

Mum asked me yesterday to get her a Mac lappy. Currently trying to decide if this means I get her an older model or I get a new MB and give her my MBP.

Decided to get a new MB for me and give old MPB to ma. I shudder to think what # mac this is for me, let alone what # computer.

A conservative estimate puts this at Mac #12.

Mac IIsi (given me by pops long ago)
Mac Quadra 800
PowerMac 9600 (this & quadra bought around 2000 from Weird Stuff)
iMac DV (sold to guy in Iowa)
Mac Classic (given to computer friend?)
PowerMac G4 Quicksilver (still have, upgraded years ago)
PowerBook G4 Titanium (destroyed screen trying to fix cracked side of case)
Mac Cube (in storage; still works)
PowerMac G5 (sitting next to couch)
iBook G4 (dropped on PS; freezes after 5 min now)
MacBook Pro (going to mum)
Mac Pro (my desktop computer)
MacBook (just ordered)

Roughly chronological order.

all macbook needs now is a number keypad.

apple really needs to make a less expensive desktop that isn't an imac; basically, the top of the line imac specs w/out a built in screen. this is a gaping hole in their product line

My mom has a Toshiba laptop w/ full-size keyboard and keypad, it's awesome.

I'd find a way to sell my MBP and get a 17" if Apple had one.

Roughly chronological order.

My computer chronology goes...

Apple II+ (given away. Now a seismograph for a school in Los Alamitos)
IIx (given away. Became the host machine for an underground BBS)
IIsi (sold to friend)
Quadra 840av (sold)
Power Mac 8500 (became webserver for many years then given away)
PowerBook 1400
PowerBook G3 ("Wall Street" model. given away)
Ti. PowerBook G4 (given away)
Al. PowerBook G4
MacBook Pro (2.33 intel)

New MB in paws. Old MBP cleaned and ready to send mum once I put a fresh OS onnit.

Shit, I was enjoying the 'stacks' function on the new Apple OS (Leopard?) but I accidentally dragged them off the dock and they disappeared.

Then I tried to get them back on, and I ended up dragging the 'documents' folder *into* the trash and now it's gone.

Also whenever I download something it turns up as a disk image, where should I put it then?

You probably mean the "downloads" folder. Any folder can have "stacks". Just drag it back onto the right side of the dock.

I am trying to convince my wife we should get an Apple laptop to work on musical endeavors (her website, my idle musical ideas, etc).

- Which machines should I be looking at if my parameters are "better-than-decent"?
- How much, realistically, should I expect to spend for a better-than-decent machine?
- How useful is the out-of-the-box software? What should I consider upgrading and what's the cost for that?
- Anyone have experiencing adding a Mac to a Window-based network? How complicated is that to manage?

are you sure you need a laptop? you can save a lot of $ if not

if you do need one, you'll probably also want some kind of upgraded audio interface if you want to record music onto it. i haven't looked at laptops in a few years, though.

I R FatNicK spends an awful lot of time making his music using Logic on a 6-month old Mac Mini (w/maxed RAM) with no complaints, all runs swimmingly

Laptops, look at macbook and macbook pro, a bit more power in the latter and bigger screens which is useful for music however the macbook should be adequate. You may wish to choose the faster hard drive option if working with music.

Budget up to 2 grand (dollars) but could be a lot less, possibly budget for a controller keyboard/audio interface.

Garage band is an ok place to start but you will probably outgrow it quickly. Next place to go is software that gets bundled with a keyboard or audio interface. Eventually you'll want to buy full software.

Easy peasy.

Take a look at novation and m-audio for good usb controller keyboards some with built in audio interfaces.

Budget for a decent large diaphram mike, stand and pop shield too.

Yeah, we may be using this to record some of J's audition material as well so the whole microphone/audio interface issue is a good one to remember.

How portable are non-laptop Macs these days? Which ones should I be looking at if I'm expanding the scope?

(I mean, I know what various iMac variants look like etc, I'm asking more about the practicality of shuffling them around to places.)

USB and firewire interfaces are so good nowadays that there is not much need for expansion slots, you can get firewire dsp processors as well. So an iMac would be a good option. Pretty portable for location recording, obviously not as easy as a laptop but there are case manufacturers who make cases for the iMac.

iMac has bigger screen, better processor and better HD than laptop so if you are not looking to move it often, go with the iMac.

Same price scale?

More or less.

take a look at the 2.6Ghz 20" iMac, maybe a TASCAM Fire one interface or focusrite Saffire, you play keyboard so you can use that as a controller over midi. Maybe consider getting logic express which is $199 with a new Mac, Maybe a Rode NT1-A Mic (although you may want to take the wife down to test out Mics), stand, pop shield

All is missing from that is some good headphones or a pair of active monitors and you are set

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/FireOne/
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Saffire/
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/NT1A/

Look out for computer, Mic and interface bundle deals.

or you could get a mac mini for a fraction of the price

Dan should buy IR Fatnick and his Mac Mini as a recording slave, are you selling DG?

well he can have fatnick for free but i think he likes his mini

Is there an advantage to going with an iMac rather than a Mac Mini? Either way, what issues can I expect to run into regarding expandability?

well the mini is a bugger to upgrade admittedly but they both have the same 4gb ram cap these days IIRC

oh and the imac has a fw800 port that the mini doesn't which may make a difference to some of these fw devices (probably not though)

you could just go crazy and get a mac pro and pwn us all