I used PCs for years in my music studio, but discovered Logic in my travels and liked it a lot, so I decided to change the studio over to all-Mac. I was tired of fighting with various drivers and having to worry about those licensing dongles with the DAW and audio editor I had long used, when went on since the days when they were a piece stuck on the printer port, and then evolved to become USB plug-ins like flash drives. Switching to Mac was a lot easier than I thought, and it's been working just fine.
I have long liked the sleek aluminum lines of the 2006-2012 Mac Pro, and remembered that it was a powerhouse when it occupied the top of Apple's product line. I decided that this was my machine, and now that they're considered a vintage piece (but still well up to the task), they came within my range of affordability. I picked up my first "cheesegrater" (I prefer the classier "Silver Tower"), a 2008 3,1 dual-processor model. I upgraded the supplied El Capitan to High Sierra and connected it to the rest of my studio gear, and it served me well for quite a few months, until I felt that a newer model would last longer into the future, and also run newer versions of MacOS.
My second MP turned out to be a mid-2010 5,1 six-core single-CPU one that I quickly got Mojave running on. My next steps were to get the Sonnet Allegro USB card for more ports, new hard drives, two optical drives, and 48GB of DDR3 RAM. I also thoroughly cleaned the case and components, replaced the two spring-loaded Northbridge heat-sink pins, and replaced the thermal paste on the CPU and Northbridge dies. Now, with the Mac Fan Control app, I've got the internal temperatures well under even mid-range (average 32C for CPU die and 42C for NB die).
I wanted to use Windows on my Mac, but there were two things I was not going to do: partition the main system drive with BootCamp, and run Windows 10. I had heard that installing Windows to its own dedicated hard drive was the best way to go, and I've used Windows 10 on two other machines and strongly dislike it because I feel it's very intrusive compared to older versions. I had 7 for many years and found it stable and reliable, so that's what I chose to use on my Mac.
I got a DVD of Win 7 and a new 2TB SATA hard drive, which I formatted in FAT to accept Windows. I removed all other drives from the machine but the main system drive and the new fresh Windows drive. After inserting the Windows DVD in the first optical drive, I shut the Mac down and immediately restarted it with the Option key held, so I could choose to boot from the Windows disc. When it came up, the Windows install went very typically, but I saw that only one of my two monitors had a display on it. I rectified this by downloading and installing the NVidia drivers for my GPU. Both screens worked again after that.
I figured I might have trouble with my Focusrite USB audio interface, but was hopeful I could get it going in Windows 7 again because that's how I ran it before making the move to the Mac. I loaded the Windows version of its control app and drivers, but it didn't install quite right before I realized that Windows was requesting a security update before it could complete the driver install. Once I got that from Microsoft's site, the install finished just fine. I found this curious, because Microsoft ended official support for Win7 on January 31 of last year, and many (myself included) were scared into upgrading to Win10 out of fear of hackers rolling over Seven and corrupting our computers on February 1. Now, over a year later, it seemed weird that I could still fetch a critical update for a now-unsupported OS from its maker's servers.
With that, I proceeded to load a few of my music apps, which I got by download. I also had a CD-burning program I liked, but it was on a DVD, and I found that the optical trays wouldn't open by pressing the Eject key on the keyboard. After thinking about it, I got the BootCamp Support Package from Apple's site, installed it, and had my controls back. The other bonus was that I could now see three of my four hard drives in Windows Explorer, and can save a file made in Windows on another drive. At this point, I've done a couple of test recordings and burned a CD, and it's all worked great. Now I can let go of the seller's remorse I felt after disposing of my PC because I've still got one: built right into my Mac!
I'm sure not everybody's experience was as good as mine, but I wanted to share it anyway, and to let everybody know never to be afraid of a little challenge to keep life interesting in these crazy times!
I have long liked the sleek aluminum lines of the 2006-2012 Mac Pro, and remembered that it was a powerhouse when it occupied the top of Apple's product line. I decided that this was my machine, and now that they're considered a vintage piece (but still well up to the task), they came within my range of affordability. I picked up my first "cheesegrater" (I prefer the classier "Silver Tower"), a 2008 3,1 dual-processor model. I upgraded the supplied El Capitan to High Sierra and connected it to the rest of my studio gear, and it served me well for quite a few months, until I felt that a newer model would last longer into the future, and also run newer versions of MacOS.
My second MP turned out to be a mid-2010 5,1 six-core single-CPU one that I quickly got Mojave running on. My next steps were to get the Sonnet Allegro USB card for more ports, new hard drives, two optical drives, and 48GB of DDR3 RAM. I also thoroughly cleaned the case and components, replaced the two spring-loaded Northbridge heat-sink pins, and replaced the thermal paste on the CPU and Northbridge dies. Now, with the Mac Fan Control app, I've got the internal temperatures well under even mid-range (average 32C for CPU die and 42C for NB die).
I wanted to use Windows on my Mac, but there were two things I was not going to do: partition the main system drive with BootCamp, and run Windows 10. I had heard that installing Windows to its own dedicated hard drive was the best way to go, and I've used Windows 10 on two other machines and strongly dislike it because I feel it's very intrusive compared to older versions. I had 7 for many years and found it stable and reliable, so that's what I chose to use on my Mac.
I got a DVD of Win 7 and a new 2TB SATA hard drive, which I formatted in FAT to accept Windows. I removed all other drives from the machine but the main system drive and the new fresh Windows drive. After inserting the Windows DVD in the first optical drive, I shut the Mac down and immediately restarted it with the Option key held, so I could choose to boot from the Windows disc. When it came up, the Windows install went very typically, but I saw that only one of my two monitors had a display on it. I rectified this by downloading and installing the NVidia drivers for my GPU. Both screens worked again after that.
I figured I might have trouble with my Focusrite USB audio interface, but was hopeful I could get it going in Windows 7 again because that's how I ran it before making the move to the Mac. I loaded the Windows version of its control app and drivers, but it didn't install quite right before I realized that Windows was requesting a security update before it could complete the driver install. Once I got that from Microsoft's site, the install finished just fine. I found this curious, because Microsoft ended official support for Win7 on January 31 of last year, and many (myself included) were scared into upgrading to Win10 out of fear of hackers rolling over Seven and corrupting our computers on February 1. Now, over a year later, it seemed weird that I could still fetch a critical update for a now-unsupported OS from its maker's servers.
With that, I proceeded to load a few of my music apps, which I got by download. I also had a CD-burning program I liked, but it was on a DVD, and I found that the optical trays wouldn't open by pressing the Eject key on the keyboard. After thinking about it, I got the BootCamp Support Package from Apple's site, installed it, and had my controls back. The other bonus was that I could now see three of my four hard drives in Windows Explorer, and can save a file made in Windows on another drive. At this point, I've done a couple of test recordings and burned a CD, and it's all worked great. Now I can let go of the seller's remorse I felt after disposing of my PC because I've still got one: built right into my Mac!
I'm sure not everybody's experience was as good as mine, but I wanted to share it anyway, and to let everybody know never to be afraid of a little challenge to keep life interesting in these crazy times!