I am a young musician and college student and I am stuck in the middle of a major decision. I do not know which to choose an IMAC or a Macbook. I have never really used a mac cpu I own PCs but I hear that they are ideal for making music. I just do not want to make the wrong decision and end up spending my money on the wrong item. And another thing I am wondering is where would u recomend me purchasing the cpu from to get the best price.... I am looking to upgrade from PC to Mac ASAP so please help me out with this one. Thanks
Which Is Better For Making Music...Which is A Better Buy ..... A IMAC or MacBook
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dukebound85
macrumors Core
id order from apple.com
as far as imac vs mb, do you want portability?
as far as imac vs mb, do you want portability?
dukebound85
macrumors Core
as someone who has a hackintosh, if you are uncomortable with computers in the slightest, i wouldnt go that route
i have spent many many hrs getting mine to work well
motulist
macrumors 601
Really? Not to go too far off topic, but from what I've read, setting up a hackintosh has supposedly gotten much easier recently what with the kalyway installers and what not. I've never used a hackintosh, but I'm interested in the topic so I loosely follow developments in the scene, and it sounds like people are saying it's pretty easy these days as long as you start with the right hardware. Is that not true in your experience?
mgridgaway
macrumors 6502
Seconded. If he's unsure of whether an iMac or Macbook is better for this task, I doubt he'd be able to configure a proper computer for use as a hackintosh.
Edit: motulist, it's easy if you have significant experience with altering/replacing files, drivers, etc. For 90% of people, and potential Mac users, that is not even a remote concern. It's fun if you want to tinker, but I've heard of no Hackintosh that works perfectly, even after modification.
But, OP, to answer your questions: it depends a bit on what you want. I believe both the Macbook and iMac would be powerful enough for your needs. The question is what do you prefer?
Macbook: Portability
iMac: More screen real estate, better video card (important if you're planning on playing any video games or doing any professional work like 3D Design programs), cheaper
For me, the iMac was a no-brainer. I had a laptop and found that I never actually took it with me anywhere. It just sat on my desk for most of my 4 years of college. Now, I have an iMac, and an older iBook on those rare occasions when I need some portability.
dukebound85
macrumors Core
yes and no
i personally use the boot-132 method so i can boot off a retail osx disk and not used a patched os such as kalyway
the trouble is depending on the motherboard, you may have a variety of issues to patch.
Since building mine in feb, i have had to reinstall literally countless times. i doubt its worth many people's time and i certainly wont be able to devout that much time coming up in the near future lol
on my last install (just a couple weeks ago), i had to patch for these issues
1) graphics (ran at very low resolution with no dual monitor support)
2) sound (sound didnt work)
3) be able to use more than 2 gigs of ram (if went over, as in the case of burning dvd's, it would kernel panic on me)
4) be able to mount dmg's without kernel panics
5)to get time machine to work (invaluable if making a hackintosh)
6) to get usb devices to be hot swappable (my mouse used to freeze if i unplugged and replugged it in....very annoying)
7) get sleep to work
8) have system profiler report correct values
i will say using kalyway/boot 132 will give you a bootable mac right off the bat but there is a lot of fine tweaking to get it running perfectly. keep in mind, i also have a VERY compatible motherboard to run a hackintosh (i built my system around compatible components)
usually, problems arise in the 10.5.x updates which can pretty much eff your install
i will say after installing osx countless times, its pretty straightforward to me to get it up and running well now. only problem i am aware of is i will get a kernel panic when i select shut down. however sleep is ok with me. i am also still wary on future 10.5.x updates. i am running 10.5.6 though
however, an advantage over apple ive found is that i can easily install as many os's as i want as opposed to just 2 via bootcamp
i will also say that the ease of installation has increased by 10000000% lately in the osx86 scene as well. a great website for gui apps is this
http://pcwizcomputer.com/
i will also say when stuff doesnt work, it totally sucks and can eat up a whole day troubleshooting at times
i will say its worth it as a hobby and if you wanted a quad core machine and an 8800gt card for under a grand bought back in feb and surely much cheaper now!
VPrime
macrumors 68000
Another major hackintosh issue (if you choose to go that route) are updates. You could have just finished making your computer perfectly stable with every thing perfect... then apple releases an update which screws it all up and forces you to start from the beginning (or stick with out dated version).
So, I agree with the others. If you are not the type who likes to get in there and spend hours on getting certain things to work properly, you may want to consider a real mac
So, I agree with the others. If you are not the type who likes to get in there and spend hours on getting certain things to work properly, you may want to consider a real mac
dukebound85
macrumors Core
also op, be sure to use your student discount when ordering if your school supports it