On 10/02/14 20:27, Lorenzo Sutton wrote:15 years ago editing video was very much better on a mac than any other comparably priced system, this certainly helped encourage many AV people to learn the mac way. While they still used powerPC chips there were a lot of advantages to OSX over linux for working with video in pd. A few good audio apps have been available on mac for a lot longer than that, and macs have been pretty consistently easy to set up for common audio workflows ... providing you stick with mac friendly hardware purchases and adapt your practice those workflows. Much earlier Apple had got a lot of designers on board in a similar way with desktop publishing.
Hi Pall,
On 10/02/2014 04:45, Pall Thayer wrote:
This was a faculty grant at a US arts-focused college. I would say that
95% of students, 80% of faculty use Apple products. That really doesn't
matter though.
As you asked for feedback..
I think it does. I'm not proposing the usual (sterile) apple vs. xyz flame, but
I've noticed this "mac for music" thing in academia and conservatoires over here
(Italy). One thing that surprised me is the attachment to this ecosystem in the
electoacoustic music landscape, where one would expect people to experiment as
much as possible with unknown and unfamiliar tools in all directions.
What is also interesting is to understand if the use of Apple products and
software (e.g. MAX/MSP) is truly justified by creative/artistic needs or if it's
just a matter of habit/convenience (this question in a neutral way, i.e. nothing
against convenience).
Learning to use an OS is a lot of invested time, changing OSes means a new investment of time. Apple understands this and has often made it quite cheap for educational institutions to get macs to teach on and has kept transitions between versions reasonably easy for the user, so a lot of students and artists with a bit of cash to throw at good equipment learn OSX, then go on to use it rather than learn another and when it comes time to pick a platform to teach on or recommend to others ...
Habit and already invested time, plus decent equipment and effective tools available without changing OS are a quite persuasive combination. Now on a hand-held level apple hardware is again significantly better than other stuff for some media and audio uses.
But you miss out on quite a lot too, and educational institutions should try to broaden their students' experience rather than just go with what is easiest.
Simon
I'm not sure how (much) this fits in the topic you're going to address, but I
think it's an interesting angle to take into account. And I'll be happy to share
my personal experiences further if you think it's interesting (as I guess my
email was already rather long)
Ciao,
Lorenzo.
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