i kind of agree with john123... kinda. see, os 9 is pretty sweet when it comes to music - for the last few years it's been the only real system you could use to use for 'experimental' music, with max/msp and supercollider both being os 9 only (granted you have pd, audiomulch, etc. etc. for other platforms, but i'd argue max and supercollider were/are the best featured). on top of that, os 9 is supereasy to customize for audio work, and it's a very light operating system - meaning for live laptop use it's responsive and fast, two key issues for a decent musical interface.
application-wise, os x isn't quite there yet, though it soon will be, with max/msp for os x coming soon and other pretty exciting unix-flavored musical programs too (supercollider 3 with client/server command line interface - pretty sweet!). but i'm not totally sold on os x as a musical interface. os x is still too slow for the kind of quick responsive interaction you need for live music creation IMHO. i'm sure this isn't a problem if you have a new g4 12/15/17 whatever but who has the money for that? especially when os 9 is a speed demon on just about any g3 you can throw at it...
I agree totally.
You should read some of the stories on the Digidesign User Conference about how slowly PT 6.0 runs in OS X unless you've got 1Gb of RAM and a mac with AGP graphics. We're talking completely unusable on a yikes G4 with 640Mb. B & W G3s and upgraded beige G3s with similar amounts of RAM that could all run plenty of tracks with a modest amount of plug-ins under OS 9 arn't having any luck at all.
It's all apple's fault for making that stupidly bloated interface. who care's if it's unix based and way more stable than OS 9, the sheer bloat of the interface gets in the way of any advantage OS X has over OS 9 unless you've got a fast mac. Even the dual models that DO perform well with it must be getting one of the cpus hammered by quartz just to keep it all running smoothly.
I'm getting an upgrade for my mac and waiting a while before I switch to OS X for audio. It just seems too bloated to me. I'd guess running OS X on a pre sawtooth powermac would be like trying to run XP or windows 2000 on a 450Mhz Pentium 2.
I actually came to the mac from the atari, we had PCs in school that ran either DOS, GEM or windows 3.0. I thought the mac I used on work experience was far more logical and friendly than windows but it was like GEM on my atari except it had these little help balloons and the cool little word processor (Quark, I was only 14) was better than word. I started using macs fulltime at work in around '95 and after a few years of wondering if I should by this or that akai sampler or whatever, I bought a beige G3. It's done me well for quite a while but I feel kind of cheated on how un supported it is in OS X. It's not enough to run the OS, it's the software I bought it for as much as anything.
I'm staying in 9 for everything till I can afford a better model of mac. OS X seems to be only half ready for what I want to do because of the software not being out for it yet. Also, there's so many mac like things missing, labels, aliases that actually work 100% of the time, the 2 MAJOR issues I have with it is the bloat of the interface/the speed and the all important thing that's always set the mac apart from the dormant windows OS. Metadata!!! I want type/creator codes in native OS X software just like in OS 9. I don't want to have all my .html files open in Safari or something or all my .aif files opening with Quicktime. I want them to open with whatever I made them in. I don't want file extensions to be necessary, I want to use them as a visual aid like I do in OS 9. Infact the only time I bother with extensions in OS 9 is if it's something that's going to be online.
Talking of supercollider, can you recommend a good book on it ?
Something easy to follow like the client and reference guides you can get for Javascript. I'd love to make some stuff with supercollider, I've been and got some online tutorials in both PDF and html format with plenty of examples but I need more help learning the language.
Thanks if you can help with this. I love some of the music I've heard it used on 'Running Down The Way Up' - BT, 'Finished Symphony (echoplex mix)' - Hybrid. for example.