Alright, so we are now a good week into the post announcements for the new Macbook Pros and I suppose everyone has had some time to digest the changes to the hardware. With the new announcements there have been a couple of changes to the hardware that could potentially have a pretty large impact on music producers. Being that Macbook (Pros) make up a pretty good chuck of the producer laptop market, lets take a look at some of those changes.
Unibody Design
Last year’s controversioal decision to have a non-removalbe battery has made its way into the entire Pro line now and it is once again taking quite a bit of heat. For most users people aren’t going to be swapping out batteries, but for the real pro user that is a legitimet concern. The 5 hour expected battery on the 13″ MBP I am sure will end up probably something like 3.5 hours in real life. That being said I can’t say that I actually know another user, including myself who owns more than one battery for any laptop they own.
Addition of Firewire 800
So with the introduction of the new unibody Macbooks a little over a year ago Apple decided to remove the Firewire 800 port on all of the models except for the 17″ model . This was a particulalrly big blow to the platform for creative types since so many of our audio interaces, video devices, etc. connect via firewire for production. It is nice to see that Apple has decided to put this back into the Macbook Pros and also consolidate the entire line into FW 800.
Removal of ExpressCard Slots
Apparently when Apple giveth, Apple must also take away. With the inclusion of the Firewire 800 they have decided to remove the express card slots. While I can’t say that I know many producers who are using the slot, there is a fair number out there who may be running a DSP module or their audio interace off of this slot. This also sort of cuts out a lot of other little advantages to the machine.
SD Card Inclusion
While this might not have an immediate impact for music producers there is quite a bit of hardware these days that use SD cards for sample transfers. With SD cards as cheap as they as well the could also make an excellent solution for storing and retriving sample libraries.
SATA I vs. SATA II
So this one isn’t really a feature as it is a concern that was unearthed a few days ago. Apparently the new Macbooks that are shipping with standard harddrives are shipping with the slower SATA I architecture that caps HDD access speed to 1.5 mbps. Normally that is not such a big deal, but if one were to upgrade their drive to an SSD you would find you have a bottleneck pretty quickly. On the flip side the Macbook Pros that come with an SSD do have the SATA II architecture allowing up to 3.0 Mbps access speeds. This is a disappointing outcome, but I am not sure if it is really a deal breaker for many.
Conclusion
So what seems to be the web’s conclusion on the new Macbooks? Overall the reviews seem extremely positive. It is sort of an intersting take that Apple is going by making the Pro line have three sizes and keeping the Macbook line with the old model style that is only $200 cheaper. One would think that the Macbook is going to fade out entirely in the next year perhaps to something else (netbook? tablet?) the way it is configured now. On that same token though Apple has removed some of Pro features of the books for some more mainstream options. Good for the 90% of users out there, but perhaps not so good for those pro users who really need it. Overall though it looks like the new MBP line probably wont have any major negative impacts on users, even music producers and I would presume that the accessories market will come to the rescue to provide adequate solutions to the minor niche problems that have arisen out of this transition.
With the release of Record three weeks ago, there has been a lot of discussion floating around the net about its merit and place in the computer music world. While the merit of whether or not Record will succeed is certainly handled well in other conversations, there is one thing in the entire release that struck me most. The interface. As I was watching the promotional video for Record they kept touting its easy to use abilities. All the while I couldn’t help but get hung up on the interface. It seems to have almost the exact same sequencing and design interface as Reason, which IMO is one of the worst around, even after its redesign. That thought got me thinking….What DAWs out there on the market are leading the design realm?
Here are my top five picks
FL Studio 8
WHY: FL Studio is on this list primarily for one reason. That is because of its piano roll. The piano roll has emerged as THE number one compositional tool for any computer based musician these days and the folks at Imageline have nailed it. Not only have they struck the right balance in UI design between contrast and 3D, but the little nuances and fluidity of working in the piano roll make it one of the simpler tools on any DAW to work in. Imageline also has added some other fantastic features such as plugin thumbnails and a great wav editing UI that make the interfae even more slick and intiuitive.
Tracktion
WHY: Tracktion is one of those DAW’s that really does not recieve enough credit for what it is capable of. It is a fantastically well designed DAW that did a great job of breaking away from some of the older DAW design ideas. Tracktion’s biggest accomplishment was the single window UI design implementation. Prior to Tracktion really bringing a single window UI everyone was working in tabs or multiple windows bouncing all over the place. Tracktion found an elegant solution of collapsable sub-menus that when paired with its minimalist 2D interface was the first DAW to really get it right. Since the release of Tracktion v1.0 we have now seen other DAW’s such as Logic and Energy XT follow suit with similar design concepts.
Renoise
WHY: Who would have thought that 20 years ago the tracker would still be in use today? Not many I think. While most trackers have not progressed to keep up with modern DAW’s Renoise has done an excellent job of striking the balance perfectly. It maintains the effcient minimalist interface that make trackers so appealing, but at the same time was able to integrate modern DAW features such as graphical automation, waveform editing and routable mixing. Renoise in many respects has struck such a good balance between effciency and features that much higher priced software appears clunky in comparison. Oh, did I also mention that you can completely customize the interface design and color to your needs?
EnergyXT
WHY: While I mentioned Tracktion above as nailing the single window UI design criteria, the newsest version of EnergyXT has also nailed it as well. In fact it takes some of the greastest bits of other software UI’s and brings them together extremely well. It has the very intuitive one window UI design and flat UI color scheme similar to Tracktion. It can also be colored and customized like Renoise. Also however is the abilityto treat the sequncer in a modular fashion with the instruments. While there have been some other DAW’s that have and can do this as well, the easy integration in EnergyXT make them one of the only DAW’s to successfully pull it off.
Ableton Live
WHY: If there is one DAW out there that has grown the fastest and changed the landscape more than any other it is Ableton Live. Not only is the UI diesn elegant and lightweight, but the software was originally designed for live performance work. Ther session menu system that they implemented has almsot single handily changed the way electronic music is performed live and in many respects has changed the entire concept and perception of DJ’s on the whole. The software and interface design not only was flexibile enough for live performance, but was also flexible enough to make the jump into a full featured DAW and took that session view concept and expanded it to use as a sketch pad for composers to work in.
