[PD] Is open source better?

[Simon Wise]

On 10/02/14 20:27, Lorenzo Sutton wrote:
> 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).

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.

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.