Ah beware Greeks bearing gifts ;) ( with apologies to our Greek readers )

Now we know why it's so cheap - Apple is going to sell a ton of machines off this puppy. :eek:

Real early but the Powerbook G4 and G3 owners seem a tad :(

Hope to have substantive results later tonight on a variety of boxes. Looks like RAM may be a significant factor.

Please if you are using GarageBand successfully or not post your comments so we can gauge accurately what machines are suitable.

We KNOW this is going to kick G5 sales into high gear for the serious users. :cool:

There may be some serious need to http://images.animfactory.com/animations/people_a_l/athletes/bodybuilder_pullups_md_wht.gif your Mac. :D

[ January 21, 2004, 06:32 PM: Message edited by: MacDoc ]

We KNOW this is going to kick G5 sales into high gear for the serious users.... especially once the G5 iMacs and PowerBooks are released later this year! ;)

BTW, GarageBand runs great on my 12" G4/1GHz PB.

Macdoc, isn't the point of software to promote hardware sales? In the case of Wintel machines, there is two way collusion to provide solutions between Intel and Microsoft that ensured new hardware specs were needed to run new software and vice versa (that relationship appears to be straining with Microsoft wanting to control hardware specs). In the case of Apple, their software has always been the driver of hardware sales. I mean, look how many of the iLife apps are Altivec accelerated.... Expect iLife 05 to be 64 bit optimized.

Still, you aren't complaining, right? smile.gif

Of course it is - my "sneaky Apple" is in admiration because this IS the killer app to bring both existing users to X and drive new users and machine sales.

I'll tuck a wink in there to make my attitude on this clear. :D

Runs fine for the first 4-5 tracks. Then I notice considerable slow downs, jumpy ect ect..
Overall, its ok.. only a few spinning beachballs thus far.


Have not tried virtual instruments or midi keyboard yet as I own none.
Have exported a few tunes rather quickly.
They sound great once exported.
Overall I am very pleased...
Going to try an iMic when someone sells me one.
Going to try my guitar soon.
Going to buy that cheap midi keyboard for fun.


By the way,, you you grab the grey area next to the counter and drag upwards... you will find a ton of loops you may not have noticed before..

Anyways

I am running an iBook g4 800, 640 megs ram, 40 gig HD, Aiport Extreme

Yup

Regarding GB, first peek allows the following comments:

- Hard drive speed/accessibility could be an issue. Got a message regarding this. Only other thing that was running at the time was a refresh fro this message board! Does this mean that a separate disk for data is going to be important?

- Window takes ages to illustrate the peaks/troughs for each instrument. Could point to processor speed/memory requirement issues. I wonder what the 'optimal' memory size would be for my PB? (I know, max is always better but...)

That my 2¢ from my PB12/G4-867/640Mb RAM

While it's cheap, I don't see why spending $3000-$4000 on a new G5 just to use Apple's new software makes sense.. there are quite a few professional audio recording apps that are more worthwhile spending money on, which can be used on many G4 machines..

Based on my immediate experience, I can see a healty market for GarageBand for Dummies! graemlins/lmao.gif

It's also the overall iLife 4 Suite that is appealing to Pros as well as consumers.
Basically its one more good reason for a consumer to look at a G5 as a personal desktop. Look to see G5s under $2k shortly anyway.

The comprehensive interleaving of the 4 apps makes it very attractive to consumer and pro alike.

Sure you might be able to patch together something similar but if you get a top notch box and great software together who cares which cost what.
And G5s are quiet and that's a big factor over the dual and single G4s which we currently sell 4:1 over G5s.

BTW one person reporting in said he cured his sluggish response but dind't say how tongue.gif

Stay tuned this is likely to be a interesting thread.
Our main tester just commented that a GarageBand for Dummies might be a hit seller. :D

How are others finding the interface.

On my 12" PBG4-867, with 640MB RAM and no other apps running, I find GB 1.0 to chug a bit, even with only 4 tracks. And, i'm not talking 4 tracks totalling 12 seconds, but a 3.5 minute song. Adding a 'real-instrument' vocal track with effects as the 5th track brings the machine to a crawl, with refresh issues happening, stuttering of the real-time horizontal scroll, and a few other details.

I've been an avid amateur electronic musician since the late 80's on the Mac and PC, and GarageBand really excites me a lot. I see it as an application which will allow me to realize some ideas in my head. However, I'll likely need to look into some more Pro software for hard-core MIDI stuff. GarageBand 1.0 seems too basic for real-time effects insertions etc, and I even find the interface for adding effects to tracks to be too linear and archaic. I can see a huge amount of improvement in a 2.0 version, but i'm not sure I want to wait six to nine months for apple to realize this update.

I'll be getting a G5 PowerMac in the coming weeks or months, and i'll be going all out on IO, RAM, and CPU performance. I'll update my report then...

I like the interface, it was a little confusing finding those extra tabs for organizing my bins..

Keyframing volume is really smooth and simple for blending and fading. I find sometimes a little to much going to for example..


clicking a loop to hear it, and thinking I can hit the space bar to stop it, actually cues the playhead to go, while the loop plays, so I hit the spcaebar again and it stops, then I need to hit the loop.

I like when you play a track and watch the volume sliders and such move in full action while playing and doing an mixdown (export)

I need a g5 for this.

I am at true amatuer when it comes to music. I must admit that I am having a ball with this app.
More to the point though, GB runs very well on my machine if it is the only app open. I can utilize 7 - 10 tracks in a 2 minute song without any truely annoying slowdowns or hiccups. The fan whines mightily so I know it's working hard.
However, once again, I point out that I am not a pro.

this IS the killer app to bring ... existing users to X

I'd say that Apple doesn't need a Killer app for this for two reasons. 1) Panther does a pretty good job of this already and 2) pretty much everyone who can be running OS X already is.

Given the amount of time spent on it at the MacWorld show and the prominence on the Apple Web site I'd say Apple also believes it's of very high significance.

http://a772.g.akamai.net/7/772/51/3030904a363ba9/www.apple.com/ca/home/images/2004/01/ilife04title01062004.gif

That's a strong statement front and centre on the Apple site.

Millions of Mac users and hundreds of our clients have not switched because they saw no good reason to. Even Apple states that just 40% are on X. Now given Apple's penchant for a bit of spin you can bet that number includes all the "dual boot" boxes that include both X and 9.

So 60% of Mac users "CAN'T"??!! - sure some can't most haven't bothered.

My first curmudgeonly Mac client from 19 years ago despite having money and the horsepower to switch wanted nothing to do with X.
He spent $4600 on the weekend in gear for he and son solely because of GarageBand.

Another professional ( live music ) musician no interest in X and tight with his dollars - spending $3500 - to get to Garageband. "It's time he says".

So you are welcome to your opinion but I'd say your opinion is not based on good evidence. There is excellent interest and excitement here and on the web and not just by Mac sites.

You appear just to be interested in just taking a contrarian view than adding meaningful content. :cool:

Just posted at the Apple Knowledge Base:

GarageBand: Maximizing Performance (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93618)

Runs just great on my G5, even if I have Seti@home and other apps running. No big surprise, eh?

The only problems I've had are:

- Sometimes, for a reason I haven't figured out yet, is that the replay sound gets very slightly crackly on occasion. Seems random.

- I got an error message right after launching it on Tuesday. Unfortunately I didn't write it down but it was warning me that "processor performance is set to automatic" and there were insufficient resources to run GB or somesuch. However I tried again right away and it launched fine, no error message, and it's been fine since.

Macdoc,

Show me where I said it was not significant? It is, but it is by no means going to be "The killer app" for OS X.

And as to how many people are using OS X, I'd explain it, but someone else already did:

<blockquote>
http://nslog.com/archives/2004/01/16/the_transition_to_x.php
Some folks are discussing whether "10 million Mac OS X users" is really the same as "the transition is essentially complete." They say Apple is ignoring 60% of its market. Some simple math backs up Apple's statement.

Apple ships around 500,000 computers per quarter. Macs need a G3 and USB ports to run Panther, and such machines have been available since late 1998 - that's 22 quarters of "capable Macs." (2 in 1998, four each in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003). 22 quarters x 500,000 machines/quarter = 11 million machines capable of running Mac OS X.

If we consider that there are about 25 million active Mac users, then clearly about 14 million Mac users are using machines incapable of running Mac OS X. 11/25 = 0.44. In other words, nearly everyone capable of running Mac OS X is.</blockquote>

Wow...

Thanks for the link Heart. This sounds like GB is a full V12/gas guzzler. So what is someone with a 4200 lap HD supposed to do? This means that I MUST get @ least a 5400 HD on the lap to get some perf out of it.

wow... I would love to hear from more users out here about it. Pretty interesting.

H!

... from MacFixit;

Troubleshooting GarageBand: GUI responsible for significant processor use

We previously posted Ted Landau's observations of the demands of GarageBand, which can suck up a good amount of RAM and processor cycles. However, reader Johan Skaneby reports that a significant portion of GarageBand's overhead is actually due to its graphical interface, rather than its audio processing:

"When you start Process Viewer you will notice that Garageband is using a lot of processor power, nearly 90%, but when quitting the GUI it drops down to half . I have tried this on several computers, and no matter the amount of channels, the GUI demands too much of the processor."

We've verified this phenomenon here at MacFixIt. We played back a GarageBand song with eight tracks on a dual-2GHz Power Mac G5 with 1.5GB RAM. During uninterrupted, looping playback, Process Viewer reports GarageBand's processor usage as 75%-85%. If we then hide GarageBand (while the song is still playing), CPU usage immediately drops to 20-30%. Although it's common for an application's GUI to add to its processor overhead, GarageBand's GUI appears to be significantly more demanding than those of most other applications.

Yeah Heart thanks that's a good link.

Mississauga - I'm suspecting the GUI as well as I had a report back from our tester on a G4 500 1 meg cache but with the stock video card. He thought it was sluggish.
I'm going ot take him over a 32 meg and 64 meg card to try the same machine.
I'll also be interested to see with the 466 and 733 how much changes the bus and RAM bandwith makes.

Drive speed on a Powerbook really needs Firewire to cure it - going internal is expensive and warranty voiding. I'd be surprised if that proved to be a serious limiting factor.
I'll bet GUI is a big factor - the card also relieves the processor of some work load.

Grabbed some good 64 meg cards to bundle up with iLife at $279- should be popular with the tower crowd.

The G5 should really strut it's stuff with this both GUI and everything else.

Anyone got a keyboard fully working yet??
Sources say the expansion packs due in the 26th. :cool:

I'm still waiting for mine to come in, but it sounds like you can use the same ideals as Photoshop if you're in a low memory environment.

i.e.: Create your tracks to the point where you start exhibiting slowdown, save and quit. Duplicate your composition file (keeping your previous layers intact) then open the copy and 'combine' various audio tracks together to reduce overheads. If you don't like how it works out, simply reload your old duplicate file prior to the combining process and tweak then re-save...

It's the long way around, but it might help some of you with low RAM or slower drives...?

"Sometimes, for a reason I haven't figured out yet, is that the replay sound gets very slightly crackly on occasion. Seems random."

You know I've had my G5 do that once on iTunes - drove me crazy. I would move a mouse of something and lots of crackles and interference.
Only once never again tongue.gif

If you can't run an audio program like this past 4 or 5 tracks on a 1 GHz system with a modest amount of ram (like 512 or so) that would be pretty **** poor programming on the part of those developing this program.

And remember how terrible the OSX public Beta ran, and look where it was w/ 10.0 then 10.1 etc...

Well I don't mean to crapola on such a neat app, especially since it *is* only 59 bucks. But when you consider you can run an audio app that will do 5 times as much (from what I'm reading here) on a PC with 700 MHz and a gig of ram, or an older G4, I am a little suprised to read about it chugging after 4 or 5 tracks on something less than a G5?. I haven't tried this app out yet, I'm hoping it will be the app that replaces Acid pro which I have on the PC, one of the few remaining reasons I still boot that thing.

Is it just me, or do the Real Instrument tracks use more MIPS than the Software Instrument tracks? Maybe it's just the filters, EQ, etc that I'm using on them.
and 'combine' various audio tracks together to reduce overheads. ^--What's the best way to go about doing this?

For sure but remember how sluggish iPhoto was in the first few renditions so perhaps we should cut Apple a bit of slack. it won't be perfect and y'know it was developed on G5s tongue.gif

I can't find the post but someone was asking about memory fragmentation in Panther and I found the same thing. Since I've moved to 2 gigs of memory the slow down over day or so is far far less noticeable.

I do have about 20 apps open and functioning at once - I would have THOUGHT 1 gig of RAM was adequate these days- maybe not. :confused:

Interesting and informative post here about X memory usage
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20010613140025184

But I can't see where the "improves over time" comment comes from as that's the exact opposite of what I see and others have told me - that restart helps immensely - that would indicate that the :oversubscription does occur. graemlins/nuts.gif

I haven't a clue to be honest, (Still waiting for my copy - thought it would be here this morning! Grrrr!!) - I'm just going on some information I've heard from other board members and media from other sites...

...apparently there's a menu command that can 'combine' several tracks into one, almost like Photoshop's layer flattening scheme...

Did anyone else spend a good 10-15 minutes figuring out what PosterBoy's signature says? Please say yes, I don't want to feel like the only nerd in the house ;)

I won't spoil the surprise... tongue.gif

Cheers,
Podboy

P.S. I realize it's off topic redface.gif

Who's Jack? ;)

I don't want to feel like the only nerd in the house

You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. ;)

I think Garageband is a very cool app, but it's definitely a problem that it's sucking on slower machines (to paraphrase). This would be a perfect laptop app, too.
If it does have an effect on G5 sales, that's just sad.
Spend $3000 on a computer to run a $59 app? "Serious" users will probably outgrow this app pretty quickly. Better even to get a new G4 tower and spend the money on Logic or Cubase. They have entry level apps too, and Logic will be coming out with Logic Express (can you hear the Apple in that?).
But yes, I'll definitely follow its progress--tons of potential. and since Apple owns Logic, it should be pretty solid.
I'm just surprised that there's so much hype over this, and that people are going nuts (yes, spending $3500 on gear to use Garageband is called "going nuts") over it.
It's just an iApp--It should be a toy that everyone can use, not a reason to buy a freakin' G5!!!... and no, I'm not just complaining because I can't use it on ol' Tangerine...

Sorry there but I think Apple is right on the money - their research shows an average of a musician per household and likely there's a lot more wannabes.
This demographic will NOT go for a semi Pro or pro audio rig. They WILL go for a total video, audio, DVD, photo solution that has something for the whole family and is integrated.
G4 towers ( and we sell tons to exactly who YOU are talking about ) are noisy at home compared to a G5.
The front ports on the G5 make stuff like plugging in the KB easy - plugging in camera's etc. and G5's will take a price drop. Apple would be smart to get into a $999 US G5 sooner rather than later.

Apple has a phenomenally good design in the G5 and iLife4 will be a great reason to use the horsepower.
Most everybody wants to tinker with music. GB makes it easy.
Plugging a KB in a getting various other instruments, changing your guitar sound. Sure these might be easy in semi Pro apps but GB makes it accessible.

It's sure not perfect yet but it really sets the stage for a strong year for Apple and a much more concerted move to X and some horsepower.
The Powerbook line tho is big need of a speed bump. tongue.gif

The iBooks both late G3 and new G4 are excellent value for the money but the Al jobbies need a speed bump in the worst way. Even slapping in 16 meg cache drives would help.

I would say 80% of the queries other than specific purpose boxes ( graphics/video) specifically inquire how the machine will be with GB.
We never got that question about the previous iLife except maybe once or twice a month in quizzing about home video in general manner.'

I think the buzz and potential is real tho it looks like the GUI needs some work for speed. :( :cool:

I think you would be right when you mention the need for a low cost G5. Because I too think it's crazy to think that many are going to drop 4 Gs on a machine so they can run Garageband. Especially when they can buy a pro app to run on their existing mac or PC for a lot less dough. And there's plenty of other semi pro apps for even cheaper without having to buy any new hardware.

Remember even right now a G5 is under $2500 and that's bound to drop.
It's a sweet machine.
It's harder and harder to get supplies of new G4s. I can just hear a lot of teenagers cranking up the

"I WANNA MAC ......refrain real loud

and

"Well Harold..... Carman does show some musical talent....I think it's a good idea." :D

Devious kids. ;) :cool:

What you are both pointing to is that GB is the ideal app for a G5 iMac graemlins/love2.gif

Let's see if anything happens tonight! :cool:

I can see GB driving those sales. If the lower cost systems get bumped, that would make sense. I can't see it really making a serious push for the powermacs really. If I had a kid that showed a knack for music, I'd buy him an M-box and say "here, plug this in to the usb port and go nuts".

I wasn't saying that Garageband isn't a keen strategic move. I'm just saying it's sad that it sucks on slower--non-pro--macs.
The G5 is a pro machine. Buying one to use Garageband is a waste of both money and hardware.
Maybe if I sold macs I'd "think different."