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Current viability of OS 10 as a music operating system.

We’ve understandably been getting more and more questions similar to the following: “With all of the hoopla currently surrounding Mac OS 10.1 I’m wondering if I should postpone the purchase of a new DAW system until things stabilize?”

The short answer is no. It is true that anything you buy today will be, to some extent, obsolete in a year. Of course, anything you buy in a year will likewise be obsolete in another year so if you want to make music there is normally little value in waiting to buy equipment. The other side of this coin is that the equipment you buy will always be capable of doing at least what it did when you bought it. If it’s good enough today it’s probably good enough tomorrow (Yeah, right! Well, you get the idea.).

The question about the OS is valid. Even though things are likely to change shortly there is still no way to realistically do an OS 10.1 based DAW at this time. Sure, you can wait a few weeks/months until OS 10 stabilizes, and more software and drivers are written for it, but it may be quite a while before “everything” works. Meanwhile OS 9.2 works just fine. You can buy a system now and operate it under 9.2, and if you feel adventurous in a few months you can certainly upgrade to OS 10. All the Macs currently shipping have the latest version of OS 9 and OS 10 on them, so you can choose to run either system at your discretion. Almost all the hardware currently being sold will work just fine under OS 10 once the software supports it. It’s entirely a software issue, so it’s not like you’ll have to throw anything away. Again, it really just boils down to whether you need to make music now. If you do, then you buy what works now and bask in the security that the upgrade should be relatively painless when you decide to do it, and you avoid the terror of being on the bleeding edge while you get your work done. You should talk to your Sweetwater Sales Engineer about the specific options currently available to you based on what you want to accomplish with your system. I promise you’ll get good, honest advice. We’re much more focused on maintaining a good, long term relationship with you than making one easy sale today.

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