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September 15, 2008

huh

Apple rep tells customer MacBooks aren’t designed to handle GarageBand

Posted Sep. 15, ’08, 4:49 PM PT by David Dahlquist
Category | Apple » Huh?

garageband.jpgConsumerist reader Mark has had a string of bad luck involving his MacBook. His hard drive crashed three times in 18 months, which is weird enough on its own, but even weirder was what happened when he spoke to a local Apple Genius rep about the issue. After explaining to the “Genius” that he was a musician, and used GargeBand regularly, the rep told Mark that MacBooks are “consumer level machines and that often they can’t handle writing big files like the kind GarageBand uses”. He recommended that Mark use an external hard drive for recording, and refused to fix or replace his MacBook.

Mark proceeded to call AppleCare, where he spoke to a friendlier Apple rep who agreed to replace the MacBook. Oddly enough, the AppleCare rep also noted that MacBooks are consumer level machines that weren’t made to handle certain programs, so if his hard drive crapped out again, he’d be out of luck.

This story has been making the rounds on the blogosphere, and has caused a lot of confusion and anger directed at Apple. If they include GarageBand on their most basic computers, why would they claim that it isn’t meant to be run on their “consumer level machines”?

As an audio geek, I have a few things to say about this: first off, GarageBand is as much a pro audio app as iMovie is a pro video app. In other words, it isn’t. Logic Pro is the pro audio app, just like Final Cut Pro is the pro video app (hence the word “Pro” after the name, as well as the high price tags). Any currently produced Mac will run GarageBand just fine, technically speaking.

That said, Apple would be doing its customers a big favor by making one simple piece of information more widely available:

If you plan on working extensively with video or audio, USE AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!

Audio apps of any kind are very demanding on hard drives, especially if you’re editing multiple tracks. Laptop drives are especially vulnerable to wear and tear from this usage. Most professionals know that you should never use your primary hard drive for editing audio and video, but the average consumer doesn’t. So when someone like Mark tries to record an entire album with GarageBand onto his MacBook’s hard drive, something bad is bound to happen. Why Apple doesn’t make this information easier to find is beyond me.

So let me break it down like this: GarageBand is a high-quality consumer app, meant to be used by people of all skill levels on any current Mac. However, if you plan on using GarageBand, or any other audio/video editor extensively (i.e., more than just a few hours a week), you should buy a firewire hard drive and use it as the target drive for your media. If you’re really serious about your work, get a Glyph drive.


11 Comments

flo said:

by principle (and absence of adequate funds) I always abuse my laptops, now it's macs, before it was pc's. Might shorten the life expectancy but at the latest after two years I sell them or the die from travel/hazards. For ex. my last pc laptop had to endure video editing, 200 page indesign layouts, all probably stuff he wasn't meant to do, but he survived just long enough to be sold on ebay. So I really think unless the macbook was old already it should have survived recording an album.

September 15, 2008 6:03 PM
Dwight said:

Why a Glyph rather than a Drobo? I need to make a recommendation to a friend who is planning on converting a small mountain of video to DVD on an iMac.

Thanks

September 15, 2008 6:37 PM
Joe Gust said:

Couldn't additional memory ease the load on these machines, especially if some of the disk writes are temporary file caching?

September 15, 2008 7:29 PM
David Dahlquist said:

I don't know much about Drobo, and it may be great for video, but Glyph drives are the drive of choice for those in the audio industry. The biggest plus for Glyph is that their warranty includes free data recovery if their drive fails in the first year. Seeing as how recovering important data can cost several thousand dollars, this is a sweet deal. It speaks for the confidence Glyph has in their drives. Drobo may be good too, but from what I've read, it looks like they don't support Firewire, which is strange.

September 15, 2008 7:39 PM
Geoff Cleary said:

Drobo does support FireWire. The newest Drobo comes with a FireWire flavor built right in.

September 15, 2008 9:01 PM
Lesser Whark said:

To me, this is insufficient. If Apple want to sell me a laptop containing a 500GB drive, I expect it to take 500GB of documents without crashing and burning. If they put GarageBand and iMovie on it, I expect to be able to use them.

If it's so bad to use your boot drive for data, why do I have go right up to a Mac Pro to get a second internal drive? I know space is at a premium inside a laptop, but I wouldn't complain if they made the iMac fatter with an additional drive...

September 15, 2008 9:28 PM
Erik said:

In addition to agreeing with the author of the article, I would also like to point out the main reasons the internal drives on consumer machines are not suitable for heavy audio/video work.

The most important reason in my opinion is heat. Most well designed pro level machines have been designed to dissipate more heat than the comparable consumer level machine. The reason for this is that the pro level machines are expected to be pushed harder. (The same rule of thumb applies to gaming rigs.)

The other reason that I would mention, is that pro level machines can usually be equipped with more RAM than a consumer level machine. (Mac Pros can accept up to 32GB of RAM compared to 4GB in the iMac.)

And the last thing that I'd like to mention is that laptops are by necessity compact. This means that they don't dissipate heat as readily as a desktop computer.

These are the main reasons I never recommend Apple's consumer machines to people who intend to work on audio or video content for a living.

The machines simply weren't designed for it.

My experience is that Macs are tough, and always have been. But they aren't indestructible.

Except maybe the Macintosh SE30. (We would give SE30s that had been sent in for servicing a hefty slap on the side when the hard drive got stuck.)

September 16, 2008 12:26 AM
Christina Warren Author Profile Page said:

Lesser,
Unfortunately, with laptops (ANY laptop), internal storage is not optimal for heavy-duty editing work (like audio or video), it just isn't. The platters on the drive itself are smaller and that combined with the heat produced and the amount of cooling space that exists in a 1" thick chassis = mechanical breakdown.

It's not that you can't use your drive for editing video or audio -- you can. You just shouldn't be using it as your primary drive for video or audio. David is on point when he says that using your primary drive (whether you are on a desktop or laptop) for editing is just a bad idea.

Let it have its own space. It makes it easier to isolate problems and your data on both sides is better protected. Although MacBook's don't currently support FW800, the iMac and the MacBook Pro do (and the Mac Pro, natch), and for real world results, that's going to be as fast as the internal drive anyway (it might even be faster for read speeds, depending on the internal drive).

@Joe Guest -- RAM will help performance, but if you are doing audio or video editing, your drive is writing a TON of information, cache or no cache. We all know how hot laptops can get (I still have burn marks on my upper thigh because of an old Sony VAIO, I fear that they will be permanent) -- much of that heat IS the hard drive. For longevity, you want to limit the abuse the internal drive takes.

Even if all things were equal, I'd still use an external over my laptop's drive for editing anyway, just because data recovery is easier (I don't know how many 2.5" SATA USB or Firewire enclosures you guys have laying around, I always wind up having to go to Fry's or Microcenter in case of emergency).


September 16, 2008 4:01 AM
krye said:

I'm not buying this. This is probably misinformed Apple employees, or Apple geeks behind the counter giving their opinion rather than fact.

I ran GarageBand on my MacBook for 2 years. It was solid. I eventually sold the MacBook for cash, but GarageBand never gave me a problem. GarageBand is part of iLife. And iLife is a consumer product. The minimum system requirements state that a MacBook is adequate.

I think those Apple employees don't know what their talking about. People have a tendency to hold a candle to Apple Geniuses. In my experience, some of them are no smarter that the clowns working at Best Buy or Radio Shack.

September 16, 2008 5:23 AM
Emma said:

Our editing shop uses iMac's, fully loaded with 4GB of Ram, external drives and they are plenty good at "pro" work (subjective term but that's another story).

Also, there is no direct evidence that Garageband is the culprit in this case. The macbook should be able to handle anything that is thrown at it. If dic red/write is smashing the drive, then the drive is at fault, not the user. If the product doesn't work with the machine or will, if used as advertised, cause the machine to be damaged then Apple is negligent in allowing it to be installed.

September 17, 2008 3:27 AM
mjteix said:

@ krye

As long as you don't record/use many audio files (real instruments/vocals), you'll be fine on a MacBook, but with the extended features in iLife '08, you can now record/mix many real audio files, and that's where the problems begin. Any audio software developper will tell you/recommand to use a dedicated hard drive for your audio files (internal or external): this is a FACT.

November 11, 2008 10:29 AM

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