I think there are several dimensions to this. These are mission critical systems with extremely high uptime expectations. Therefore using highly standardised easily available identical replacement parts with solid vendor support is a must. There are probably several Apple Stores within easy reach of Broadway and Apple Care will get you rapid support and repair if needed.
Another aspect is that the audio stack on MacOS is truly outstanding, with a whole host of professional audio applications and utilities on the platform. Hardware drivers are up to date and also well supported. Connectivity is also well supported by audio hardware vendors.
Finally Mac Minis have had a stable hardware form factor for well over a decade. If you go for a small form factor generic Pc system there’s no guarantee anything like it will even exist a year or even 6 months later. Hardware specs and specific component choices change with the breeze as availability and relative pricing fluctuate continuously.
Those seem like good points, however you can build a PC with name brand parts and keep them consistent and going for a decade. AMD has made sure you don't need a new motherboard everytime they move to a new generation of CPU compared with Intel for example. Yes, Apple stores are all over, but rapid support and repair are not inexpensive, which was one of the arguments for why they chose Mac Minis. FTR, I am interested in a Mac Mini for my children's main home computer and also for streaming on our TV. It's pretty neat with the M1 processor! I have a 2011 iMac 27 with an AMD HD6970M with 1 gb (possibly 2gb?), and I still do a lot of stuff on it. I program graphics on it, and play with audio.
building a PC with name brand parts does absolutely nothing to address the critical factor mentioned by the GP:
> Another aspect is that the audio stack on MacOS is truly outstanding, with a whole host of professional audio applications and utilities on the platform. Hardware drivers are up to date and also well supported. Connectivity is also well supported by audio hardware vendors.
Drivers. Good lord. I primarily use a Mac for both school and work and had forgotten about the nightmare of drivers. I recently purchased an HP laptop for software that only works on Windows and have already had to reinstall Windows since the display driver was completely broken.
I absolutely appreciate how Macs don't really need you to play with the drivers... I've been using them for years and haven't once needed to do so.
It doesn't have to be Windows. Linux has had the superior audio stack for the past two decades, and it's considered the standard for most A/V work. Just as there are "Mac exclusive" apps, many Linux/*nix audio tools are never ported to MacOS (for example, the industry staple CALF tools are not actively maintained for MacOS).
The larger point here is that the M1 is not as revolutionary as it's being made out to be. The "flagship killing" multi-core performance is embarrassed by the Ryzen 4800u, which can be found in NUCs that cost significantly less than the Mac Mini. If price were a limiting factor in the industry, we'd probably see more people reaching for those Ryzen machines: but we don't. That's why this article is ultimately self-defeating.
In all my time spent in studios and live music in the past 20 years, I've never encountered an A/V professional using Linux. I don't work in video production but I know several people who do, and I've watched some documentaries on this -- in that case, the proportion of Apple machines seems to be even higher than the already quite high proportion found in audio. Never seen a professional or semi-pro using a Linux box. I'm sure they exist, but this doesn't track at all with what I know about this industry.
Sometimes a DJ or bedroom producer is using Windows. So it's quite surprising to hear you say that Linux is the standard.
Can you point me to any producers, artists, sound engineers, studios, or production houses that use Linux? I would love to know...
I have never seen anyone using CALF tools in this profession. Looking at what that does - the functionality is available in a number of rock-solid applications native to Apple (MainStage, Ableton, Logic, etc). So there's no reason why it would need to be ported to MacOS.
How are you measuring audio stack superiority? And in terms of "stack", are you talking about something separate from the suite of professional audio / MIDI tools that come standard on every Apple computer that don't seem to have any comparison on Linux or Windows?
Are you taking into account the availability of hardware drivers on these different platforms? What is your experience in setting up a Linux-based audio production system with a lot of outboard gear? This is one area that seems to be a major source of headaches and motivation to not use Linux for producers and engineers.
Even looking through the comments on this page - there's people talking about the difficulty of setting up a functional audio production environment in Linux compared to Apple. I've noticed this sentiment is repeated over and over again on HN (going back to previous articles on audio production, Ableton, etc).
This topic stands out to me as I've sincerely wanted Linux to be much less of a headache with audio so I can get off the Apple ecosystem entirely.
There's an element here of being led to the proprietary stack only because of paper-cut UX considerations. They aren't going micro-budget here - which they could do, by simply eliminating all the equipment and doing the show a capella - so much as they are looking for impact for money, which means something that works reliably for the current talent pool in live scenarios.
Audio on Linux can definitely work well, but other comments here mention Mainstage as the live performance software driving this decision, and offhand I can't think of a comparable app on Linux; you'd either live with different/worse UX, or have to code up something, which is not really in the scope of the quoted budgets.
I don't understand how it's self-defeating. I literally work in the industry and shared my thoughts about how Apple Silicon is going to benefit the work I do. You can keep talking about Linux, but at the end of the day Linux doesn't have anything we need for the job...
How can the article be self defeating, it’s not really an opinion piece when it comes to Mac Minis dominating Broadway, it’s a statement of fact by an industry insider. How can that be ‘defeated’, self or not? What does that even mean?
With consumer and professional software, it’s never as simple as switching to Windows or Linux to get the job done when your entire back catalog of work and the training for the entire team is invested in a specific software package.
Linux is not really an option. There are very few DAWs with support, next to no drivers for common hardware, and next to no support for popular VSTs. Linux is not a good platform for audio work.
No drivers are needed for "common hardware", because iOS forced most "common hardware" to be driver free i.e. actually compliant with the USB audio standard.
It is true that if you're (still) using PCI devices, drivers can be an issue, but there are several high end companies, including RME, with PCI device support on Linux.
Ardour, Mixbus, Bitwig and Reaper all run natively on Linux. Yes, that's a tiny subset of those available on proprietary platforms.
"Popular VSTs" feels like a wierd thing to say. I would doubt there is enough overlap in people's plugin use to every really create particularly popular ones. There are thousands of plugins available on Linux, both libre, gratis and proprietary. And even if I do not recommend the approach, many (not all) Windows VST plugins can be used on Linux. Yes, you cannot use plugins from companies that choose not support Linux without some hurdle hopping, and yes, that means that "well known" and not-easily replaceable plugins like those from Izotope and Native Instruments are generally out of reach.
A lot of hardware still has "drivers" (more just hardware specific software) for their devices though that only support Mac/windows.
The bigger point isn't that audio production isn't possible on Linux, it's that you have to make significant compromises to make it work. I count switching DAW as a significant compromise.
The cost difference between a Mac mini and Linux hardware of similar performance isn't worth those compromises to many creatives, outside of CG
