Suffering from a head cold over the weekend (which has persisted into this week) and needing something to cheer myself up, I decided to break down and finally get around to buying a new Mac. I had actually been planning to do this for a while, but only recently did I have the funds on-hand to make the purchase. After a quick trip to the Apple Store, I picked up a dual core 2.0 Ghz iMac. The Dell box I bought a while back can now be relegated to gaming purposes, which is more or less what it’s best at.

The main reason I procured this rather nice piece of hardware is because I needed something to run Logic Pro 7.2 on. At about $1000, it’s by far the most expensive piece of software I have ever purchased (I now have a burnt hole in my pocket where my wallet used to be).

In a nutshell, Logic Pro is a pretty powerful digital audio workstation (DAW) tool and MIDI sequencer, used in order to create music using a computer and any myriad pieces of MIDI-compatible instruments/hardware you may have laying around. Logic Pro essentially allows you to create, modify and mix audio into songs using a computer-based user interface. It also includes a drum machine, a number of virtual synthesizers, as well as a wide assortment of filters and samples you can use to mimic real-world instruments or create entirely unique sounds. There’s also a thriving 3rd party plug-in industry, should the included assortment not be sufficient.

It’s also a pro-level tool, commonly used throughout the recording industry. I was a bit apprehensive at first as the UI at first looked pretty daunting, but after a few sleepless nights I’ve mostly gotten the hang of the software’s user interface and have developed a rudimentary understanding of the various plug-ins and effects available. There’s a lot to learn, but the main UI is not really all that much unlike Player Pro - a MOD tracker I used to mess around with over 10 years ago.

The biggest problem is that, despite some playing around with computer-based composition in the past, I’m not in any manner classically trained. No amount of nifty software or hardware can make someone a good musician, and while I’ve had decent results in my experimentation over the last few days it’s going to take me a while to come up with something original that anyone would actually want to listen to. I imagine it’s safe to bet that I will be producing some horribly cheesy electronica for the foreseeable future until I get the hang of things.

…

As for the iMac itself, Apple has really outdone itself with this one. I wasn’t a big fan of the original iMac (though I recognized that it was instrumental in saving the company), and aesthetically speaking the 2nd iteration looked a little too much like a desk lamp for my tastes. The 3rd generation version, though, is just about perfect for an all-in-one box. The Front Row interface in particular is really well designed, though I hope Apple continues to add functionality and opens it up to 3rd parties.

Performance-wise, it’s hard to say where the iMac falls. It seems sufficient for my own uses, though I plan on throwing a little extra RAM into it before too long.

I haven’t tried an install yet, but I’ve also formatted a second partition to use with Boot Camp. There’s something just so incredibly wrong about booting Windows XP natively on a Mac, but at the risk of violating all sense of taste and decency I think I will have to give it a shot when I get a chance.