>Phil Taylor writes: >| I've put up a first rough beta version of BarFly Carbon, for all the >| folks who've been badgering me for an OS X version. You can download >| it from: <http://www.barfly.dial.pipex.com/BarFlyCarbon.hqx> > >Hmmm ... I'm getting more and more tempted to invest in a PowerBook >with OSX. Now there's another reason. > >Actually, I've done a bit of digging, and have put it off because of >not enough information to decide what to order. While my official >excuse for buying one would be for "professional" software >development reasons, I'm also interesting in something that could >function as a portable musical tool. Maybe someone here knows more >than I can get from apple.com.
Well, I bought a new Titanium G4 Powerbook about a month ago, so I can answer some of your questions. >There's a lot of hype about the wonderful music support, but it all >seems to be aimed at people who are downloading and playing musical >recordings. This is interesting, of course, but it can be done on >nearly anything these days. You're right, but Apple do it very prettily:-) >More interesting would be the ability to >use the machine as a recording studio. I can tell that a PowerBook >comes with a microphone, but I can't even tell from the specs whether >it's mono or stereo. Mine didn't come with a microphone, but it has line-level audio inputs (16 bits per channel stere). >And, of course, I'd like to plug in N >microphones, and it would be interesting to learn how large N can be. >Can the "sound studio" software actually input N tracks from mics and >play games with them? Or can it only download the N tracks from some >other computer? Not sure about that. You could use multiple USB microphones. There's nothing in the operating system to prevent recording multiple audio channels, and a machine which can record full-screen video in real time ought to be able to handle at least a dozen audio channels, but you'd really need to speak to somebody who is doing this to find out about the real situation. >Another topic that's hard to get straight info on is what can >actually be done with the wireless ports. The standard airport thingy is for wireless ethernet. You can use it to connect to a base station which is connected to the internet via modem or dsl. There's also Bluetooth, about which I know absolutely nothing. As far as I know, if you want to connect to the internet while you're out in the woods you will still have to use a cell phone, although there are a variety of interfaces which could potentially be used to connect the computer to the phone. >As far as I can tell, the only available answer is "Buy one and see >if it works." I'm not sure if I'm ready to invest that much money, >just to find that it will only work when I'm at home. Try asking around on some of the comp.sys.mac usenet groups and you'll probably find somebody who's done it if it can be done. >Sure would be useful, though. > >(And, since I'd use it for testing my day-job stuff, its price tag >would be deductible. ;-) Yeah! Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
