Hi Tatsu! There really was no way to respond to your earlier post. You must have been having a bad day. What I wrote is what I know to the best of my understanding. Apple makes some very pretty products, but I see little functionality that distinguishes Apple from the alternatives. What has always disturbed me about Apple is that everything they sell costs nearly twice what it does from everyone else, and they justify it by claiming theirs is a superior product. Furthermore the Apple Fan Boys seem to see themselves as being superior themselves for having chose Apple products. That's great for Apple because it gets people spending a lot of money, and then spending more to continually upgrade because their products are not backwardly compatible. And this is all because Apple products are superior?

The two stories I cited are examples of what I see are fundamental flaws in the Apple Way and I feel should give people a reason to step back and re-think the whole paradigm.

The 3 years of studio recordings can be recovered if my friend purchases a new ProTools license...

Spend, spend, spend...

You're quite right when you say I don't know much about Macs. I have no idea what is the current rev of OS X, so Yosemite and El Capitan are just noise to me. The point here is that my friend's Mac apparently couldn't be upgraded to run a compatible version of the Airport Utility in order to manage her new Airport Extreme, which is absurd. Were the Airport Extreme to have a web based management interface, like EVERY OTHER consumer router on the planet, her old Mac, as well as any other machine with a web browser, could have managed it.

As for running Linux on old hardware, it's not just that it runs. It's *USEFUL* too on old hardware.

As for the CLI to manage the Airport Extreme, what makes you think that rev of the CLI would work if the Airport Utility wouldn't? The GUI is just a front-end to the CLI.

The point here is that Apple's gear isn't compatible with itself over time, and it forces people to purchase upgrades unnecessarily. I suppose the best thing you could say for it is that its clearly a successful business model...

The older version of the Airport Utility isn't compatible with the new Airport Extreme. Beyond that, there is no good reason that an Airport Extreme should be managed by anything other than a web browser. Because Apple requires you to use the Airport Utility, you have to upgrade your Mac OS X rev to be compatible. But if your hardware is too old, you then have to upgrade the hardware as well.

Linux runs just fine on an 8 year old laptop with all the newest tools. It comes with a variety of excellent IDEs to choose from as well as any number of different windowing systems you can pick from. The latest software runs just fine on an 8 year old piece of hardware. Apple forces you to spend, spend, spend to keep everything working together and it just age well.

I don't know what MacBook it is my friend has. All I know is that she can't update to the current rev of Mac OS X. All these super thin MacBooks look the same to me, so I can't tell you just how old it is or what's the model number.

As for ProTools breaking, it certainly is Apple's fault that an older product does not work. I've got shell scripts I wrote 15 years ago which work fine on any Linux system today. I use an 8 year old $100 laptop running Windows 7 to do location recording with a 13 year old version of CoolEdit to record to. Works fine. And that version of CoolEdit would run under Windows 10. Heck, I could probably get it to run under Wine.

I have another 8 year old laptop that runs Ubuntu 1404 LTS which acts as the music server for my hi-end audio system, using the Banshee application.

Can you imagine anyone using a 6 year old Mac and have it work with anything Apple new? Nahhhhh...

The problem with Apple gear is that it isn't compatible with Apple gear, let alone anyone else's. Once you buy into the Apple eco-system, you're screwed. Here are a couple of stories.

One friend had a MacBook which was 4 years old. She purchased a new Airport Extreme, Apple's home router. The only way to manage the Airport Extreme is with Apple's Airport Utility. The version of Mac OS X had an older version of Airport Utility that wasn't compatible with the router. Furthermore she couldn't upgrade the version of Mac OS X on her laptop to the current rev because it was 4 years old. In order to install the Airport Extreme, she had to borrow a new iPad.

Every other home router on the planet is managed through a web browser interface. There's NOTHING about the Airport Utility that you couldn't do with a browser interface, but noooo... It's an Apple product so you HAVE to use their app to manage it, and if you don't have a current Apple platform to do it from, you're screwed.

Another friend purchased a new iPhone 6 and found that iTunes wouldn't work for him with his laptop. Again, he had to upgrade Mac OS X. His laptop was new enough that it could go up to the current rev of OS X, so he got his iTunes working. But then his ProTools wouldn't work with the new OS X. Three years of studio recordings were lost.

Apple stuff is not only not compatible with other platforms, it's not compatible with itself. Anyone who buys into the Apple eco-system is going to run up against this kind of problem.

Try taking your install and making it into a bootable iso image and a bootable DVD. Run off of that.

I still have a CD player. The Peachtree DAC has USB and optical inputs. But since I've ripped all of my CDs to disk, the CD player gets little use.

I also do location recording of chamber music, so I use the laptop to my editing. I typically burn CD copies of the remastered recordings for the musicians and will check them on the CD player just to make sure everything is right.

Old? Having an mp3 player makes you old? Hee, hee. That's funny!

I run a Linn LP-12 turntable (serial #1956) which is 44 years old. It's in tip-top shape. I have a Rega RB-300 arm and a Denon DL-110 cartridge. I run that into a tube preamp (http://www.tubes4hifi.com) which feeds an active crossover for the Linkwitz Orion loudspeaker system. I use an Ubuntu laptop with the Banshee music player for my digital source into a Peachtree DAC. Decent grade, but nothing special Parts Express interconnects and 14 gauge zip cord speaker wire. Everyone who hears my system leaves with envy.

*All* headphones suck compared to what I listen to at home. I don't care if you're listening to an mp3 player, a iPhone or what headphone amp you're running it through. It all sucks in comparison. If you want something that actually sounds good AND is affordable for the Common Man, point your browser at:

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/

This is how the Borg got their start.

And just who is going to give money to the humans lounging at home with which they will pay for housing, food, clothing, transportation, goods and services? How much money will they be given? Or is this "home" you speak of just going to be a tent in Hooverville?

The economic system is one where all goods and services have to be paid for at some level. Even subsidized services like public transportation and health care require some level of payment. Are you suggesting that the long-term unemployed will be government subsidized sufficiently to have an apartment to live in, with Internet, streaming electronic entertainment, beer in the fridge ("free as in beer") and an endless supply of junk food?

Even if food, goods and housing are amazingly cheap, if you have no money to pay for them, then they are still too expensive for you.

Our economic system and extensive robotic automation of production are inherently incompatible. Machines can replace labor, but if humans aren't working, then they have no jobs and no money to spend, and then you have nobody for you to sell your goods and services to.

Back in the 1960's, there was a TV show called "The 21st Century", which was narrated by Walter Cronkite. He kept going on about how much more leisure time people would have in the 21st century. What the futurists of the day forgot to consider was that if you put everyone out of a job, nobody is going to have money to spend, and thus there would be no market to sell to.

...someone who listens to live music, and then using that as a reference, tries to reproduce that as well as he or she can reasonably afford at home. Most audiophiles are NOT people with too much money and not enough sense. They're just people who love listening to good music and revel in hearing voices really sound like voices.

You can have truly great sound for an affordable amount of money, but you can have great sound with pre-packaged junk like what you get from Cambridge Soundworks or most anything else you connect to your laptop or iPhone. Affordable great sound is had by purchasing speaker drivers from Madisound and building your own enclosures. It's had by building your own tube amps from tubes4hifi.com. It's had simply by caring about what you're hearing and using a little common sense.

I used to run full-range electrostatic loudspeakers, but have since moved on to the home brew designs of Siegfried Linkwitz. Very, very affordable major hi-end. You can't buy better sound than his home brew designs.

I'm both a musician and an engineer, and back in my college days some 40 years ago, we didn't have computers, cell phones, Raspberry Pi boxes and all the fun toys y'all have today. No video games. But we did have audio to play with and it's been fun.

Insanely great sound can be had for a reasonable amount of money if you're willing to DIY. Check out the loudspeaker designs of Siegfriend Linkwitz at

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/

It's not cheap, but it sounds every bit as good as gear costing 30 - 100 times as much depending on which design you build. The LXmini can be built for less than $1k and within it's limitations, sounds as wonderful as anything AT ANY PRICE.

There was a time when the experience of live musicians is what defined what the musical experience was, and so good audio was an attempt to recreate that experience at home. What's sad is that today music is consumed rather than seen as the product of live musicians, so good quality audio just isn't valued much anymore.