Update on Mac20Q Macs on My Desk in the Office

Giving the MacBook away to an Aussie

By three sons came to visit last week, and two of them are Mac users, each of them having a MacBook Pro. One of them uses the MacBook Pro professionally to edit videos, he is a cameraman. The youngest of them uses the MacBook Pro, I suppose professionally also, as he is an artist and he creates digital arts using his Mac. The oldest lad, has just returned from an Antipodean adventure, that was three years down under in Australia and New Zealand. While he was travelling he bought a cheap HP computer, and I felt sorry for him, I felt that I should be using a Mac like the rest of us. Besides it was a plan to stop him from taking the piss of us for being Apple fan boys. He was very grateful for me given him my lovely MacBook, the taking of the Mickey, ended straight away. I should think so too as on many occasion on seeing my MacBook on my desk, I thought to myself – What a lovely computer.

I expected to get at least three more years of use from the MacBook as it is a great little machine. It is one of the last MacBooks that were made with the aluminium Uni body. The only thing that I have missed on that MacBook was the FireWire port. Since giving away the MacBook, that I was very happy to do, I have missed it. I kind of forgot, that one of the tasks that are used for that MacBook, was to record screencasts and in particular for recording audio. I will have to find a solution now, to recording good audio.

using a professional condenser microphone to record audio

I have a Behringer B-2 condenser microphone connected to a Behringer mixer, which was then plugged in to the MacBook. A good setup for getting an excellent sound from my voice, for posting online in screen casts. If I try to record from my iMac which is now taking the place of what I had before, then I get too much background noise. The microphone I have connected to the iMac 27 inch, is a Sampson USB microphone, which is very sensitive indeed and picks up every small sound.

Making use of the Shure SM 58 microphone

What I may have to do instead, is to bring the Shure SM 58 microphone which is less sensitive as it is a dynamic microphone and connect that via the mixer to the iMac. I did kind of wonder if it would be possible for me to connect from the Behringer mixer to the iPad, but that seems not to work. Another possibility that I considered was the purchase of a iRig microphone with you is specifically made to work with the iPad. I will have to make another post in this Mac 20 Q website to let you know how I sort this little problem out.

Going back to using Leopard

There is one other possibility which I have considered and that is to use the Mac mini G4, which is extremely quiet in use and would be just the job for audio recording. The only thing is, is that I would be using Leopard as the operating system, as it can’t be upgraded any further. I would also have to take the extra monitor that I have connected to the iMac and take that to the upstairs studio. That still is a possibility and over the next couple of days I will give it a try to see how it works in practice.

If I was to use the Mac Mini to do my audio recording, then I would have to hope that my preferred audio recording software, which is Amadeus pro, will work on that Leopard operating system.

Despite the rearranging of my computing, that has resulted from giving away the MacBook, having created a couple of small difficulties, I don’t regret being able to bring the other son into the fold of us Mac users. He is a good son and deserves to have the MacBook.