I agree with you that apple is overly expensive, but for that money you get a high end product from the highest build quallity, with very very stable operating system, just because the fact apple does not have to support tons of hardware... on to of that, apple keeps its vallue.. 3 year old macbooks still sell for o er half of the new vallue.. which makes the total costs of a macbook certainly more acceptable... also keep in mind that the windows competitors to the macbooks called ultrabooks are also very very expensive products.. these are the competitions answer to the macbook hardware quallity, and they cost about 3/4 of the price of a macbook pro.. for a system with comparable performance..


And yes, apple is expensive, by nature, thats also because they dont aim at poor people's money, but at the rich people.. why is a mercedes much more expensive then a totyota?


For me having mainstage ( and logic for under €200 with lifelong free uodates where comparable daw software costs €500 with another €150 update every 2 years) and the prices of used macbooks make the investment worth it... i currently have a 2011 macbook that still runs things just fine.. the hardware is still in perfect condition, only did an upgrade to 16GB memmory and an SSD... and its running mainstage on the highest level..


Gig performer certainly seems to be the way to go on a windows system... but dont forget that mainstage at the much lower price comes with a set of sounds comparable to Native instruments komplete in quallity and quantity.. when you buy apple mainstage, you dont need any other VST's. They are an option. When younbuy gig performer you will need to buy the sounds sepperately, meaning another €500 for NI komplete or another all around package. If you allready have the VSTs, its not a thing, but when starting out, its a huge difference..

Patch maintain, certainly is a huge thing, but the lower CPU use is a claim by the manufactorer.. domt get me wrong, i think gig performer is a great. Program, and certainly the way to go on windows systems... but if you have an apple and use mainstage, i dont see any reason to switch to gig performer.. because, when i look at gig performer, all i see is a mainstage clone, but a darn good one...

In the future however, with gig performer still being developed and getting more and more features, and mainstage dont moving anywhere for the last few years, inwould not be surprised if in a few years gig performer has overtaken mainstage by a large margin... unless apple takes up the gauntlet and starts further development for mainstage again.. personally i think having competition is allways a good thing for the customers..