Should you get a Mac or a Windows machine / a laptop or a desktop

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Disclaimer: the following are the opinions and beliefs of Xylio staff (and they might even be subjective)

A desktop is much more powerful than a laptop, but a laptop is portable.
For DJ-ing portability is a big advantage. So, most of the times a DJ carries around a laptop. Except for resident DJs which sometimes have the luxury of using a powerful desktop at the location.

How to choose between a Mac and a Windows machine -- first and foremost is a matter of preference. If you prefer one over the other you should definitely stick to your choice. Both can accomplish the same tasks and FutureDecks works ok on both. In terms of the actual machines, from the hardware point of view, Macs tend to be better built and usually have better processors and higher quality components and displays. If you were to configure a Windows laptop with the exact same internals as a Mac laptop (exact processor type (not only i5/i7 but down to the exact type id - eg.i5 3317U), memory, display type/quality/resolution, SSD/hard drive, etc) you will be amazed on the price difference between them -- or more precisely on the lack of a price difference. If you factor in the battery life you get from them, the difference is practically non-existant.

If on the other hand you don't care for the latest hardware components or simply don't want to spend a lot of money on a Mac, then a Windows laptop is indeed a very good choice - especially very good in terms of what you get for your money. You can get a decent machine at less than a half (or even a third) that of a Mac.

On the software side things are a bit more different though - all Macs come by default with CoreAudio which is a high-quality and very low latency audio software interface to the actual audio device (soundcard). This ensures that you will have very low latencies (usually between 1ms to 15ms) and everything works perfectly and with all audio devices out-of-the-box. On Windows to reach the same latencies and quality you have to have a soundcard with an ASIO driver -- which unfortunately not all have -- mostly only the professional ones (and some of the hardware controllers which have the sound I/O built-in, but not all have ASIO). In terms of resources allocated to the audio apps - Macs also usually fair better. A Mac is a machine more targeted to media creation/multimedia/audio work than a Windows machine which is more targeted as an office machine. That's not to say you can't use them both for either task.