« Tom Cruise struck a nerve | Main | Please wash your hands »

July 9, 2005

Garageband 2 or Logic Express 7?

I love Garageband, I really do. I love it's simplicity, I love that I can make music that I like, in a fairly short amount of time. I love Garageband, but it has it's limitations, so I long for something more. Garageband was first released as part of Apple's $50 iLife suite, now iLife '05 is out, and Garageband 2 is included, it has some cool new features, but they want $80 for it. Now that doesn't seem like much of an upgrade path. I'm used to buying a software and then getting minor upgrades for free, which I did with Garageband, and major upgrades at a discount. Apple couldn't care less that someone bought iLife before, they will charge you full price to buy the upgrade. Now, it's not a $999 piece of software, so most people won't go broke upgrading, but it's not worth it to me, at this point. Maybe I'll upgrade when they release Garageband 3.

In the meantime, I've been looking at the $300 Logic Express 7, it's the lighter version of the $1000 Logic Pro 7. Logic Express 7 added a lot of the functionality of Garageband, it can import Garageband projects and it uses the same loop library as well as the same synth instruments. Now that I have said all that, let me state the following. Logic Express 7 is NOT Garageband 2, it works completely differently and you will have to learn a new program. I'm playing with the Logic Express 7 Demo, so I know of what I speak. That said, Logic seems to be a very solid and powerful program, I'm just not sure if I want to start so close to square one. If I buy it and don't like it, I'm out $300 I shouldn't really spend anyway. I can play with the demo for 29 more days, Let's see what it can do. I will probably just end up staying with Garageband for now, and not even upgrading to Garageband 2.

I guess what I really want is Garageband Pro, something that looks and works just like Garageband, but with more power and more features. Come on Apple, step up to the plate!

Posted by Michael Welsh at July 9, 2005 9:33 PM