Well, maybe my critisism of GB was unfair because I don't have a lot of experience using Mac computers. It just seems like it's hard to customize the plug-ins and VST selection and what not.

there are no real plug-ins with garage band... (as far as i know)
the demo version is most commonly used, but if you pay for it the midi capabilities are awesome.

Can you import your own VSTi? That's the biggest thing I think i'd be interested in.

i don't believe so, but you can customize the instrument itself while playing like a vsti
one of things that bothers me about garageband is you can only add 5 track effects, but it's better than nothing

Yeah. It's alright, but it just doesn't seem as open ended as other programs are you know what I mean? With mine I feel like I can tack on to it whatever I need and not have to worry about whether or not theres a "mode" for it. It's basically whatever my RAM can handle.

im entering this thread a bit late. but who ever cares.. i use a mixture of programs. such as MixCraft, Audacity, BeatCraft, Fruity Loops/FL Studios, Kramware, SynthZone and Mixxx. i use so many programs because its so easy to create a piece of music in one the import it to another and edit it then record vocals or whatever you want and put it all together. as others said i dont know what the poster wants but i recomend any of those programs. ive used them for only about two months now and ive already have created around 100 songs of all various genres ranging from complete doof rave music to electrocore and everything in between! also if you do use any of those i recomend installing every plug-in that you can install with them!!

Agreed. Garageband is exactly what it's meant to be: an entry level simple music creator for people who are basically new to DAWs and aren't really trying to record a studio quality album. It's rudimentary both in GUI and audio quality, but it's also quite versatile.

and the only prominent DAW that I can think of that is exclusive to the windows platform, and doesn't also run beautifully on a Mac is Fruity Loops, but since windows can be run seamlessly on Mac machines via Boot Camp and Parallels, I'm sure there's ways around that.

The only gripe I have against limited-feature recording software is that you're buying something else by the time you grow out of it.
It just makes more sense to me to buy something that's expandable and capable of covering your current and future needs, even at the expense of user-friendliness. I think a person is far better served expending more effort on a learning curve for a more intense program than to have to switch modes multiple times in different software instead of just building on one.

I think the main consideration in deciding what to use is figuring out what you need now AND what you'll need later. If you don't know how you'll change and evolve, that's fine, but if you stick with it and put your soul into it, I guarantee that you will... so in that context, it's better to get a size too large to grow into than multiple sizes just right for a limited amount of time.

If anything, you'll save yourself from having to learn different workflows, setups, interfaces, layouts... which ALWAYS slow down productivity.

ok, and when you create your music do you post it somewhere?
like you tube? facebook or idk.....where is it possible to find your creations???

I know somebody who ordered a music website like that: websitetemplates.bz/categories/website-templates-musics-2.html
you think what's better?

people use myspace and youtube because they are free. nobody wants to pay $ 1000.00 for a crappy template