Two computers / Mac & PC together

[Mike Martin]

So I've moved over to a Mac mostly as I'm really enjoying writing in Logic Pro X. So far so good but I have a lot of older 32-bit (not an immediate problem) and some old Windows only plug-ins on my Windows desktop that I really like. So anyone simply use a second computer as a "sound module"? Aside from just using a MIDI cable and a digital out any other ways I should consider integrating these two computers?

[MoodyBluesKeys]

You can do file sharing over your network. Simply setup the Mac to use SMB (Microsoft's protocol) for sharing, and set any areas that you want shared to sharable. I run a combination Mac/PC environment (in fact, my business specialty is "Making Apple and Microsoft PLAY NICE").

Of course, not all documents will work on the other platform (unless there is an application available for both PC and Mac that reads those files), but it is simple to share common files like Microsoft Office, the current Apple apps can read and write the files. There is somewhat of a difference in how they display. Videos, Pictures, MIDI files, audio files all can be worked with transparently between devices.

 

My internal network (with a hardware firewall to the outside) is setup so that I can share whatever needed between any of the computers, and for that matter can remote control any of them from my primary location (includes Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Mac OS High Sierra, Mac OS Catalina, Linux Mint 20, and virtual machines running on the primary Mac using Parallels.

One possible way of running 32-bit apps inside Catalina is to use Parallels to install a virtual machine with an older Mac OS version. Works great for some things, not as sure how well such things as music from sound generators work between the two.

 

I would definitely have both on the network. Since the MBP has both wireless and wired output, I use wired. The Macbook Air is only wireless, but still works with a lower throughput.