There are different choices for video and sound but the professional tools available on both platforms are very good. ProTools on the Mac probably has the edge but only if you want to have a pure recording studio setup and don't use the computer for anything else. Even so there is probably much greater choice on a PC even at professional level when you take into account the purely PC manufacturers producing video and audio equipment and software.-Carol Haynes
The choices are better (or at least more numerous) on the PC side. I use Cubase, Sonar, and GigaSampler. But anybody that does serious music work on a PC will tell you that, unless you want to have a grand day out troubleshooting constant bits of weirdness, you'd best dedicate your studio machine to your music app(s) and nothing else. General rule of thumb is start with a clean ultra-minimal Windows install and then only load your music software. That means no antivirus, firewall, or other security software; no power management; minimal (or no) network protocols; etc. - which IMHO renders the machine unsuitable for general computing use.
And yes, there are more hardware choices for Windows music apps. But the industry heavies and big studios pretty much all use ProTools. If you ever get a crack at working with a ProTools studio setup you'll understand why. It's very fast and fluid once you learn it - and time is money in the recording industry.
Years ago the complaint was levelled that Windows was not truly WYSIWYG for publishing - but that complaint really died with the introduction of TrueType Fonts.
Not so much TrueType per sce. What really did it was that the makers of various high-rez output devices (i.e. Linotronic, Fiery, et al) finally caved on their "Postscript Only" position and updated their raster image processors (RIPs) to correctly handle TrueType. Later on they added the ability to directly RIP Adobe PDF files and the issue became moot for most of the places that wanted to use TrueType. They just sent PDFs and that was the end of it.
Personally, I think the best quality type output comes from a RIP of either a Quark or InDesign file using "foundry quality" Postscript Type-1 fonts. PDFs always lose something in the translation. The letter shapes and metrics get distorted. It's subtle but still there if you know what to look for.
But most people have never seen old school typography so it doesn't really matter. If you've never seen it it doesn't exist.
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