It sounds like the OP is reconsidering, a Mac purchase, which I think is probably a good thing. One thing that may not have been mentioned, yet is how nicely Macs work with multiple external devices simultaneously, which, given his widely varying hardware, set up, will really come in handy. Right now, I am using mostly midi DIN cables to connect my music hardware to each other (through the MRCC midi hub). However, last year, I was using USB hubs to connect it all to my Mac as a central host. I also dabble in photography, and use my studio as both a music and photography development studio. At that time, with all of the synth and effects devices, and including 4 external hard drives, two printers, 3 monitors, a scanner, multiple controllers, keyboard, mouse, and the trackball, all combined for a total of 21 peripherals connected to my Mac pro, which was then 7 to 8 years, old, running on the most current operating system, and all flawlessly. I seriously cannot imagine doing something like that on a Windows machine. Maybe things have changed, but I recall having used windows in the past where three or four peripherals simultaneously would start to become fiddly and jumpy. even if you don’t have such a ridiculously complicated set up, when you connect peripherals to a Mac, by and large, you just don’t have to worry about things like drivers, device incompatibilities, ports confusion, background tasks, and all the rest of it. It’s all there in the operating system. I don’t want to exaggerate and say there is never a problem, because sometimes there is, but in almost every case, things connected to a Mac just work.
Just my two cents.
