Why You Shouldn’t be Reading This. . .
Sunday, July 13th, 2008. . . on your studio computer.
The Studio Moral of the Day goes like this: You shouldn’t have your DAW connected to the web. That goes for Macs as well as PCs.
Why Macs? Because they’re essentially PCs in terms of interest to the hacking community. I mean, sure they’re different under the hood. But if you believe that your Mac is safe just because it’s a Mac. Well. . . Keep on thinking that. Your clients will come to me!!! (I keed, I keed!)
Taking that a step further, one of the best practices is to Dual Boot your computer if your studio comp is also your personal comp. That essentially allows you to have an OS for play and an OS for work. My laptop has a stripped down version of Windows XP for remote work. Games, typing, browsing, iTunes, all that’s on the other OS.
Another thing that people forget about: On your “work OS” if you’re dual booting, you should disable auto updating. On that Apple side, seemingly innocent updates to Quicktime can bring your DAW to it’s knees. Same thing on the PC: an update to Internet Explorer could do you in.