| A licensed cutdown version of MacDrive comes with ProTools 8 (HD & LE) for PC now (labeled as HFS+ support) and will install with the software. It'll allows you to read/write mac drives, just not create/repair mac drives/CDs which the full version of MacDrive can do.
BTW, I use Mac ProTools HD at work all day but use PT LE (Complete Toolkit, now) on a PC at home and on the side at work. Haven't had any issues in over 4 years running on my laptop and having compatibility with the Macs (though it takes a little time for me to readjust my shortcuts when I switch systems.)
The only other thing is that some plugins are Mac only (but on the otherhand, it's also true the other way around and there are a lot of cool VST plugs that can be wrapped and used in PT on the PC side.) The other bonus is almost all the great spectral analysers/wave editors work only/better on the PC side. Sometimes I trade files from the Mac rig to the PC rig just to do some processing. For instance, CEDAR Tools is PC only as is Algorithmix's EQs (wrapped) while McDSP plugins are Mac only. Luckily those things are evening out (for instance, AudioEase's Speakerphone & Altiverb going to the PC side) but it's sometimes good to be running two different systems so there's more available.
Clients... they've never cared. ProTools looks pretty much like ProTools on either system and it's not really apparent (especially if all your equipment is in a machine room.) You can get files on & off and so that's all that matters. Better yet, there's no way to write a PC NTFS drive on a Mac, but the MacDrive solution give PCs compatability the other way. I've had situations where audio had to be returned to a Avid PC and we had to transfer over the network from the Mac to a PC just to copy back to the post-group's drive. |