1.1. Equipment Requirements

Here are the official Apple minimum requirements for GarageBand:

• A Mac whose processor is a 600MHz G3 or faster . True, but you can't use the Software Instruments (see Section 1.7) unless you have a G4 or later chip.

• Mac OS X 10.3.4 or later . Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) is ideal.

• 256 megabytes of memory . Well, you might be able to record "Chopsticks" with two fingers with this much memory. But if you expect to create compositions much more elaborate than that, 512 MB is the bare minimum. A gigabyte or even more is better.

• QuickTime 6.5.2 or later . If GarageBand complains that you don't have this software, download it from www.apple.com/quicktime.

• A screen with at least 1024-x-768 “pixel resolution . That would rule out, for example, blueberry and tangerine iBooks. Then again, they can't run GarageBand anyway.

• 2 gigabytes of hard drive space . That's what you need to install GarageBand, although there are some sneaky tricks for moving GarageBand onto a different hard drive if necessary (see Section 9.2).

• Musical equipment (optional) . You can use GarageBand happily for years using nothing but your Mac and its mouse. But if you have even a little musical talent ”even the ability to sing in tune ”you can get even more out of the program by adding musical gear like a microphone, synthesizer (electronic MIDI keyboard), or guitar (see Chapters 4 and 6).

The point is that GarageBand is a very hungry program. It craves memory and horsepower like Donald Trump craves publicity.

If you're getting error messages like "Part of the song was not played ," "The hard disk is not fast enough," and "Disk is too slow," flip immediately to Chapter 10 for some explanations and solutions.

Either that, or buy a new Mac.