I have both mac and PC and have used both for PT I don't bother with the mac any more for that though... the reason being is that there was NO noticeable "gain" using the mac the only thing that was different is the start up time or loading time is slightly faster on the mac... THAT's IT!!! so all the "hype" of Mac is well over rated and over priced. so if you can't wait the extra 20 - 30 seconds spend the extra $$$$ and get the Mac.

As for your other question you can use another interface that has an optical input and it will work fine and you can still do the "dry track thing" I have a friend that uses a "pro fire" with his 11r.

If you can put something together your self you can save a ton of $$$ and have an awesome comp for a fraction of the price, and really we all know that the hardware inside of a Mac is the same as inside a PC. I all ways build my own. what I am running now is an AMD 8 core 4ghz cpu with a msi mobo 32gigs ram a 185 gig solid state drive for win 7 and a 1.5 terabyte drive for storage and PT audio files an older video card because I don't play games any more. Really it's not that hard to do and the parts won't plug in to pretty much anything but what they are for. It's really not as hard to do as you think.

DYI Computer