According to Jack

Garageband is better than ok. It's fuckin awesome. And it came free with my mini mac.

According to fluffy

GarageBand is a loop sequencer made by Apple. It is sort of a low-end version of Logic. It allows you to record and rearrange digital audio and MIDI tracks, though its external MIDI support is limited to recording only (it will only play back through its internal softsynths). GarageBand itself can also act as a ReWire slave so that other sequencers (such as Reason) can use GB's looping and softsynths.

It has several winning points which make it quite compelling:

• It's very cheap - The latest version always comes free with the purchase of a new Macintosh, and purchasing it separately costs only $50 (as part of iLife, a collection of applications which, for the most part, are each individually worth well more than $50 themselves)

• Practically unlimited tracks - You can throw as many tracks at it as your computer can handle. You're basically only limited by disk bandwidth (even CPU is a non-issue as it supports freezing)

• Top-notch bundled softsynths and effects - Not only does it come with some amazing synthesis engines, you can also add on more via the use of Jam Packs (which are also usable in Logic)

• Extremely natural workflow - You can start by doing a rough arrangement, then record more detailed parts, then rearrange stuff as much as you want. Or you can start with a finished song in mind and go from there. A song in GarageBand tends to evolve rather than be planned out, but planning out works fine too. Not only that but it becomes really easy to start remixing your songs without a second thought.

• Multitrack recording - With the appropriate hardware you can record up to 8 tracks simultaneously. Many professional apps can't even claim that.

• Really good looping engine - Once you record a track you can very easily slice and dice it to make new loops to be painted, stretched, and otherwise mucked about with. Suck at keeping the band together during tempo changes? Not a problem - just record at one tempo, then adjust the tempo as appropriate. The loop engine takes care of the rest.

There are a few places where GarageBand starts to lose ground, though:

• No third-party softsynths or effects - Aside from Jam Packs, you can't add additional plugins.

• Minimal track automation - The only parameters you can tweak via an envelope are tempo, volume, and panning. Granted, most other automation tasks can be faked with those, but it's still nice to be able to do a properly-controlled filter sweep.

• Loops are a bit of a crutch - Granted, that's more a problem with loop sequencing than anything else, but GarageBand's interface is definitely loop-oriented. Fortunately it does make it really easy to push loops in new ways, so your songs don't have to sound like total clipart.

• Drum machine feature is inferior - It still gets the job done, but it's a bit difficult to use and doesn't exactly make it easy to find the sounds you want. If only they made fruity loops for Mac...

In any case, GarageBand kicks the pants off of many professional software packages, and yet is really cheap. Even if you don't have a Mac it's a pretty good deal - $600 for an awesome piece of software, and it comes with a computer!