Agreed! Sometimes being restrained in what is possible opens up a myriad of ways to get creative.

Start with very very basic equipment/samples etc. and very rarely add to your setup.

It's crazy how much you can achieve with just a drum tracker, EQ, compressor and a dozen samples.

Ableton seems to have the in-the-know buzz though. Just looked at the UI for Ableton for the first time today; know how it's preferred by some over Garage Band?

They're not competing with each-other... Ableton's a pro tool. Garageband for iOS is a fun app aimed at beginners, which allows one to experiment, record, have fun and maybe even produce some tracks. It's surprisingly capable, although it's focused on loops and presets.

You can think of GarageBand as a simplified version of Logic which is used by a lot of professional producers, so GarageBand is maybe not as amateur as it might seem. More of a simplified entry point into music production to get people eventually into Logic when they get more advanced. Ableton includes a lot of more professional features, but if you want a more serious comparison I might compare Ableton to Logic where you can basically accomplish the same things in each one with different workflows etc.

There are quite some videos out there from famous producers showing their craft, and many use Ableton (Deadmau5, Timbaland) or Logic Pro (Armin van Buuren). It helps develop the buzz.

Ableton is really two softwares in one, for composing and for performing

Ableton has a radically different interface from previous DAWs