I've had a few devices for running my guitars to the computer.
First, I had the Belkin 1/4" female to Mini Jack connector. Worked well for what it was, but I was limited to what I could do with the guitar sound. (I hadn't gotten Guitar Rig software yet.) The Garageband's effects at the time weren't so swell.
Next, I got a Inspire 1394 firewire box. It WAS a great little unit. It featured two firewire ports to allow for piggy backing the units, 2 XLR inputs with 48V phantom power, two 1/4" instrument jacks, and on the back it had headphone outs, RCA outs and ins. It worked great, until it broke. One complete side of the unit stopped working after about a year, and I could no long record in stereo. I was using a LINE 6 Pod XT Pro at the time. (back when line 6 firmware didn't allow for USB recording, or i was too dumb to figure it out.)
After the firmware came out for the Pod XT (or I found it) I used the Pod XT as my sole source of guitar in to garageband and logic. The amp modeling suffices for me, and the software to control would run in real time and change the effects and amps as if I were doing it on the unit itself. Plus the unit was rackmount and it looked sleek and stayed out of the way.
Also by using the Pod XT Pro over the USB line, it became an external sound card. I had the two XLR outs of the Pod XT hooked up to two bookshelf powered monitors, iTunes never sounded so good! lol. The one thing that i was missing with the Pod XT was the XLR inputs were not there.
Solved that with the purchase of a Pod X3 Pro. Rack mount like the old one, but it does XLR ins as well as dual tone, bass, and vocal processing.
If I had to reccomend something for you: Pod XT Pro. If you aren't a singer/songwriter, the Pod XT Pro will work fine for you. If singing is your thing as well as playing, the Pod X3 Pro might not be a bad route to go. You get guitar signal processing, as well as XLR inputs and an interface for recording.
The apogee just records in, nothing more.
