The only difference I see is in garage band it is an instrument generator and Daw in one. you pick a specific pattern you want on a track, and it plays it. For example an arpeggio guitar, it will then play the same arpeggio without variation, like a loop which is all it is; until you tell it to do something different or end. [A feature I wish was available on Band in a Box for Realtracks; you could choose the patterns you wanted to use when it was all midi.]

With Garage band You can choose different variations on your own, when he gave us the finished version there were variations, but fitting the song, he went in and edited just for effect, as what we did would have surficed. For the song I was a part of recording using it, the gentleman chose an arepeggio guitar and acoustic bass and a stick driven drum; we recorded the song and the music just continued to play when we were done, because he had not set an intro or end, he just put in the pattern he wanted and the chord changes and it played. In less than a minute we had drums, guitar and bass, there were other instruments but those three were all we needed for the song. We recorded the vocals live using the external mic on his ipad, I failed to mention we recorded this on an ipad. In the matter of probably 5 to 7 minutes we had the song done recording, vocals and all. The instruments do sound very, very good. To my ear though the realtracks in biab are far superior, [Have I said; I only wish they would add the choose your own pattern feature as band in a box players will sometimes play as though it is a different song and style, which would be ok if they didn't get so far off of the feel of the song, of course you can correct it, but it is way to time consuming, even since they added the feature to take it into real band and regenerate. I wish they would either make it where you can pick you own pattern or where you can freeze bar by bar, and then regenerate only the bars needed. In garage band you choose what you want, when you want it. Which to me is much better. He then went in later and added an intro and and end. I believe Garageband is geared more toward Rock and hip hop genre music, but I have heard songs done in other genres that sound very well. If I had only one to buy for the overall features I would choose Band in a Box. For ease of creating a song without need to edit I would choose Garage Band. I hope this helps!

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Psalm 57:7 My heart, O God, is steadfast, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and make music.