M1 MacBook Pro

[atma]

Hey Reason forum. I’m new here so here’s a (not so) quick intro. I’m a longtime hobbyist reason user (I believe ver. 3 was my first purchased version), although the past few years I haven’t fired it up much. I’ve been looking to get back into it, and after a few fun sessions running ver 8 on my late 2009 17” MacBook Pro, it decided it lo longer wanted to power on. At all. End of an era, and it went out with a whimper.

This happened like a month ago, and I was in no hurry to replace it with an Intel powered Mac knowing the Apple Silicon announcement was just weeks away. I had to decide between short term availability of apps and long term sustainability. Apple said they support the Intel macs for “years to come” and in my head I heard “this unit will be frozen in time in 4-5 years” so I opted for the M1 13” MacBook Pro.

I know propellerheads say M1 processors are not supported for reason but I was curious to see how it would run through Rosetta2. It shipped with Big Sur already installed and I know reason 8 isn’t supported so I upgraded to 11 Suite.

The laptop arrived yesterday. I didn’t do any migrating or load a time machine backup because I want a clean install. I haven’t moved any old files over because I’m waiting for an external case for my old hard drive to be able to access all my old stuff, so I can’t do any direct comparisons. I don’t know how valuable it’d be anyway comparing to such an old box.

As mentioned in another thread here, upon trying to install reason, You’re asked to install Rosetta first. That’s the last you ever see of it, it’s invisible after that. Reason installed perfectly from that point, as did all of the extra Suite devices.

All I’ve done to this point is fired up the software and run each of the included demo songs. They both play perfectly. I have no idea how demanding they are in comparison to a real world project.

Anyway, point of all this is I’ll follow up with whatever I find as I find it. If anyone has any questions I can try to answer to the best of my ability. Looking forward to refamiliarizing myself with Reason and getting my hands on all of the fun new features and devices.