New Mac ???
Ok have a 2015 MacBook Pro 13 retina screen blah blah snd think it’s time to update - hearing so much pros and cons about new macs - who has the latest MacBooks the ones with the biggest memory and processing power - are they better ? Any issues or regrets or anybody change from a Mac to a pc ??
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integerpoet
- Posts: 832
- Joined: 30 Dec 2020
- Location: East Bay, California
- Contact:
The biggest issues I can think of are:
- Does your audio interface need a driver? Has it been updated for M1 Macs?
- Reason has not been updated for M1 yet but it runs mostly fine in emulation.
- Shocker: I have a SoundCloud!
If you're talking about the M1 Macs, there's only 1 CPU option*, and you only have 2 RAM options - 8GB or 16GB.
If you're talking about the Intel Macs, I have a late 2018 MacBook Pro with the i7 6-core CPU and 16GB of RAM, so a couple of years old at this point. I definitely find these MacBook Pro enclosures to be thermal limiting for the Intel CPUs. I only have to run Reason for 10 mins with a few plugins and it's screaming hot. After a longer session I definitely notice some performance loss as the CPU has to throttle down to avoid overheating. Not unusable ofcourse, but definitely noticeable to me.
On the other hand from what I hear about the M1 Macs, they sound very impressive, and run much cooler apparently. I'm personally waiting for a 2nd gen to come out (M2 or maybe M1X) and for Reason to get native support.
In either case I wouldn't necessarily say hold off from buying yet (or from buying an Intel Mac), but Intel MacBook Pros definitely have thermal issues, but M1 Macs are still in their infancy and you may have to be a bit patient in getting native updates to some software.
* Ok, technically there's two, one with 7 GPU cores, and one with 8 ..
If you're talking about the Intel Macs, I have a late 2018 MacBook Pro with the i7 6-core CPU and 16GB of RAM, so a couple of years old at this point. I definitely find these MacBook Pro enclosures to be thermal limiting for the Intel CPUs. I only have to run Reason for 10 mins with a few plugins and it's screaming hot. After a longer session I definitely notice some performance loss as the CPU has to throttle down to avoid overheating. Not unusable ofcourse, but definitely noticeable to me.
On the other hand from what I hear about the M1 Macs, they sound very impressive, and run much cooler apparently. I'm personally waiting for a 2nd gen to come out (M2 or maybe M1X) and for Reason to get native support.
In either case I wouldn't necessarily say hold off from buying yet (or from buying an Intel Mac), but Intel MacBook Pros definitely have thermal issues, but M1 Macs are still in their infancy and you may have to be a bit patient in getting native updates to some software.
* Ok, technically there's two, one with 7 GPU cores, and one with 8 ..
This is good advice. If you can wait then I'd say wait for 2nd Gen M1, or at least for the current range to be expanded and for DAW and Plugin companies to catch up. I'm not sure I'd want to spend $$$ on a new Intel Mac right now.
As an M1 owner I'd say they're worth it. A lot of people that don't own the machine will tell you to get the most expensive one. I'd say do that if you're sure you are going to need the processing power.
I have the base model Air and it works beautifully with Logic and RRP as a plugin. I can actually make music and not have to bounce anything down. The laptop barely gets hot even without the fan.
If you're going to use anything else besides Logic and RRP then you might run into issues. I'm not sure what the guys did but I was genuinely surprised at how many RRP and cpu intensive RE's I was able to open.
If you're actually considering purchasing one, look up benchmark videos. The Air outperformed the m1 pro in a few of them. You're really paying for the touch bar and built in fan. Also, a lot of the benchmarks I watched were strictly DAW benchmarks. So do with this info as you may.
I have the base model Air and it works beautifully with Logic and RRP as a plugin. I can actually make music and not have to bounce anything down. The laptop barely gets hot even without the fan.
If you're going to use anything else besides Logic and RRP then you might run into issues. I'm not sure what the guys did but I was genuinely surprised at how many RRP and cpu intensive RE's I was able to open.
If you're actually considering purchasing one, look up benchmark videos. The Air outperformed the m1 pro in a few of them. You're really paying for the touch bar and built in fan. Also, a lot of the benchmarks I watched were strictly DAW benchmarks. So do with this info as you may.
Some general input for others thinking about moving to the new Apple processor: I have a Mac Mini with Silicon/M1, 1 tera SSD, 16G Ram. There are occasional hiccups in playback with Reason (using Rosetta), but exporting final mix as audio works flawlessly, so I can deal with playback glitches, though it's annoying.
More generally, the M1 Macs have minor hardware(?) issues Apple support acknowledges. I am using the HDMI port with an HD monitor. There are occasional video artifacts, sparkles of colored pink rectangles, and gray snow, like an old TV that's getting no reception. Both of the latter happen only rarely, and mostly only when the computer is first booted up. The other known issue is that the computer has trouble waking from sleep. This is pretty much always, to the point that I run my computer with sleep disabled ("never go to sleep") and enable a screen saver, to protect my monitor. I also turn it off every night.
More generally, the M1 Macs have minor hardware(?) issues Apple support acknowledges. I am using the HDMI port with an HD monitor. There are occasional video artifacts, sparkles of colored pink rectangles, and gray snow, like an old TV that's getting no reception. Both of the latter happen only rarely, and mostly only when the computer is first booted up. The other known issue is that the computer has trouble waking from sleep. This is pretty much always, to the point that I run my computer with sleep disabled ("never go to sleep") and enable a screen saver, to protect my monitor. I also turn it off every night.
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huggermugger
- Posts: 1303
- Joined: 16 Jul 2021
If it's gotta be a laptop, so be it. But I recently switched from an MBPro to an iMac, and there's no going back. I still have the MBP when I need mobility, but in my studio I've got a big beautiful system, cool, quiet, and plenty of power.
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I was planning on going for a mac mini m1, 8 gigs, but after my research I found out that only logic is the most optimised daw for the m1 chip as of now, and others although run ok, there's no significant performance gain you'd get that you would get on logic or that would make sense to you to spend so much money on a computer. Other companies are yet to catch up and make their apps m1 compatible. That will take a long time.
And even though people are sayin that 8gigs is good enough because the ram is well integrated in the system etc...in reality you will need 16 gigs. For me the 16 gig mac mini m1 was too expensive it had a terribly small ssd. You would need a much bigger SSD if you do serious work with sample libraries and stuff. And apple would charge you ten times the regular price for that option.
Thirdly, the whole system is soldered on to a single board, there is absolutely no upgradability. Once you buy it you are stuck.
The gpu is okish, nothing great, gets the job done but that's about it.
Nowadays even vsts like vital rely on GPUs and work a lot better with a good graphics processor.
I've been using a 2011 mac mini since then. I was very happy, it was expandable, I could upgrade ram, I could replace the hdd.
I love mac os, those days windows was terrible.
But when my Mac was showing its age and I thought about upgrading, I finally went with a windows pc after a lot of consideration.
It costed me half the price of a mac mini.
It has tons of ram, upgradable ssd hdd, and windows has almost caught up with mac os now. OSX ten is no more the best selling point of apple. Windows works really stable, it works well.
It even allows me to upgrade the motherboard,albeit it's a little tricky, but it can be done if I choose to in the future.
I run Ableton Live and reason on it. So far I haven't had to freeze or bounce tracks in my projects. Everything is buttery smooth. And obviously a significant performance gain over my 2011 mac mini.
Anyway these are my thoughts.
Also you need to factor in the cost of upgrading your daws and other softwares when the release m1 compatible versions. Most certainly there won't be free upgrades given.
And even though people are sayin that 8gigs is good enough because the ram is well integrated in the system etc...in reality you will need 16 gigs. For me the 16 gig mac mini m1 was too expensive it had a terribly small ssd. You would need a much bigger SSD if you do serious work with sample libraries and stuff. And apple would charge you ten times the regular price for that option.
Thirdly, the whole system is soldered on to a single board, there is absolutely no upgradability. Once you buy it you are stuck.
The gpu is okish, nothing great, gets the job done but that's about it.
Nowadays even vsts like vital rely on GPUs and work a lot better with a good graphics processor.
I've been using a 2011 mac mini since then. I was very happy, it was expandable, I could upgrade ram, I could replace the hdd.
I love mac os, those days windows was terrible.
But when my Mac was showing its age and I thought about upgrading, I finally went with a windows pc after a lot of consideration.
It costed me half the price of a mac mini.
It has tons of ram, upgradable ssd hdd, and windows has almost caught up with mac os now. OSX ten is no more the best selling point of apple. Windows works really stable, it works well.
It even allows me to upgrade the motherboard,albeit it's a little tricky, but it can be done if I choose to in the future.
I run Ableton Live and reason on it. So far I haven't had to freeze or bounce tracks in my projects. Everything is buttery smooth. And obviously a significant performance gain over my 2011 mac mini.
Anyway these are my thoughts.
Also you need to factor in the cost of upgrading your daws and other softwares when the release m1 compatible versions. Most certainly there won't be free upgrades given.
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