Advice re Apple MacBook/air etc for music.

jimkehoe

Thank you to everyone for all the useful advice.
I finally pulled the trigger and bought an M1 MacBook Air 16GB/1Tb direct from Apple.

ToneControl

monquixote said:

jimkehoe said:

octatonic said:

jimkehoe said:

octatonic said:

The Air is fanless which means it will throttle under CPU load.

Get as much RAM and storage as you can afford.
16GB, 1TB would be my suggestion, to get the maximum life out of the machine.

I struggle to recommend used Mac laptops because of a lack of warranty.
If the SSD (or anything else soldered on) dies then you have a doorstop.
My previous MBP (15" 2017) was essentially swapped out (except for the bottom case) under the AppleCare+ warranty.
It is worth its weight, imo.

I assume that an Apple warranty is only available from Apple or is it available from trusted resellers/refurbishers ? 
Are you saying the air isn’t as reliable as a result of a lack of fan?

Applecare+ is only available from Apple as far as I know.
You can get a third party warranty from some places but it is unlikely to be as good.

No, I am saying that it with throttle under CPU load.
That has nothing to do with reliability.
It is performance.
Without a fan it cannot exceed certain core temps, which means it cannot exceed certain speeds.
It depends on other factors though, the type of processing and even room temperature (to a degree).

A fan in a computer allows for cooling under load- the fan spins up when it gets hot to cool it, allowing for longer periods at full CPU usage. The fanless designs don't allow this- they can run slower under load.

They are all as reliable as each other- to a point.
There is an argument to be made that high usage at high temperature shortens component life but not massively.

I would still argue for buying new, with an extendible warranty.

Thanks that’s very informative. I’d love to buy new but I can’t really justify that sort of outlay. I do love apple but blimey they don’t come cheap:)

The ability to dissipate heat is very important for performance. 

I would anticipate the performance of a Mac Mini for example will be considerably higher than that of a Macbook Air. 

The last generation of intel macs had terrible real world performance I have an i9 Macbook and it constantly stutters and crawls because it overheats at the slightest hint of sustained load. It's theoretically high powered machine, but you see none of it.

Fanless machines if kept to sensible operating temperatures should be more reliable as they don't have mechanical components and don't get vents clogged up with fluff.

how much heat can you dissipate into an external heat sink?
I used my work Microsoft lap top on top of an upturned heavy baking tray, in the hope that it helps it cool quicker (fan gets noisy when doing video in Teams) 
I have no proof that this is working for me really

ToneControl

goldtop said:

For £800, it's tricky to get an M1 Mac with the 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD pairing. Pretty rare. I'd guess >80% sold were the 8/256 model, with lots bought for office workers who were working from home under CV19 lockdown.

But I think the OP's audio needs are pretty modest and 8/256 is fine unless he's going for NI Komplete/similar.

I have NI Komplete Ultimate plus some other large libraries, so around 1TB in total. Would that all work OK from an external SSD?

goldtop

ToneControl said:

goldtop said:

For £800, it's tricky to get an M1 Mac with the 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD pairing. Pretty rare. I'd guess >80% sold were the 8/256 model, with lots bought for office workers who were working from home under CV19 lockdown.

But I think the OP's audio needs are pretty modest and 8/256 is fine unless he's going for NI Komplete/similar.

I have NI Komplete Ultimate plus some other large libraries, so around 1TB in total. Would that all work OK from an external SSD?

There are a few guys here who do that. I have an SSD with all of my Arturia and Steinberg libraries on it, works fine, albet much smaller. I failed to get the 290GB of Komplete 13 Standard on to my SSD, so I can't directly comment. (Some weird install problem, and I lost patience after 2 days and got a refund.)

TBH, the annoyance of remembering to eject the SSD before disconnecting the MBA from the TB3 hub is almost worth the hassle of swapping to an MBA with 1TB internal SSD.

Snap

ToneControl said:

goldtop said:

For £800, it's tricky to get an M1 Mac with the 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD pairing. Pretty rare. I'd guess >80% sold were the 8/256 model, with lots bought for office workers who were working from home under CV19 lockdown.

But I think the OP's audio needs are pretty modest and 8/256 is fine unless he's going for NI Komplete/similar.

I have NI Komplete Ultimate plus some other large libraries, so around 1TB in total. Would that all work OK from an external SSD?

Yes, will work fine. We do similar on one of the setups, no problem. Unless you forget your external drive of course....ha

cathodyne

monquixote said:

I'm sitting with a 2020 i9 16" MBP on my desk that cost £3K (luckily work bought it)

It's complete dogshit. It's been sitting on my desk browsing the web and so hot you can barely touch it. Despite having been solidly on charge with an official Apple charger since Friday the batteries are apparently half empty.

Yeah, I have one of those (unfortunately work did not buy it), I knew the M chips were on the way but I had to get it as I was starting a new job.

Which browser do you use?  I find Chrome will run very hot, so I only use it minimally for debugging.  I have a lot of tabs in Safari though that don’t heat it up.  (Hope that might help you).

Having bought a Universal Audio Apollo interface I have been playing with Luna, but I have been taken aback how it can cause the fans to start whirring with only 2 tracks in it.  I need to figure out whether this is due to a problem plugin or if Luna will always do this, but I am not especially optimistic.

My plan had been to use Luna and save money, but I am considering buying Logic to use instead (perhaps before the rumoured Apple UK price bump in a week or so).

Somewhere down the line (in a year or two?) I can imagine buying a Mini or Studio using an M2 / M3, but that’s not a solution for me anytime soon.

notsopro

just reading through this thread as I'm currently purchasing a new laptop for 'work', was looking the 256gb / 8gb ram MacBook airs that seem good value at the min.

seen few people saying this should enough for 'most people', just wondered if anyone's had any direct experience with one, I'd basically be using it for a couple stand alone Neural DSP plugins, amplitude 5, and would do some very light recording with logic (just a few tracks etc). from what people have said, think the entry model be fine, any advice appreciated. 

thermionic

I’ve been researching this a bit lately and just ordered a refurbished Macbook Air M2 as a stopgap while I wait/decide when to replace my 12-year old iMac. It won’t be my main machine but I will try opening some Logic projects to see how it goes. Some things I learnt:

• It’s not worth getting the 10-core GPU over the 8-core. The difference is marginal and the extra cores may result in thermal throttling becoming more likely in certain situations.
• The 256 GB model is considerably slower for read/write than the older M1 because the SSD is on one chip, the M1 had two 128 GB chips in parallel. Go for a 512 GB configuration if you can afford it (it’s two 256 GB in parallel).
• People will tell you to double the base RAM at least, but I’ve been running Logic on a much slower 2011 iMac with only 8 GB with no problems so was not convinced that I needed to spend another £200. I will probably max it out when I replace the desktop though, for longevity’s sake.
• Don’t get the Midnight colour, it will be permanently covered in fingerprints.
• I’ve not heard anything bad about the Apple Refurbished store, the stock changes daily so you might find your ideal model for a couple of hundred quid cheaper.

YellowLedBetterMan

I use the standard M1 Macbook Air, a NI Komplete Audio Interface, and Amplitube for all my amp sim needs.

It does require a dongle to plug the USB interface in, but I had one of those anyway. It goes one of the USB-C ports on the macbook air and gives me 2 USB-3 ports, an HDMI port, an SD card slot AND the same USB-C slot it takes up*. I think it was £15 on Amazon and I'd recommend one for any Mac user regardless of what you were planning on doing with it.

*Just don't plug your charger into this port, this can allegedly damage the battery life.

thermionic

Wouldn't a simple USB-A to USB-C cable do the job of the dongle? I have the opposite problem - old Mac with USB-A, newer interface with USB-C, just connect with a cable.

Although those things can be useful to have around, especially with an SD card slot.

Stratavarious

Why pay over a grand for a screen and £200 for £30 quids worth of RAM?

Just got a Mac Mini M2 with 512gb SSD and 2TB extra in a dock that adds loads of ports and a second display output.  Replaces a 2012 iMac that was never challenged by music (DAW, dozen+ tracks + plugins) or Final Cut video work.

Unless you REALLY need portability (I use cheap Windows laptops to capture multitrack live at gigs from the desk), the minis are very cost effective.