New Macbook Pro (downgrade?), (Not Bashing or Blinging here) |
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Jun 25 2012, 01:36 AM
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The more I learn about the new macbook pro the worse it sounds for music production. I've got a prev gen Macbook pro and it's been the best mobile platform I"ve ever used for music.
BEFORE WRITING ABOUT HOW THE PC PLATFORM IS XYZ.....Of course opinions vary WIDELY and every has a right to think whatever their experience had taught them. Some folks for example have had AMAZING experiences with the PC platform and that's perfectly valid as well. For reference here is a link to a teardown of the new machine. http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/06...eitary_ssd.html The problem with the new machine IMHO is that 1.)The ram is SOLDERED in. You CAN"T UPGRADE IT. 2.)The battery is GLUED IN not screwed in, so it might come loose when the machine gets hot under use. 3.)The pricey retina display is NO LONGER PROTECTED BY GLASS so any damage will require full replacement and the display is the most pricey bit on the rig. 4.)NO FIREWIRE! No 800 or 400 FIREWIRE PORTS! "Thunderbolt" Only! Get ready to buy some adapters for your firewire drives/devices. In short this is a "Netbook" now. And it's a sexy one! But it's no longer "AS" Viable a production platform. I"m glad I got one before the switch. *NEW NEW TOWERS?: There has not been a new Mac Tower in more than TWO YEARS as many think Apple is "Abandoning the Pro market" for mobile. At this point, the "Sweet Spot" for Price/Performance is actually the iMAC with i7 Processor and 8 GB ram. Where PRICE meets PERFORMANCE this is currently a wad of bang for the buck. I have a mini, and I love it. But it doesn't have a wad of horsepower and creates a bit of lag for recording/mixing under heavy load with plugins. Not dissing the mini, it's fine for lots of stuff. I have a Mac Tower. It's now slower than my iMAC 27 with i7 quad processor. I have a macbook 13inch notebook. Thank goodness I bought before the NETBOOK version. To sum up, I've put time in mixing/recording on just about every Mac in release for the past 5 years. In all that time I've seen the changes in the line. I was not a fan of the imac. I hate one piece units in general. harder to upgrade, limited in power. ETc. But as it stands the iMac is the machine I use now for everything. I have not turned on my TOWER in about a year. The intro imac with i7 quad is the smaller of the two available, and runs about $2,000 U.S. when equiped with i7 and 8 GB ram. Configuration 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB 1TB Serial ATA Drive AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512MB GDDR5 Apple Magic Mouse Apple Wireless Keyboard (English) & User's Guide Accessory Kit $1,968.00 http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/imac   So for about 2k, you can get an imac with Garage band and run Reaper. Add any interface and phones or monitors and you are ready to roll. HOWEVER: For about half that you can get a PC tower with display and run reaper just the same. So it may come down to price. Honestly the PC is a viable PRO platform. Using a Mac is something that comes down to preference and personal experience at some point. Many studios use Macs. But many use PCs. Just like "Which guitar is best", "which platform is best" isn't an entirely answerable question. Just like practice, it comes down to the player. Todd This post has been edited by Todd Simpson: Jun 25 2012, 01:41 AM |
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They have not been very vocal about getting rid of FIREWIRE and SOLDERING RAM, or not protecting the display. The good news is, if you have THUNDERBOLT connections on your current mac, there are wads of expansion/upgrades coming. You can buy a box, like a hard drive case, and put Video cards, Esata, pretty much anything in them. Hopefully these things can keep the current towers and laptops going for a while. I"ll be holding on to my 13 inch MBP for quite some time 
So, the RAM is not enough at times (slows things down).|
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Jun 25 2012, 06:32 AM
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Just an aside, USB 2.0 should be fine for recording - unless you're going to be mic-ing an entire band (which in practice, how many home recordiing people really do this? Most of what I read, you might double mic a guitar cab and perhaps mic a singer if you're going for an accoustic set, but I would suspect most people like myself will record tracks at a time, then go back and record more tracks to supplement. USB versus firewire really is a moot point, unless your AI really only supports fire-wire. But I agree that soldering components in place versus making hardware easily swappable seems to be a retro-approach in this day and age of replaceable parts.
I'm computer neutral btw - I just go PC for cost effectiveness. There are people who swear by Firewire for other functionality you can read about here http://gigaom.com/apple/firewire-vs-usb-which-is-faster/ But for us home recording studio noobs, USB ought to be just fine. cjeers! -------------------- The more I practice, the more I wish I had time to practice!
My Band Forum: http://passionfly.site/chat  |
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