any future for MacBooks in music production ?

[lnikj]

Until they get rid of Jony Ive I see no hope.

[Cinebient]

Until they get rid of Jony Ive I see no hope.

THIS!!!!!!

[Deep Purple]

f**k windows

Yep. Never had a Windows laptop that comes near to how good my MacBook is for music.

[mgw38]

I have both Windows and MacOS laptop systems and use both. For audio work I still very much prefer MacOS even though I have to admit that Windows got a lot better over the last couple of years. But there is just nothing that replaces the convenience of CoreAudio. In terms of computing performance the time where you had to have the latest CPU and the best GPU are pretty much over. Performance increases for new generations of chips are more or less incremental now. I'm currently on a 13 inch 2016 MacBook Pro (the first TouchBar model) and I do not see a need to update any time soon.

Did you have any problems yet with the keyboard (or other things)?

Not with the MacBook Pro, no. I also have a 12 inch MacBook and that developed an issue with the keyboard. But they replaced it for free, so no complaints here.

I am not particularly happy with the lifespan of the batteries I have to admit. Already replaced a battery on the 12 inch MacBook and need to replace the battery on the MacBook Pro soon. But I am also wearing them down quite a bit.

[BONES]

When you say "they replaced it for free", do you mean they sent one to your home via express courier and collected the faulty one or did they force you to go to them and wait around for a replacement? Because if I bought something that broke in short order and I was forced to take it to someone to have it fixed or replaced, I think Id have a complaint or two about why I had paid a premium price for a faulty product and why it had been left up to me to do all the work in getting it back to the state it should be in.

f**k windows

Yep. Never had a Windows laptop that comes near to how good my MacBook is for music.

I am certain that's because you've never spent as much money on a Windows laptop as you have on a MacBook. If you had, you'd have bought something that could run ring around any equivalent Mac. That said, my sub-$200, ex-lease Surface Pro 2 ran all my music applications brilliantly. I'd still be using it if it had a bigger screen. But if nothing else, the fact that Windows supports so many more software applications is a huge reason to use it over something running macOS, which immediately narrows your choices to the most expensive options. Then there is the fact that almost everything is developed on PC and ported to Mac these days, which means most things will run better on a PC. I'd also think more USB ports would be a further advantage many Windows laptops have over MacBooks. So that's three solid reasons just off the top of my head.

[mgw38]

When you say "they replaced it for free", do you mean they sent one to your home via express courier and collected the faulty one or did they force you to go to them and wait around for a replacement? Because if I bought something that broke in short order and I was forced to take it to someone to have it fixed or replaced, I think Id have a complaint or two about why I had paid a premium price for a faulty product and why it had been left up to me to do all the work in getting it back to the state it should be in.

It started to develop the keyboard issue after 3 years of rather intensive use. At that moment the battery was also ready for replacement (max capacity was below 80% of design capacity - I had somewhere around 800 charge cycles). I just took it to the Apple store and they switched out the battery and keyboard. I had to pay for the battery, which was $199 for the 12 inch MacBook, I believe. Switching out the keyboard was free. Took two days, which is a bit annoying but no biggie.

[chk071]

f**k windows

f**k Mac OS.

Nah, wouldn't go that far. It's OK. Just another OS, like Windows too, just that it's hardly any configurable, and always pretends it's so better than anything else. Sort of like Linux, just with less "put your money where your mouth is", because it just works better, looks better, and handles much better.

[fmr]

f**k windows

f**k Mac OS.

Nah, wouldn't go that far. It's OK. Just another OS, like Windows too, just that it's hardly any configurable, and always pretends it's so better than anything else. Sort of like Linux, just with less "put your money where your mouth is", because it just works better, looks better, and handles much better.

The problem doesn't reside in the OS (although we could live with less new versions and artificial incompatibilities).

The problems resides in the shitty hardware Apple builds nowadays (since a few years - basically shortly after they entered the mobile phone market). Seems like they are trying to transpose that market logic over to the computer market (and it isn't working anymore even in the mobile market).

[Cinebient]

50% of the tools i use are mac only (or even iOS only). Then there is core audio and aggregate devices and some.
Sadly windows has nothing for me here yet.

[jancivil]

f**k windows because of all the actual problems for a music production way of life it brings to bear which OSX does not. If you like it, who'm I to hope to disabuse you of it.

My new computer is fantastic, again. It literally feels good to use.

[jancivil]

typical duplication

[jancivil]

i just checked out my graphic designer friend's new MacBookPro... i didn't want to touch it, because i could see it would break in my hands.

now, THAT is not f**king pro. by ANY standards... and there's the MANDATORY dongle thingy to use ANYTHING, besides a device that uses the most recent USB... which is WHAT? NOTHING. it's a tad f**ked in the head.
AND, the WHOLE LAPTOP is a heat sink... you go running a live set through it, it's gonna COOK!!!!

bizarre, like they replaced the CocaCola guy with Professor Frink, and BAM, here's your product.
It's just too i'm the future with the Tron and the whey and the whoa.
Just no. Put something back in there, for glob's sake.

PRO should be musicians... artists... not uber cool cafe owners streaming media as they ignore their customers from their wanky stainless steel and teak cake cabinet.

I have the new MBP. It's actually a definitely more robust box physically than any of the 4 I've owned previously.
I could see it would break in my hands. That's not how the physical universe operates, just a heads-up.
It's thin. It's light. I love it.

I have no idea what the dongle thingy is.

It's not hotter than before, it isn't. I don't know what a 'live set' even is, but it doesn't concern me. I rather doubt it's something which requires more machine than my projects. EDIT: it apparently is for the one user who is overloading a single core with that modular standalone but he bought the gamer sort of video card as well. All of them have got hot after a while for me. This one seems cooler on average.

A selling point for me was the claim of speed, and the benchmark was rendering video (FCP X and Resolve) which was that it is many times faster than the last generation. I don't memorize marketing but it's on the site. So. If its architecture does that bit, it should by rights be good for DAW work, yes, no? And it is insanely fast. A video I know took 45 minutes takes under a minute now.

Last new computer I bought was the 8-core Mac Pro 4.1 5.1 in 2009. This is much, much faster, of course it is.
That looks like a lot of snark instead of a use case. Why you'd do this, who knows. But I call bullshit unless this is facetious comedy I'm not sharp enough for.

[jancivil]

My mid-2010 MBP, 13" appears to be dead, dead, dead. I bought it used and the battery was already with the warning to replace ASAP.
I'm paranoid about the battery life now.

[mgw38]

My mid-2010 MBP, 13" appears to be dead, dead, dead. I bought it used and the battery was already with the warning to replace ASAP.
I'm paranoid about the battery life now.

Yes, if there is anything I would complain about, it is the batteries.

[BONES]

It started to develop the keyboard issue after 3 years of rather intensive use. At that moment the battery was also ready for replacement (max capacity was below 80% of design capacity - I had somewhere around 800 charge cycles). I just took it to the Apple store and they switched out the battery and keyboard. I had to pay for the battery, which was $199 for the 12 inch MacBook, I believe. Switching out the keyboard was free. Took two days, which is a bit annoying but no biggie.

OK, after three years that's not so bad, although I do miss the days when you could just unclip the old battery and clip in a new one. The thing is, though, that I don't think the number of cycles is relevant to Li-Ion batteries, they lose capacity over time just sitting on a shelf. That's certainly been my experience with phones - I have, on several occasions, bought "new" batteries for old phones and discovered they were just about as bad as the "old" batteries, presumably because they were all manufactured at around the same time. At least with you MacBook, it's a Current product so hopefully they put in a replacement that was manufactured more recently. I wouldn't bother getting mine replaced at all, I'd just put up with the shorter battery life until I decided to buy a new machine. I imagine that's the difference between paying a couple of grand versus $700 for your laptop.

50% of the tools i use are mac only (or even iOS only). Then there is core audio and aggregate devices and some.

You undo yourself by citing iOS, a toy OS if ever there was one. What's the point of a device that can't do all the things you might want or need to do? Can you hook up multiple external devices, e.g. a hardware synth plus a set of MIDI drum pads? Can you use the same soft synths in your iOS device that you rely on elsewhere? You'd struggle to make it as useful even as something like an Uno hardware synth, which I can at least hook up to the rest of my studio and use with all my other tools.

I bought and installed FL Studio mobile quite a few years ago and I always reinstall it when I get a new phone but, in all that time, I don't think I have so much as opened it to have a look at what it's capable of. For me it's the sort of thing that seems like it might be a good idea but so far I've not found even a desire to use it, let alone a need. When I can run my full studio suite of software on my 8" tablet, why would I need something that runs on a toy OS?

I have no idea what the dongle thingy is.

I think what he's getting at is that nobody makes Type C peripherals, so to connect anything requires some kind of adapter. Of course, all it really requires is that you buy a different cable but he sort of has a point.

It's not hotter than before, it isn't. I don't know what a 'live set' even is

I really hope that's a joke. If it's not, why are you even here?

A selling point for me was the claim of speed, and the benchmark was rendering video (FCP X and Resolve) which was that it is many times faster than the last generation.

But that's true of every PC as they all use the same major components. So surely what you would look for would be the fastest of the current gen, not one that's just faster than something from years ago? Do that and I doubt a Mac would seem too competitive, especially if you are rendering video, where an nVidia Quadro is going to run rings around a Mac's ATI card.

In the end it's all relative and by allowing one company to lock you up within their walled garden, you can't see that the rest of the world is doing even better than you. Not a great position to be in from where I stand.