In my experience, Apple Silicon has pretty much made this a non-issue. I use a monitor in non-integer scaling on both my personal Mac and my work Mac, in both cases a 5K display running at 6K scaled, and I’ve never had a problem with GPU tasks.
This is a stark contrast to my old Intel MBP, which could get noticeably choppy just scaling the internal display. I distinctly remember how simply scrolling in Safari felt like it was laboring a bit with “more space” scaling, whereas these days my work M3 shrugs off scrolling in Safari at scaled 6K like it was 720p.
yep I feel this too on my studio compared to intel mbp but is still draws some gpu cycles, as strong single gpu cores are I can see the scaling constantly pumps up the usage with things like window resize, switching between desktops, stage manager etc., if I’d go for a new monitor I’d go for 27" 2k or 30-32" 4k, this is easily avoidable and unnecessary gpu usage. my 48 cores dealing with it easily but if you can avoid this on less cores setups like the base minis - you should imo, I bet at least 2-3W (maybe more) go only for this scaling thing constantly.
Not to GAS you. Lots of ‘closeouts’ still going on so you’re probably good noodling on it for a while.
Yeah, me too. The thing about wiping the drive and reinstalling is tricky. The APFS file system has a top-level drive, and that then has a container. This container drive is made up of your volumes, and the OS volume is actually two volumes (say, Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data). The ‘Data’ drive is read-only and you can’t change it.
My ‘tendency’ is to wipe the top-level drive, but that has ‘other’ info on it. You want to actually erase the container drive, which, depending on when you’re running disk utility, you can’t do.
That being said: I still boot to ‘Recover mode’ – open Disk Utility – and wipe the top-level drive anyway (dealing with the reactivation bit since I know how it works now).
Another option (that seems to do the same thing and I just used this recently) is to ‘reset’ your machine as if you’re selling it (or returning it), which you can do from the OS when booted (it’ll take care of the rest, and activation, and – the best part – it helps you with Bluetooth devices while doing it, which Recovery mode only sort of sometimes does and you can end up with a non-functional machine that all you need to do to make work is GET A GOOFY KEYBOARD AND MOUSE WORKING! (not that I’m angry about that).
EDIT: Just another note on M3 vs M4. This won’t matter for several years, very likely, but IF you use Logic, or end up using Logic, Apple does tend to phase-out older OS versions sort of out of nowhere (for some technical reason likely). For the ‘latest’ Logic version, you had to not only upgrade to a more recent OS, but also a specific minimum version of it. They do this. And there were a few people on some of the Logic boards lamenting that their machine was ‘out.’
Depends on the hubs you use.
But I managed the following last month : through a 11port TB4 OWC dock, I used a BlackMagicDesign dock loaded with 4 x 2To SSDs, a 250GO, 500GO, 1TO and 2TO Samsung external T-Series SSDs, 1 x 4To Lacie and (counting the MBP SSD slot), 3 SD cards (1 x 32, 64 and 256 Go).
So I’d say, sky is the limit! But don’t take my word for it.
It is down to your dock and your use cases.
I only half understand what you’re writing about, but have just ordered a Mini base model, and am looking at simple screens. I’m looking at 24 inch. Can you tell me what would be a good resolution to not have this scaling problem? Full HD (1920x1080) good? QHD (2560 x 1440) good? Or is it a settings thing?
it’s not about the screens that have a problem per se but about the native resolution vs size, I’m not sure what would look good to you on 24" but for example I have 4k 27" monitor but the resolution that looks good to me overall is 2k, so the way osx scales down from 3840 x 2160 to 2560 x 1440 is by doubling the resolution to 5k (5120 x 2880) and then half it to 2k, it’s quite weird but the point is that it looks better, but if that monitor was 2k native resolution this wouldn’t be happening, osx would be outputting the native resolution, so if I’d look for 27" monitor I’d look for 2k (qhd) instead of 4k monitor.
I haven’t used 24" for looooong time so I have no idea what would look good on that size, I assume 2k would be decent but text could still be a bit small, you’d have to set zoom on every program which is kinda annoying and inconsistent.
it’s best too look for monitor which size/native resolution is good for your eyes.
in general these M macs handle scaling with breeze so you don’t really have to sweat for it, but if there’s a way for you to see before you buy how the native resolution looks on that screen size it would be best.
I use 1440p at native resolution and it seems like a good option to me because you can fit more on the screen than 1080p. A 24" monitor might be a bit small for that though - mine is 25 and I’m happy with it but the text might still be a bit small for some people
Been getting used to using this 19’ MBP. For getting it used and what I am doing with it, I didn’t realize virtual machines were going to end up being a hog on a quad-core, but so far as I know the one’s I’m using need the Intel CPU to run as the software isn’t able to run on the new ARM chips.
With all the disk space I have in-spite of the meh, 8gb of RAM, I have plenty to go around for the virtual systems as well as my music. Haven’t used FL much, but it’s nice to have it.
I started getting more serious about programming the last time I had used a MBP, and knew I wanted to get back into it. I would use other means, via iPad, but the apps I used to learn on went from their beta stage to pay stage, and I want to work in the terminal. I didn’t really want to be on it if there was a way to do it.
Been delving into RUST and flipping back to python. I figured if I was ever really going to take programming seriously it would have likely been in relation to music. So thank you to all who have brought Elektron into being and to those who perpetuate this wonderful, inspiring set of instruments, and community.
Learning that is what is used to develop the source code for the instruments, reading about the group involved in still updating the ‘Machinedrum’ all these years after it’s cease in production, I can’t help but want myself to delve into the firmware of the OT and reverse engineer it and learn how to code it. Maybe one day I can add something that could be in an update, if even after its production? Definitely something inspiring me to learn as much as I can, as quickly as I can.
Hmm…apologies to any for this random dump, I just don’t know to many boards to really chat this computer geek out stuff to, and it’s all your guy’s fault, so…
I thing RAM is an important factor for virtual machines. My music laptop is fine with 16gb but the one I use for work (software development) has 32 and it still runs out eventually
Saw some folks asking about always on Mac Mini - this is pretty much how mine operates (meaning it is in sleep mode when not in active use). Have never had a crash or anything of the sort. The only restarts are for occasional updates but the normal uptime can be several months in outside of that.
MacBook Pro is pretty much the same aside from the charging needs.
In November, I bought a Spring 2024 Apple M3 MacBook Air, Apple Certified Refurbished, to become my new daily driver. Each of my previous daily drivers had also been Apple Certified Refurbished and continue to work to this day with no issues, so I’ve had good luck with that program. Unfortunately this 2024 M3 MacBook Air started to show problems after a week or so of use. The screen would randomly start flickering with a purple tint. The mouse cursor would still move, but the rest of the machine was unresponsive until I could hard power-cycle. Had to return it. Was lucky that I bought during the extended return window for holiday purchases.
This was disappointing. Usually I wait a few months (or longer) before using the migration assistant, to “burn in” the new machine for a while. Unfortunately, this time I committed immediately: migrated from my 2017 MBA, authorized all my software, etc. Now I have to sort out what I did on this laptop for a couple of weeks compared to what was on the 2017 MBA before the migration, etc. What a mess.
The ARM machines are amazing. I also have an Acorn Archimedes, an early desktop computer from the 90’s that has an ARM processor; Acorn invented the ARM chip, the A (advanced risc machine) was originally Acorn RISC Machine.
Anyway I resisted the M1 mini and was waiting for the M2 but instead the studio came out. I bought an M1 Ultra Mac Studio, and I won’t have to upgrade for a long time
When the transition was announced, how they were moving from hot Intel chips to efficient ARM chips, it reminded me of the switch from hot PowerPC G5 chips, to efficient Intel chips. I went back and watched their promo/ad from 2005, with the Intel chip fan stuff. I then did rotoscoping and keyframing, to update the visuals and did the old karaoke style phase invert trick to remove the vocals and recorded a new voice over. AI stem splitting didn’t exist then.
So here is Apple 2004 G5 → Intel promo updated to be an Intel → ARM one
This takes me back. The A3000 my dad got because he was a school teacher and they were using them in schools in the early 90s and he got a discount. I was gutted to discover it hardly had any games and a lot of them were bad but would play certain ones for hours. Twin World, Stunt Racer, Lemmings…
Haha, yeah I knew a kid at school whose mum bought him an Archimedes for educational purposes when others had Atari STs and Amigas. He still seemed depressed about that last time I saw him as an adult.
My A5000 came with ArtWorks from the previous owner copy protection dongle and everything. Excellent vector graphics (like illustrator) program. Really impressive, and intuitive. Games wise in school I saw the 3D isometric pac-man… Pac Mania? Anyway u thought it was amazing at the time. Most games were Amiga ports and were not too bad, especially considering everything had to run on the CPU - no custom chips like Amiga.
I grabbed a base model 14" m4 pro over the weekend. The 16" just felt too big and heavy. I considered a 15-inch m3 air for the same price, but decided having an extra year or two of support was worth buying the newer model. 14" is slightly small but still perfectly usable. I considered the 1tb hard drive, but realistically I doubt I’ll fill the 512Gb anyway. The fancy display option didn’t seem worth it on its face, but I’ll admit I barely looked into it beyond the marketing info.
Not going to give an opinion yet, but I’ve got to say the new user onboarding experience is smooth. The keyboard shortcuts will take some time - having 3 “shift” style buttons to remember will take some time. Having one menu bar at the top for everything is a surprisingly nice thing, it seems like it’ll make using new apps a bit easier.
I’m going to resist the urge to Windows-ify the mac and embrace the Apple philosophy as much as I can. I know I’ll experience friction, but I’m excited to learn something new.
