I own the Macbook Air and am a big fan (despite originally not wanting one but had to buy one because my 2011 MBP gave up suddenly).
I think it’s the best value-for-money available flat out. And it’s fanless so it is completely quiet. Definitely something that could suit you and it goes for fairly cheap!
M1 Air. Excellent. I’ll start investigating immediately.
Thanks very much.
Btw, got a cold base for the MBP that I can use. That thing can cook an egg while processing a 300mb tiff.
That’s already the exception rather than the norm. I can think of a few tasks that could eat that much RAM but none that are audio related and none that I would normally do on a laptop. Even working with 15GB pictures (which I do) does not eat that much RAM because of course tiles & pyramidal tiffs…
Some data scientists could probably load huge datasets in memory but those I know would perform such tasks on a server.
Bottom line is: your Ableton/Live/Logic/Whatever session will be fine with 8GB.
Ok, fair, but have you ever tried launching that “Safari” app? 
I’ll never whine about file size again
Yeah, but larger sample libraries (like 10gb piano + 10gb violin etc… )…
That’s a very bad idea to load 10GB worth of samples in RAM… good sample-based instruments use disk streaming of course. We had this feature more than 15 years ago in products such as gigasampler (and we didn’t even have SSDs back then). I’m pretty sure Kontakt supports it.
I hear that. VCV almost auto turns the fan in my late 2014 iMac. It’s maxed out as well.
Same when I hit play on an animation I’m werking on in Maya.
I’d never heard the fan before those apps.
New machine please. I’m gonna hold out for new iMacs tho. I’m not up for lappy’s anymore.
My approach is that it is not worth spending a lot of cash on computers unless you can really amortize the cost over a long period of time and you make money with it.
If it is just a hobby, invest the minimum
Computers get obsolete very soon
I remember when I bought my first Apple G3 laptop i spent almost $7k for the high spec model and looking back i think it was not worth.
Disagree. I’m still rolling on a 2014 iMac. It’s still supported to Monterey. And is going strong.
7 years is a good run. And the price spread over that time is fair.
But as apps and audio, video and images get bigger, it’s starting to show it’s age. And my next will again but maxed out. Good long usage life.
ufff I was really hoping for a m1 pro mac mini, guess it’ll be next year
First of all I don’t think M1max will help for music related apps, it has more GPU power over pro but it’s the same in other regards. So M1max for graphic/video/3d editing and games.
Don’t forget that the price on the apple.us website doesn’t include taxes. Depending on the US state you will need to add that(8.875% in NY).
Yeah, as I understand it, it’s the same processor on both M1 Pro and M1 Max, is that correct?
I will go for the M1 Pro version and save some bucks. Okay, didn’t know that, but it’s still 900€ difference when it comes to the Max version. If you buy it in Sweden compared to US.
Well, do a NY city break. I think that if you put it in your luggage without the box as your personal laptop you won’t have to pay extra taxes.
Yeah, that would be amazing, it’s tempting 
But I guess I will get problems with warranty if something is wrong with it.
I might retire my big and powerful custom music pc and dive into MacOS for the first time ever.
Thinking about getting the Mac mini M1, I hear different things regarding 8vs16gb ram. Any ideas?
I’ll mostly use it for adobe software, and ableton. Soundtoys and omnisphere being my most cpu intensive plugins. I usually use multiple instances of both and it doesn’t make a dent in my current pc.
8GB will be sufficient for the tasks you describe. 16GB if you also want to use VM’s, like Parallels Desktop for Mac. I own a 16GB and run a 8GB Windows 11 VM and keep the other 8GB for the Mac tasks.
The big cost could be built in ssd as I don’t think they can be swapped …you’d need external storage
I agree, and this might be the reason I would downgrade my 14" MBP after I test it. If you use multiple screens, then it could be worth having the beefier GPU. Even music apps benefit from fast and responsive UI when accelerated with hardware. The thing is, the base M1 is no slouch for graphics, so it’s unclear if anything would be observably faster.
The unified memory speed is the thing that interests me the most, and it’s why I opted for the M1 Max. Fast memory with lots of bandwidth usually leads to future optimizations (even for the CPU). Less time waiting can lead to better throughput on the same specced processor (same reason that cache sizes and speed is a big deal)…time will tell if it’s the same performance, or if there’s another “gear” we have not seen yet.
