Mac and windows 2019

The Lounge General Discussion
#21

I use Windows (desktop workstation) and MacOS (Macbook Air) and I dont see a big difference in stability since the Windows 7-era (that started almost ten years ago).
As a matter of fact, it seems like nowadays that the major MacOS-updates seem to break things much more frequently than any shit that Microsoft does to your OS shrug

The tale of Windows being an absolute shitshow and MacOS being the only stable computing platform for professionals seems to never get old and is often told by people who havent touched a Windows-PC in years and are still salty because they had a problem with Windows XP sometimes back in the 2000s. (its the same people that will compare Uli Behringer to Darth Vader/Adolf Hitler in every Behringer-thread because there 50$-Behringer-mixer lost a poti after gigging two times with it in 2004 :D)

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#22

XP or even 2000 were rock solid, comparing to 9x / Millenium.
i remember the times when seeing BSOD every hour or two was not considered as something unusual :grinning:

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#23

yeah the last three Macs I’ve bought have been refurbished, direct from Apple. easy way to save a few hundred bucks on it, provided you don’t need the absolute latest and greatest.

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#24

I replaced the drive in my mid2010 MacBookPro with a 500GB SSD a few years ago and it accelerated drastically. And then some time later replaced the optical drive with a 1TB SSD. Still performs outstandingly.

#25

Hey everyone, this is my first time posting here :slight_smile:

As @t already suggested, I would look into the new Mac Mini - it is very powerful, flexible and great value for money. Way more powerful than my top-end MacBook Pro from 2013 that is still running great for music and graphic design.

You can check this article about Mac Mini for music production: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazona.de%2Ftest-apple-mac-mini-2018-fuer-musikproduktion%2F

If you want an iMac now I would wait for an update, they are lacking behind Mac Mini at the moment. This is a great source to check if you want to buy an Apple product: https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac

My plan for the future is to switch to a Mac Mini myself and buy an iPad for mobile use instead (as soon as they have USB-C as well).

Cheers

#26

I’ve been using Mac for more than 10 years now for music and work.
At my job we use Macbook pro and we change them about every 3 years.
I can say i hate the new Macbook pro with the silly touch bar and sub par keyboard.
Its just too expensive for what it is and tend to overheat so i would say get a 2015 Macbook pro (best one imo) if you really want a Mac or wait for the non touch bar version ? I think that right now the Macbook pro is a terrible value even if am a Mac lover.

I really prefer OSX to Windows but imo im tired of Apple releasing new OS every year and breaking stuff. Sure i can choose not to update OS but then i cant update Logic Pro and other software.

If its true that Apple wanna switch to an other CPU then … bye bye … im gone for good.

I’ve build an Hackingtosh a while ago (desktop) and it was running great but i dont know how it is now since it has been a couple of years. Probably not a good idea.

One thing to consider is that Macbook has good resale value.

Will maybe switch to linux someday and using Bitwig only + Uhe plugins.

#27

The latest Macs have an audio glitch bug:

I barely use my computer for music - just adding tracks to files sent by friends, using all external hardware and instruments, no softsynths. But I do sympathize with whoever bought something from this latest Apple batch.

#28

I just purchased a 2018 MacBook Pro the second week of January. I haven’t noticed the bug in question - that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or cause problems for many other people though. The article also mentions that it’s either T2 chip or software related. If it’s software, they can patch it.

#29

Definitely build a PC! Any apple product at a similar price range is going to be way underpowered in comparison, and you can’t upgrade them because all the components are soldered to the motherboard.

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#30

I mostly agree about the software side.

For laptops, pc hardware is shit though. I have a dell precision 5520 and I wish I had bought another 2015 macbook pro.

#31

Similar to me. Had my 2018 MBP for maybe a month or so now. No regrets.

I have Windows (and shoddy laptop) experience in spades and genuinely wish I had made the jump over to Mac a few years back. I used to scoff at the whole “it just works” thing. Not any more!

I jumped ship from a Dell XPS 15 9550. So near the top in terms of quality for a Windows laptop. The MBP destroys it.

#32

Lenovo ThinkPads kick ass. I bought a refurbished one on ebay for 300 bucks and it’s got an i7 2.7 GHz, 16GB RAM, 256GB HDD, Windows 10 64 bit.

It feels like a tank and it hasn’t given me any problems so far. Been a bit over a year. The only issues I have are with really big sessions in my DAW, but I can always just bounce down/freeze tracks and keep moving.

Edit: Seems I’m repeating myself as I already posted in this thread some months back :stuck_out_tongue:

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#33

I was in the same boat last year. I wanted to upgrade but didn’t like any of the new macs and really didn’t want to start producing on a PC. I’ve built a hackintosh and I can confirm that my build went very smooth and everything is working perfectly. Tonymacx86 is an excellent resource. Research the components carefully and find a build guide similar to what you’re after. The Tonymac forums and community are very helpful.

I love that I can run OS and upgrade any of my components. Sooooo good!

#34

Previous windows fanboy here, but I had to jump the win10 ship. What a pita! Relentless updates, non approved restarts, constant threat of viruses, dubious privacy settings, changing of settings after big updates requiring 1hr of work to get it back to where you had it. Win10 seems to think they own your computer, not the other way around.

Apologies for the rant but win10 really drove me nuts. If you can get windows 7, be worthwhile I suppose.

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#35

Will NEVER buy a PC again. Lost too much werk.
Got sick of endlessly troubleshooting, reformatting and dealing with driver issues and conflicts.

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#36

Thermal management is a big issue with all that nice and shiny slim laptops, cpu will slow down with increasing temperature.
In case of apple laptops where are big issues with the T2 chip for audio applications you can read that all over the internet.
In case of Overbridge it always works better on windows 10 pro, have a 2015 I7 Macbook also, nightmare really.
From price point and the performance PC with Caby lake refresh 9900K very overclocking friendly or a dedicated gaming laptop with proper cooling not nice but powerfull also during summer time. Windows pro is stable no issues run really complex setup with uad apollo silver and old uad extension duo both on firewire with their own pcie firewire card to connect. AH mk1, Rytm Mk1, A4 mk1 and Digitakt all on overbridge 2 beta…it clicks and pops only when i want it should.

#37

I’ve had both Windows and Mac laptops in my possession, mostly provided by employers. The Windows laptops had a fraction of the lifespan of the Macs - 2-3 years vs. 6-7 years. Granted, these were Windows laptops that the employers like to cheap out on - no employer is going to dish out the cash for a fancy gaming-optimized Windows laptop that costs just as much a Mac (well the Alienware ones did before Dell bought the brand).

I avoid being too reliant on laptops for making music. It helps that I’ve gotten more serious about playing guitar :smile:

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#38

BUILD YOUR OWN!
I’ve been doing it since Windows XP.
You can have a fantastic system for not much money. 256GB ssd for operating system and 1 HD for storage with a best CPU that you can afford with an Asus MB.
I have Windows 10 and sometimes regret not keeping W-7 pro, because all software is updated and running great…not so with W-10.

Also NO antivirus software and other crap that runs in the background. You can further deactivate functions in Windows to have a dedicated music machine. An internal sound card like RME pci is great. …well my 3c

Also 1 tb ssd is overkill and you need it only for OS. Storage runs great with a regular HD @7200 rpm

#39

This :point_up_2:

A good buddy of mine just bought a new gen Mac mini and it is absolutely awesome. Very highly recommended.

I’m still running my Late 2013 Macbook Pro (highest spec one) and a more worried about eventually frying the motherboard/video card rather than anything else.

As has been mentioned already, audio doesnt require that much processing power, RAM is actually more important…

Even though Apple is expensive (has annoyed me recently), I must admit I enjoy the hassle-free, plug n play it solution it offers… plus if youre on an iPhone, have Mac software etc, it makes sense to stay within that EcoSystem and will save you money in the long run.

I’ve also found that the SSD drives on MBPs are faster than those found on similar spec Windows machines… but I guess it’s hit or miss and I cannot quantify that with empirical evidence - just user experience.

The portable solutions from Apple are still the best and it doesnt matter how old they are really… I have yet to get the same experience from Windows based machines (I own both: Windows at work, everything Apple at home)

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#40

Depends on what you’re doing, really.

If you’re running a lot of plugins or rather resource-intensive ones, then it does make sense to get all the processing power you can get.

In this context, it makes sense to focus on parallelism rather than clock speed; better to get a 6-core CPU with a slightly slower clock speed than a 4-core CPU. It’s also recommended to get an i7 rather than an i5 because the latter doesn’t support hyper-threading.

Again, this is for when you really want to push things; pretty much any modern system is more than fast enough to run a DAW and a whole bunch of plugins fine.

Again, depends on what you’re doing. Going over 16GB can help speed things up if you like to use those huge detailed multi-sample libraries. Even then, RAM and SSD speed is probably a bigger factor.

This is not just your impression. The built-in SSD drives in modern Macs are insanely fast; you can find evidence of this from benchmarks and reviews. See foe example https://www.tomsguide.com/us/mac-mini,review-5908.html which states:

File transfer speeds were fast enough that I did a double take. I took 2 seconds to copy over our 4.97GB file folder, which works out to a 2,544 MBps transfer rate. That’s significantly faster than the HP Z2 Mini G4 (1,017.8 MBps), which is something of a speed demon in its own right. It’s exponentially faster than other mini PCs, like the Intel Hades Canyon NUC (310.60 MBps) or the Lenovo ThinkCentre M710q Tiny (169 MBps). In fact, it’s identical to another member of the Mac family, the workstation iMac Pro, which had the same 2 second, 2,544 MBps speeds.