Yeah, you can’t open them up and change the ram annoyingly. I’m used to just needing to max the Ram but my two apples are now 7 and 6 years old.
The Air won’t me my main computer at all, I know I’ll be buying a new 27” iMac when they come out and as it’s for my work and I’ve been saving for the last year for it. This will be pretty low-key Ableton use and getting me out of the **** for work every now and then. (My current iMac keeps crashing and is really struggling with big photoshop documents for Posters at the moment).
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I have a 16 and my friend a 8. It doesn’t make a difference. We see no difference in how they perform.
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That’s what I need to hear 
It’s about £180 extra. Plus I can spread the costs on a 8gig from Amazon and that’s pretty attractive to be honest.
It’s the best laptop I ever had, hands down.
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is there any accounting / explanation for this?
I don’t have any. We have similar workload. Same audio software, same dev tools… Renoise / Bitwig, from 1 to 3 jetbrains IDE instances plus browser with many tabs. I just don’t think we need more ram. Even on my windows desktop (16gb) the machine rarely goes above 8gb ram occupation.
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Unified memory access.
CPU, GPU, RAM, and Storage are all dependent on each other. Its not like like classic apps are loaded into RAM and work from there. Things are swapped around as needed. I get better performance in audio apps on iOS than macOS (intel computers). Faster CPU is far more important for audio than more RAM and everything needs to eventually be placed on a single “thread” (for lack of a better term)
Also this i believe is 8gb of RAM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIAUiFoYPtQ
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this is impressive, I wonder if there are any equivalent testing for Ableton?
Keep in mind thats logic compiled to run on ARM processors. Not everything is arm native yet, so it goes through a translation layer. Ableton would not perform like this, yet.
Coworker of mine has a mini and running logic. Easily outperformed his 18core iMac Pro w/ 32gb ram. Didn’t take him long to sell the iMac.
Downside of the m1s right now is not everything is native, and cannot run windows yet.
I ditched desktops long ago for iOS due to performance (but comes with its own set of complications like anything else)
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I switched to Mac for the first time in my life, I have been using PCs since I was 4 or 5 and I am 27 now.
I ended up with a 2018 Mac Mini, brand new at a super good deal from eBay, the i5 version. I figured by the time Apple Silicon is worth investing in for music production, it’ll be time to upgrade computers again. Also, I got the 8GB RAM version since this Mac Mini has user upgradeable RAM (thank G) and it’s way cheaper to just do it myself. I will absolutely be upgrading, but since I’m not software heavy, 8GB has not hindered me in any way. I am the type of person that never has more than 5-10 tabs open on a window, max.
It’s nice to complete the ecosystem, just like when you buy Elektron and want everything else Elektron offers because they work together. I have always used iPhones since they came out, plus I ended up with an iPad at some point and I have one now with the Apple Pencil. Everything syncs epically with everything else. I get a text, it shows up on my Mac, I open my AirPods case, it gives me the option to Bluetooth them right to the Mac, etc… etc…
Regarding music, it has more than I could want. I used an i7 2600k for a decade straight in a computer I built, what a chip that was, still running fine when I sold it recently. I have never been plugin heavy and for the most part it still held up at 4k, u-he VSTs with some Sound Toys 5 plugins.
Aggregate devices is a great update on a Mac, multiple interfaces, plus audio over USB right from my iPad, virtual Moog synths and all that good stuff. The hardware is outrageously overpriced but the difference comes from the software.
It’s wonderful.
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Unsure whether this is the best thread for my question: longtime Windows user, super happy with my 2023 iPad. Frustrated with Windows driver issues, and considering buying a MacBook. Would love to spend below 1k, used would be ok.
What do I need to use Ableton and couple plugins – is an M1 enough? How much RAM? Is an Air enough?
I saw that MacBook Pro still has audio jacks, whereas the Air only has two USB-C.
Thanks for all advice!
A Macbook air is fine for Ableton!
All current Macbooks have headphone jacks as far as I know, although you’d generally want to use an audio interface anyway. The current gen Macbook Airs (M2 or M3 chips) have 2xUSB-C, 1xpower, 1xHeadphone ports.
An M1 chip is totally fine for Ableton. Although all current models that you can buy new are at least M2. Each gen seems to be ~15% faster than the previous one, so year-on-year there’s no big leaps, but it does add up and the new M4 chips are a fair chunk faster than the M1 versions. Like I said though M1 is totally fine for Ableton today.
Also the Mac Mini is also great if you don’t need a laptop.
The biggest issue with the Macbooks is the limited RAM and the crazy price of upgrades. You want at least 16 GB, but definitely go for 24 or 32 if you can afford it.
Get at least a 512 GB HDD, and once again more if you can afford it. For music production it really depends on how big your sample libraries are, how much you need on the machine, how much you’re prepared to manage things on external storage.
In terms of what to buy, there’s two paths.
- If it’s just for music production, get the newest base model Macbook Mini or the cheapest Macbook Air with 16GB/512GB. They’ll be great.
- If it’s going to be your main computer, get the best Mac you can afford and hang on to it for as long as you can stand. They’re solid computers and should last a long time.
Apple Refurb store is always worth looking at. They’re essentially as-new and 15% cheaper.
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