Hmmm, besides it being costly (I’d rather use that money to buy more gear) it’s also kinda inconvenient, at least for me. I actually have a few macs around (via my studio) and idk, prefer one machine. But that’s just me. I like having a laptop and a big screen, work between my lounge and desk space.
cool tool! thanks, going to check this out
Are you talking about having two logged in accounts and swapping between them ? If that’s the case, are you sure that the “100s of invisible processes” in the non-music account will be taken out when you swap to the music account ?
Genuine question, I don’t know for sure, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if those processes were still running.
you’d have to carefully install software for each user to avoid background processes overlap for both users, theoretically it sounds like a huge difference, and MAYBE it will eventually make a difference, but imo it’s not worth the hassle, it’s easy enough to kill all running apps from the Force Quit menu (Command+Option+Esc) and usually this will be enough to load off a lot from the OS, for background services it’s trickier to kill but still easy enough to track with Activity Manager and sort stuff by RAM/CPU, I got rid of Adobe stuff because their background services were ridiculously demanding.
nothing prevents you from trying to create extra user and just re-install everything per user, but imo it’s overkill unless you really have some background resource-hogs running…
when you install something you theoretically can do that per-user, and see everything running in the background or stop it from System Settings > Login Items > Allow in the Background
but in practice you almost never do that and just install the software for all users, and unless something reeealy sticks out just killing the app is enough to free resources.
the only thing that can be a system bottleneck is when a background process starts swapping memory, on macos it’s really funky to clear swap so once you see the swap start filling you know you’d better reboot to clear everything… I’m not even sure that the swap is cleared when switching users…
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If you want to get maximum benefit from separate user accounts, then you’ll need to restart every time you switch - simply switching accounts won’t completely kill background apps and processes.
The real benefits you’ll see are when you need a lot of apps/services running as login items for both music work and general use, otherwise any major optimisation work is unnecessary.
It’s definitely not a bad idea to keep music and other uses separate, but don’t expect massive gains - the benefits are going to be largely in workflow and focus rather than performance.
If you want to really maximise performance, run disk utility first aid in recovery mode every 6-12 months, depending on your disk usage. Also, when transferring data to a new Mac, don’t use the automatic method, install your apps manually and transfer the data you need. Junk will accumulate in system folders over the years otherwise, and this can have a significant effect on performance.
Also - ChatGPT won’t give you any usable or accurate information on this, and will likely suggest obsolete actions that are more likely to cause instability and performance issues.
I do this for a living and more than once had to do a clean install after users went messing with things they shouldn’t have. Much of the information changes yearly and isn’t made public.
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You’re right. For one I’d disable all the extensions I use for work and entertainment (music games etc) and maybe even research other things I could do via terminal… ill look into it and report back
Cheers for this input, I did a recovery first aid the other day actually. Thanks for that. Anyway ill report back with findings and true do restart launches if I go ahead with this.
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Maybe you care too much? If your computer runs what you need at the latency you desire, without any dropouts, why bother at all? I‘ve been using computers for audio production for around 25 years, and I never felt the need to use a separate account, not even on Windows.
Make music, trust your ears, solve problems when you encounter them.
That’s a waste of your time. You won’t be able to tell what is real info, what is already outdated, and what is a hallucination. AI can’t give you the source as a reference, it‘s useless for researching facts.
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I lectured in front of undergraduates twice a week with the same laptop I used for the rest of my professional life (including various confidential matters) and all of my personal life (my work email is my personal email). I knew about Spaces and its predecessors, and after trying them out briefly by myself, decided not to use them for this purpose. It was a useful exercise to close windows, quit apps, and block notifications when I wanted to switch roles. I’m not claiming this will work for everyone in all situations, but when technology causes issues for me, I try to look for the solutions that use no added technologies.
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Hey you may have a point 
but I kind of enjoy optimising stuff and esp. workflow. But yeah ill watch if I’m being a little OTT about it.
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Optimization for no reason typically makes things worse, because it adds complexity that leads to unanticipated and often quite complicated problems, and also inevitably to a lot of unnecessary effort in maintaining it.
Do the simplest thing that works. Fix problems when they occur. Be happy.
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Ah, I didn’t spot you were the same person with the Overbridge issue the other day! Glad that got fixed anyway.
This is one of those situations where you would be taking the path of most resistance for very little gain, in my opinion.
If you are in the habit of keeping a ton of shit open at the same time and that actually has an effect on your computer’s ability to keep up with your music production, the easiest solution is to close down the shit you don’t need. If closing down things one by one takes too much time, this is something that is easily scriptable as well.
If you just want better organisation, use Spaces.
Optimising for the sake of optimising is just a waste of time.
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I have a separate user account for music on my Windows machine but I’ve never felt the need to do it on my Macbook. I would say it’s only worth doing if you encounter any issues with how you’re working now, otherwise just do whatever is easiest
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Tip for moving between spaces: control+left/right arrow key.
I share a Mac with my wife so we have two user accounts and no problems! She doesn’t mind a messy desktop and 85 chrome tabs open. I on the other hand lose my shit when I see that. So, I just log in to my profile and it’s just the way I like it! All good!