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New Macbook Pro? Should I wait

This fella I found much easier to watch. Don't know anything much about audio processing, but the base mini does seem to be quite a performer.


That said the same channel has another video from the day before where it didn't exactly excel itself.
 
deebster said:
This fella I found much easier to watch. Don't know anything much about audio processing, but the base mini does seem to be quite a performer.


That said the same channel has another video from the day before where it didn't exactly excel itself.
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I just came here to share this, he' s funny and a little bit mad, but as a recording device the M1 Mac Mini looks really good. Almost makes me want to buy one.
 
As someone who only really uses a sound recording via a microphone and has zero truck with soft synths (or hardware ones for that matter, give it to a synth player). The base-level Mini looks perfectly sufficient, but my instinct is always to max-RAM and get a larger SSD: 1-2TB but then Apple start quoting stupid money & I waver. If their prices were a little more reasonable I would feel happy to eventually get a mini as a main recording machine but I just feel they’re capitalising on the closed nature of the platform by gouging people to pay ~400% market price over quality Hynix/Samsung/Micron RAM already out there and then there’s the constant ‘nickel & diming’ of dongles, cables, cases & yes even power supplies (although I see their point in a world awash with the things).

The 2nd generation will be even smaller, no doubt because materials cost cutting dictates that. But an even even smaller Mac Mini, maybe the size of an AppleTV blows my freaking tiny little mind.

I’m adjusting as well as everyone else to the miniaturisation and virtualisation of everything, huge mixing desks feel unnecessary for 90% of the work, rackmount interfaces now smaller than a paperback - and sound better. Headphones now earbuds algorithmically compensating for your hearing. Even giant bass amp stacks are tiny boxes the size of a toaster. Our understanding of materials technology is leading to smaller and lighter and more transportable everything — this is, frankly, doing my head in.
 
This chap compares the new 16 gig Mac Mini with the previous 64 gig i7 Intel version, then throws an external GPU into the mix. Without giving too much away, I’d probably be happy with an new 8 gig model for what I do.

 
At this rate, in a decade big screens will be gone for most of us and we just put on a pair of specs for enormously immersive displays.
 
I’m still swaying between the top model of all three M1 options. They all make some sense in their own way, though I think I’m more drawn to the laptops (I’d not want a dedicated screen, so if I went for a Mini I’d have to use my 50” 4K TV).

I watched some YouTube video that suggested the Air might actually be the better long-term buy as it has passive cooling, so no fan to fail and it won’t be spending any time sucking dust inside. It is as free from moving parts as a laptop can be only having a lid hinge and a keyboard. It all comes down to how much that thermal throttling will shorten usable life, e.g. will that extra bit of grunt in the MBP be useful in 8 years time to run whatever software is around at that point? That is the key question really, as otherwise the only difference is a bigger battery, slightly brighter screen and the additional complexity of the touchbar.

To be honest the ‘Pro’ disappoints me as it so clearly isn’t. The lack of ports is acceptable on a general machine like the Air, but seriously bloody irritating on a machine allegedly aimed at professionals. No standard USB, no SD card, no ethernet etc. Seriously WTF? How can that be considered a pro-level computer? By saying that if it is genuinely better and likely to have a longer service life I’ll still buy it.

Has anyone had hands on with the Air yet? I’m still trying to figure out if it has the proper gloss glass-fronted screen of the MBP these days. Going back a while they didn’t, they had the same crappy matt plastic screen typical of a PC. That is a total deal-breaker for me and I’d pay the couple of £hundred extra just for that extra durability and ease of cleaning.

I must admit the passive cooling of the Air appeals. I’ve never used a touch-bar Mac and I understand they have had some reliability issues, though I guess it is a useful thing in Logic etc? Whatever I buy will spend most of its time hooked up to my Model M, so that is secondary, and I guess the Air wins on simplicity again. A 16GB/2TB Air is looking quite attractive. Maybe even just 1TB.
 
I swear to god apple has a kill switch. My 2016 macbook pro has just gone belly up. Suspected logic board failure.
 
Sadly there is physical damage, I banged a corner of the screen side around 2 years ago so I know what they will say.
 
I've been tempted out of my Mid 2012 Pro, ordered an M1 Air 1TB and 16Gb RAM that should last another eight years.
 
Tony L said:
I’m still swaying between the top model of all three M1 options. They all make some sense in their own way, though I think I’m more drawn to the laptops (I’d not want a dedicated screen, so if I went for a Mini I’d have to use my 50” 4K TV).

I watched some YouTube video that suggested the Air might actually be the better long-term buy as it has passive cooling, so no fan to fail and it won’t be spending any time sucking dust inside. It is as free from moving parts as a laptop can be only having a lid hinge and a keyboard. It all comes down to how much that thermal throttling will shorten usable life, e.g. will that extra bit of grunt in the MBP be useful in 8 years time to run whatever software is around at that point? That is the key question really, as otherwise the only difference is a bigger battery, slightly brighter screen and the additional complexity of the touchbar.

To be honest the ‘Pro’ disappoints me as it so clearly isn’t. The lack of ports is acceptable on a general machine like the Air, but seriously bloody irritating on a machine allegedly aimed at professionals. No standard USB, no SD card, no ethernet etc. Seriously WTF? How can that be considered a pro-level computer? By saying that if it is genuinely better and likely to have a longer service life I’ll still buy it.

Has anyone had hands on with the Air yet? I’m still trying to figure out if it has the proper gloss glass-fronted screen of the MBP these days. Going back a while they didn’t, they had the same crappy matt plastic screen typical of a PC. That is a total deal-breaker for me and I’d pay the couple of £hundred extra just for that extra durability and ease of cleaning.

I must admit the passive cooling of the Air appeals. I’ve never used a touch-bar Mac and I understand they have had some reliability issues, though I guess it is a useful thing in Logic etc? Whatever I buy will spend most of its time hooked up to my Model M, so that is secondary, and I guess the Air wins on simplicity again. A 16GB/2TB Air is looking quite attractive. Maybe even just 1TB.
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Well I’m still really knocked out with my Mac mini M1, which I use with a 55” OLED. Our main machine is an iMac Retina, and we use iPads for casual browsing and portability. Decided to abandon the laptop format years ago, and it’s worked out very well. No more hunched over a small screen with an immovable keyboard and finicky trackpad in an inconvenient place, a nice big sit up and beg iMac with a fantastic screen is just so much nicer to work at. If you don’t need portability I’d strongly recommend thinking about a Macmini with either your TV or a dedicated monitor (or both). Your eyes and your back and your neck and your hands will thank you.
 
Migrated the work passive-cooled Hackintosh from the very last bits of Clover to a custom tailor-made EFI/Opencore on a z390 Designaire motherboard a i7 9700K 3.6GHz (9th Gen) with 64GB RAM. Running Catalina (not Big Sur - still has compatibility issues with audio products I use) at present with no tweaks or obscene overclocks (yet) did a baseline speed test in Geekbench 5. CPU cores all around 45 Deg C. This is all raw, as I find it.



As expected the Intel is limping along in Single Core duties, the M1 is up to 50% faster in places. Thats good... but the M1s are noticeably slower in multicore -- but in real terms its not by much. A sterling first-performer and in line with the other tests out there.



So I'll not be sweating the M1 Architecture for now unless I have a hankering for a small non-upgradeable machine with limited I/O with a fan in it and proprietary SSDs. Might try overclocking the i7 and then pop in the i9-9900K and start overclocking next, as the system has thermal and wattage capacity for it.
 
claire.foxx said:
Migrated the work Hackintosh from the very last bits of clover to a custom tailor-made EFI/Opencore on a z390 Designaire motherboard a i7 9700K 3.6GHz (9th Gen) with 64GB RAM.
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How much does a top Hackintosh like yours cost?
Is there a place for a layperson to learn how to make one or is it too difficult?
 
It can get pretty arcane

https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Install-Guide/
https://khronokernel-2.gitbook.io/opencore-vanilla-desktop-guide/

Clover is easier to start with and then branch out into a custom self-made Opencore is usually how people go.

I've never added £££ up, let's do that together.
You need a mouse and keyboard and screens but that's £1,126, surprisingly ok with that. You can get a machine for a lot less than £899. (i.e. Apples top end M1 Mini with 16GB) especially if you don't mind cheaper cases, fans, different motherboards.

A6-EF0-F38-E1-E2-4-D51-8-D02-7-C091-F511258.jpg


Its also a space heater. When I need to add more RAM/storage I can (2 x 2TB M.2 sticks await), when I want a better GPU to frag simps in Elite Dangerous, I can. Heck, no Elite Dangerous for M1... at all... When I want to run Linux I can. This is not a machine a Mac Mini customer would want.
 
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Stunsworth said:
Personally I’d go for the M1 Mac.
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Yeah, if it were me today I would probably wait for for the next maybe 3rd iteration but M1 wasn’t on the roadmap when I built it. See what the M1X and beyond offfers but I’m good for a few more years. M1 performance is a high bar but its not unattainable.
 
Looks good Claire, how its the ambient chilling on that sort of kit?

In other news my MacBook Pro which I though was dead has sorted its shit out. Part of that was a clean from new install of Sur. I urge people that have upgraded from Catalina, to do a clean install, Sur is a whole other beast on a clean install, its beautiful.
 
Heatsinks cool fast. Overclocked to 5GHz & it lives (expected as most can be OCed); AVX throttled it to 4.8GHz but as thermal mass reached stability it crept up to 5GHz. Won’t push further. Disabling iGPU for shits, giggles & RAM recovery. Won’t go i9 because minimal gains.

Next: Fresh Surly install on a quarantined NVMe stick, Do ya feel lucky, punk?
 
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