Considering MacBook Pro

I'm considering a MacBook Pro in the not-too-distant future possibly for music production so what are some questions I should ask myself? I don't care to be caught up in marketing hype. Also if you have a Mac and/or MBP did you buy refurbished or brand new?
 
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Check out post 19 from me https://www.futureproducers.com/for...runs-driving-me-insane-493257/2/#post49871721
There's a pretty radical equation as to wheter buy a mac or pc.
Other then that?
How much money do you wanna spend?
How long do you want to keep your laptop going? The more you spend on newer stuff, the longer it'll take to get outdated and have trouble running new stuff.
Do you really want a laptop and be mobile or would a desktop suffice?
How big of a screen do you want and how important is that? Will you be running on a seperate monitor mostly?
Do you want firewire or pcmcia to have a pcmcia firewire card or does USB suffice?
Do you want USB3 ports?
How much VST plugins do you run? Have you ever looked at windows task manager and checked how much CPU and memory your currently using when producing? Or have you ever done the equivalent in mac os?
Other than that, probably a lot more questions. Just go start googling for it all and start learning what it all is.
 
i got the macbook pro retina display 13'' and i use it for logic pro x. its so much more mobile than a laptop, battery lasts long and i never get any problems really. now im a newbie so i dont use a lot of plugins for logic so i dont know if more will have any effect. if you do fear this then you should get the 15'' one which is much more powerful
 
I got a 13" Pro with a secondary monitor for the lab. Have never experienced any issues with it, as opposed to when I used PC's.
 
As a reference, check out what hardware I got for what price:

Clevo 15CL58

I7 4710 quad core
8GB DDR3L 1600Mhz low cas timings memory, Kingston Hyper x
15.6 inch 95% gamut monitor
Nvidia GTX860 2GB high end gaming video card
500GB 7200 rpm HD
Cool paste replacement
AC7260 wifi adapter
2 year full pixel gaurantee
256GB Samsung EVO 840 SSD

For: 1200 Euros.
Now, for the fun of it, try and see what you'll pay for the same hardware with Apple :berzerk: LoL
Ok, the apples have 16gb of mem. That'll cost you max 100 bucks more then my setup. Still doesn't explain the at least 200% price difference :p :pointing:


15-inch: 2,2-GHz Retina-display

Specificaties


  • 2,2-GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
  • Turbo Boost tot 3,4 GHz
  • 16 GB 1600-MHz geheugen
  • 256 GB PCIe-flashopslag[SUP]1[/SUP]
  • Intel Iris Pro Graphics
  • —
  • Ingebouwde batterij (8 uur)[SUP]2[/SUP]
B GDDR5-geheugen


  • Ingebouwde batterij (8 uur)Kiwist
  • Does the 16gb mem consist of low cas timings?
  • No high end graph card (not needed if you don't game, but interesting to see the price difference while they didn't even spend a lot of money on a graph card
  • No 95% gamut monitor
  • No data HD
Price?
2029 Euros.
That graphics card in my laptop is at least worth 150 to 200 bucks, the data disk is about 60 bucks, the gamut screen is worth at least a 100bucks price difference...

So , roughly, your paying about a 1000 bucks more. Euros. Imagine what you can buy on production gear for a thousand bucks...


So, in the end, mac vs pc, you gotta ask yourself the question:

Is getting a mac, stable no hassle mac os, vs pc, very thin laptop with good battery life, worth the big price difference?
 
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B Side Producer said:
As a reference, check out what hardware I got for what price:

Clevo 15CL58

I7 4710 quad core
8GB DDR3L 1600Mhz low cas timings memory, Kingston Hyper x
15.6 inch 95% gamut monitor
Nvidia GTX860 2GB high end gaming video card
500GB 7200 rpm HD
Cool paste replacement
AC7260 wifi adapter
2 year full pixel gaurantee
256GB Samsung EVO 840 SSD

For: 1200 Euros.
Now, for the fun of it, try and see what you'll pay for the same hardware with Apple :berzerk: LoL
Ok, the apples have 16gb of mem. That'll cost you max 100 bucks more then my setup. Still doesn't explain the at least 200% price difference :p :pointing:


15-inch: 2,2-GHz Retina-display

Specificaties


  • 2,2-GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
  • Turbo Boost tot 3,4 GHz
  • 16 GB 1600-MHz geheugen
  • 256 GB PCIe-flashopslag[SUP]1[/SUP]
  • Intel Iris Pro Graphics
  • —
  • Ingebouwde batterij (8 uur)[SUP]2[/SUP]
B GDDR5-geheugen


  • Ingebouwde batterij (8 uur)Kiwist
  • Does the 16gb mem consist of low cas timings?
  • No high end graph card (not needed if you don't game, but interesting to see the price difference while they didn't even spend a lot of money on a graph card
  • No 95% gamut monitor
  • No data HD
Price?
2029 Euros.
That graphics card in my laptop is at least worth 150 to 200 bucks, the data disk is about 60 bucks, the gamut screen is worth at least a 100bucks price difference...

So , roughly, your paying about a 1000 bucks more. Euros. Imagine what you can buy on production gear for a thousand bucks...


So, in the end, mac vs pc, you gotta ask yourself the question:

Is getting a mac, stable no hassle mac os, vs pc, very thin laptop with good battery life, worth the big price difference?
Click to expand...

i can assure you no pc has a better battery life than a mbp retina
 
Most important things for a music computer. GHZ- get at 3.0 and higher for sure. RAM get a ton of it. I will not buy refurbished computers or music equipment ever. I wouldn't recommend it either. Im a Windows user. I didn't grow up on mac so I cant tell you about it.
 
Macs and windows use the same hardware. The software however is different. There are soldered macs and Pcs.
There are both that let you customize them.Both can be built.If you never plan on using heavy plugins, while ghz matters it isn't the entire solution.
a 8yearold processor at 4ghz [hypothetical] would be doing the same as a 2ghz i7.

Horsepower affects power consumption also. Macbook pros have good enough specs for heavy plugins depending on what you choose as well.
for another 5 years 8gb of ram wouldn't be an issue. be wary, unless your tasks are moderate, 4gb can be filled up.
 
Jayohe12 said:
my old laptop had a bad display, was heavy and the battery lasted only 4 hours. i absolutely enjoy my mac's keyboard, trackpad, battery, mobility, screen, and performance
Click to expand...
Poor laptop, like there were poor macbooks as well in the old days. There's so many laptops out there, there bound to be a few bad ones. Mostly, very good avoidable if you know what to look for.
Just saying, there's an immense price difference between laptops and macbooks. As you could've seen on the specs of my laptop, the screen is 95% gamut, trackpads, well, they're almost all good now, mobility, there's ultrabooks as thins as macbooks and have similar battery life, performance, it's the same processor and mem. Motherboard could be some changes, but if it's functioning and has same bus speeds, there's no difference there. I could choose 3 different keyboards on my laptop, all of em very nice. Only difference that's left then is the price difference of 200%. For that 200%, the only thing you get extra is mac os. There's some hardware being less in the mac and there's some hardware being the same. There's no hardware being better then my comparisons.
So, there's a lot more choice in laptops and a lot more customization options.
Yeah, mac is no hassle. It's a no brainer, you only have a few options, all of em are thin and have good battery life, proper laptops. Vs, a lot more choice with pcs and windows. With, a lot more you can mess up in choice if you don't know what to choose. Although you can run whatever you want on a pc , that asks for a bit more hassle from you. Or you gotta have someone do it for you.
In the end, if it's not the mac os that leads you to buy the mac, I can't see a good reason and you're just dropping a lot more cash for less or the same. It would never be worth the 200% more in my opinion. 1000 euro in my example case.
As I said, the mac will offer you no hassle, stable mac os, almost impossible for you to screw up with the choice as there's a lot less to customize, thin, good battery life. But, for 200% more money than a similar or better laptop.
A laptop will offer you loads of customization options (which can make it hard to know what to choose), half the money of what a macbook costs for same or better hardware, windows (which can be a ***** sometimes, but since win7 things are very stable). If you buy an ultrabook, you have same thinness and battery life.
 
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