Hey so,
I think i fried my logic board on my 2008 mbp (pre unibody was where its at). Luckily i managed to grab the contents of my user folder before it stopped turning on.
Long story short im considering financing some new equipment. As a disclaimer im not an apple fanboy at all and definitely would like to hear other options if anyone knows something notable. i prefer hearing from djtt community because i primarily use my computer for djing and producing on traktor and ableton, common programs here. Also im aware there is no “perfect setup” but simply looking for opinions before i go dropping tons of money.
so to the point, I am considering getting a new i7 15" mbp with the ssd. Although obviously a beast of a computer, i hear in april a total revamp is coming (perhaps 13" quad-core, ivy bridge etc.) and maybe worth waiting for? Also, a friend suggested i buy an imac and a macbook air for the cost of the decked out mbp. Anyone have any experience using the new airs with traktor?
Any thoughts or opinions are greatly appreciated. Again not limited to apple…just what im familiar with.
The new airs in a benchmark comparisons were almost double in tests to the Oct 2010 top model MBP C2D .. you won’t have any issues running Traktor (or anything else really)
Also can’t imagine them updating the 11’ 13’ line anytime soon, but you never know a 15’ “could” happen.
If you are used to Apple I can’t imagine going back to Windows, every time I “need” to open it these days depresses me no end.
If I were buying today, I’d buy an iMac and a MBA, but that’s because I’m weird and think that 13" laptops are on the gigantic end of portable.
But, I wouldn’t deck out any of them, certainly not from apple. Just walk in and buy a base model…then an SSD from OWC and maybe a ram upgrade if the DAW I was using was 64 bit along with all my plugins and I was having issues.
Unfortunately, the MBA upgrades are expensive. The 120GB SSD that I’d buy for it (yes, they’re upgradable) costs more than the jump to the decked out 11" air from apple…and I’d want at least 4GB of ram. I’d have to look at benchmarks to see if it’s actually worth getting the Mercury drive from OWC for it as opposed to just getting the better one. It’s funny, but it’d cost close to what my MBP did to get it the way I want, which is the main reason I got another 13" laptop a year ago (that…and they haven’t released firewire adapters for thunderbolt yet).
The iMac, i wouldn’t hesitate. I probably would order the SSD first and not even pretend to boot up the installed hard drive…just format it and use it as another backup drive.
I’ve got the latest 13" MacBook Air (256 GB SSD/4 GB RAM) and love it. But I’m with mostapha, I’m personally not a fan of portables beyond 13". The Macbook Air is wicked fast and works 100% with all my needs (that even includes a few games off of steam and apple’s app store). The awesome SSD is what melts my mind, it just makes everything so much faster… that’s where the bottleneck in performance is for most computers.
I’ve had a couple thinkpads, robust laptops for sure. They are built like tanks, and some even had holes that run through the keyboard incase a drink gets spilled on it. Cheaper than macs, and stronger build imo. Not as pretty as macbooks though mind you, but tough little sobs.
I prefer to have one good computer rather than 2 old computers. If you wanna save money just get the most basic MBP and upgrade it yourself. My blackbook is still alive and kicking but frying the logic board gets me scared shitless. I hope it lasts me until the i7’s make it to the 13inch models…
im somewhat in agreement with this after further thought. I am also curious as to how the newest air’s handle ableton in terms of complex sets with multiple tracks and effects… i dont do anything too crazy but on my old one certain drum racks and extreme effects would occasionally lock up.
thanks a bunch for the input so far, much appreciated
I think you could do it but I think you’d run into limitations pretty quickly. I use a 2011 MBP and still wish Ableton ran more smoothly, especially when several VST instruments are running. But I’ve never tried Ableton on an MBA.
2011 i5 MBA vs the 17’ 2010 i7 MBP, In short, its faster… I really can’t see Ableton being any issue, I’m running it smoothly on a 2.4 C2D 2009 unibody13’ MBP/4gig/320.
The only issues I’ve had were disk related when I was reading off external with a ton of other USB devices in use.
I imagine some hefty VST’s being an issue if there are a ton of them, but even when you’re running short of ram juice the SSD should power you along with virtual memory and keep things snappy… if I had the cash the only real reason I can see for getting the MBP is if you were always ripping CD’s, but even an external is only going to cost around $25 for an external DVD-R.
Got a MBAir with i7 and 256GB. It’s my first Mac. I am never going to buy a Windows computer again, it’s simply amazing. Just buy it. It costs a shitload of money, but damn I become so happy already by only looking at it, let alone working on it
Not wanting to sound like a fanboy, but I’m really astonished by how good this laptop is at what it does. And that is being the thinnest, lightest, most powerful and most beautiful ultrabook there is.
You can of course always buy the MBPro, but I really can’t think of any reason why you should choose a (13") MBPro over a MBAir…
