I’m in the market for a new macbook. i know most people arent really on board with the retina macbooks, but i kind of want one (pure gearlust). the question is, should i get the 13" or 15"? they are roughly the same price with a student discount. the 15" seems too…big, but it has a discreet graphics card and the ssd space i need. the 13" seems to be a better size for me, but it lacks the quad core processor. would the processor even make a difference? i mostly want this for traktor/ableton and some basic photoshop work. any suggestions?
if I were you, I would definitely go for the Retina 15 inch if the price is not that different. Quad-Core will be a big advantage and its i7 compared to the 13 which is i5. Discrete graphics will also make ur photoshop much faster. As of the CPU, I don’t think you would really need the quad-core for Traktor but as of Ableton, I would recommend you the Quad-Core if you’re using it for production or even Live performance/DJing. I myself went to the classic MBP 15 2012 with the antiglare instead, the retina 15 inch should be no problem for you to lug around imo.
The good news is apple made this choice a no-brainer - the 15.
If you make ONE upgrade to the 13 retina (like say HD from 128 to 256 (+$200)) You are within $200 from the 15 in which case you get –
Quad core instead of dual core
256 storage instead of 128
Dedicated graphics card with 1gb memory instead of Integrated Graphics.
Bigger Screen (This probably doesnt matter)
Anyway I held off on getting a macbook for months waiting for the 13 retina. Was extremley dissapointed. Ended up getting the 15 inch retina just had it delivered but I am still in sticker shock. ($2000 WITH my friends Apple discount after all is said and done).
I may return it and get an old 13" and upgrade HD to SSD and get more RAM. Something to think about - I think I made a mistake.
If you don’t need the CD drive, might as well double up the SSD and put them both in RAID 0 for extremely fast speed (if one drive fails though, the whole thing fails). Anyways, why didn’t you stick with the 15 retina? portability issues? CD Drive? Firewire?
I spend 8+ hours a day on the computer at work and realized I dont do much at home besides web browsing and fooling around with Traktor here or there for an hour or two. Spending the $2k + was overkill for me. Instead I am getting a base 13 inch and upgrading to aftermarket ram 8gb and a 256 ssd. I will save about a grand and I think it will be perfect for my needs.
Reason #2 is that the retina is a first-gen product which are usually 1. Expensive and 2. Buggy. Just going to go with the above for a couple years and then get a retina when it is affordable and all the kinks are worked out.
Just a terribly dumb question of somebody who bought his multicore laptop 5 years ago; With my Core Duo (@2,66Ghz) I run into max processor issues if I load Massive in Maschine. Do the new multicore processors spread the load or is Maschine/Traktor etc still only using one processor core?
My core duo 2,66 Ghz is not enough to run Maschine. I may need to reinstall or replace it. I have maybe 10 sounds and 20 effects total on the sounds, master and group and it starts to stutter. I assumed it was kinda normal to tune every sound with one or two effects to give it that spunk. But it’s a crappy Vista install anyway. Kinda sucks to dive into making music and running into a problem after 3 nights of practice.
But hey, no place to whine here, I am hijacking somebodies thread. Go on and talk about macs.
Personally i would just go with either the 2.7ghz 13 inch or the base 15inch. The base quadcore should be over kill for most things. I’m planning on getting a base model 13 inch. The thing about the retina display models are they’re a pain to upgrade, you cant have dual hard drive either. The base 13 should be enough as long as you drop in some more ram. Personally I plan on dropping in a 120gb SSD 16gbs of ram and a 500gb HHD for storage
