New Mac line-up

Emp_Fab

I thought this was going to be about burgers.

johnnyurq

I thought it was about the latest fashions for dirty old men and flashers.

musicegbdf

Sorry to hijack the thread a bit.
Looking at a mac book pro for basic music production (Garageband leading to logic) . Already have an interface (Focusrite Scarlett 2 in 2 )

Need the portability to take the music overseas, and work on it whilst overseas (USA). Hence the idea of a macbook. was thinking of a 15 inch 256 Retina. Maybe with a large screen and backup HDD at home . Looks like the price int he US is about the same as the UK , and can get the VAT back if bought here.

I know nothing of Mac products , but need this to link with other music pro's . Any advice.... or am I on the right track

Axe_meister

You can claim american sales tax back, but you should in theory have to declare and pay uk vat on it when entering the uk

jellyroll

Drew_fx said:

the top of the line i7 quad core offered on the 2012 mac mini benchmark:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?...QM+%40+2.60GHz

and heres the top of the line i7 dual core benchmark from the 2014 model:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?....00GHz&id=2345

Stolen from a Sneapster. Just coz.

Yeah.....but it's not just about the spec of the processor. 

Keyboard material also has a huge impact on tone performance.

xmrchi

For music production any Mac made in the last 2 years will do it with ease, I have a macbook air 2013, and it blazes through pro tools with 15 plus audio channels and various vsts, but then again most windows laptops these days will do just fine, you have the soundcaed/interface so you will be good to go

Axe_meister

mrchi said:

For music production any Mac made in the last 2 years will do it with ease, I have a macbook air 2013, and it blazes through pro tools with 15 plus audio channels and various vsts, but then again most windows laptops these days will do just fine, you have the soundcaed/interface so you will be good to go

Not sure about the dual core imacs. My wifes dual core (2.4ghz)  4GB imac and slow 500GB disk can be quite slow, even with some fairly simple tasks and it's not even memory bound yet. I'd hate to throw some big music projects at it.

Axe_meister

Apple sure have got the pricing of the mac mini screwed up.

The smallest mac mini is a 1.4Ghz dual core with 500GB disk and costs £399

To upgrade the same box to 8 GB memory costs £80 taking the price to £479

Add in a 1TB fusion drive option £200 and your looking at £679 

The next mac mini up has a 2.6Ghz processor 8GB memory and a 1TB (ok not fusion) and costs £599

So you get a faster processor for roughly the same spec (ok the drive will be slower) at £80 less

Am waiting for the tear down reports to see if anything is user upgradeable.

monquixote

Axe_meister said:

Apple sure have got the pricing of the mac mini screwed up.

The smallest mac mini is a 1.4Ghz dual core with 500GB disk and costs £399

To upgrade the same box to 8 GB memory costs £80 taking the price to £479

Add in a 1TB fusion drive option £200 and your looking at £679 

The next mac mini up has a 2.6Ghz processor 8GB memory and a 1TB (ok not fusion) and costs £599

So you get a faster processor for roughly the same spec (ok the drive will be slower) at £80 less

Am waiting for the tear down reports to see if anything is user upgradeable.

The additional cost is paying someone to open up the box and customise it rather than buying a standard model. It's exactly the same if you buy something from Dell. If you take the base model and spec it up to the high spec version it costs about twice the price.

If I wanted a Mac and wasn't in an urgent hurry I'd hold out. Intel are late on their Broadwell architecture so all these machines are using Haswell. I expect they will do an across the board spec bump when it's available. 

xmrchi

Axe_meister;386084" said:

mrchi said:

For music production any Mac made in the last 2 years will do it with ease, I have a macbook air 2013, and it blazes through pro tools with 15 plus audio channels and various vsts, but then again most windows laptops these days will do just fine, you have the soundcaed/interface so you will be good to go





Not sure about the dual core imacs. My wifes dual core (2.4ghz)  4GB imac and slow 500GB disk can be quite slow, even with some fairly simple tasks and it's not even memory bound yet. I'd hate to throw some big music projects at it.

The only thing in that setup that will slow it is the HD, but will still be throughly usable, a 2.4ghz dual is very quick, in reality and will take pro l in its stride :-D

Jalapeno

musicegbdf said:

Sorry to hijack the thread a bit.
Looking at a mac book pro for basic music production (Garageband leading to logic) . Already have an interface (Focusrite Scarlett 2 in 2 )

Need the portability to take the music overseas, and work on it whilst overseas (USA). Hence the idea of a macbook. was thinking of a 15 inch 256 Retina. Maybe with a large screen and backup HDD at home . Looks like the price int he US is about the same as the UK , and can get the VAT back if bought here.

I know nothing of Mac products , but need this to link with other music pro's . Any advice.... or am I on the right track

You can't buy a UK keyboard version in a US Apple shop - you can however order one on the internet for collection at one. If one was thinking ....  and yes, reclaim US taxes, and paying UK ones still saves a couple of hundred or so.

musicegbdf

Interesting. I wonder if we reclaim the us taxes ,then pay the vat , we could still claim the vat back as well? We can claim vat as we are a limited company , and the business is songwriting / performance ...
Will have a chat with our accountant.