Which MacBook to choose?

[mattmertz77]

I'm getting a macbook for school work and for music production and performance. Would one with 512gb of PCIe storage and an i7 core be a sufficient? The iMac I'm using right now for music has a 1TB HDD and an i5. I only use 250GB because I use bootcamp. I don't know much about PCIe so should I spend extra money getting 512GB PCIe storage or just stick with 256GB.

 

[Meister]

Are you talking about buying a macbook air or macbook retina?

Are you talking about 13" or 15"?

What apps will you run? Whats your budget? Do you need portability?

How much storage will you need? Are you planing to use an external hdd?

 

[mattmertz77]

This is one of the most confusing posts ever

Where to start?

Are you talking about buying a macbook air or macbook retina?

What apps will you run? Whats your budget? Do you need portability?

How much storage will you need? Are you planing to use an external hdd?

Pcie ssds are faster than hdds. The size in gb is always the same size in gb.

macbook pro with retina. Apps? a word processor and a music production host running plugins inside. Example. Logic Pro. And on my iMac I am using 250GB of space in bootcamp and haven't gone over in the 7 months I've had it so idk if its worth it to get 512gb instead. And its a laptop, so why would portability be an issue?

 

[merrickdrfc]

i7 will be more than enough, most probably overkill. Pretty negligible.

Get at least 8GB RAM.

Look at your disk usage, if your OS X disk footprint is greater than 100 GB and you also want Bootcamp, go for 512 GB. If not, just go for the 256 GB. Go for as much as you can afford in all honesty, best way to future proof it.

13" or 15", both will be fine. The 15" might be better with the higher res, never used Logic but more screen real estate might be useful

 

[maflynn]

Depending on what you load in windows will dictate if you should get a 512MB SSD or the 256. I have bootcamp and its fitting nicely within the 256GB but I use it for office apps and few other things.

I'd also say go for the 8GB of ram, its cheap insurance to ensure you have enough resources now and in the future.

 

[Crugga]

Logic runs very nice on a new Mac as you'd expect, certainly better than the other DAWs.
Get as much as you can afford, forget the storage size as you can get an external drive at a later point and personally I find limitation to be a good thing.

Although not as taxing as video production music production software does put a fair strain on the machine especially if you tend to have lots open at once, for this reason i'd get as much as you an afford.

Minimum 8gb ram for certain, I used to get over 6 on my old 2010 machine and that was usually limited by the cpu before ram, it will utilize the quad core fully(not sure other DAWs do in osx), hd space isnt that important imo, if you get the 8gb you get 256gb as standard which should be workable. The ssd in new machines is rapid though.

Is there no way you can just get rid of bootcamp?, isnt much you cant do on osx now and it would make the whole experience a bit nicer. Guessing you use osx for the music side, Office is decent on these new machines, I just pay £5 a month or so. I hear people say Windows is better for gaming and office is slightly better although on a new Mac Office runs great.