Which Macbook for Music Production?
I’ve been looking at Apple laptops for music too, and I’ve opted for the Pro, and here’s why – The MacBook has no dedicated VRAM but the MacBookPro does. OS X eats graphics resources for breakfast. I’m not interested in losing power mid-recording just because the OS or an app thinks it needs to be pretty. I’d imagine that you’ll notice this even more when you’re playing games.
My son is a composer and a doctoral candidate in music composition, and routinely runs Finale, ProTools, and who knows what other other composition, mixing, sampling, and recording software. He gets along just fine with a current model MacBook (non-MBP) with three gigs of memory. Up until January he got along just fine with a G4 iBook with one gig of memory. When he upgraded the memory on his current computer from one gig to three gigs he noted a significant increase in performance with both ProTools and Finale. He likes the form factor of a small laptop since his is frequently sharing desktop real estate with synthesizers, an external mixer, patch bay, and other hardware. He has no desire for a larger screen.
Cheers for all the help guys, I’ll probably be doing what these guys said: Blazecock Pileon: “If your budget is limited and a MacBook Pro is out of range, maximize your RAM and buy an external Firewire hard drive. An internal laptop hard drive is not made for multitrack recording.” tachikaze: “I hate to say it, but the black Macbook is perhaps worth the $100 price premium over white. I wish now I had gone with the black, since the white is kinda girly and all.” phax: “2 years old white MacBook here, external FireWire hard disk and maxed the ram to 2GB from Crucial) (link goes to their UK site [and no, I’m not affiliated with them]). Never ever pay the Apple tax on RAM. I’ve had no problems running fairly complex arrangements and projects using Logic and Live. Sure the bigger screen would be nice, but the pure CPU grunt and the HD access speed (with an external drive) is not that much different between the plain MacBooks and Pros. Remember to budget for an audio interface, though.” imju
