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Old 01-10-2019, 06:40 AM   #41
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I use the Mac only as video slave, office, mail, web machine... no music production there.
I use mine for everything, incl. music & photo / video, even Windows in a virtual machine.

That‘s why I am so happy with macOS, everthing works like a charm, while on Windows a dedicated music machine is preferable to avoid issues.
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Old 01-10-2019, 06:51 AM   #42
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Yay, they've deleted the line in, so one more bit of gear I need to use one for simple audio tasks.

"progress"

3 times the cpu power, and I still need to buy something else to do what I could do before.
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Old 01-10-2019, 08:01 AM   #43
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I use mine for everything, incl. music & photo / video, even Windows in a virtual machine.

That‘s why I am so happy with macOS, everthing works like a charm, while on Windows a dedicated music machine is preferable to avoid issues.
That's exactly how I handle it. Music production on PC, everything else: Mac.
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Old 01-10-2019, 08:10 AM   #44
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That's exactly how I handle it. Music production on PC, everything else: Mac.
And I do everything on a Mac and use only Windows VMs for keeping myself up to date, e.g. for my job. Works like charm for me.
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Old 01-10-2019, 09:47 AM   #45
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That's exactly how I handle it. Music production on PC, everything else: Mac.
I got a PC for graphics horsepower for 3D work and rendering, but everything else, including music, is on Mac.

I can't hear what I'm mixing with my PC on, and I definitely couldn't record anything near it.
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Old 01-10-2019, 09:50 AM   #46
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I assembled myself a super silent PC. Actually the iMac is the loudest piece of gear here in my studio. Especially when streaming video to the external TV over thunderbolt. I guess the iMac just gets too hot with all the things going on.
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Old 01-10-2019, 09:56 AM   #47
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I assembled myself a super silent PC. Actually the iMac is the loudest piece of gear here in my studio. Especially when streaming video to the external TV over thunderbolt. I guess the iMac just gets too hot with all the things going on.
My 2015 iMac is silent, as long as I keep the fans clean.

I have no idea how I could make my PC silent without skimping on CPU and GPU horsepower.
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Old 01-10-2019, 10:02 AM   #48
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I guess the iMac just gets too hot with all the things going on.
Especially i7 iMacs are well known for that "heat issue" ... that's why the iMac Pro got an improved cooling system ... it's pretty silent even under heavy load.

The silent fans were also one of the reasons to buy my Macbook Pro ... after I no longer could stand the vacuum cleaner sound of my old Sony Vaio
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Old 01-10-2019, 10:06 AM   #49
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My 2015 iMac is silent, as long as I keep the fans clean.
Got a certain method for doing that? Don't you need to open your iMac?
Would love to hear some advice, so I can get my iMac a bit quieter.

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I have no idea how I could make my PC silent without skimping on CPU and GPU horsepower.
Actually the key is to have enough case fans, huge ones. That way you provide sufficient air circulation in the case. My machine is overclocked to 4GHz (8 cores) and doesn't get hotter than 60° C.
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Old 01-10-2019, 10:21 AM   #50
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Got a certain method for doing that? Don't you need to open your iMac?
Would love to hear some advice, so I can get my iMac a bit quieter.
I just blow air up it!

You can occasionally hear the fans if I forget to do that for too long.

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Actually the key is to have enough case fans, huge ones. That way you provide sufficient air circulation in the case. My machine is overclocked to 4GHz (8 cores) and doesn't get hotter than 60° C.
Here's the stats, I've got 5 big fans in it:

CORSAIR GRAPHITE SERIESTM 780T FULL TOWER CASE
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1900X 8 Core CPU (3.8GHz, 20MB CACHE, sTR4)
ASUS® PRIME X399-A (DDR4, 6Gb/s, CrossFireX/SLI) - RGB Ready!
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3000MHz (2 x 16GB)
11GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1080 Ti - HDMI, 3x DP GeForce - GTX VR Ready! 250GB WD BlueTM 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 500MB/sW)
500GB WD BlueTM 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 545MB/sR | 525MB/sW)
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIESTM MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Corsair H100i Hydro Cooler w/ PCS Liquid Series Ultra Quiet Fans

It is not "ultra quiet"!
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Old 01-10-2019, 10:27 AM   #51
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I just blow air up it!

You can occasionally hear the fans if I forget to do that for too long.
Haha, awesome, so you just use some kind of air pressure dust cleaner?
Thanks, gonna try that!

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Here's the stats, I've got 5 big fans in it:

CORSAIR GRAPHITE SERIESTM 780T FULL TOWER CASE
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1900X 8 Core CPU (3.8GHz, 20MB CACHE, sTR4)
ASUS® PRIME X399-A (DDR4, 6Gb/s, CrossFireX/SLI) - RGB Ready!
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3000MHz (2 x 16GB)
11GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1080 Ti - HDMI, 3x DP GeForce - GTX VR Ready! 250GB WD BlueTM 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 500MB/sW)
500GB WD BlueTM 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 545MB/sR | 525MB/sW)
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIESTM MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Corsair H100i Hydro Cooler w/ PCS Liquid Series Ultra Quiet Fans

It is not "ultra quiet"!
Okay, that's quite a lot of fans indeed.
I never put them on "automatic" mode, though and don't let the mainboard doing it.
My case got a slide controller where you can manually set the RPM of the fans.
However, of course you can't do that with the gfx card. This might be the component that produces the most heat and noise.
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Old 01-10-2019, 10:33 AM   #52
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Haha, awesome, so you just use some kind of air pressure dust cleaner?
Thanks, gonna try that!
Yeah, I just spray canned air up where you put the RAM. Don't know if that's the best thing to do, but it works for me.

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Okay, that's quite a lot of fans indeed.
I never put them on "automatic" mode, though and don't let the mainboard doing it.
My case got a slide controller where you can manually set the RPM of the fans.
However, of course you can't do that with the gfx card. This might be the component that produces the most heat and noise.
If I turn the fans down on the case they get quieter, but nowhere near as quiet as the iMac, and it make the machine prone to hanging.
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Old 01-10-2019, 10:37 AM   #53
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Yeah, I just spray canned air up where you put the RAM. Don't know if that's the best thing to do, but it works for me.
Ah bummer, got the 21,5" iMac. No RAM slot accessible there. However, there's a grid where I could put a nice shot of fresh air.

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If I turn the fans down on the case they get quieter, but nowhere near as quiet as the iMac, and it make the machine prone to hanging.
Yeah, I see the dilemma.
Well, I'll try out the air pressure cleaning and see if I can get my iMac as quiet as yours.
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Old 01-10-2019, 10:48 AM   #54
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Ah bummer, got the 21,5" iMac. No RAM slot accessible there. However, there's a grid where I could put a nice shot of fresh air.



Yeah, I see the dilemma.
Well, I'll try out the air pressure cleaning and see if I can get my iMac as quiet as yours.
Is yours an i7?

Mines an i5, which might be making the difference.
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Old 01-10-2019, 11:37 AM   #55
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Yep, i7 here!
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Old 01-10-2019, 05:08 PM   #56
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Duuuuude! This worked wonders, I still can't believe it. Used my vac and the air pressure spray and the iMac doesn't make a noise anymore.
Thank you so much! Now, I can again happily use my iMac
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Old 01-10-2019, 06:12 PM   #57
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Duuuuude! This worked wonders, I still can't believe it. Used my vac and the air pressure spray and the iMac doesn't make a noise anymore.
Thank you so much! Now, I can again happily use my iMac
Sweet!

Glad it worked for you!
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Old 01-10-2019, 11:11 PM   #58
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Yep, i7 here!
No chance then ... the single fan is just not enough for an i7, so you can do what you want, you won‘t be able to reduce fan noise drastically. As soon as there‘s a bit of load, it blows noticeably.

Do some research about that ... you can even find Youtube videos about that. I even saw a video, where someone cut additional air slots in the backside ... crazy, but that worked.

PS: Nice to see, that the vac helped a bit.
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Old 01-11-2019, 04:37 AM   #59
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It helped tremendously, there's no fan noise, even when there's heavy load.
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Old 01-11-2019, 04:47 AM   #60
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It helped tremendously, there's no fan noise, even when there's heavy load.
Cool ... then it seems the 21“ iMac has less issues as the 27“ model ... I mean regarding heat. I vaguely remember, that most complaints I found were about the 27“ i7 model.
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Old 01-11-2019, 05:17 AM   #61
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Yeah, that could be. I'm sure the 21" model has a weaker GPU as well, because the screen is smaller, therefore less overall heat.
Well, let's see how it goes in summer :P
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Old 01-11-2019, 05:28 AM   #62
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Yep, GPU is a good point.
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Old 01-11-2019, 05:37 AM   #63
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In general, you're better off with the lower end models. They seem to fail less too...

I say that while looking at the pile of 15" MB Pro's in the corner. All failed on a component that can't be replaced. Five of those are mine. The 13" ones fail too, but far less and in general, I can repair those.

I've got a number of 13" medio 2009 ones. Old junk, I know. The 2.2 GHz is very reliable. The 2.53 isn't as reliable.

Mini's seldom break. I've been looking for a defective Mini for dissection for years now. There are some around, but people throw them out in stead of listing them. The MB Pro's OTOH get listed for spares all the time.
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Old 01-12-2019, 02:51 AM   #64
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I don't like it either, but Apple wants to be a bank. Security wise, they're going in the right direction.
That's valid. And somewhat admirable.

It would be better if they could do it without breaking so much else.

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Apple doesn't block replacement. Just like in the iphone, these are standard chips and can be replaced. There's an American, living in China, who upgraded an iphone 16 GB to an iphone 64 GB. Or was that 128? Don't remember. You can find him on Youtube, if you look for Shen-Zen.

And what are you seeing that doesn't match?
That's...interesting and contradicts some claims. So, you're probably right. I still think it's insane not to just use standard drives.

There are also a lot of self-encrypting SSDs that just require a password set in BIOS. There have been some pretty big flaws discovered in them (most recently Crucial and Samsung), but it's still an option. Improving that, especially if apple said "we'll buy a few million of these if they don't suck" would be a better solution for everyone than what they're doing.
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Old 01-13-2019, 04:12 AM   #65
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That's valid. And somewhat admirable.

It would be better if they could do it without breaking so much else.



That's...interesting and contradicts some claims. So, you're probably right. I still think it's insane not to just use standard drives.
That's what I feel too. But we don't count, do we?

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There are also a lot of self-encrypting SSDs that just require a password set in BIOS. There have been some pretty big flaws discovered in them (most recently Crucial and Samsung), but it's still an option. Improving that, especially if apple said "we'll buy a few million of these if they don't suck" would be a better solution for everyone than what they're doing.
Yes and no. A better solution, cause they can be replaced. From Apple's viewpoint, the T2 handling the encryption, is far better. It's proprietary and closed. Far less chance of security problems.

From my viewpoint, it sucks, because the bridge chip between T2 and the rest of the computer also handles USB, which results in dropouts and cracklings with USB audio interfaces. And, of course, it's an Apple chip. No replacement available.
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Old 01-15-2019, 03:56 AM   #66
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Yes and no. A better solution, cause they can be replaced. From Apple's viewpoint, the T2 handling the encryption, is far better. It's proprietary and closed. Far less chance of security problems.

From my viewpoint, it sucks, because the bridge chip between T2 and the rest of the computer also handles USB, which results in dropouts and cracklings with USB audio interfaces. And, of course, it's an Apple chip. No replacement available.
Well, a better solution because you can get a reasonable amount of storage with it.

The highest-spec'd Mac Mini has a 2TB drive. For $1400.
The highest-spec'd iMac Pro is capped at 4TB for $2800.

Now...for MLC NVMe storage, the prices aren't actually bad.

But, they don't mention MLC or NVMe on their product pages.

And, they're still not doing anything in terms of data redundancy or protection that I'm aware of. And they prevent you from doing it yourself (unless you use external storage and basically ignore the T2 chip). And expecting people to solder on their new motherboard that will void the warranty (that they've had problems honoring lately anyway) is just ridiculous.

And...with the way even mundane SATA SSDs have been advancing (e.g., write endurance that's plenty for anything like a normal user or media creation and NVMe not even showing much of a real world improvement over SATA for a lot of 8k video tasks) and the way processors are overpowered for most people's use cases, and the easy availability of encryption co-processors, it's an artificial limitation for something that could easily be accomplished in software.

If they want to hold private keys in some NVRAM or on-board chip that can't easily be tampered with, cool. I still have some slight philosophical issues with that. But, it'd be acceptable.

What they are doing is not. What they've done isn't solve this problem, it's push people toward external storage that either can't take the same advantage of it or proves that it's an artificial limitation, which also costs more money and adds complexity and failure points.

Their mantra used to be "think differently." Now, it seems to be "you can have any color you like, and you can do anything you want, as long as we thought of it first."
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Old 01-15-2019, 04:15 AM   #67
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Well, a better solution because you can get a reasonable amount of storage with it.

The highest-spec'd Mac Mini has a 2TB drive. For $1400.
The highest-spec'd iMac Pro is capped at 4TB for $2800.

Now...for MLC NVMe storage, the prices aren't actually bad.

But, they don't mention MLC or NVMe on their product pages.

And, they're still not doing anything in terms of data redundancy or protection that I'm aware of. And they prevent you from doing it yourself (unless you use external storage and basically ignore the T2 chip). And expecting people to solder on their new motherboard that will void the warranty (that they've had problems honoring lately anyway) is just ridiculous.

And...with the way even mundane SATA SSDs have been advancing (e.g., write endurance that's plenty for anything like a normal user or media creation and NVMe not even showing much of a real world improvement over SATA for a lot of 8k video tasks) and the way processors are overpowered for most people's use cases, and the easy availability of encryption co-processors, it's an artificial limitation for something that could easily be accomplished in software.

If they want to hold private keys in some NVRAM or on-board chip that can't easily be tampered with, cool. I still have some slight philosophical issues with that. But, it'd be acceptable.

What they are doing is not. What they've done isn't solve this problem, it's push people toward external storage that either can't take the same advantage of it or proves that it's an artificial limitation, which also costs more money and adds complexity and failure points.

Their mantra used to be "think differently." Now, it seems to be "you can have any color you like, and you can do anything you want, as long as we thought of it first."
Mac main marketing argument over PC is plug&play eveything works out of the box, well, it does not seem the truth.
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Old 01-15-2019, 06:59 AM   #68
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And, they're still not doing anything in terms of data redundancy or protection that I'm aware of. And they prevent you from doing it yourself (unless you use external storage and basically ignore the T2 chip). And expecting people to solder on their new motherboard that will void the warranty (that they've had problems honoring lately anyway) is just ridiculous.
There are many problems that are worse. But not by design, I think. Like the flatcables that connect the screen to the logic board on the T2 MB Pro's. These seem to fail a lot more than the old ones. And the bad thing is, the cable is part of the LCD assembly.

But Apple is doing something for redundancy. Maybe not visibly, but APFS is a step in the right direction, when used with iCloud backup. From a completely non-technical user's POV, this is easy and reliable.

Quote:
If they want to hold private keys in some NVRAM or on-board chip that can't easily be tampered with, cool. I still have some slight philosophical issues with that. But, it'd be acceptable.
It's a rock solid solution, from Apple's POV. Like APFS, there are still bugs, but hey, with a new system every year, it's to be expected. And some bugs are silly, like the installer telling you it can't convert an empty APFS disk, because it isn't HFS+... Pure lack of testing, of course.

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What they are doing is not. What they've done isn't solve this problem, it's push people toward external storage that either can't take the same advantage of it or proves that it's an artificial limitation, which also costs more money and adds complexity and failure points.
The T2 can be used for external disks too. Largely untested, again, but not excluded. And the encryption is coupled to the Mac, because of the T2 chip. So even when a thief has the password for the disk, it's useless without the Mac. A legitimate user can still ask Apple for a decryption key. I don't see a more secure system possible, as long as you take user error into account.

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Their mantra used to be "think differently." Now, it seems to be "you can have any color you like, and you can do anything you want, as long as we thought of it first."
What worries me more, is the lack of serious software. Lots of devs have abandoned OSX. We have the abundant number of cheap software on the appstore to replace it, but it's mostly junk.

Reminds me of "Open Doc". A technology that seemed very interesting when Apple was touting it last century. But where Open Doc was about integration, today's meme seems to be "There's an app for everything". Which is a complete failure, as there is no easy way to get data from one app into another on iOS and that's what I expect MacOS to fuse with...
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Old 01-15-2019, 07:46 AM   #69
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Well, a better solution because you can get a reasonable amount of storage with it.

The highest-spec'd Mac Mini has a 2TB drive. For $1400.
The highest-spec'd iMac Pro is capped at 4TB for $2800.

Now...for MLC NVMe storage, the prices aren't actually bad.

But, they don't mention MLC or NVMe on their product pages.

And, they're still not doing anything in terms of data redundancy or protection that I'm aware of. And they prevent you from doing it yourself (unless you use external storage and basically ignore the T2 chip). And expecting people to solder on their new motherboard that will void the warranty (that they've had problems honoring lately anyway) is just ridiculous.

And...with the way even mundane SATA SSDs have been advancing (e.g., write endurance that's plenty for anything like a normal user or media creation and NVMe not even showing much of a real world improvement over SATA for a lot of 8k video tasks) and the way processors are overpowered for most people's use cases, and the easy availability of encryption co-processors, it's an artificial limitation for something that could easily be accomplished in software.

If they want to hold private keys in some NVRAM or on-board chip that can't easily be tampered with, cool. I still have some slight philosophical issues with that. But, it'd be acceptable.

What they are doing is not. What they've done isn't solve this problem, it's push people toward external storage that either can't take the same advantage of it or proves that it's an artificial limitation, which also costs more money and adds complexity and failure points.

Their mantra used to be "think differently." Now, it seems to be "you can have any color you like, and you can do anything you want, as long as we thought of it first."
All this seems to support what all us olduns have been saying about the 2011-2012 Macs. None of these hassles apply. As usual Apple trying to be Nanny to the World .
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Old 01-15-2019, 09:16 AM   #70
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They started resting on their laurels when Jobs died. The security is all about preventing repairs to try to make the product disposable and generate return sales. If they were offering the heavy security models for the likes of CEOs or CIA operatives - where NOW you really would want to treat a $2000+ item as disposable for security reasons and performance is secondary - and normal performance focused models for the rest of us, that might be reasonable. And of course this is a mental exercise of fitting the product design I see into some logical scenario. They don't seem to be courting that market at all. To keep drinking the koolaid at this point and say "No... no... they're doing this for my security... and it's totally reasonable to pay this much for that and throw it away in a couple years when it breaks..." This is Apple riding out their popularity with ridiculous expensive but disposable products. The build quality and all the logic board design faults since 2013 are more of what you'd expect from a Dell from Worst Purchase.

That their now 7 year or older products outperform everything since (from port configurations, modibility, repairability, and performance vs price) is pretty ridiculous.

At some point before too long we WILL have more disposable computing devices just like what happened with the calculator and fussing over old hardware concepts will be a moot point. We're not there yet and further, Apple is making this artificial for no reason but to drive up prices and shorten the life of the product.
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Old 01-16-2019, 03:55 AM   #71
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While waiting for Allen and Heath driver to be officially ready for Mojave I thought I'd take the intermediate step of upgrading from my early 2009 MacBook and get a 2014 Macbook Pro. The thinking being that using a more modern machine would allow me to update my plugins to work on High Sierra (and be compatible with other studios) while getting a step up in performance for a year or so before moving to the new Mac mini i7 6 core.
Having got everything installed on the Macbook Pro I was surprised to find that performance with i5 duel 2.6Ghz processor and 16 Gb of RAM is in practice no better than Intel core duel 2.13 that's five years older running Snow Leopard. Most of my work involves recorded audio rather than software instruments (where the RAM would be an more of an advantage).

So after finding that the full mixes that stressed my old machine stressed the new one in the same way I ran geekbench on both machines and here are the basic results. It confirms the i5 processor doesn't outperform the older Intel one. This is surprising to me.
Back to the drawing board!


2014 MacBook Pro:
System Information
Operating System Mac OS X 10.13.6 (Build 17G65)
Model MacBook Pro (13-inch Retina Mid 2014)
Model ID MacBookPro11,1
Motherboard Apple Inc. Mac-189A3D4F975D5FFC MacBookPro11,1
Processor Intel Core i5-4278U @ 2.60 GHz
1 Processor, 2 Cores, 4 Threads

Single Core Score: 1113.
Multi-Core Score: 2186

----------


2009 MacBook:
System Information
Operating System Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Build 10K549)
Model MacBook (Early 2009)
Model ID MacBook5,2
Motherboard Apple Inc. Mac-F22788AA
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo P7450 @ 2.13 GHz
1 Processor, 2 Cores, 2 Threads
Processor ID GenuineIntel

Single Core Score: 1190
Multi-Core Score: 2100
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Old 01-16-2019, 04:25 AM   #72
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ivansc View Post
I spent a LONG time researching before I settled on a mid-to-late 2011 Mac Mini Server.
Hi Ivansc. - Are the 2012 models inferior In any way? Thanks
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Old 01-16-2019, 11:45 AM   #73
serr
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Triode View Post
While waiting for Allen and Heath driver to be officially ready for Mojave I thought I'd take the intermediate step of upgrading from my early 2009 MacBook and get a 2014 Macbook Pro. The thinking being that using a more modern machine would allow me to update my plugins to work on High Sierra (and be compatible with other studios) while getting a step up in performance for a year or so before moving to the new Mac mini i7 6 core.
Having got everything installed on the Macbook Pro I was surprised to find that performance with i5 duel 2.6Ghz processor and 16 Gb of RAM is in practice no better than Intel core duel 2.13 that's five years older running Snow Leopard. Most of my work involves recorded audio rather than software instruments (where the RAM would be an more of an advantage).

So after finding that the full mixes that stressed my old machine stressed the new one in the same way I ran geekbench on both machines and here are the basic results. It confirms the i5 processor doesn't outperform the older Intel one. This is surprising to me.
Back to the drawing board!


2014 MacBook Pro:
System Information
Operating System Mac OS X 10.13.6 (Build 17G65)
Model MacBook Pro (13-inch Retina Mid 2014)
Model ID MacBookPro11,1
Motherboard Apple Inc. Mac-189A3D4F975D5FFC MacBookPro11,1
Processor Intel Core i5-4278U @ 2.60 GHz
1 Processor, 2 Cores, 4 Threads

Single Core Score: 1113.
Multi-Core Score: 2186

----------


2009 MacBook:
System Information
Operating System Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Build 10K549)
Model MacBook (Early 2009)
Model ID MacBook5,2
Motherboard Apple Inc. Mac-F22788AA
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo P7450 @ 2.13 GHz
1 Processor, 2 Cores, 2 Threads
Processor ID GenuineIntel

Single Core Score: 1190
Multi-Core Score: 2100
Yeah, you have to look at the specs. The thing where next years machine was always faster by default than last years stopped around 2010. Meaning that's when new models started showing up with reduced specs (because many people only needed to buy facebook browsing machines).

FYI my 2011 MBP just got
Single Core Score: 3562
Multi-Core Score: 11296
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Old 01-16-2019, 01:18 PM   #74
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Triode View Post
Hi Ivansc. - Are the 2012 models inferior In any way? Thanks
I can honestly say that I have had zero issues with the mid 2011 I bought. It is certainly fast enough to keep up with my demands & so far has been 100% reliable.

One factor in my decision to buy the Server model was that it is one of the last models to have a solid aluminium chassis. Also it has socketed ram so easy to upgrade yourself to a max of 16gb.
And it has 2 hard drive SATA connectors, each of which can carry either a HDD or an SSD.
Incidentally mine is currently offering to update the OS to the very lates OSX version too, although I have kept it on Mavericks for the sake of my buddy having to stay with Logic Pro 9 which wont work properly after Mavericks as I understand it.
If I was keeping it (and Logic) I would happily update it to Logic Pro X for the small price they are asking.
But I didnt really warm to Logic tbh.
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Old 01-16-2019, 02:18 PM   #75
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Ok great stuff thanks for that.

Looking forward to getting my hands on one of these machines. Interesting to hear about Logic 9 only being supported up to Mavericks. I'm not too worried as I still have that on the old laptop which I may now keep to use as a mobile recorder (I find in that situation Logic is actually more rock solid than Reaper but for studio stuff it's Reaper all the way.)
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Old 01-16-2019, 02:47 PM   #76
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The 2012 Macs are the flagship machines. There will probably never be better Macs built. The 2011 models are nearly what the 2012 are. (Some of 2011 have USB2 instead of 3 and the 2012 have a couple slightly faster CPUs to offer.) Except the Mac Pro. You want the 2009/2010 Mac Pros. (Upgrading the CPUs in a 2009/2010 is more bang for the buck than the cylinder Mac Pro.)
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Old 01-16-2019, 03:55 PM   #77
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The 2012 Macs are the flagship machines. There will probably never be better Macs built.
Which means time freezing plug ins and the OS. I bet earlier version of OSX feel more nippy on that hardware. What's your favoured OS version, Serr?
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Old 01-16-2019, 04:46 PM   #78
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Triode View Post
Ok great stuff thanks for that.

Looking forward to getting my hands on one of these machines. Interesting to hear about Logic 9 only being supported up to Mavericks. I'm not too worried as I still have that on the old laptop which I may now keep to use as a mobile recorder (I find in that situation Logic is actually more rock solid than Reaper but for studio stuff it's Reaper all the way.)
"Not supported" doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't run.

And for rock solid recording you could take a look at Boom recorder. Even when it has gotten somewhat expensive lately, it's interesting.

http://vosgames.nl/products/BoomRecorder/
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Old 01-16-2019, 06:46 PM   #79
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Quote:
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Which means time freezing plug ins and the OS. I bet earlier version of OSX feel more nippy on that hardware. What's your favoured OS version, Serr?
Everything back to late 2008 still runs the latest OSX. (10.14 currently)
My favorite two right now are 10.13.6 and 10.6.8.

10.6.8 Most t's crossed and i's dotted OS I've ever used.
10.7 The hell? You broke Spaces!
10.8 Still broke. And what's up with these little Finder bugs?
10.9 I said, what's up with these little Finder bugs?
10.10 So it's just going to be a little sloppy and unfinished from now on?
10.11 Appears so.
10.12 Oh... I think we're going to be seeing the last version of a working OSX soon... And installer bugs?!
10.13 A genuine bug fixed 10.12! Actually a little impressed (and relieved) on the apparent return to form!
10.14 Here we go again...

Last edited by serr; 01-17-2019 at 12:00 AM.
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Old 01-16-2019, 10:21 PM   #80
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I'm glad you started this thread. It led me to solve the one beef I have with the 2018 Mac Mini i7.

I found an app that easily turns off Turbo Boost and can be customized to automatically turn off (or on) when certain apps are running.

Since doing this, I never hear the fans kick on when doing audio sessions and it's what I would call dead silent because I can shut off Turbo Boost.

For me, the 2018 Mac Mini sits right where I expected, somewhere between my laptop and iMac Pro.
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