Hello
Currently running PL8 on a 7 year old Windows machine with quad core and 32gb ram
Going to migrate over to Apple silicon, not just for PL but for music too.
The price difference for an M2pro mini with 16 or 32gb memory is a bit nuts. If I get 16 will I be able to use my machine for 5-7 years? If not, I’ll pay the extra.
I know this will be conjecture but interested to hear opinions. The new PL8 is much slower than PL7 on my Windows too, sort of making the change more pressing
Thanks!!!
A total upgrade of your computer system is a quick and easy way to get more power and greater speeds. However, it is by no means future-proof unless you spend a lot of money to get way more potential in every component than you expect to ever need. So you have to look at the total package and determine if every part of it is enough for your needs. In my experience, 16GB RAM is enough for a limited range of tasks. You’re better off with 32GB if you want a computer that can run many things at once without slowing down - a web browser with many tabs, photo editing, music, video…
Of course, if you’re tech savvy you can upgrade individual parts of your computer system to get more performance for less money. But you will be limited by the parts that can’t be upgraded any further. Do you know if you’d be able to upgrade the RAM of a cheaper Apple system yourself, and if that would save you any money?
Unfortunately, for a few years now, memory has been hard soldered onto the board and cannot be upgraded. Even the initial SSD size has to be chosen at purchase but, at least with that, you can plug in a fast external Thunderbolt SSD for files and save size and money on the onboard disk.
One of my systems is a Mac Mini M2 with 16GB memory and 1TB of SSD. I have never found cause for complaint speed wise, for my usage.
Jim, if you are comfortable on Windows, I wouldn’t move to macOS at this point. Everything is nailed to the floor, there’s no third-party service any more, you can’t even substitute in parts from another parallel machine. Apple is exploiting its users everywhere it can. Just drop a slightly better graphics card in that Windows machine and you’re good to go. PhotoLab export and real time processing does lean heavily on the graphic card.
My Mac Pro 5,1 (2011) with a Radeon VII outperformed my M1 Max but OS compatibility for latest PhotoLab forced my hand.
For music, if you want to create on macOS, the hardware requirements are way lower. You are also better off running older versions of the OS, and even Intel architecture. You can buy a powerful used i5 or i7 Apple laptop for a song these days (€200 to €500). Totally unsuitable for PhotoLab but fantastic for audio production.
If you insist on buying a fancy Mx Apple Silicon machine, then don’t even think about going with 16GB. I have 15GB of swap right now on a 32GB M1 Max MacBook Pro. The situation is not normally this bad, but I far prefer 64GB which I have on my M1 Studio.
I’m annoyed enough with Apple’s violation of my privacy (constantly phoning home, attempting to force health data and photos onto iCloud), lack of respect for open source (WebDAV has been deliberately broken most of the time since Snow Leopard) and lack of respect for the environment (non-repairable machines, everything soldered on) that my own plans include the move to Linux for everything except video and photo editing (at first) where I’ll keep one Mac Studio for those tasks, ideally off the internet.
Thanks for the feedback, but my current machine will not be ‘good to go’ with a new graphics card. The processor is already really old, as are the disks, so will be looking for a new machine in its entirety. Plus, I can’t drop in a new processor, the memory is maxed out and I have a MB Air M1 which is very good indeed, so want to have a desktop that has the silicon chips, as they really are an upgrade in terms of speed for Ableton and the CPU-heavy plugins I use in it.
Fine. Then man up and lay out the cash for a 32GB or 64GB machine. Or hang around and whine and hope for the best with a 16GB machine. 16GB means one main app (something like PhotoLab) plus a browser with a few tabs and two or three small satellite apps. If you are the kind of person to shut all your applications down before you work on photos or audio, then you might be able to get by with 16GB.
Sorry to be blunt but so much hand-wringing I’ve rarely seen. Apple computers with adequate memory are ridiculously expensive now. That’s the way it is. Accept it or don’t go with Apple.
I’ve been using Apple computers for more than thirty years and I’m looking for the exit (not just cost).
Fully agree 16 Gb is not much for a machine that should last a while.
Thanks for the impassioned and emotive reply, really helps.