in general this is true, but external storage is really not what you want on stage in a live music performance context if you can even remotely help it
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a laptop becomes a lot more awkward with an external ssd plugged in. iām just a safari/sublime/electron rube but i use cyberduck to mount my rsync.net volume on a base macbook air to avoid dangling usb devices
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i think this is really a big one tho, just having the whole thing be very slightly smaller and lighter is a MASSIVE. i do not think the air would ever throttle while running single virtual instruments for live performance so the fan is irrelevant (in that context). the extra RAM will almost certainly matter. i can probably cut it with 1TB without needing external storage, just gotta manage it which i do already
the fan might matter for recording with lots of effects but even then i donāt think itāll be a problemā¦ dunno for sure
the air just seems like itāll be more approachable too, which matters mentally
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hmm maybe i should just get the refurbished m4 air from apple
ticks all the boxes, donāt have to gamble on the ebay listingā¦ still feels like highway robbery with the spec bumps but if it is going to hopefully last 7+ years the 300USD difference between the m3 on ebay and the refurb m4 on appleās store probably wonāt bother me long
will get a bunch of macOS updates
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agreed. I think Macs are generally very worth it at the lower end of the spec options and/or refurbished, and not at all worth Appleās memory/disk upgrade prices, but I have never found external drives to be particularly usable at all. āgo up one notch from the bare minimum tier and invest in a good sync solutionā has been my rule for like 15 years
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itās tempting. if i rethink my usage around any kind of kontakt library type shit i could probably get away with 512GB and bump to 32GB RAM for the same price or save 160-170 by keeping it at 24GBā¦ but i think 512GB is just going to be rough with logic and 16GB RAM makes me uncomfortable in the long run
not sure what kind of disk throughput you need but
plus
might be a reason to get the pro, it fits in flush
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if you do go this route, I would say do not be tempted to cut corners and get an SD card rated slower than extreme pro, because theyāre just horrible at random writes in a way you will notice if you (like me) wind up symlinking random shit on there to compensate for not wanting to pay apple for storage
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Staring down my options and wondering if I want to submit to Apple since my Microcenter has an open box M3 Pro MBP or if I want to roll the dice on another Windows OEM
I love gambling
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wouldnāt touch that stuff with a gun oil dropper much less pour it into a vent for fear of airial dispersion
but then again I threw out all my cookware like the Hulk in that (propaganda?) movie and itās probably in all our brains already anyway so Iām just a bit paranoid as usual
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doing this is the one thing iāve missed going from a mbp to an air.
for your usecase meauxdal, you really do want more than the base 512gb (as someone also doing music stuff on a 512gb air).
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is there any reason to upgrade bios for agesa updates? are any of the security issues with mitigations and patches actively getting popped
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hi
my laptop adventure has landed me on another goddamn x86 dinosaur portable computer
I looked at the open box section of my local Microcenter and saw the only two computers I would consider: a 14" M3 Pro MBP and some Asus Vivobook thing, which met my stupid x86 criteria (11 Pro, too much CPU, not a godawful keyboard, not a godawful display), both within a hundred bucks of each other. I was lucky that they had both out so I could touch them and feel them and
you donāt appreciate the anger around the notch on the Macbook Pro until you are confronted with it in person. I physically moved the cursor to the notch and watched it disappear behind and started losing my goddamn mind. you make the OS! youāre the only ones making Macs! you control everything! you canāt cut out the notch in the OS?
so because Iām an insane person with unreasonable standards, I grabbed the Vivobook and it has an Ryzen AI HX 370 which is a 12 core shambling chimera of a mobile chip and now Iām back to having the most powerful computer in the facility at work every time I walk in (I am locked in to too much CPU until someone goes crazy and puts JPEG2000 into encode/decode blocks in consumer hardware and no, Iāve run it on my M2 Pro Mini and it probably has 25-33% of speed of my 1700X system, which I have at work because Iām an insane person and you never know when youāll need a linux computer for nonsense)
I think OLED displays on a laptop are nice but also the inky blacks mean I am constantly staring into the abyss and itās staring back at me with my face and I hate it
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I was dangerously close to buying a Snapdragon laptop. I almost told the world I looked at Macs and looked at x86 and declared I wanted to be beholden to Microsoft making WoA a thing
the camera notch is a perfectly valid reason to avoid apple products
I think what drove me mad is looking at my phone and having seen iOS demos and they compensate for notches! both of my Pixels either put crap around the notch or crop the top part of the notch out of the resolution. Iām not losing anything
with the notch on the MBP I am physically losing resolution and I can only assume the only attention given to it is the OS having dropdown menu categories not go under it. but if the OS knows to not do that
then the OS knows where the notch is
oh Iām giving myself a headache just yelling about it in my mind
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I shouldnāt be this mad about it but I canāt stop litigating it
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I use MacBooks with notches for probably 50+hrs a week and have completely forgotten the notch exists until these posts.
I just asked my spouse about her feelings about the notch on her new MBA and she said she was annoyed at first but hasnāt even thought about it since the first couple of days.
As a person who writes UI software sometimes I fully understand why they chose the solution they did. The annoyance is really low compared to the possible software edge cases and having humans adapt to a small inconvenience seems easier overall than solving those issues.
That said I can imagine this is just going to be another one of those things that drives the cult of Mac.
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Tbh I think a lack of a hardware camera shutter or microphone switch is actually the more annoying thing.
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My use case for a laptop is basically a desktop that might need to pick up and move during a natural-disaster or a trip where I need to be on call in case of an emergency. So if I had a notch Id almost never see it.
I could get used to a notch but it looks like an admission of failure or a micorsoft level of not giving shit about the user or software developer.
Really I yearn for the return of FAT bezels and THICC cases.
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