Switching from Windows to Mac

[Achilles]

I don't use a DAW or play video that requires ridiculous graphics.

Here's the 17" laptop I've been using for the past 6 years:

I'm using about 140 Gig on drive C: and another 325 Gig on drive D:

I want to switch to a Mac system where I buy one of their cubes and then add a monitor and keyboard.

Suggestions?

 

[HomespunEffects]

Get the memory upgrade. It’ll last a lot longer with the memory intensive updates.

 

[Achilles]

Get the memory upgrade. It’ll last a lot longer with the memory intensive updates.

But with which cube?

 

[laxu]

But with which cube?

The best one you can afford. Macs are a bit shit for external display support so the lowest tier model won't do well with some high end displays despite what the specs say, so that might reduce their future compatibility.

I'd look at used or refurbished M2 Max models and see if the price is right.

Also get the memory and disk space you need as those are not upgradeable. Which is also why I don't touch the desktop models and prefer the laptops. At least it's somewhat justified on those.

 

[Achilles]

Yikes!

$1,830 w/tax and no peripherals.
Got to re-think this a bit.

 

[laxu]

Yikes!

View attachment 26896

$1,830 w/tax and no peripherals.
Got to re-think this a bit.

You get absolute robbed by the memory and disk space upgrades.

 

[Achilles]

You get absolute robbed by the memory and disk space upgrades.

That's the base model!

 

[Orvillain]

Also get the memory and disk space you need as those are not upgradeable.

Godamnit that is SUPER wank.

 

[Sascha Franck]

A Mac Mini should be absolutely fine, no need for anything fancier. Second lowest baseline model /w 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD should be fine.
If you can, get a 16GB RAM model. And don't go for the 256GB SSD models because those will defenitely be too small in the longer run (system fills up and it's recommended to not use much more than 80% on an SSD, plus they gradually lose some capacity).

Over here, you can find the 2023 model with the 16/512 combination for around 800 2nd hand.

Note: For any typical daily life work, even 8GB of RAM will be sufficient. But who knows, maybe one day you would like to do some DAW stuff (which I'd recommend to any musician anyway). Or you'd like to get into video editing a bit more. After all, macOS comes with some things for free (Garageband but also iMovie), making it very easy to check these waters. So I'd tried to find something with 16GB RAM.

Fwiw, these new M-Macs are dealing with RAM *much* more efficiently (or rather "elegantly") than pretty much any other computer, so you possibly don't need much. The baseline Mac Mini has already been outperforming my old but still pretty powerful Mac Pro in all aspects, and we're talking more or less high end demands in terms of DAW work here.

Oh yes, there's some kind of "issues" with Macs and external non-Apple monitors (their onboard GPUs are completely tailored to work with Apple's own Retina displays), but in reality, these are absolute non-issues unless you're completely into graphics, video and possibly gaming. In case you're not, you can just connect any monitor. How do I know? Because apart from spending quite some bucks for the core machines, I'm connecting them to super-average monitors since decades. No issues at all.

 

[KHAAAAAAANNNNNNN!!!!!!!!]

I need to upgrade. I'm thinking of getting the cheapest Mac mini for web surfing, and building a PC for music stuff. I agree the Apple rapes you on ram and storage upgrades.

 

[Joshual-L]

It all depends on your need but just for you to know that i still work on a 2011 iMac (the cheapest one).
Yes it’s more expensive but it’s really worth the price.

 

[Sascha Franck]

I'm thinking of getting the cheapest Mac mini for web surfing, and building a PC for music stuff.

You probably owe it to yourself to consider spending a little more on that Mac Mini (and possibly wait for the M4 models expected this fall by many, simply because the Mac Minis haven't seen a CPU update in a while, so Apple may as well skip the M3 entirely with them).
As said, even the baseline model with 16GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD would give you plenty of ooomph to run a DAW. And even if you have to factor Apples street robbery prices for those updates in, you're still spending way less than for a dedicated PC.
Sure, in case you also want the two to be in different locations, that'd rule the "one size fits all" approach out (you could then consider a Macbook, but those can indeed get quite pricey, so I'm not exactly recommending it, even if it's what I went for).

Whatever, these days, unless you're doing huge productions, there's not much of a need for dedicated DAW computers in case you go for a Mac. A Windows box to even just match the overall performance of these Mac Minis would cost quite some money already.

 

[JerEvil]

I went full potato with a Mac Studio Ultra…

 

[LeftyLoungeLizard]

I want to switch to a Mac system where I buy one of their cubes and then add a monitor and keyboard.

 

[LeftyLoungeLizard]

Yikes!

$1,830 w/tax and no peripherals.

 

[paisleywookiee]

I don't use a DAW or play video that requires ridiculous graphics.

Here's the 17" laptop I've been using for the past 6 years:

View attachment 26888

I'm using about 140 Gig on drive C: and another 325 Gig on drive D:

I want to switch to a Mac system where I buy one of their cubes and then add a monitor and keyboard.

Suggestions?

Just get the Mac Mini , and 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD.

However, as Sascha said, a new M4 one is around the corner. I've still got the M1 Mini, and it runs everything music-related flawlessly, as well as edits 4K video, RAW images for photography, etc.

EDIT

There's a rumor that the M4 Macs will also be announced at the iPhone event on September 9th. Worth waiting for that. I'm personally going for an M4 mini, so I can give my M1 to my son, since he's heavily into Logic now too.

 

[EOengineer]

My Apple refurbished M1 Mac Mini 16gb/1TB absolutely kills, and that’s on 60+ track sessions with your typical Superior Drummer, UAD, IK, Brainworx plugins. I’ve been so impressed with it.

I grabbed an M2 MacBook Air 15 inch recently for software dev and that things a monster too. It uses the body as its heat sink and I’ve not had it throttle on a Logic session yet.

 

[Sascha Franck]

I grabbed an M2 MacBook Air 15 inch recently for software dev and that things a monster too. It uses the body as its heat sink and I’ve not had it throttle on a Logic session yet.

Same with my M3 MBA. At home I even keep the lid closed all the time and I hardly ever manage to put more load onto it so it'd get more than lukewarm. Running Logic at 32 samples all throughout, it's just set and forget (but admittedly, with Logic it has always been like that because it's automatically using a higher buffer on playback-only tracks).
I usually keep everything opened as well, which would be monstrous amounts of Firefox windows and tabs, Thunderbird, whatever I just need. As expensive as it was (went all in with 24GB/2TB), as much as I hate Apples pretty strict "no more than 5 years of support for lower end machines" policy, in case the thing doesn't break and deliver its full performance over 5-7 years, I'll happily buy the then actual version again as it's simply the best computing experience I ever had (the only drawback being the small amount of USB ports, but a passive hub is fixing that easily and most of the time I don't need it).
Now Apple just has to adress some Logic issues. That's actually something really making me angry, they got pretty slow with fixing things.

 

[laxu]

Fwiw, these new M-Macs are dealing with RAM *much* more efficiently (or rather "elegantly") than pretty much any other computer, so you possibly don't need much. The baseline Mac Mini has already been outperforming my old but still pretty powerful Mac Pro in all aspects, and we're talking more or less high end demands in terms of DAW work here.

This is often used to excuse Apple's miserable memory amounts. But it's worth remembering that the 8 GB is shared between everything. Most PCs have separate VRAM for their GPU, or with integrated GPUs use a small chunk of onboard RAM. While Apple's approach has benefits (memory bandwidth), once that RAM is filled up you are out of luck. There's tests on YT showing that 8 GB is not enough.

Most users are going to be fine with 16 GB for anything they do. It just should not cost you what Apple charges for upgrades. With Apple pushing for the "Apple Intelligence" AI nonsense, hopefully the baseline memory amounts will go up.

Oh yes, there's some kind of "issues" with Macs and external non-Apple monitors (their onboard GPUs are completely tailored to work with Apple's own Retina displays), but in reality, these are absolute non-issues unless you're completely into graphics, video and possibly gaming. In case you're not, you can just connect any monitor. How do I know? Because apart from spending quite some bucks for the core machines, I'm connecting them to super-average monitors since decades. No issues at all.

I'm working at the opposite end. To me you should buy the best possible displays (within reason) because you are looking at them all day, MacOS works better with 4K+ resolution displays for UI/text rendering, high refresh rates makes even desktop use just plain more pleasant and monitors last for many years.

Now, this does not mean I'm voting for Apple's 5K/6K displays. Both are overpriced, lacking in ports, 60 Hz only and the 6K is already dated in HDR capabilities while the 5K has none. Their plus sides are high res, great color accuracy, high SDR brightness and guaranteed compatibility with Apple's computers.

I'm currently running dual 28" 4K 144 Hz displays on a M2 Max Macbook Pro 16" with 64 GB RAM and 1TB disk space. The displays are an interim option while I wait for something better to come available, most likely 5120x2160 ultrawides in 40-45" size.

The issues I'm running into are:

• One of the displays sometimes not waking up when the computer comes out of sleep, or wakes up to a garbled screen. You need to pull the cable from the Mac and plug it back in.
• Cannot use HDR unless I drop refresh rate to 60 Hz, or alternatively change display scaling to 1080p or native 4K. So too big or too small.
• HDMI 2.1 adapters and cables can be extremely fickle with Macs and often drop down to HDMI 2.0 speeds. With HDMI 2.1 becoming increasingly popular, this can become an issue when Macbook Pro M2 and up come with only one HDMI 2.1 port.
• Fractional scaling of the UI works less than ideal on MacOS and Windows handles this significantly better.
• On some displays max refresh rate might not work.

Windows has none of these issues even on my Intel 13600K's integrated CPU. Same cables and everything.

 

[EOengineer]

This is often used to excuse Apple's miserable memory amounts. But it's worth remembering that the 8 GB is shared between everything. Most PCs have separate VRAM for their GPU, or with integrated GPUs use a small chunk of onboard RAM. While Apple's approach has benefits (memory bandwidth), once that RAM is filled up you are out of luck. There's tests on YT showing that 8 GB is not enough.

Most users are going to be fine with 16 GB for anything they do. It just should not cost you what Apple charges for upgrades. With Apple pushing for the "Apple Intelligence" AI nonsense, hopefully the baseline memory amounts will go up.


I'm working at the opposite end. To me you should buy the best possible displays (within reason) because you are looking at them all day, MacOS works better with 4K+ resolution displays for UI/text rendering, high refresh rates makes even desktop use just plain more pleasant and monitors last for many years.

Now, this does not mean I'm voting for Apple's 5K/6K displays. Both are overpriced, lacking in ports, 60 Hz only and the 6K is already dated in HDR capabilities while the 5K has none. Their plus sides are high res, great color accuracy, high SDR brightness and guaranteed compatibility with Apple's computers.

I'm currently running dual 28" 4K 144 Hz displays on a M2 Max Macbook Pro 16" with 64 GB RAM and 1TB disk space. The displays are an interim option while I wait for something better to come available, most likely 5120x2160 ultrawides in 40-45" size.

The issues I'm running into are:

• One of the displays sometimes not waking up when the computer comes out of sleep, or wakes up to a garbled screen. You need to pull the cable from the Mac and plug it back in.
• Cannot use HDR unless I drop refresh rate to 60 Hz, or alternatively change display scaling to 1080p or native 4K. So too big or too small.
• HDMI 2.1 adapters and cables can be extremely fickle with Macs and often drop down to HDMI 2.0 speeds. With HDMI 2.1 becoming increasingly popular, this can become an issue when Macbook Pro M2 and up come with only one HDMI 2.1 port.
• Fractional scaling of the UI works less than ideal on MacOS and Windows handles this significantly better.
• On some displays max refresh rate might not work.

Windows has none of these issues even on my Intel 13600K's integrated CPU. Same cables and everything.

Yeah but then you’re stuck with a garbage OS. It’s kind of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Fortunately most of my work is dev and audio so I’m not as focused on display limitations. I could see why some may jump from the Apple ship though.

FWIW I’ve found the best way to get a low cost Apple device - turns out if you just smash a window or two and get out before security tackles you, great deals can be had almost anywhere.