M1 Max

Dorico
41

Eh. Windows has a better software ecosystem.

Apple has better integration across their devices.

Software ecosystem has never been a reason to buy macOS over Windows.

Personally, I’m skipping these. I think the prices are a bit too high for me, and with Ryzen becoming more prevalent in laptops there simply isn’t a need for them - personally speaking g - in my life.

Plus, you’re basically chained to Rosetta forever if you buy one, so you’re going g to give back performance anyways. Software developers will definitely use this opportunity to force as many upgrades as possible - Steinberg included.

I got an M1 Pro and returned it after a day because I realized how much more I’d have to pay in forced software upgrades. I am too platform agnostic to care to waste that extra money, and the machine itself was $800 more than a comparably speced (and faster) Windows laptop.

The battery life was legit, though, I will say that.

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42

Ooh how quickly these discussions turn into [redacted] contests…

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43

Depends on your line of work. Many music producers rely on software that is Mac only. Logic Pro is one, for a start. Granted, most of the big players are on both, but there are cultural divides.

44

Logic Pro is the only macOS only-DAW. There are more Windows-only creative software applications than macOS-only.

This makes no sense.

If they choose to use that software, then that’s on them. But, I’m going to disagree that most depend on software that requires them to run a Mac. How many constitutes “many” is subjective, when juxtaposed against the size of the music production market.

45

Really? a non feature and only a simple GUI optimization and a lot of marketing? :thinking:
I guess that the market must be plenty plenty of cpu, gpu, neural engine, ddr5 memory (accessible by all the units hence unified) on 1 single chip with highly optimized energy consumption, is just that they don’t do a good marketing then :man_shrugging:
Just saying…

46

AMD already has 7nm chips, CPU and GPU. The RX6000 series basically halved the power consumption of their GPUs alone.

ARM chips have been viable on the desktop for over half a decade. The only reason why they didn’t go mainstream was because Apple wasn’t going to use anything but their own chips, and the Windows ecosystem is too dependent on Intel, at this point in time (so anything there was doomed to failure).

ARM Performing well is not really a headline. Bringing full macOS to ARM was the real headline. Apple’s developer ecosystem is pretty good at following Apple where they go. The Windows developer ecosystem isn’t as enthusiastic (in that way). Practically no one really bought into Windows on ARM. It’s going to take Microsoft half a decade to get the type of developer uptake that Apple accomplished in a month after the release of the M1.

Windows has a huge legacy of backward and forward compatibility. Users on that platform like being able to take software they paid for and run it without forced upgrade fees.

Users on macOS are - at this point - pretty used to Apple breaking things on a yearly cycle, and developers releasing “compatible” versions as paid upgrades more than occasionally.

This is the thing that made me move off of macOS back to Windows. On macOS, I was getting nickled and dimed on a yearly basis to keep software up to date and compatible. The licenses weren’t super expensive: $20 here, $49 there… But it adds up, so the LTCO of a Mac was too high to justify it - long term.

On Windows, I just keep using the same version that works well enough for me, without worry.

There are software packages that I own for both macOS and Windows, and the macOS version requires forced upgrades just to run on Big Sur, while the Windows version just keeps on trucking - even on 11.

So, I view saving as more than the disparity of the hardware cost at time of purchase. It increases the longer I own the machine (or, more specifically, use Windows instead of macOS).

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47

I see, meaning if i build a PC with the AMD chip i don’t have to add the memory bars anymore and the bus speed between the various units on the motherboard is reaching the 200/400 GBs?

48

You’ll note that this is why I observed:

It’s a matter of industry culture, not strictly “need”. As I also said:

49

Why would you need that - that is spec porn, particularly for music production? In an x86 System, anything that needs this kind of memory bandwidth is likely GPU-bound (i.e. DaVinci Resolve), so the limiting factor would be the bus your GPU is on. The memory bandwidth is likely designed to be high to accomodate the fact that these SoCs use an iGPU. iGPUs are limited by the architecture’s memory bandwidth, since it shares “CPU RAM” as VRAM.

This is why, even in x86 PCs, not running your RAM in dual channel is a pretty sizeable hit to iGPU performance.

Those things that aren’t, generally won’t accomodate a machine that maxes out at 32-64GB RAM well, anyways. Think of the workstations used for high end Visual Effects workloads, for example.

A dGPU is limited by the speed of the bus it lives on. Modern CPUs, GPUs, and MOBOs support PCIe 4, so this is not an issue there.

You just get a good GPU with lots of fast VRAM and you’re good to go.

I/O bottlenecks are likely to occur before you even approach a RAM bottleneck in most consumer’ish desktop systems.

I think you’re exaggerating this, especially the Logic Pro X factor. It’s certainly popular because enough people own Macs and it’s dirt cheap, but there are DAWs that were Windows-only for the majority of their existence and have blown up despite it (FL Studio, for example).

In 2021, I think the whole idea of “Macs are for creatives” is more history than fact. The things that made Macs de facto for creatives in the 80s and 90s, etc. largely don’t exist as disparities today. Listening to this is like listening to people sing the praises of WordPerfect :roll_eyes:

EDIT: Error corrected.

50

My comments are not on what one needs or wants or what is best, everyone is entitled to choose the tool he likes or need (happy to live in a world with options),
but more on your comment on the new M1 architecture that you call a non feature with a simple GUI optimization and a lot of marketing.

It does not seems the case to me, and for once i believe Apple has done a great job where mac users (like me) will benefit and not relying only on marketing as usual.

Imagine, I’m so impressed that I will finally substitute my 2012 MBP i7 because i finally think there is that technological advancement (and not the next iteration on the old architecture) worth the investment that will serve my need for the next 10 years, but hey, to each is own.

51

Please quote me where I stated such a thing, because I’m certainly not recalling.

A lot of what is stated is marketing. It’s impossible to not rely on marketing, when marketing is the vector through which you receive all information. Though, I guess it’s working if you actually believe what you’ve written!

If you have a 2012 MBP then anything from the past 4-5 years will be a massive technological leap over that ancient hardware. You aren’t just upgrading the CPU, but also the RAM, Storage, [i]GPU, Display, etc.

And that’s ignoring massive security upgrades, as old CPUs can be open to some unpatched vulnerabilities (though that depends on the level of support the platform has received from the OEM).

52

Apologies that quote was from another user and not you.

In any case if you say marketing is working on me without even know my educational background (possibly because my understanding and critical thinking in not enough to discern and simply fall victim) and not understand technological advancement and you are and thus you feel entitled to judge others people choices based on your preferences the discussion ends here.

53

Again, you misread me. I am not exaggerating “industry culture”. Logic Pro X was just one example. I said in my original post that there are many cross-platform options, hence its a culture issue for certain industries. Your industry(ies) may not work that way, but others do. FCPX, for example, is huge among film makers and “content creators”. Yes, there’s Adobe Premier, Davinci Resolve, and others—all with large followings of their own—but they don’t negate that there is indeed a common culture in film making that you probably need to know how to navigate FCPX even if it’s not your editor of choice. The same used to be true of ProTools, which once completely dominated the industry, just like photoshop does. Other daws and other photo editors exist (thank God). But protools is still an industry heavyweight even if it doesn’t dominate anymore. Photoshop is still the gold standard and a bunch of knock-offs imitate it shamelessly.

The point is, in certain circles, there are cultural trends. Visit any liberal arts college and visit the music department and art departments and I’d suspect you’ll see macs to windows devices at a ratio of 5:1.

Edit: and to be clear: I really don’t care. I was just making observations. It really makes no difference to me what platform people choose to use. I’ve used both and can transition between them very easily. (In fact, I find it odd that many people cant.)

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54

"cpu, gpu, neural engine, ddr5 memory (accessible by all the units hence unified) " …

OK, so you like what Apple is doing and the marketing is working. From the engineering standpoint it’s nothing impressively different, and certainly nothing that the rest of the industry isn’t doing too - including me in my day job. I’m laughing because I work in the painful details of these ARM CPU’s for 15 years and it’s amusing to see the spin. Imagine selling your music composition as “Made with Dorico - the most Advanced Music Program on the planet”. Well that’s true, but other musicians are using it too, and how does using Dorico matter to your listeners?

Basically it’s an end device, if you like the results then no argument from me. Meanwhile whatever, the last thing I want to talk about is ARM SOC’s :grin:

55

Could you point me towards a PC laptop builder that’s put out a similarly specc’d machine, please? I have little interest in paying an Apple tax but I’m certainly interested in a substantially faster machine (than my i9 8-core MBP) with better battery life - in more normal times I’m often working on the go.

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56

Budget and what kind of machine are you looking for? For laptops and desktops (my builds) I’ve used ASUS for years. Innovative designs and have always been reliable.

For laptops I just upgraded to the Zenbook Pro Duo. Marketed for ‘creatives’ - well basically its about as high spec as you can get, and rotten battery life (because of the insane specs, but battery doesn’t matter to me, specs do). But it’s got a 3070, 32GB, 8 core i9 etc. Anyhow the lower spec ones - which would be perfect for Dorico I’d think, get great reviews. You can get the “Duo” version which has two built in screens (which I love) and they have a single screen version too I believe. So yeah check out the ASUS Zenbook and pick the one that fits your budget and performance expectations.

Otherwise avoid HP (used to work for that once great company), my IT department deals with HP and Dell and says the HP’s have terrible reliability (they do from my experience of using them at work). Dell is OK, nothing to write home about.

After that you’re looking at gaming laptops which I’d avoid.

57

A Zenbook Pro Duo UX581 comes out at £2950 here, which is roughly the same price as a mid-spec 16” MacBook Pro M1 Pro with 32gb RAM and a 1TB SSD. And rubbish battery life, which does bother me if I’m on a long train journey without a power socket.

I do already have an i9-9880H machine, so I’m looking for that sort of speed but with better battery life.

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58

Except the MacBook Pro M1 doesn’t have a 3070 and is an island onto itself (e.g. they’re not comparable for high end graphics work), but I wasn’t suggesting you get that. My point was that the Zen is a lineup, if you go lower down in specs you’ll get better battery life and cheaper hardware, and may find something you like for sub 2k.

59

Again… i seriously don’t understand why is so difficult to recognize technological achievements but i will digress form technology and enter a social science .

Ok let’s make it very simple, and since you are the expert should be easy for you to educate person like me falling for good marketing only, please tell me where i can find an integrated chip with the CPU, GPU and RAM all packed into one with a tiny footprint using 5 nanometre fabrication with the same level of efficiency/performance ratio?

image

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60

Well, that’s a fruitless point. Apple is providing something with top-end specs AND outstanding battery life, and you suggest we should go down in spec if we want better battery life. That’s hardly a reply to “please show me a PC laptop with similar specs and battery life”.

You seem determined to diminish the achievement, because ‘the rest of the industry is doing it too’. But they’re not. People might be using ARM chips, but no one else is building a laptop that is as good as this right now. Next year, there might be an ARM Windows laptop, and I would welcome it.

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