That is amazing. Good for you. I've personally never managed more than 3 to 4 years on a MS platform before the want to throw it through a literal window starts to surface when asking to do some heavy lifting. Though I do have a couple of 10 year old Samsung Laptops running as cluster for compile and render tasks that started life as Windows 7/8 boxes but are now running RHOS. One has a dead built in monitor the two other two require an external keyboard to operate but none of that is an issue as they are static now. Thanks to HDMI, Bluetooth and SSH they have a second life. Though they are getting to the point where they are outperformed by a contemporary solo desktop or laptop, they are offline post boxes so as long as there is no rush they are still valuable in that they free a usable machine of tedious tasks.

I would love one of those Mac series 1 aquariums.

You don't name your dog George because you hate everyone or anyone called George, unless for some reason you have a dog you hate. Which begs the question of why do you have a dog.

 

Thanks

Thanks

Well, if you don't throw them you can be as lucky as me 11 years later. Give them a chance

Jokes aside, to each its own. Macs come better integrated both in hardware and OS. Because Apple control both.
You pay for it.
PCs are quite cheaper but if you don't know about computers you can end with bad/unbalanced hardware.
Mac OS has always been better than Windows IMO, though lately the iOS influence and Apple squeeze-the-money practices seems to be a problem.

But a fact that can't be denied is that Apple forces obsolescence way, way much more than Microsoft.
Three years ago I had a very old too MacBook Air (late 2010). With Mac OS Lyon (or whatever) only starting Safari with two tabs dragged the poor bastard to its knees. Besides, a lot of things were already deprecated for that Mac OS version.
I installed both Windows 8 and 10 with the official BootCamp drivers and it ran fine. Obviously, no DAW, no Photoshop, not many chrome tabs either.

Oh, and the monitor and touch-pad amazing both

 

I don't have any loyalty to a brand / corporation, feels ridiculous for someone who is (nominally) an adult. I'm interested in this cos I'm looking to buy a new laptop around the $3k mark, and that includes Macs. I'm not sure of a good buy for Hackintosh compatibility, but my main concern is something good for music production, games and accidental warranty / onsite. Cos children are capable of busting anything. I'm still looking, but hopefully Lenovo will release something (7i) with a 17" screen and series 10xxx cpu. I might wait until the 3070 (gpu) is more routine? It's kinda a "take my money" situation, but lots of suitable (gaming) laptops don't have 32G mem options, which is kinda a minimum tbh.

But anyway, I'm pretty paranoid about security, and this (supposedly) hardware haxx is likely a software haxx already. I'd be very wary of trusting anything, esp anything touted as unbreakable security.

Incidentally, I have dinosaur old PCs running (win10) as NAS storage and are basically potato (x86) garbage! I use a decade-old PC (again win10) running as a VEP server, to use sample libs. I guess nobody told them they were obselete! :D

 

I have brand loyalty, but my loyaly starts and stops at single malt whisky

Macallan, Balvenie or Aberlour

 

I always liked Glen Moray, personally, but I confess to sipping (glugging) various Thai / Dominican rums nowadays.

 

overproof? 75.5% ABV / 150% proof

Excellent rum, doesn't like flames though

 

Unless you are planing on waiting quite a while till the A12XM | A13XM MB or MBP come out I would hold off on buying a Apple laptop.

I bought a 17" G5 Powerbook in 2005 right before the Intel transition and it still runs OSX Leopard and I sometimes use it as MIDI sequencer with some of the older MOTU MIDI routers and MTP that just will not work with modern machines, but I felt back then just as it got it's last update that I had a bit of wasted potential as more things were no longer Rosetta optimized. It still runs pro-tools 8 and the hardware that is attached to it TBH It could probably still back a studio. I still felt a little bad inside that everything kind of changed and I got left behind but that's not really true, but it felt that way.

As far as this hardware hack ever becoming a software hack, that would take some doing as the the on the fly cryto daemon runs at kernel level and the logic isn't bi-directional. It would take installing a modified OS to expose you to a software hack. So unless you root install a kext (to jailbreak a phone or get around some gatekeeper hardware blocks) this particular vulnerability will stay a complicated hardware only hack, but who knows what the future will bring.

We are animals with different tastes I've always favored a dram of Glenmorangie and the older Glenfiddich at home for myself but I'll happily drink yours if someone else is offering.

 

As far as the rum goes, @Haliax the one I'm (literally atm) sipping is 40% abv, Thai. Approximate to whiskey? It feels like I'm drinking (something as strong as) white wine, tho, so freaking deceptive!

Yeah, that's exactly what they said about unhackable PS2 security, back in the day. But one guy managed to do it in software pretty quickly. A team of Chinese hackers (amongst others)? People wanting to downgrade/jailbreak? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Hackintosh all the way.

Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions for good laptops (I've prolly gone through and dismissed most of the "famous" options) for music production, I'm open to suggestions.

 

Last edited: Aug 11, 2020

Or VSL with VEP? etc
This is were it's at regarding old hardware. It's not about the newest OS etc.

Interesting. The Mid 2010 MBP was later found to be able to go beyond Snow Leopard, Lion etc, by going via El Cap, and then beyond. I use one in Sierra for surfing as we speak.
Plus it was later found to be able to accept 2x8 GB of RAM, as per the newer 64Bit OSs!

 

Apparently, you have either not had a lot of experience with PCs or you have yet to experience the heartbreak of dealing with your Mac becoming an obsolete hunk of aluminum. For example, your 2011 MacBook Air with 5 OSX version upgrades without a single reinstall is, yes, utterly obsolete. I'm sure it still runs, but it is now 4 OS version upgrades behind (unless you hacked it, which creates its own set of problems) and will, if not already, be unable to use most contemporary software. You could run Firefox on it and use it for browsing, I guess, but eventually, even Firefox and Chrome will stop supporting Sierra (again, if they haven't already). Meanwhile, my girlfriend's piece-of-shit Best Buy HP laptop, probably a lot slower than your MacBook Air and was also purchased in 2011, runs the latest version of Windoze. There are plenty of old PCs out there than can run Windoze 10. And if a PC isn't fast enough to run it, there's a better than even chance you can upgrade components until it can. Try doing that with a contemporary Mac ... especially your MacBook Air.

Man, I still have a fucking G3 iBook from 2002 (the "Icebook" model, I think it's called). The last thing I did before switching over to an Intel MacBook was upgrade the RAM (from 500 MBs to one whole whopping GB) and replace the keyboard. I actually used it to record a whole album's worth of location vocals using Vision DSP (inside OS 9.2.2!), and since I still have some Vision DSP projects I need to transfer, I have it plugged in to preserve the 13GB hard drive. It's clunky, old and takes about ten minutes to boot up in either Classic or OS X (10.4, I believe). I had Vision and Digital Performer 3 as my DAWs and they both had proprietary audio (Acadias for Vision, MAS for DP) and MIDI (OMS for Vision, FreeMIDI for DP) systems, meaning, I had to manually switch between them before opening either DAW. It's hard to believe I ever got any work accomplished in that thing, but I definitely miss Vision, as well as BIAS Peak and the best MIDI sequencer ever made for the Mac, Master Tracks Pro.

 

I think you'll find it's running High Sierra (which is as high as it will go without hacks) and which will actually run the latest Ableton 10 just fine mate - so much for not running contemporary software

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001261150-MacOS-Compatibility-with-Live

I don't use it for music production anyway (I have a 12 core Mac Pro and a MBP for that) but I've more than had my use from the Air now in 9 years anyway. Plus it still runs and starts up just as quickly as it did when we bought it, unlike a PC would.