Macbook pro 16 inch 2019 + universal audio arrow. Worthy investment?

[FarleyCZ]

Of yourse it's not a good investment. It's Apple.

Look. Their computers are well made (unless they f*ck up keyboards like they did in 2016), stylish and well optimized.

Having said that though, they're just hostile to their customers.

Hardware-wise, it's hard to repair MacBooks and if your drive fails, you lose your data as they decided to solder it on the motherboard and excluded the external bus connector few generations back.

Though the biggest problem for which I will never consider an Apple computer for studio use, is their ignorance of backwards compatibility. Essentially you have two options with an Apple computer. Either keep your OS updated, or keep your sotware reliably working. You can't have both. So far every major update brought some reasons why plugin developers needed to revisit their codes. Which means you need to redownload and reinstall some of your plugins. ...and if the developer is not active anymore, that plugin is dead for you.

Meanwhile on PC, I'm running latest Win 10 build and awkward outdated 15 years old VSTs without any trouble.

Apple used to be a creator focused brand up to 2014, today it's just for bragging.

[perpetual3]

My current laptop is a MacBook Pro from 2012. I would say that they are pretty good investments. And yes, I’m going all in on a fairly well spec’d MBP 26”, which I plan to use for another almost decade, unless there is a paradigm shift in computing.

[Ploki]

Of yourse it's not a good investment. It's Apple.

Having said that though, they're just hostile to their customers.

Hardware-wise, it's hard to repair MacBooks and if your drive fails, you lose your data as they decided to solder it on the motherboard and excluded the external bus connector few generations back.

Though the biggest problem for which I will never consider an Apple computer for studio use, is their ignorance of backwards compatibility. Essentially you have two options with an Apple computer. Either keep your OS updated, or keep your sotware reliably working. You can't have both. So far every major update brought some reasons why plugin developers needed to revisit their codes. Which means you need to redownload and reinstall some of your plugins. ...and if the developer is not active anymore, that plugin is dead for you.

Meanwhile on PC, I'm running latest Win 10 build and awkward outdated 15 years old VSTs without any trouble.

Apple used to be a creator focused brand up to 2014, today it's just for bragging.

No computer is a good investment. Computers are not investments, they're tools.

The problem is not if the drives fails, it most likely won't. The problem is that if anything else fails, data is inaccessible. I agree that that is an issue. (Especially given apple's track record with GPUs on MacBooks)

Soldered is not the issue. The whole T2 + drive thing is an issue. iMac Pro doesn't have a soldered drive, but the NAND boards are unreadable because they're tied to the T2 chip and encrypted by the T2 which is non-removable... That's why they removed the connector. It's pretty much useless.

Backups are a smart thing to do, and with the new macs, absolutely necessary.
I personally went for a smaller internal drive + a fast thunderbolt3 external, where i keep 99% of my thing. It's faster than internal drive, I can keep working on projects between two computers, and if any of them fails, I have all my data safe.

re backwards compatibility: the 2012 rMBP can run Catalina. An 8y old computer can run the newest OS. That's pretty good for backward compatibility if you ask me.
And as far as OS updates go, that's simply misinformation. Catalina brought notarisation, which will be a good for anti-piracy in the long run, but bad for developers who need to update installers in the short run. Prior to that there was no big issues.

Other than that, I have 4y old VSTs that work without a problem on Catalina. The whole Catalina thing was blown WAY over proportion.

Besides, nobody is forcing you to upgrade. My gf is still rocking High Sierra and we can share projects just fine from Catalina to HS.

[telecode]

Wow. OP you going from a dinky MSI to a Macbook Pro. You really are serious about this music stuff.

[FarleyCZ]

re backwards compatibility: the 2012 rMBP can run Catalina. An 8y old computer can run the newest OS. That's pretty good for backward compatibility if you ask me.
And as far as OS updates go, that's simply misinformation. Catalina brought notarisation, which will be a good for anti-piracy in the long run, but bad for developers who need to update installers in the short run. Prior to that there was no big issues.

Other than that, I have 4y old VSTs that work without a problem on Catalina. The whole Catalina thing was blown WAY over proportion.

Besides, nobody is forcing you to upgrade. My gf is still rocking High Sierra and we can share projects just fine from Catalina to HS.

All i know is that almost each major OSX update I get bombarded by warnings from all different developers to not upgrade the system. I recall El Captain, Mojave and Catalina all made some changes that required updates by developers. Sorry, but that is simply not backwards compatibile. Backwards compatible means, I can run unchanged old code on a brand new build of the OS. And Apple does not care about that.

So for exaple if you bought old perpetual Adobe licences, you are forced to pay for the upgrades, because Catalina does not run CS6 as far as I know. Same with Waves and WUP.

[Ploki]

All i know is that almost each major OSX update I get bombarded by warnings from all different developers to not upgrade the system. I recall El Captain, Mojave and Catalina all made some changes that required updates by developers. Sorry, but that is simply not backwards compatibile. Backwards compatible means, I can run unchanged old code on a brand new build of the OS. And Apple does nit care about that.

So for exaple if you bought old perpetual Adobe licences, you are firced to pay for the upgrades, because Cataline does not run CS6 as far as I know. Same with Waves and WUP.

AudioSpillage Drumspillage 2.0.7 was released in 2014 - 6 years ago, during macOS Yosemite.
It still works on Catalina... It's easy to pin everything on apple, but some developers are lazy and grabby. (waves)...
I switched to 100% 64bit in 2010, when Logic Pro 9.1 was released.
I had 0 issues with upgrades since 10.7 Lion, that's 7 major revisions. Most devs I support with money either make decent software or they don't charge a fortune for what's essentially maintenance updates.

And you are not forced to upgrade to Catalina? You can run High Sierra and CS6, what's stopping you?
I'm keeping an external installation of macOS Mojave in parallel of Catalina so i can keep running ProTools 11...
There's plenty of macs built up to 2018 that are able to run Mojave. If you want a new mac, then you just need to suck it up. At one point backward compatibility becomes detrimental to progress.

While you're arguing in favour of 32bit support, why don't you rant why Catalina doesn't support PowerPC anymore?

[FarleyCZ]

Yup. It does become detrimental, but the period over which it is maintained matters. Anyway. That's just me. I like to run old faves on a new system. That's all.

[telecode]

OP, just don't upgrade. I am on High Sierra. All my stuff works. New and old.

[fmr]

OP, just don't upgrade. I am on High Sierra. All my stuff works. New and old.

I was in Sierra, an upgraded to Mojave only AFTER Catalina release date was announced.

[Protocol187¥]

From 2009 to now I’ve had 3 mbp’s and they are all still perfectly working. For me I don’t mind doing small maintenance because overall the ride has been so smooth last 10 years with Apple. Yes sometimes their ‘innovations’ break stuff, but overall I can’t recall having generally such a smooth time just doing what I like with no hiccups on win. I also prefer the os itself and I have to say the formfactor for a laptop is also important, I mean you and others look at it, so it’s not bad that they look great too! For me it’s Apple all the way! yes it’s Nowadays almost a status symbol and premium priced. yes, they are less good in general than back in the days, but still rocksolid products for most audio production!

[panpiotrk]

I have MacBook Pro 15 '' (Mid 2019) and Mojave installed. I was afraid that it would be a problem, because I worked for several years in Sierra before, but it turned out that all the old and new plugins were installed. Everything works without a problem.