New Macbook Air - A good gigging machine?

[rbro]

Looks pretty sweet. Whaddya think?

http://www.apple.com/macbookair/

[delicioso]

Looks like an ideal live tool for sure. And it's fast/silent and ultra portable not to mention the long battery life. I've been waiting for Apple to come out with something like the 11" Macbook Air.

[beats me]

Looks like an ideal live tool for sure. And it's fast/silent and ultra portable not to mention the long battery life. I've been waiting for Apple to come out with something like the 11" Macbook Air.

I think in order to see if it's going to work as a good performance computer for you you'd have to see it in person to see what the GUI is going to look like on a small screen.

[robin]

I think you might need the 4gb and 1.6Ghz upgrades.

Must be someone getting one of these. Waiting for sine feedback

[beats me]

I agree initially it looks (keyword, literally visually looks) attractive but there's just too many downsides from the SSD drive (expensive for small capacity, hardwired to the motherboard, limited lifespan expectancy) to the required instant upgrades to bring it up to a performance accepted level (for now) which will quickly shoot the price up of your initial purchase which is already teetering on unreasonable at the base level pricing.

[delicioso]

Looks like an ideal live tool for sure. And it's fast/silent and ultra portable not to mention the long battery life. I've been waiting for Apple to come out with something like the 11" Macbook Air.

I think in order to see if it's going to work as a good performance computer for you you'd have to see it in person to see what the GUI is going to look like on a small screen.

Not if you're gonna be using it with something like Maschine which eliminates the need to look at the screen anyway. Or with touchAble/LiveControl or even Launchpad/APC for that matter and any such setup using some kind of controller as the interface you're interacting with. Or as an amp modeler/signal processor to play instruments through...etc. None of those scenarios assume that one would be using a laptop by itself hunched over like you're checking email.

Performance will be snappier than my C2D Macbook Pro thanks to the SSD and I would have no need to install large sample libaries or anything like that for something like this so I would have no need for a bigger drive than it comes with. And 2GB RAM is more than adequate for live use where you're not gonna be running multiple processor intensive plugins as you might when you're producing. Still, it will certainly be a very capable machine on its own. And I don't buy the haters' argument about SSD's life expectancy. A regular hard drive with moving parts are much less reliable and are more likely to die before SSDs. The base level $999 Macbook Air looks perfect for this.

[beats me]

Looks like an ideal live tool for sure. And it's fast/silent and ultra portable not to mention the long battery life. I've been waiting for Apple to come out with something like the 11" Macbook Air.

I think in order to see if it's going to work as a good performance computer for you you'd have to see it in person to see what the GUI is going to look like on a small screen.

Not if you're gonna be using it with something like Maschine which eliminates the need to look at the screen anyway. Or with touchAble/LiveControl or even Launchpad/APC for that matter and any such setup using some kind of controller as the interface you're interacting with. Or as an amp modeler/signal processor to play instruments through...etc. None of those scenarios assume that one would be using a laptop by itself hunched over like you're checking email.

Performance will be snappier than my C2D Macbook Pro thanks to the SSD and I would have no need to install large sample libaries or anything like that for something like this so I would have no need for a bigger drive than it comes with. And 2GB RAM is more than adequate for live use where you're not gonna be running multiple processor intensive plugins as you might when you're producing. Still, it will certainly be a very capable machine on its own. And I don't buy the haters' argument about SSD's life expectancy. A regular hard drive with moving parts are much less reliable and are more likely to die before SSDs. The base level $999 Macbook Air looks perfect for this.

Sounds like it would work for your needs and acknowledged limitations and that's cool. I'm just saying it's not the all purpose production and performance machine with a little future proofing and for a lot of people that is what they are looking for if they're going to drop that much money.

[humnumb]

Sounds like it would work for your needs and acknowledged limitations and that's cool. I'm just saying it's not the all purpose production and performance machine with a little future proofing and for a lot of people that is what they are looking for if they're going to drop that much money.

What does "future proofing" mean in this context? Delish is right about regular hard drives vs. SSDs. I do think the new Macbook Air will be an "all purpose production and performance machine" for a lot of people.

[davepermen]

Sounds like it would work for your needs and acknowledged limitations and that's cool. I'm just saying it's not the all purpose production and performance machine with a little future proofing and for a lot of people that is what they are looking for if they're going to drop that much money.

What does "future proofing" mean in this context? Delish is right about regular hard drives vs. SSDs. I do think the new Macbook Air will be an "all purpose production and performance machine" for a lot of people.

he just somehow needs massively much more storage and thinks everyone does. those that do won't buy that laptop. those that won't get a very well balanced device.

[Hidden Driveways]

I do think the new Macbook Air will be an "all purpose production and performance machine" for a lot of people.

For users who don't hit the cpu that hard, maybe. If most people tend to need more horsepower (like I do), then the new Air seems like it's first and foremost a mobile computer. Something lightweight that you can bring along to do non-intensive work with. That applies to a lot of things, but certainly not everything.

[humnumb]

I do think the new Macbook Air will be an "all purpose production and performance machine" for a lot of people.

For users who don't hit the cpu that hard, maybe. If most people tend to need more horsepower (like I do), then the new Air seems like it's first and foremost a mobile computer. Something lightweight that you can bring along to do non-intensive work with. That applies to a lot of things, but certainly not everything.

I'm not saying that i5/i7 MBPs won't be better obviously for hitting the cpu harder. I'm just saying that for a lot of people the Airs will be perfectly fine for cpu intensive tasks. C2Ds are no slouches as it is and Apple having fine-tuned them in the Air along with the SSD for optimal performance should mean that it will be quite snappy and very capable. I think we're just too spoilt these days with the accelerating pace of tech advancement. Pros were producing/performing/editing films with G3s and G4s not that long ago and getting things done.

[beats me]

Sounds like it would work for your needs and acknowledged limitations and that's cool. I'm just saying it's not the all purpose production and performance machine with a little future proofing and for a lot of people that is what they are looking for if they're going to drop that much money.

What does "future proofing" mean in this context? Delish is right about regular hard drives vs. SSDs. I do think the new Macbook Air will be an "all purpose production and performance machine" for a lot of people.

Let's say somebody buys one today with the intention of only using it for Traktor and the base model is good enough for that. Then later down the road they decide they want to use it to run Live along with Komplete and Omnisphere with their huge content libraries and CPU hogging. The base model will no longer cut it. It's nowhere near all purpose.

[Florian95]

And now with the new one ?

13-inch :
1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
2GB memory (Up to 4GB)
128GB flash storage1
NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics

Regards,

[Sage]

What's wrong with the Macbook?


The Macbook Air has always been pointless.

[pepezabala]

And now with the new one ?

13-inch :
1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
2GB memory (Up to 4GB)
128GB flash storage1
NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics

Regards,

would be great to run live 3 on that. oh shit, live 3 doesn't run on intel macs.