Tuur wrote: ↑Mon May 04, 2020 12:40 pm
A_Cow wrote: ↑Fri May 01, 2020 7:27 am
...so pulled the trigger on one of the new i5s.
Do you already have it up and running?
So yes, I do now have it up and running and here are my thoughts on it:
The specs of my specific model are that it is the 2020 Macbook Air with 1.1ghz i5 and 8gb RAM
The good stuff
Compared to my 2014 Air (1.4ghz i5 4gb ram) there is, unsurprisingly, a decent improvement.
On my
old machine CPU usage on a pretty complicated track I used to benchmark was 70-90% on average with frequent stutters and drop outs. The track included maybe 6 serum instruments, some 3rd party plugins, 20-30 tracks in total, most with fairly complex effect chains.
On my
new machine it was 20-50% CPU (usually 20-30%) with no dropouts. So, broadly, it is capable of handling quite intensive tracks. I don't know if I'd be completely comfortable playing live without simplifying effects chains and flattening various things, but I'd probably do that whatever machine I was using.
Elsewhere, switching between apps is very snappy and (this really isn't a thing I cared about at all or expected) the speakers are absolute witchcraft - considering the thing is right in front of me the stereo width is insanely good. The keyboard is also a dream and sounds pretty good to my ears (if that matters).
The bad stuff
Despite all this I'm considering returning it for one of the pros that have just been announced...though I'm very torn for reasons that I'll get onto.
Specifically it's the heat dissipation that's the issue. There's a lot of youtube videos that cover this in more detail but basically the fan is not attached to the heatsink / CPU, it's just a thing that sits on the other side of the laptop blowing air around the body, rather than focusing specifically on the thing that gets really hot.
What this means in practice is that the CPU gets hot and stays hot - meaning that performing intensive tasks for prolonged periods start taxing the CPU to the extent that it needs throttled to cool it down much earlier than should otherwise happen. The fan also seems to go to it's max speed very quickly, even when Live (my only intensive program) isn't open. Even going to a resource heavy website in Chrome seems to push it harder than one would expect from a new 2020 machine.
Also worth baring in mind if you're on Ableton 9, this thing ships with Catalina which will bork 9 in some ways. Strangely for me Live 9 is actually working with some issues around using mp3s in tracks, but others have reported that it won't even open, so beware. I didn't try to downgrade to Mojave as this seemed quite tricky and I don't know whether these newer machines support an OS that precedes them. I've started using the Live 10 trial (90 days is a great length of trial) and will probably buy it later. Additionally I noticed maybe a 5-10% higher CPU load on the new Air in Live 10 vs. 9.
Why am I undecided
Had these MacBook pros been available a few weeks ago, I think I would have just gone for one. The main turn off for me with the 2019 model was the old keyboard and it's well documented issues. But, it's also worth baring in mind that the tech that's within the base level 2020 Airs is newer than the base level 2020 pros. The Air's have 10th gen intel processors (with the pros on 8th gen) and faster RAM.
So basically I've got 14 days to decide if I want to return it. On paper the Air is a superb machine at a great price, and more often than not it feels that way too. But what's irritating is that it often feels like it can't realise that potential due to the heat issues. If you've been using Live for more than 10 minutes you can assume that the fan is running loud, and will continue to until you stop. The Pros on the other hand have slightly older processors but may be better able to realise that potential as they don't have the same heat issues.
