Ableton Forum

Over in the Lounge we've started a subdiscussion around the MacBook Air.

For all the talk that's gone on in the forum since it's release, I can't say that I've seen a single forumite who actually owns one, is using it to run Live, and given feedback.



I always seem to run across the "yeah I'd like to get an Air and run a mini set" or "the Air would be the perfect gig machine" but......

Not me and dunno I would have bought an 11" one already but the next gen MBA is going to be sandy bridge so I'm hanging on for that. I'm guessing/hoping it will go up to dual core i5s and have thunderbolt. The rumoured release date is June and I don't need another mac right now so I'm prepared to wait. As soon as the new ones come out I promise to report in!

You could always install a demo version of Live at an Apple store and see how far you can push it

octopod wrote:Not me and dunno I would have bought an 11" one already but the next gen MBA is going to be sandy bridge so I'm hanging on for that. I'm guessing/hoping it will go up to dual core i5s and have thunderbolt. The rumoured release date is June and I don't need another mac right now so I'm prepared to wait. As soon as the new ones come out I promise to report in!

That's the only thing that has me on the fence right now, is when will the next gen be out? And I don't want to be one of those a-holes that sits around waiting for over a year for either a refresh....or more upsetting a refresh that doesn't include whatever upgrade I was hoping for.

I'm praying they mention the Airs at next week's announcement.

beats me wrote: That's the only thing that has me on the fence right now, is when will the next gen be out? And I don't want to be one of those a-holes that sits around waiting for over a year for either a refresh....or more upsetting a refresh that doesn't include whatever upgrade I was hoping for.

I'm praying they mention the Airs at next week's announcement.

I hear you. I'm actually pretty happy with what I've got at the moment so I'm prepared to wait. Be different if I was on a much older machine. I'm basically betting that next gen Airs and Mac Pros will be worth waiting for. This is all I've seen regarding a release date. I'd trust it as much as I'd trust any other random rumour link some guy gave me on the internet

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/11/mac ... e-in-june/

If you buy now you can always sell again when they do come out. You'll be out a bit of cash, but at least you wouldn't spend the next however many months stressing about when it's going to appear.

octopod wrote:

beats me wrote: That's the only thing that has me on the fence right now, is when will the next gen be out? And I don't want to be one of those a-holes that sits around waiting for over a year for either a refresh....or more upsetting a refresh that doesn't include whatever upgrade I was hoping for.

I'm praying they mention the Airs at next week's announcement.

I hear you. I'm actually pretty happy with what I've got at the moment so I'm prepared to wait. Be different if I was on a much older machine. I'm basically betting that next gen Airs and Mac Pros will be worth waiting for. This is all I've seen regarding a release date. I'd trust it as much as I'd trust any other random rumour link some guy gave me on the internet

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/11/mac ... e-in-june/

If you buy now you can always sell again when they do come out. You'll be out a bit of cash, but at least you wouldn't spend the next however many months stressing about when it's going to appear.

I did some googling too and it seems there's nothing beyond wishful thinking to substantiate a June refresh on the Airs, especially considering the current ones are only 3 or so months old. And also the brand spanking new 13" MBPs are still only duo core so I don't think that's a good sign that the Airs will be quad core, or at least there's a 50/50 chance they won't be.

But on the original question, and I'm going to do zero research on this, don't netbooks have substantially lower specs than an Air? And yet people are claiming to be running Live just fine on those with little issue.

But as has been mentioned, Airs aren't small enough to fit in your glove compartment box.

I have an 11" and I run Live and Logic on it - no issues. Is it a CPU powerhouse? No, but what it IS is an amazing disk playback machine. In Logic, I can run 96 STEREO tracks at 96K! All off the internal boot storage. That flash storage really makes a difference!

As long as you keep printing your VIs to audio files, you can run quite large sessions on the thing. And it's tiny. And it's silent.

please correct me if I'm wrong but i couldn't find a firewire port on the macbook air. does that mean you can't use firewire interfaces? or is there some kind of expansion bay.

As soon as the air gets thunderbolt I will buy one