My first post
I have been reading MacRumors Forums quite a lot lately and I love this site. So this is my first post, and it's on my day off, and well I'm bored, so it's a big one
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I am in a similar situation right now (except I did not buy a MBP yet or a MBA, but am stuck in the same decision process as others on here).
Lost in the novella verbiage below is my own personal take from my visits to best buy and my countless hours of youtube videos being viewed in trying to make my crazy self (I'm right there with the starter of this thread in being crazy, but hey, it's a lot of money and you want to be sure). I personally think that waiting for Lion and the next release of the MBA or maybe even a new Macbook?? may be the "smartest" thing to do, but I don't know if I have that kind of patience personally.
Everyone's needs are different, my needs are known from my pc experiences with notebooks. I owned a 14" acer laptop, it was big and took forever to start up and I never used the thing, like ever. I bought an asus eee 1000ha (or 1000he, hmmm don't remember now) and I used it ALL the time, I actually wrote a novel on the thing at my kitchen table/bedroom/back porch/car/etc over an 8 month time period that I self-published through lulu.com (but didn't take the isbn plunge but rather just bought 60 copies and gave to family and friends), bucket list novel writing checked off the list. Next, music album... er cd... er whatever you kids call it nowadays
. But thinking back on why I used the netbook so much was because for my crazy self I:
A) wasn't afraid of breaking it because it was so cheap and easy to transport
B) ran linux and openoffice on it under ubuntu remix so it was fast (for the time)
C) it had an AMAZING battery life of like 9 or 10 hours so I was not turning it off and on repeatedly all the time but rather just left the thing on all day and then charged it every night (the thing still runs and is still amazing 2? 3? years later, I don't remember when I bought it in all honesty). But I am Mac OsX all the way now and I need that netbook feeling again, except with a Mac!
So yes, I bought my first iMac, and my life changed forever. OsX is everything I loved about linux versus winblows, but better! things are supported, things are pretty, things are just perfect from my viewpoint.
I use my iMac for writing, photos, web browsing, emails, youtube video watching (but not much movie watching as I'm old and still use a tv for that
), and then my music hobby that I've been doing for the past 2.5 decades or so (yes, i'm a dinosaur, but I've seen a lot and have learned a lot). When I got the iMac I immediately bought Logic 9 thinking I would use it all the time. In reality, it confused me with all of it's fine details. I would be creating and bam, 1 hour later I'm still scouring websites trying to figure out how to make it do what I need at that moment. So I have learned yet again in life that simple is almost always better. So I now use Garageband almost exclusively (but still have Logic 9 there if I ever decide to take that plunge again, which I may, who knows). But Melodyne, IK Multimedia's soft synths, Native Instruments plugins, ezdrummer, etc... all work great in Garageband (and it is the same audio engine as logic 9 so it is just as high quality as well).
So... long way to get back to the MBA, but now you know my needs. So I go to my local best buy and start to play on the 11" MBA and the 13" MBA and my first impression was that they were toys and in no way should be trusted for my music hobby (everything else, sure, fast enough for everything else I personally would do, including watching movies if I wanted to). But then I started reading more and seeing youtube videos so I went back to Best Buy determined to test these things and I had an idea of what I could test (as I couldn't very well load in my software to test on their machines).
I opened Garageband on the MBA 11" (2gb and 64gb $999 model), I then opened the demo files one at a time and started adding effects and such. My first test was to open the amp simulator demo, the one that the tracks look like this (where the xxx are the audio on the track):
xxx
xxx
-----xxxx
-----xxxx
-----------xxx
-----------xxx
And I clicked and dragged all of the audio files to the left to make them look like this (below is an example of only 3 stereo tracks, the actual amp demo has like 10 or so stereo tracks i think):
xxx
xxx
xxxx
xxxx
xxx
xxx
And then I looped them out about 30 measures or so like this:
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
And then I lowered the volume on the thing and tried to play like 10 stereo tracks or so (whatever the number of tracks were on the demo originally) with the amp sims on and whatever effects were setup on the tracks by default. And the 11" crapped out immediately and stated it could not play. So I tried the same thing on the MBA 13" and it did play it without error, but then I started to add effects to each track and I eventually got it to crap out as well. But what I learned from this test (and others I tried) was that for my needs (as a second Mac), the 13" would work with more than enough horsepower for me. Because I have to be realistic on how I will use it. More than likely I'm not going to be plugging guitars or my cond mic into this thing. I'm going to be starting songs and messing with beats and synths etc... while on the couch or at lunch at work, etc... and then adding the vocals and guitar on my iMac at home, and then moving it back to the MBA to work on some more for mastering, etc. In my own personal situation I would probably never have 10 stereo guitar tracks (20 tracks) all going at the same time. Realistically maybe 4? or 6? tops.
I also know that the 7 hours of battery life on the 13" versus the 5 hours on the 11" make a difference to me as well. That 9 or 10 hour battery on my little eee pc taught me that, it would drive me bonkers when my acer 14" died after 1.5 hours of use, it was pointless. So even the chance that some odd usage of mine would kill the 11" in 3 or 4 hours is enough right there to scare me away from that model. Plus the screen of a netbook, although usable for sure, does involve extra scrolling and some squinting at times, something the 13" would not have me doing as much.
So for me, it is a tossup between the 13" mba and the 13" mbp. Logically the MBP should be the winner, but I keep looking at that mba as I could really see myself just picking it up and carrying it around all the time, and honestly, that is the bottom line for me. What will I really use and what will sit on my desk collecting dust. if only the MBA had the backlit keys, I would stop thinking (doubt it, because again, I'm crazy too). But again, smartest move for me is to wait, but I have a feeling I'll be in here writing another novella about my new MBA 13" in not too long a period of time
. The real dilemma for me currently is MBA 13" 2GB ram or 4GB ram? And sadly it's not the $100, it's wanting to buy at the store versus waiting for the delivery (pathetic, I know), but the stores only have the standard model and the maxed out model (not the ones in between normally, at least when I called that's what they told me). I also have best buy gift cards from my job that I'd like to use and that shoots the delivery from apple down as well.
In the meantime, this guy posted a lot of really useful MBA 13" reviews on youtube and I personally found his to be the most useful to my decision making process. Even though he doesn't do audio, this Scottish dude really put the MBA 13" through a LOT of testing. Thank you very much theunits3 you really did a good job on the reviews!
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=24F0BA3CAFAF5583
I liked his 2 months on with his MBA 13" as well
http://www.youtube.com/user/theunits3#p/search/5/jhhwWki59vw
If and when I get my 13"MBA I think I may make my first youtube video showing how it works with garageband and au/vst plugins and such as I am having a hard time finding anyone actually showing the number of soft synths and such that the thing can handle. But until then, more driving myself nuts with the pre-shopping research. Sometimes I think I enjoy this research time period more than I actually enjoy the purchase itself (sad huh?).
Anyway, I hope that all this typing has helped someone out there that may be in the same boat.
Peace...
