If you really don't need either macOS or Windows based software, have you considered a Chromebook? Less fuss when switching to a new machine, and suspect doing everything on the web is fine for many folks. Rock bottom prices, and operating system updates... are really fast. Suspect a lot of stuff will continue to migrate to the web. Unsure about status of DJ software.
I'm retired (after 34 years in information technology). Still keep a Chromebook for backup to my mac (9 year old MacBook 13" Pro). Would love to go Chromebook only, but still have a mac for non-web applications. Planning to replace unit with a 14" M2Pro MBP. Much of the design of many PCs is influenced by the fact that the architecture was defined by IBM in 1981 (plug in memory and such, just like the mainframes and minicomputers of that period). Remember our HPQ representative telling us not to use WinTel PCs because we'd be locked into an IBM architecture (they were not yet selling WinTel PCs).
If you can work with a desktop, I'd consider a M1 or M2 mini (quite a bit less than a laptop), and use a cell phone or tablet for mobility (or maybe a cold start UPS battery backup unit). I assume much of your DJ equipment requires connection to utility power (mains in the UK, if I remember correctly). In many parts of the world, people use mostly cell phones. Any more, many applications are first released for either iOS or Android (and may not be available for Windows or macOS). I'd assume by now there is tablet based DJ software.
Part of the slowness you are seeing may be due to the SSD having a very small amount of free space. Depending on how much RAM is being used by your DJ (and other) software, there may be attempts to swap memory to disk and/or compress physical memory. Maybe storing some of the audio tracks on a cloud service would speed things up (especially the infrequently used ones). I'd normally want to keep at least 20% of the SSD (or even disk) free, but at least a bit more than the size of RAM on the machine (in event of a program or system crash that attempts to write memory to SSD, or in older machines disk). I'm wondering if some of your SSD storage is occupied by previous disk dumps caused by crashes, and maybe system logs and caches.
You could also investigate using storage on a cell phone, tablet or iPod as a network drive on your current mac. (But I'd look into cloud storage first.)
No absolutely not, I need a real desktop OS tho. I depends on on software that's available only on Windows and Mac. (Serato and FL Studio mainly)
Well the status is that, if you can't even get major DJ software on Linux (Serato/Rekordbox/Traktor/VirtualDJ), you definitely ain't gonna see it on a Chromebook anytime soon. DJ doesn't require a lot of power, but it still does. I could get by with my 2013 MBP, but anything older than that would struggle too much in a situation where stability and smoothness is really a must, imagine the sound going to the sound system freezing or shutting down in the middle of the set because the computer crashed.
Nope, the class of controller I have powers itself through the USB plug only and only works with a computer.
I already tried one of these, a DDJ-200 that could run on battery and had bluetooth connection, I've tried it on my iPhone 11 and.. It was a nightmare. Practically unsuable if you want to do anything more than just litteraly playing a track after the next. Since the latency is really bad and you really need to be as precise as a fraction of second, and If you're correct on the timing in your head, but you have a 1sec lag because it wireless, it can be a pain in the ass to recover and it will just sound bad. As with a proper setup with a controller plugged via USB to a computer, you don't have these kinds of issues.
But that being said, sure my actual desktop is 11 years old at that point, but it still does everything I need it to do, and isn't slowing down or anything so I'm not replacing it.
Well, actually I thought why not give Windows a try, so I installed Windows 10 on my MacBook and I swear that thing flies now. I guess it's just that macOS is being way too resource hungry. Because Windows 10 is snappier on it while using less storage (with equivalent software and files stored on it).
So I guess I'll keep it as is for now.
Oh yeah also, "Part of the slowness you are seeing may be due to the SSD having a very small amount of free space."
Yeah, tell that to Apple. I pay for a 2TB iCloud subscription, so I store everything I need to have access but don't need to have on my computer.
But, my tracks is something I need to have access to. It has already happened multiple times that a friend would pick me up by surprise, take my laptop, controller to go to mix on a Rave Party in the middle of the field or a forest in the far rural countryside, with absolutely no connection (or maybe 3G lmao) so, it's not an option sadly.
Well, turns out no matter what I would do (check uncheck that box in the iCloud page on the System Preferences), it would still try to download as many files as possible on my SSD.
Trying to squeeze 800GB of files into a 128GB SSD isn't going to end up well obviously. I've selected "Free up space" on every folder, but it seems that it would still try to download the files inside the folders. And I ain't gonna manually right click all of the files (with 800GB of files, it will take A LONG time)
And I don't know why but they don't enforce this stupid behavior on Windows, on it iCloud Drive is actually decent and usable.
