Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

Consensus is, the Pro machines are on an 18-month or longer refresh cycle, so M2 Pro/Max still quite far away.

Just get the machine you need to do your job now, and don't worry about it.

Guess the M2 Air 16GB 8/10/16 512GB (£1749) vs 14‑inch MBP M1 Pro 16GB 8/14/16 512GB (£1899) is really about the screen, performance close? Have the choice between the two, focus on longevity. Will be ditching the iMac.

"performance close?”

there must be a million youtube vids on this, i think the disk or ram speed is slower on the Air?

Yep. A small thing but as a POWER USER that 0.2 second delay, then the 0.2 second animation really grate

Cheers all, I'll proabably just order one this weekend, I know I'll be happy either way but It's always nice to get the newest shiniest!

Fair. A lazy post, was more about real world use, non power-user. Just need to rid the iMac i5 from the house, space saving exercise. Will probably go MBP. Thanks ~ S

as a POWER USER that 0.2 second delay, then the 0.2 second animation really grate

yea man, I even go as far as to have the fucking thing not autohide at all, but have it visible AT ALL FUCKING TIMES so I can use even more instantly

They're not even a tiny bit close. The M1 Pro wipes the floor with the M2 Air, in every respect.

The M1 Pro CPU & GPU performance is MILES ahead, the 120Hz mini-LED display is in another universe, more ports, SSD is over twice as fast, etc etc.

You'd only go for the M2 Air for portability reasons in your config example.

New toy.

3 Attachments

Okay that is better. Cheers.

I want some software to go through my very poorly organised RAID, identify duplicates and delete them. Mac or windows. I'd also like it to do some kind of copy/offload/checksum processes when on shoots. I know people use Shotput and Hedge, what else do DITs use and can both of those tools do duplicate visibility/deletion?

Reason being my RAID is dying after 8 or 9 years (don't know for sure but it made some awful noises last night) and I realise I've got loads of old stuff I won't need and of the new stuff there may be multiple copies. Want to streamline it before copying over to a new RAID (looking at the OWC Thunderblade 32TB for reasons of thunderbolt 3, small, quiet, passive cooled, not hell to look at etc but am open to something else with similar characteristics https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-thunderblade )

Following on from this M chip business. At the other end of the scale completely I have a mid 2009 iMac that was just gathering dust.

I've installed Chrome OS flex on it. The initial install when it was in a kind of beta didn't really work but now that it's a stable release I can only say is brilliant. Has given a new lease of life to a stock 10+ year old computer.

So if you've got an old machine kicking around I'd recommend giving it a try :-)

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/chrome-enterprise/chromeos-flex-ready-to-scale-to-pcs-and-macs

That is crazy performance. Must be expensive?

Like it, thanks!

The Thunderbolt 4/USB4 caddy is about £100 on Aliexpress, and you BYO NVME.

The 2TB Samsung 980 Pro I fitted in it was on sale recently, I paid ~£170.

I’ve been using similar Thunderbolt 3 NVME caddies for a couple of years, but this one has the new-gen controller that falls back to USB at 1000MB/s when plugged into a non-Thunderbolt port, whereas older ones are TB-only and don’t work with USB.

I should try something like that as an external disk for my Mac Studio.

Literally didn't see your post as I posted mine. Would be paranoid about heat and reliability over time but keep us updated.

Like I mentioned, I’ve been using similar TB3 caddies for a while.

They all use genuine Intel TB controller chips, and are as reliable/hot as the NVME drive you fit inside them.

Case in point, one of my older TB3-only caddies has a 1TB Samsung 960 Pro, and runs very hot. This new one with a 980 Pro gets barely warm. The CNC metal chassis acts as a heat sink for the SSD and the TB/USB controller chips.

For your use case, you can get caddies with 2/4 NVME M.2 slots, which you can fill with 4TB drives. The only hitch is they often need external power, and the performance is capped at 2700MB/s each way no matter how many drives you have running in RAID, as that’s the limit of a single Thunderbolt port.

Presume some caddies come with multiple ports so you could daisy chain to unlock speed like the Thunderblade?

Dunno about that, I’ve only ever used the small single-drive ones to make turbo thumb drives.

But just had a look at the Thunderblade specs, it’s also capped at ~2800MB/s single-port speed. The daisychaining has nothing to do with drive connections.

Poor wording. Was looking at this from 6 min 30ish

https://youtu.be/gLGd9_0rX2A

That just describes using two separate caddies RAIDed via their proprietary software RAID controller.

Not sure if of interest here, but I've a mint condition 2019 mbp (13inch) for sale, barely used.

In summary, quad core i5, 256 ssd, 8gb ram, 37 power cycles on the bat, boxed, with case, looking for £650.

Apologies if this is not the done thing round these parts, do let me know if so! Many thanks

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/377974/#comment16610836

Here's a nice CNC alu chassis quad-drive NVME to Thunderbolt for £130: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004344222531.html

I've used a single-drive TB3 caddy from this brand before, working perfectly for 3 years.

Fill it that one with decent cached SSDs, for a fraction of the price of that OWC thing, which is likely made in the same factory...

Thanks, shooting this week so can't give huge thought rn but I feel if it's going to be my main day to day storage for work (and would be a big hassle to solve/rebuild from backups if it failed) I'd be happy to pay a premium on housing and drives for perceived reliability. In the apple thread no less. I've no experience buying from AliExpress. I don't even know what it really is - presume Chinese Amazon? I'm sure it's fine but would just feel safer with owc or Gtech etc, regardless of whether they're built with the same ingredients. Presume also if there are failures or issues I'm better served from a known brand, buying through CVP or somewhere with a rep in a similar timezone, where I can ship a failed unit to Middlesex, rather than a brand I've never heard of shipping to the other side of the world.