Apple laptops

Wish list, hi-fi

February 12, 2019 — January 5, 2022

diy
hardware
music
Figure 1

Much as I have managed to survive linux audio production successfully, I would like to have a mac laptop around to run the less enlightened commercial plugins that I know and love. 1

Unfortunately, that is expensive. How to survive expensive laptop doom? Buy a cheap, second hand or refurbished laptop and upgrade the upgradeable parts? Does that save me money? Is that feasible?

2019 Macbook Pros can reportedly maybe be SSD upgraded but AFAICT the recommended vendor, OWC, doesn’t have the right bits, and the actual models are listed as ”soldered” in the data sheet, so I suspect this is a typo.

If being able to upgrade the storage after purchase is important to you, you might prefer to purchase an earlier 13-Inch or 15-Inch “Retina Display” MacBook Pro as they all have upgradable storage and are available at much lower prices on the used market, as well.

One usually wants the extra warranty of a vendor refurbished mac though.

Macbook pro drives are around.

1 Apple Silicon

There are sites that track Apple Silicon compatibility, e.g. here are the results for Krita:

Need to execute a weird non-GUI intel binary on apple silicon? I have had UTM recommended to me.

Footnotes

  1. I theoretically could use windows, but I find it depressing.↩︎