Menu
What's new
By:
Filters

Intel Macs - ticking time bomb?

Of course Intel Macs won't stop working tomorrow but probably in a year or two macOS will be Apple Silicon exclusive.

Then developers of third party products will slowly stop releasing Intel versions. Five years from now you won't be able to install almost any new software on an Intel Mac.

Same thing happened when Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel.

wayne_rowley said:
Before, that I upgrade both the RAM and storage in my 2011 MacBook Pro. None of this is possible any more - it's pay Apple's prices for RAM and storage or switch.

I feel as if I am being forced down the PC route!
Click to expand...
Apple RAM prices are absurd but using external storage is perfectly fine.

Look, I love messing with PCs, but if you're used to Macs there's a lot more to a PC than RAM and SSD prices.

A PC is probably not going to be as cheap as you imagine it to be.

Eg:

You want a silent PC or a leaf blower? For a quiet PC be ready to spend at least $200-300 in parts. A truly silent PC is going to be much more expensive.

Energy bills? A PC is going to consume at least 2-3x more than a Mac. Depending where you live etc this could be significant after a couple of years.

Is your time free? If you don't know anything about building and maintaining PCs better get ready to invest serious time into that. Hopefully you won't get into one of those situations where you bought the wrong motherboard or you need to spend a week messing with BIOS settings etc. Plenty of those horror stories in this very forum.

Etc.
 
I don't know what the budget is, but this is where I'd be shopping if I were looking for a new Mac today.

And in fact it's where I bought my M1 Max 1-1/2 years ago. A side benefit to using the Apple Store is that they have a 3% rebate + interest-free 1-year financing if you use their credit card. Why not.

(The card is very convenient anyway.)

I personally would only be interested in another Intel machine if I had specific hardware and/or software that required it.
 
Pier said:
A PC is probably not going to be as cheap as you imagine it to be.

Eg:

You want a silent PC or a leaf blower? For a quiet PC be ready to spend at least $200-300 in parts. A truly silent PC is going to be much more expensive.

Energy bills? A PC is going to consume at least 2-3x more than a Mac. Depending where you live etc this could be significant after a couple of years.
Click to expand...
My PC is silent and the case, power supply, fans and CPU heatsink cost about £200 in total. I would have saved £50 at most if silence wasn't an issue.
If building today, I might spend £250 maximum on those components.

It idles at about 35W and at full load maybe 130W.
For DAW usage, I can't imagine it ever reaches 100W.
So the potential savings to be made aren't dramatic when you look at the overall costs involved in buying and running a high end machine.

I think some see the 250W figure for some Intel CPUs and use that as a baseline for comparisons.
That's no way to go if you want a quiet and efficient PC.
 
Apple discontinued their last Intel Mac around the end of May, beginning of June, 2023. That last Mac could get new MacOS upgrades for five years from that point. As long as there is one Intel Mac that gets the latest OS, the other Intel Macs can probably be patched. There may be Intel Mac updates until 2028. And even then, it takes 2-3 years before the last OS is too old. If you're okay with using a patcher, Intel Macs are not dead yet. Which plug-in developer will be first to cut off some of their highest-end consumers using Intel Mac Pros? It will happen, but I think that is still 3-4 years off. Maybe longer.

But, Apple Silicon is great. Beef up on RAM, skimp on storage if you have to choose. Or, just get the machine you want: pay once, cry, and just use your new machine for a long time. Quiet and cool. They're really great.
 
pegotico said:
That would have probably cost him around 5 grand with similar specs, if he had gone with a windows pc. While i do agree that macs have their merits, not to the point of investing double for the same performance. No way.... Its also easier to sell, as you can even sell the stuff separately.
Click to expand...
Well, good thing that machine is now for sale for half the cost of an equivalent windows box then! But even such a beast of an Intel Mac is still probably not a future-proof buy at this point.

He was a bit too anxious and just needed to jump in, since he needed a sturdy rack-mountable rig that could hold HDX cards and travel the world in the bottom bay of a tour bus. The price was not really the issue for him - he’s gotten his money’s worth out of it - and he considered his previous cylinder-plus-PCIe-chassis a bit fragile for tour use, so he went for the Intel rack Mac. I used his case as an example of reduced demand / value of Intel Macs from the broader customer base now that Apple Silicon is on the scene.

We have a guy who does a ton of business scooping up used Macs by the truckload when post facilities and VFX houses upgrade (or go out of business), doing upgrades, and selling used machines, so we use him as a temperature gauge of sorts, just to see which way the wind’s blowing. He’s a great resource when you have weird tour-backline situations like needing four identical out-of-date laptops that exactly match the four you’ve already got set up, etc. Besides component-level and broken-USB-port repairs and motherboard swaps on MacBooks, he can do bulk installs of any macOS version, re-flash graphics cards for the 5,1 cheese graters, and all the tweakhead stuff that comes up when setting up backline rigs for tours. Great resource to have. Any LA-based folks that want his contact info, send me a PM. He always has tons of Macs both new, used, and refurbished (some still under AppleCare) for sale, and can source any weird configuration or parts you might need.

I wasn’t in such a hurry and so I stayed on the 12-core Mac Pro 6,1 cylinders for ten years, until the m2ultra Mac Pro rack was available, and it is an absolute monster - initial testing indicates that my biggest cues that taxed the 12-core to about 80% will run on the m2ultra at less than 30% load, maybe even less I once I fiddle with buffer sizes etc. And since the process of setting up a new machine can be time consuming for me, with four DAWs, dozens of support apps, and nearly 3,000 plugins, I’m glad that I only did one from-scratch macOS update to the cylinders in that ten years. Other than that one big refresh when I swapped the factory boot drive for a bigger one from OWC, I didn’t have to fiddle with the cylinders one bit in a decade - they just worked (and still do). So I’ll keep the cylinders frozen in time so I can run older EOL apps like my beloved Redmatica KeyMap and Variax WorkBench v1, as well as locate any ancient plugin settings that I may have neglected to copy across. I have spare MOTU 112d interfaces so I just run the old rig into a spare ADAT input on the new guy and it’s all right there, just in case.
 
Last edited:
Pier said:
Of course Intel Macs won't stop working tomorrow but probably in a year or two macOS will be Apple Silicon exclusive.

Then developers of third party products will slowly stop releasing Intel versions. Five years from now you won't be able to install almost any new software on an Intel Mac.

Same thing happened when Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel.


Apple RAM prices are absurd but using external storage is perfectly fine.

Look, I love messing with PCs, but if you're used to Macs there's a lot more to a PC than RAM and SSD prices.

A PC is probably not going to be as cheap as you imagine it to be.

Eg:

You want a silent PC or a leaf blower? For a quiet PC be ready to spend at least $200-300 in parts. A truly silent PC is going to be much more expensive.

Energy bills? A PC is going to consume at least 2-3x more than a Mac. Depending where you live etc this could be significant after a couple of years.

Is your time free? If you don't know anything about building and maintaining PCs better get ready to invest serious time into that. Hopefully you won't get into one of those situations where you bought the wrong motherboard or you need to spend a week messing with BIOS settings etc. Plenty of those horror stories in this very forum.

Etc.
Click to expand...
Exactly what i meant when i said they would just remove the intel stuff from their OS which was the same situation with their powerpcs.

Obviously a good pc is going to cost you, but here is the thing... when you spend 2 grand on a pc, this translates to 5 on a mac to have similar specs. And as you mentioned considering how cheap ram this days, its ABSURD what apple charges.

Dont know if the issues with bios are related to amd, but i havent had any. I do understand that when buying stuff, its better to do your homework as mentioned. Every manufacturer has a detailed compatibility page with already tested ram, nvme, required bios for cpu, etc.... so in the end taking your time is important.
 
charlieclouser said:
Well, good thing that machine is now for sale for half the cost of an equivalent windows box then! But even such a beast of an Intel Mac is still probably not a future-proof buy at this point.
Click to expand...
Not much of a consolation when he paid 15 big ones....... and taking into consideration most of this hardware is way overpriced..
 
HCMarkus said:
A reason some choose to go Mac... buy it, turn it on and get started. (Oh were it that simple!)
Click to expand...
For sure but that is when you have no experience that you can overlook what can be an issue. I have built many pcs even for friends and till this date 0 issues. Not that this are not possible. With my last mac which was a macbook pro during the apple care it went 3 times (two of this for the same issue they couldnt fix). So with electronics you never know.
 
pegotico said:
Not much of a consolation when he paid 15 big ones....... and taking into consideration most of this hardware is way overpriced..
Click to expand...
Meh. It’s not like he cares. In the three-plus years he had that machine he made two albums with it, and when you’re playing to crowds of 10,000+ a night, $15k is the rounding error of a single show’s merch and ticket revenue. Cash outflow for a single non-show idle day is waaayyy more than $15k - it costs far more than that to keep the busses, trucks, drivers, and crew parked at the hotel for a day off in the middle of a tour. So $15k disappears into the murk of expenses pretty quickly in that situation.

Again, it’s not the money…. but I use his case as an example of how buying an Intel Mac today might not be as much of a bargain as the low price for used machines might suggest.
 
charlieclouser said:
Meh. It’s not like he cares. In the three-plus years he had that machine he made two albums with it, and when you’re playing to crowds of 10,000+ a night, $15k is the rounding error of a single show’s merch and ticket revenue. Cash outflow for a single non-show idle day is waaayyy more than $15k - it costs far more than that to keep the busses, trucks, drivers, and crew parked at the hotel for a day off in the middle of a tour. So $15k disappears into the murk of expenses pretty quickly in that situation.

Again, it’s not the money…. but I use his case as an example of how buying an Intel Mac today might not be as much of a bargain as the low price for used machines might suggest.
Click to expand...
As long as he can afford it and he's happy, everything is fine!
 
Pier said:
Of course Intel Macs won't stop working tomorrow but probably in a year or two macOS will be Apple Silicon exclusive.

Then developers of third party products will slowly stop releasing Intel versions. Five years from now you won't be able to install almost any new software on an Intel Mac.

Same thing happened when Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel.


Apple RAM prices are absurd but using external storage is perfectly fine.

Look, I love messing with PCs, but if you're used to Macs there's a lot more to a PC than RAM and SSD prices.

A PC is probably not going to be as cheap as you imagine it to be.

Eg:

You want a silent PC or a leaf blower? For a quiet PC be ready to spend at least $200-300 in parts. A truly silent PC is going to be much more expensive.

Energy bills? A PC is going to consume at least 2-3x more than a Mac. Depending where you live etc this could be significant after a couple of years.

Is your time free? If you don't know anything about building and maintaining PCs better get ready to invest serious time into that. Hopefully you won't get into one of those situations where you bought the wrong motherboard or you need to spend a week messing with BIOS settings etc. Plenty of those horror stories in this very forum.

Etc.
Click to expand...
That was more often about 20 years ago with really bad components.

The advantage of building your own most upgrades are basically the board, CPU, RAM. The drives, PSU, and case gets used again. I don't even do a clean install and had no issues and didn't have to spend time reinstalling software.

Our choices have a lot to do with what we are willing to spend. It's much different when it comes to desktops. You make some valid point if one is going to fork over money for a high end laptop. That's were I'd go with Apple. But....I hate laptops.
 
pegotico said:
For sure but that is when you have no experience that you can overlook what can be an issue. I have built many pcs even for friends and till this date 0 issues. Not that this are not possible. With my last mac which was a macbook pro during the apple care it went 3 times (two of this for the same issue they couldnt fix). So with electronics you never know.
Click to expand...
I assisted a bunch of folks in keeping their 2009-2012 Mac Pros running and relevant after learning about ROM flashing and CPU/GPU swapping potentialities these Macs allowed us. And, yes, it was fun, and saved a bunch of dollars along the way.

But it was also very pleasurable to simply plug my (then new) M1 Mac Studio into the wall, add some external storage, and be up and running with a near-silent machine that doesn't overload the air conditioning capabilities of my machine closet while providing performance that absolutely blows away my last computer.

wayne_rowley said:
you have no idea how badly the SSD on a used Mac has been hammered...
Click to expand...
One point: if you buy a refurb with max memory and more than minimum SSD, chances of SSD burnout are pretty slim. It's the base models with barely sufficient RAM and SSD, and resultant heavy RAM-Storage swaps, that are riskier to buy used.

Wayne: make sure you check your pre-load for VIs as I noted earlier... this can make a huge difference in RAM requirements. I may be preaching to a choir here, but this is a point that is easy to overlook. Disabling of VIs and purging of samples are other techniques that help. IMO, CPU horsepower trumps RAM in most situations.
 
HCMarkus said:
Wayne: make sure you check your pre-load for VIs as I noted earlier... this can make a huge difference in RAM requirements. I may be preaching to a choir here, but this is a point that is easy to overlook. Disabling of VIs and purging of samples are other techniques that help. IMO, CPU horsepower trumps RAM in most situations.
Click to expand...
I’m currently using external SATA SSDs over USB. I’m getting the max performance of the SSD but not anywhere near M.2 or PCI. As you say, I hit the CPU limit before RAM so have never needed to tweak anything.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom