Apple M1 chip, yay or ney?

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Re: Apple M1 chip, yay or ney?

Post by Kwackman »

Couple of points.

It's possible in a year or so the schools will be changing their Macs, and probably only M1 models will be available.

The iMac will still be useful after he finished his course- might as well be an M1.

Some programs let you export for previous versions. I use this on Apples "numbers" to transfer files to my really old iMac. Maybe similar options are available, if needed, on the applications that are relevant to him?
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Re: Apple M1 chip, yay or ney?

Post by James Perrett »

I'd be very surprised if M1 projects couldn't be opened on Intel Macs if they were both using the same version of software. This would affect huge numbers of people who need to swap projects and I think we would have heard all kinds of angry shouts if it were the case.

It appears that there is a beta version of Reaper for M1 but for best compatibility with Intel plug-ins they advice using the Intel version on M1 at the moment. I presume this plug-in compatibility issue will affect most software.
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Re: Apple M1 chip, yay or ney?

Post by Zukan »

Still confused.

Ok, so the cartoon software is called Comic Life 3.
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Re: Apple M1 chip, yay or ney?

Post by Forum Admin »

OK more info on Comic Life 3 here:
http://plasq.com/apps/comiclife/macwin/

It's not M1 native but would run under Rosetta 2 I'd wager.

If he's 13 he's got a good few years left at school. M1 Mac gives him future-proofing, but a new Intel iMac will last him too... decisions, decisions.

If I was his parents, I'd be asking the school what the likelihood of them upgrading their Intel Macs within 5 years will be, and act accordingly upon their response? (That won;t be much help if they say "we have no idea... budgets have been cut, etc".
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Re: Apple M1 chip, yay or ney?

Post by Zukan »

Good advice. Thanks Knower.
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Re: Apple M1 chip, yay or ney?

Post by Murray B »

A yay from me with my experiences so far.

You may have already encouraged the parents to do this, but if not make sure they ring Apple directly to order the machine and explain that the new machine is for their 'student' child - this will result in a 10% discount on the cost price of the hardware and access to the Pro-Apps bundle which is Logic Pro X, Final Cut Pro, Compressor and MainStage for £199 :-)
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Re: Apple M1 chip, yay or ney?

Post by ManFromGlass »

Zukan wrote:
ManFromGlass wrote:Good point - will M1 projects open on an iMac?
I guess it depends if the code writers start taking advantage of the chip in some form of non-backwards compatible way.
If I was using Logic on the M1 I don’t think I could open the file on my current tower set up. I’ve had this error message recently with a friends Logic file.

Damn.

And Zukan - the Logic file that gave me the warning message was from a Logic version newer than 10.4.4 but not from an M1 machine. I could open the file. All the crossfades were out of time. I tried to import all into my template but the crossfades were still off. In the end I had to bounce all tracks down to audio files in the newer song and import them into my template.
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Re: Apple M1 chip, yay or ney?

Post by Zukan »

Damn, more confusion.
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Re: Apple M1 chip, yay or ney?

Post by blues_n_cues93 »

As someone who bought an M1 mac mini after optimistically watching some YouTube videos about how it works with Ableton - I can say it's not gone as smooth as I'd hope.

Yes, the Rosetta translation allows me to open Ableton, and nearly all of my plugins (which is an amazing feat - I'll give them that) BUT because these need to be translated to work properly - I am running at 25-30% CPU usage with 2 tracks and no plugins. The front-end load on CPU is high. Which becomes an issue when you add more tracks and plugins, etc.

It DOES do a remarkably good job at NOT driving up CPU the same way my old mac book did, I can add 30 tracks with less CPU heavy plugins and it only goes up to 35%-40% - that being said, if I try and use Izotope or a heavy CPU plugin on each track, it will start overloading around 15 tracks.

It's still better than my old Mac Book, but you will not be able to realize even near the chip's full capabilities unless you're using Mac ONLY software. That is just my experience, but thought I'd share in case it helps!
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Re: Apple M1 chip, yay or ney?

Post by Humble Bee »

blues_n_cues93 wrote:As someone who bought an M1 mac mini after optimistically watching some YouTube videos about how it works with Ableton - I can say it's not gone as smooth as I'd hope.

Yes, the Rosetta translation allows me to open Ableton, and nearly all of my plugins (which is an amazing feat - I'll give them that) BUT because these need to be translated to work properly - I am running at 25-30% CPU usage with 2 tracks and no plugins. The front-end load on CPU is high. Which becomes an issue when you add more tracks and plugins, etc.

It DOES do a remarkably good job at NOT driving up CPU the same way my old mac book did, I can add 30 tracks with less CPU heavy plugins and it only goes up to 35%-40% - that being said, if I try and use Izotope of a heavy CPU plugin on each track, it will start overloading around 15 tracks.

It's still better than my old Mac Book, but you will not be able to realize even near the chip's full capabilities unless your using Mac ONLY software. That is just my experience, but thought I'd share in case it helps!

I don’t want to be a smart arse but how can you ignore the recommendations from Ableton in this matter?

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/artic ... -with-Live
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Re: Apple M1 chip, yay or ney?

Post by Kwackman »

blues_n_cues93 wrote:but you will not be able to realize even near the chip's full capabilities unless your using Mac ONLY software.

When Apple changed from powerPC chips to Intel chips a few years ago, non Apple software companies soon had updated their products to run natively on the then "new" Intel.
I would be surprised if there aren't M1 native versions of the main players available in the near future.
I'm more concerned about when the M1 chip becomes a requirement to run software!
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Re: Apple M1 chip, yay or ney?

Post by Forum Admin »

blues_n_cues93 wrote:It's still better than my old Mac Book, but you will not be able to realize even near the chip's full capabilities unless you're using Mac ONLY software. That is just my experience, but thought I'd share in case it helps!

Thanks for the feedback, but worth pointing out that this is based on the current status. Ableton will be working on an M1-compatible version of Live, as too will all major DAW makers and mainstream plug-in makers (especially those with CPU-intensive apps, since native M1 should improve performance here significantly).

Just a matter of time... but it would surprise me if most music software has not been updated and is running native within one year. (Sooner we hope.)
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