I want to buy a New Mac Book Pro and I was thinking about the 13” with the 2.3GHz dual-core 7th-generation Intel Core i5 processor, but my question is if the i5 is powerful enough to run a DAW, VST or softsynth and samples, or do I nned the i7 ?

An i5 is perfectly fine.

Always buy the most powerful computer that you can afford, so if you can afford the i7, you should.

Apple specs 15 years ago were powerful enough to run DAWs, soft synths and samples.

Nowadays, with today’s specs, you can run many more soft synths simultaneously than you could, and because computers come with more RAM and are able to utilise more RAM, you can certainly run a whole lot more samples with products such as Kontakt, as an example.

philwoodmusic - 30 December 2018 09:39 PM

An i5 is perfectly fine.

Always buy the most powerful computer that you can afford, so if you can afford the i7, you should.

Apple specs 15 years ago were powerful enough to run DAWs, soft synths and samples.

Nowadays, with today’s specs, you can run many more soft synths simultaneously than you could, and because computers come with more RAM and are able to utilise more RAM, you can certainly run a whole lot more samples with products such as Kontakt, as an example.

Thanks

Do you know if buying if macmall.com is a good option to buy ? I believe you don’t pay taxes vs the Apple Store which because I live in Texas I have to pay 8.25% tax.

I have no experience of Macmall, but their wikipedia entry says this:

“MacMall is an authorized online reseller of Apple products. They buy Apple products in bulk, which allows them to sell them at a volume discount. MacMall is a wholly owned subsidiary of PCM, Inc”

Authorised resellers are fine, and back in the day, before Apple Stores and before the internet, that’s all there was.

philwoodmusic - 01 January 2019 09:56 PM

I have no experience of Macmall, but their wikipedia entry says this:

“MacMall is an authorized online reseller of Apple products. They buy Apple products in bulk, which allows them to sell them at a volume discount. MacMall is a wholly owned subsidiary of PCM, Inc”

Authorised resellers are fine, and back in the day, before Apple Stores and before the internet, that’s all there was.

Hi, thanks

Just have one last question and this is because of my budget: Is the difference between a 2.2GHZ 6-Corei7 and a 2.6GHz 6-Core i7 very substantial ? or is 2.2 powerful enough ?

They are both absolutely fine, and one will be a certain percentage faster than the other doing the same task.

Have a look at a page like https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks

You can look them up there and check out their performance scores.

Thanks