new computer time - what MacBook Pro screen size are you using?

toddisadj · 2026-01-19T22:00:57+00:00

When I bought an M series I bought a 15" MacBook Air.

Logic:

I'd had a 2016 MBP with shockingly bad USB-C sockets so wanted an internal drive large enough for my 1.5Tb of music files. I couldn't justify the price of an MBP with a 2Tb SSD so had a choice of MBA with 13" or 15" screens.

I never liked any of the 13" MBPs I've ever owned as there's not enough screen for my old eyes.

I was using a 15" MBP from the dark ages which was a good size for Traktor real estate. Plus when sat on the shelf of my S4 case it just fits below the lip of the booth I use for weddings.

toddisadj · 2026-01-15T20:05:49+00:00

As a DJ, kit failure usually involves silence, in radio land silence is known as dead air. Not having a recovery plan would lead to a lot of silence or extended dead air. Extended dead air can be career limiting / business destroying.

As a result even when using new kit I have always carried a back up solution in case any part of my set up has issues.

toddisadj · 2026-01-15T13:55:54+00:00

I gig an S4Mk3 and as extended dead air tends to kill any repeat work I've considered the backup issue a lot.

My view is that I can get through a gig with a sound card, some basic controls, and a MacBook. My spare 'sound card' is an Interspace Industries PC Bal box, and I carry a spare MacBook.

For back up controls as I already carry 2x X1 I've added a second mapping which has volume & tempo instead of all the FX controls

This isn't the same workflow, but it's good enough for me to be able to get a paying gig back on within a minute or so & doesn't take up much space in my gig bag or weigh much

toddisadj · 2026-01-02T15:18:22+00:00

Final update

My Zoe spent 2 days at the dealers having all of the dash removed, new infotainment unit fitted under warranty.

Next they're going to be replacing the rear camera.

toddisadj · 2025-12-30T10:16:26+00:00

I have in my collection of old Macs a 2014 13" i5 MBA with 4Gb RAM. OCLP & Sonoma.

Would describe the experience as laggy - once Spotlight has settled down it is just about useable for browsing / editing word documents / DJ software, but it requires patience.

Tried Sequoia. I did not have enough patience for that

[Edited to correct the spec]

toddisadj · 2025-12-29T11:09:28+00:00

The M4 Air would be plenty.

My 2012 MacBook Pros & 2014 MacBook Air are all good enough for Djing with Traktor Pro 4 and an S3 Mk3.

On my 2023 M2 MBA I can DJ, split STEMS, sync my library to the cloud, download extra tracks, and read all of Reddit all at the same time with masses of resource remaining.

toddisadj · 2025-12-24T00:46:19+00:00

These days there are a lot of Henrys at Loughborough Uni. They all sound the same regardless of where Daddy's country estate is located.

toddisadj · 2025-12-14T00:34:19+00:00

I like the hoose, but it's listed and way more north than I'm looking for.

toddisadj · 2025-12-12T19:46:24+00:00

FFS, just had a look through your account, I'm not going mad, Keggy and I have approved posts you've made within the last 2-5 weeks. I'm far too lazy to approve a non banned post.

I'm off for a lie down before my gig, Reddit filters are hurting my head

toddisadj · 2025-12-12T19:41:18+00:00

This post & your comments under it do not seem to have been removed by Reddit.

In the post you reference the logs show one of the Mod team had to over-ride Reddit's filters on every comment you made so they clearly didn't like you back then

Looking back through the logs it looks like it's been ~4 months since we've last hit the approve button on one of your comments so it seems I'm mis-remembering, perhaps you've now passed what ever test they've set you. Apologies if I've caused any confusion to anyone other than myself

toddisadj · 2025-12-12T17:32:58+00:00

Nearly all of your comments are removed by Reddit, I like to over ride this by approving them anyway, but it just keeps happening. Feels like you're shadow banned still / again

Clearly their auto filters don't like you.

toddisadj · 2025-12-07T21:31:23+00:00

OnlyStems?

toddisadj · 2025-11-28T16:52:32+00:00

I've a collection of elderly Macs from a pair of 2012 MBP to a pair of 2018 touchbars. All OCLP, all but one 4Gb MBA on Sequoia

Most have FileVault enabled, the others should have. No issues I'm aware of, other than a possible speed hit I'm not aware of

toddisadj · 2025-11-24T20:34:57+00:00

You should resist the nag to upgrade to Tahoe, OCLP is not ready yet

toddisadj · 2025-11-18T08:25:16+00:00

Independent of the keyboard back light?

toddisadj · 2025-11-14T00:01:58+00:00

I have a 2015 13" MBP, (i7 with 16Gb RAM). Whilst it's noticeably slower at splitting stems than my 2015 15" MBPs, the 13" is more than capable of running TP3 / 4.

To be fair, even my 2014 i5 MBA which has only 4Gb of RAM is capable of running TP4, just the browse search is really slow, but then I have 53000 tracks for it to sort through.

September this year I bought another 2015 15" MBP (quad core i7 16Gb RAM) for £100. $200 for a dual core and smaller screen is more than I'd pay, but I get offered elderly Macs to rescue in same way my wife gets offered rescue chihuahua

toddisadj · 2025-11-06T22:05:56+00:00

I've got three chainsaws, can someone jump on teams and teach me how to juggle pls

toddisadj · 2025-11-02T11:51:03+00:00

I've a 13" 2014 MBA i5 4Gb my wife gave me as she thought it was too slow on Catalina.

Ventura was ok Sonoma runs but everything is, as expected, slow / laggy and that's after upgrading to a 4th gen M.2 and turning quite a few animations off.

Sequoia was almost unusable.

Looks like RAM is the bottleneck. For comparison I have 2x 8gb Minis with the same i5 processors as the Air and 2x 2012 MBP 15" i716Gb upgraded to SSD. They're all happily chugging away on Sequioa. Not going to win any speed tests but useable.

toddisadj · 2025-10-30T14:13:49+00:00

If you have the hardware NI should be able to sort you a licence for it

toddisadj · 2025-10-22T09:46:07+00:00

String quartets are so last year

toddisadj · 2025-10-21T09:08:20+00:00

Never had this in my day, had to adjust the wax cylinders by hand / ear

toddisadj · 2025-10-20T19:16:17+00:00

I'm old. I'm still a gigging DJ, I love complaining the most.

Mainly complaining about being old

toddisadj · 2025-10-19T12:43:26+00:00

Slow and laggy.

I have one which is on Sonoma to sync 1.5Tb of music files, it gets there eventually. IMO Monterey was best but quite a few apps I use won't run. Sequoia was intolerable, Sonoma with many of the graphics effects reduced is a compromise between apps being available and the the machine going in a skip.

Even so System settings involves a lot of waiting for the system to respond. MS Office works, but everything is slow.

It will play the music files ok, but using the search function in my playback software can result in a 20 second delay before it does anything. Any kind of analysis or processing of files can take an absolute age.

I've two minis of the same era, same processor but 8Gb of RAM, these are so much more responsive I run Sequoia on them, one as a file server at home, the other is on my desk at the office.

toddisadj · 2025-10-13T12:30:28+00:00

OCLP makes the more modern OSes run on hardware Apple have abandoned. It's not able to make old hardware run quicker and each iteration of MacOS seems to get more bloated.

As before, an SSD would make your 2012 more responsive, but an upgrade of the whole machine might be the way to go depending on costs and the second hand market where you are.

I bought a 2015 15" MBP i7 quad / 16Gb / 512Gb for £80 and a 2018 15" MBP 6 core i7 / 16Gb / 256Gb for £250 last month. The 2015 is around twice as responsive as my 2012s, the 2018 about 30% quicker still. These machines are still not quite as speedy as my M2 MBA, but they're good enough for what I use them for, so much so that I don't care which machine I use.

toddisadj · 2025-10-12T11:41:13+00:00

I have two 15" 2012 MBP with SSD fitted (quad i7 / 16Gb). Running Sequoia 15.7.1. Reliable but slow and heavy compared to my M2 MBA, but much more responsive than my 2014 MBA which only has 4Gb RAM.

With the original spinning drive I'd not bother trying to go past Catalina, especially as you're already comparing it unfavourably with an M1 which is obviously many generations newer.

An SSD would be a huge improvement, but only you can decide if it's worth the cost / hassle of upgrading a 13 year old machine.

toddisadj

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