MacBook Air $999 at Costco

[James Steele]

Hmmm....

I'm seriously lusting over one of these right now at Costco:

https://www.costco.com/.product.100713212.html

I'm using my old MacPro4,1 hexcore as an office machine... but seriously thinking about getting one of these, and docking it with external monitor, etc. for home then bringing with me...

PLUS... it seems like it would make an extremely capable machine for using for my live rig that I used for my band. Drummer played with a click and we used DP to not only fly in keyboard parts and rhythm guitar during solos, but also I used it to send MIDI patch changes at just the right time to control my guitar rig—resulting in little to no pedalboard "tap dancing" while I was trying to focus on lead singing and playing guitar. Plus I like the black "Midnight" color which will help blend it into the background on a stage (when it's sideways or facing front).

Just have to figure out if I can migrate a very crucial Bento DB to something that will run on Ventura. I tried TapForms and even had some dialog with the author... it's the most promising. Sadly, NOTHING I've found is as elegant and easy to use and that is what has kept my office Mac on High Sierra now for years.

[mikehalloran]

Hmmm....

I'm seriously lusting over one of these right now at Costco:

https://www.costco.com/.product.100713212.html

I'm using my old MacPro4,1 hexcore as an office machine... but seriously thinking about getting one of these, and docking it with external monitor, etc. for home then bringing with me...

PLUS... it seems like it would make an extremely capable machine for using for my live rig that I used for my band. Drummer played with a click and we used DP to not only fly in keyboard parts and rhythm guitar during solos, but also I used it to send MIDI patch changes at just the right time to control my guitar rig—resulting in little to no pedalboard "tap dancing" while I was trying to focus on lead singing and playing guitar. Plus I like the black "Midnight" color which will help blend it into the background on a stage (when it's sideways or facing front).

Just have to figure out if I can migrate a very crucial Bento DB to something that will run on Ventura. I tried TapForms and even had some dialog with the author... it's the most promising. Sadly, NOTHING I've found is as elegant and easy to use and that is what has kept my office Mac on High Sierra now for years.

$999 is $80 less than the Refurb Store and $plus/minus an M1 with a similar configuration.

I bought an M1 for my wife in 2020 and it's a great machine but... What you don't know till you've used one is that the M1 takes its power over USB-C (thank you, Jon Ivey) and hogs one of the two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports. Being the one-armed guy, I am spoiled by the MagSafe plug on my 2012 MBP and learned to hate that USB-C charging connector.

The M2 uses an older style MagSafe 3 charging connector that disconnects if anything gets tangled, caught, forgotten etc. and leaves the two USB-C ports alone. Much, much much better, IMO.

Get your motor runnin'…
Head out on the highway…

[James Steele]

Thanks, Mike. It sure sounds appealing. I wish it was 16GB RAM, but I figure if I'm not using as my main DAW machine (I'll continue to use my Mac Studio for that), that should be enough if I'm using for office tasks and live playback duties.

[HCMarkus]

Thanks, Mike. It sure sounds appealing. I wish it was 16GB RAM, but I figure if I'm not using as my main DAW machine (I'll continue to use my Mac Studio for that), that should be enough if I'm using for office tasks and live playback duties.

I max out the 16GB RAM on my M1 Air when running MainStage, but I've always got a whole bunch of VIs loaded.

The return of MagSafe is a big win with the M2.

[mikehalloran]

16GB RAM is the max available on an Air.

Our M1 has 8GB. Being my wife's school machine, I use it for proof of concept and demos that I remove when I'm done. I've used it to beta Finale with Note Performer and BIAB and ran DP 10 with Komplete 13 just to see if it could—it did, a pleasant surprise. The only AV I have done is PowerPoint videos and those compile a little faster than my iMac Pro which I find impressive. AV is supposed to be better on the M2. Ok...

As attractive as the Costco price is, I might get more storage (which will be faster like the M2 Mini) but the basic 8GB RAM/8 Core should be good enough for my needs. OTOH, I may decide that 256GB is enough storage, save the money and run.

My current 15" i7 2012 MBP is as maxed out as these can get unless I really want to increase the SATA III SSD beyond 2TB. When the WiFi/BT card went down as these do, I found someone modifying later 802.11ac/BT 4.2 cards and stuck one in. It weighs 5 1/2 Lb and can't run later than Catalina without a hack. It's past time. Some folks still think that a built-in Superdrive is worth having but I'm not one of them.

[James Steele]

Thanks, Mike. It sure sounds appealing. I wish it was 16GB RAM, but I figure if I'm not using as my main DAW machine (I'll continue to use my Mac Studio for that), that should be enough if I'm using for office tasks and live playback duties.

I max out the 16GB RAM on my M1 Air when running MainStage, but I've always got a whole bunch of VIs loaded.

Interesting! I've been using a very old MacBook for backing tracks and am pretty much just playing back a few audio tracks and sending MIDI patch changes. I do use one instance of Falcon in one of the chunks to load a Taurus style bass pedal sample with. I *might* be able to get by with 8GB RAM... but I always like to go overkill on RAM.