Please recommend a replacement for 17" MacBook Pro

[TimothyJohn]

2.3 Ghz i7. Heat issues finally steering me towards this move.

What I will miss:

Two onboard 1 tb SSD's: system drive 6g, scratch drive 3g (in the superdrive bay).

THREE USB ports, firewire 800, thunderbolt, MagSafe connector.

Expresscard slot-sometimes for card reader, sometimes for UAD Solo laptop. I LOVE UAD stuff.

Any recommendations? I'd like to stay Mac, and I would like to expand my video editing as well. I use Pro Tools extensively, but mobile use is usually limited to editing. I also use it for home studio use with my Scarlette 18i20. I almost want to do two upgrades...One being for my home studio: the i9 eight core, 2019 iMac. But what about the laptop? I would be ecstatic to never again be able to fry eggs on my computer. But how in the world will I come close to matching the functionality I have now? I'll need at the cheapest, a UAD Arrow (one SHARC processor, like the Solo Laptop-but it's bus powered...and $500) and some sort of hub to compensate for the lack of ports: An iLok, Axiom Pro, Scarlette interface, tb hard drives, firewire 800 hard drives, and card reader. And why get rid of the MagSafe? Kinda like McDonalds getting rid of French fries...

Thanks in advance, everyone!!!

[albee1952]

Just one opinion; unless you REALLY need a laptop, I'd look at a beefed up iMac or a new 6-core MINI. Laptops, by nature are a bit limiting. You'll need adapters to get from TB down to FW800, but its doable

[TimothyJohn]

Originally Posted by albee1952

Just one opinion; unless you REALLY need a laptop, I'd look at a beefed up iMac or a new 6-core MINI. Laptops, by nature are a bit limiting. You'll need adapters to get from TB down to FW800, but its doable

The iMac 8 core i9, 2019 seems like the real deal. In spite of the fact that it doesn’t have the industrial strength heat dissipation that the iMac Pro does; its thermal handling is impressive. Noise and heat are not an issue. No thermal throttling. User upgradeable RAM. So yeah, I agree with you. But I travel, and not being able to edit sessions and video would not be good. I’ve been following used deals on macsales.com. 15 inch i7 MacBook pros. Older ones with MagSafe. But what about heat? That’s why I’m asking. Thanks!!!

[Darryl Ramm]

The iMac is a fairly thermally constrained design, they will throttle if pushed enough. The is a wide gap there between thermall handling in a iMac and real high-end system.

One great way to have a scorching 17" MBP is to have them full of dust, I opened mine up every 1-2 years and sucked lots of dust out of them... and replaced two fans on separate occasions, but sure the'll get hot anyhow. My 2016 MBP was much more efficient/less burnt lap for more performance.

May be time to ditch your old Firewire disk technology. Super fast PCIe/NVMe or Thunderbolt 3/NVMe SSDs are widely used now. Even a tiny little external USB 3.1 SATA SSD like a Samsung T5 will blow away your old FireWire drives.

You will not miss having to old SATA drives (even if SSD, that's slow SSD).. The first piece of advice on any new Mac with PCIe SSDs is to maximize the drive space there as much as you can to fit your sessions and possibly all your sample as well. Old advice about not running stuff on the systems drive does not apply with that super fast PCIe/NVMe technology. If you can ditch all those external drives it helps with reliability and just less hassle.

[TimothyJohn]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

The iMac is a fairly thermally constrained design, they will throttle if pushed enough. The is a wide gap there between thermall handling in a iMac and real high-end system.

One great way to have a scorching 17" MBP is to have them full of dust, I opened mine up every 1-2 years and sucked lots of dust out of them... and replaced two fans on separate occasions, but sure the'll get hot anyhow. My 2016 MBP was much more efficient/less burnt lap for more performance.

May be time to ditch your old Firewire disk technology. Super fast PCIe/NVMe or Thunderbolt 3/NVMe SSDs are widely used now. Even a tiny little external USB 3.1 SATA SSD like a Samsung T5 will blow away your old FireWire drives.

You will not miss having to old SATA drives (even if SSD, that's slow SSD).. The first piece of advice on any new Mac with PCIe SSDs is to maximize the drive space there as much as you can to fit your sessions and possibly all your sample as well. Old advice about not running stuff on the systems drive does not apply with that super fast PCIe/NVMe technology. If you can ditch all those external drives it helps with reliability and just less hassle.

Thanks! I saw a previous post that you’re awaiting an 8 core i9 2019 MacBook Pro? I think they upgraded the thermal paste, and are restricting power to the processor, which keeps them humming along in the sweet spot. And they consistently perform at or above spec. So, a 32 Gb ram, 2tb ssd, (partitioned appropriately) would be your suggested approach? One port for power, one for the thunderbolt bus-powered Arrow, and the other two to accept a port adapter to handle the iLock, Axiom Pro, and Scarlett 18i20. (Assuming the interface portion of the Arrow can be bypassed in favor of just the SHARC processing). Did you see the links I posted regarding the thermal performance of the 2019 iMac i9 8 core? Not impressed?

[Darryl Ramm]

Uh no don't assume you will partition the PCIe SSD... well only if you want to have multiple boot volumes on the drive. And with APFS containers now (APFS==the filesystem you will run with an new Mac) there is no need to hard partition stuff. Different volumes can dynamically share and grow within a container ... all great stuff, as hard partitions really have no meaning on an SSD since the SSD magic foo is remapping logical to physical storage under the covers anyhow.

I'd love to see thermal tests running heavy Pro Tools sessions, all others, especially video that can be GPU intensive and single threaded I'd be careful of extrapolating from. Laptops are very constrained, I'm just amazed at how well my 4 core 2016 MBP runs. Have not got the 2019 i9 8 core yet.

*If* you want a MBP then 32 GB or RAM is an obvious must have, then it's how much SSD do you need/can afford. That stuff is expensive but you have to buy a Samsung X5 or similar to be close to it's performance.

If you are not needing to be absolutely portable I'd look at a Thunderbolt 3 dock like the OWC Thunderbolt 3, I have one on my desk in front of me now. Super happy with it. They make two models, one with Firewire 800, a newer one without.

[Darryl Ramm]

Two things I frigging love. My Grace m920 and the OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock (and here at a work desk where I just listen to music with no other interface the dock is feeding USB audio to the m920 off my MBP, works great).

https://www.owcdigital.com/products/...3-dock-14-port

Or model with FireWire...

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB3DK12PSL

Oh wish Grace still made that m920...

[Darryl Ramm]

To be clear why I was pointing that out... the dock connects iLocks, some old SATA USB and FireWire drives at times.... and it provides powers back to the MBP. And I chain a 5K LG monitor off that. Leaving three other Thunderbolt ports on the MBP for things like like Thunderbolt interfaces and Samsung X5 SSD drives.

[TimothyJohn]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

To be clear why I was pointing that out... the dock connects iLocks, some old SATA USB and FireWire drives at times.... and it provides powers back to the MBP. And I chain a 5K LG monitor off that. Leaving three other Thunderbolt ports on the MBP for things like like Thunderbolt interfaces and Samsung X5 SSD drives.

Darryl, your perspective is always insightful, sharp, and spot on. I was unaware regarding partitioning SSD drives. I LIKE the speed of the two SSD’s on my MacBook Pro. Your comments are enticing to say the least. And I’ve come across a number of bus powered thunderbolt 3 external ssd’s that claim to rival mac’s new internal ssds performance-wise. So perhaps a 512, or 1 tb internal would suffice? The OWC dock seems to be the way to go. But I’m also looking for simple bus powered docks that would allow multiple usb’s, considering the ilock and a keyboard for instance. I found one that caters to dual monitors. I guess there’s not the demand there once was for usb connectivity. My dreams of complete, untethered portability would include the Arrow, an external SSD, but what about the iLock?

I have a lacie ext SSD thunderbolt 1. PLUS there are a number of external devices floating around. Is thunderbolt 3 backwards compatible? The OWC has the port, but it’s mini display. Something tells me that it’s not backwards compatible. So an original Apollo with the thunderbolt 1 card for example, won’t work with the new macs. Or am I wrong?

By the way, news came out that Pro Tools is upping the annual fee. Trying to go the subscription route I guess...

[Darryl Ramm]

Thunderbolt 3 connections on your computer are backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 1 and 2 peripherals including audio interfaces. Apple sells an adapter.