Maxed out MBA vs Standard MBP

I am currently a Senior in High School and we are provided 11" MacBook Air (2012) w/2GHz Intel Core i7, 4GB 1600 MHz DDR3, Intel HD 4000 Graphics, and 121 GB Flash Storage. I'm most likely going to be attending Belmont University as a Music Business Major. My main concerns are speed and overall performance in a laptop while dealing with high-powered professional software. My current choices would be between a maxed out MacBook Air (2014) vs a Standard MacBook Pro (2014). Also, being a Music Major, should I invest in a decent sound card? Internal or External? If someone could help me, that would be awesome! Thank you!

To be honest I would look at a refurb mbp with a mechanical hard disk, especially for your needs. I suggest staying far away from the newer generations coming out of apple. I do physical data recovery, as in a cleanroom and deepspar operation, and I also repair computers. The SSDs in these new apple laptops fail at a tremendous rate and I can't pull data from them. I had one last week and one this week that had catastrophic failures somewhere on the SSD. The price for a replacement SSD starts at around $450 and goes up to about $600. That's half the cost of a newer mbp.
An earlier version of the mbp will suit your needs just fine and you won't risk losing data to a proprietary and outlandishly expensive SSD down the road. The built in sound on apple products is pretty good but an external USB DAC is going to be much better. I personally use a rather inexpensive soundblaster DAC I got from Amazon.
EDIT: The reason I suggest a mechanical hard disk based storage option is the ease of upgrades to the entire PC. The hard disk can be easily replaced with a standard SSD and the RAM can be upgraded. You CANNOT upgrade RAM on anything made by apple these days - a huge turn off for someone who wants to keep a machine for longer than a few years. The SSDs are upgradable if you'd like to pay out the nose.

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ITunes podcast update maxes out both cores on MBP 2.16

On my new macBook Pro 2.16Ghz, there aren't too many normal operations that will run my cpu cores up to 100% each, but updating my podcasts in iTunes does it every time.
Not even transcoding multiple h.264 video files gets my cpu above 50%. why is it that updating my podcast xml feeds in iTunes maxes out both cores? If it starts taking more than a few seconds to update, my fans kick in and start getting progressively louder until the update completes or I cancel the update. Has anyone one else experienced this? is this a flaw in the itunes binary?
I have about 8 feeds that I'm subscribed to (diggnation, twit, eMacCast, dl.tv, etc).

it only happens when a feed starts to take too long to update (5-10+ seconds). some feeds just kind of hang when its trying to update. it seems like its stuck in a loop or something like that.

13" MBA or 15" MBP for a musician, amateur photographer, and college student?

Now, if I had it my way I'd wait for the next MBP release, but alas my mother says I must buy a laptop now.
I've heard that the MBA is great for just about every average user's needs, but I do use my computer for more than the average user does.
Right now I'm using an HP desktop which I'll be bringing with me to college: 6 GB RAM, an i5 2.67GHz processor, and a 512 GB HDD at 7200 rpm.
It has a sucky monitor, but I'm going to replace it very soon.
I'm excited to get my Mac and use Aperture with it, because I tried Lightroom and found that it is not good enough in terms of workflow, so I did not purchase it (pricey) and am just using the Nikon software included with my camera.
I work with RAW files and often import 8 GB of them at a time and edit them, convert them to jpegs. The processes are all just a little slow, with the conversion to jpegs being the worst by far. That could be because I'm using the Nikon software, though. I recall that Lightroom was lightyears faster at that.
My point it, I WANT to use the Macbook I get as my primary photo editing machine. Is this realistic? Can either of the machines I'm looking at really handle that?
The 13" MBA would be too small, wouldn't it?
If I got the 15" MBP, I'd get the hi-res screen as well.
But the MBA is just so beautiful and portable. I'm worried that the MBP will feel like a burden. Then again, 6 pounds isn't that heavy still. And I know that if I buy the MBP, they will release a new one and I will feel remorseful, but, hey, a new model will always be around the corner.
And I couldn't afford a SSD if I got the MBP. :/
If I get the MBA, it will be maxed out.
I will also probably be purchasing an external hard drive for photos in the next 6 months, so I'm not concerned about 256 GB on the MBA being too little.
As far as other uses of the computer, I do some audio recording and editing. How good are the two machines at Garageband?
I'll do a lot of word processing for school. I like to stream video, listen to music.
Also, I love the HD cam on the MBP and hate the one of the MBA. I will be Skyping a lot this year.
Oh my GOSH. Sorry for writing so much and being disorganized. Thanks for reading! Haha.

From what I see on Twitter and blogs, a lot of photography pros are picking up the new MacBook Airs as their road machines because with the new Core iX processors they are quite acceptable for performance. I've mostly read about them using Lightroom, though, and not as a primary machine, so you should take some of your raw photos to an Apple store and run some Aperture tests to see how it feels. Do you think there is enough room to see everything, or does it feel cramped?
The main problem with the MacBook Air is not being able to put more than 4GB RAM in it, but with the SSD you might not notice the lag as much. For most people the Air is a fantastic computer. I use the 15" MacBook Pro, because I use other graphics apps where I need room to display documents, filmstrips, palettes, etc. so I need mor pixels, and also because I need to be able to have more RAM.
I would guess that GarageBand wouldn't be a problem on any new Mac, assuming you're not piling on heaps of effects.

Maxing out on RAM

Hey
My old powerbook came with 128, I added 512 to start then exchanged that with a 1gig so it was running on 1.128. No problem at all. Spec said max was 640.
I now have the macbook pro 2.16 C2D 15.4 screen. It came with a removable gig ram and I had a gig from my previous MBP. However - I feel 2gig is not enough. This MBP says it can only do 3gig ram. Recent models can do 4. I'm wondering if anyone has maxed out the ram on a 3gig version and run it on 4.
I'm thinking of pullng out both 1gigs and sticking 2x2gig in it. Just want to make sure it is possible.
Appreciate any help.

Hi,
one benefit of 2x2GB is that you still have the 'pairing' advantage of some small percentage more speed when the memory is accessed.
And secondly, if you decide to get a Santa Rosa MBP in the future you can use this memory for it.
Other than that, you are right, not much use.
Have Fun
Stefan

My 8th core is almost maxed out while idle

Hello folks,
I'm glad Logic is now 64bit; no more "out of memory" errors. Yippee! However, now the eighth core of my "octo-core" Mac Pro, is almost maxed out when idle. This also seems to be the core that is taxed the most during playback. After looking at the Activity Monitor, it looks like the 32-bit Bridge might be the culprit. Does anyone know if the 32-bit Bridge is supposed to spread the load evenly across the cores (multi threading)? Is there something that I can "tweak" to fix this? Is anyone else having the same issue? Thanks!

Depending on the year of the MBP, the hard drive may not be considered a user replaceable item...but you can check the available 1 TB drives at good sources such as OWC, http://www.macsales.com they are great to deal with and have on-line videos showing how to do most installation tasks.

Query Builder results seem to max out at 500 lines. How to change?

Hi all,
Some of out Application Express users are using the Query Builder tool for ad-hoc reporting. The idea is to run the SQL to extract the data, then download to MS Excel. The Query Builder results seem to max out at 500 lines. I want to increase that value. I searched all Application Express forums for 'query builder output max 500' and then 'query builder output' and did not find the answer.
How do I change the 500 line limit in Query Builder results?
Thanks!
Application Express 3.1.2.00.02
Oracle 10g
Standard PDF printing (not BI Publisher)

Bryan,
Here is a link to an HTML-DB studio application, that is a QBE "replacement" for the query tool in APEX development..
http://htmldb.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=18326:7:1387557504245687::::P7_ID:1222
It is for an older version of APEX, but you should be able to make it work for your needs..
Thank you,
Tony Miller
Webster, TX

Has anyone maxed out their mac?

i ask this out of curiosity for the bigger and faster machines. i can understand the needs and wants for faster, but has anyone maxed out their mac? and with what? i have lots installed and running on mine im sure not as much as a lot of people, but i still have lots available. so jsut wondering about the need for 200g

15-20gb is gone off my drive just for parallels, i have about another 15gb dedicated to music, another 10gb for movies and tv shows. My mbp has just a little under 6gb left free, but this is only due to constant clean up of "temporary" (eg - not useful to me anymore) files. I had opted for a 100gb 7200rpm drive, I now almost wish I had went for the 120gb option.

Adobe CC Application Maxes out Network Capacity

Hi,
We are deploying the Creative Cloud applications to around 150 Mac OS users, and are having some very bad network issues when we attempt to update more than one person at a time.
Basically, we have a 100M pipe, and we're seeing it MAX OUT COMPLETELY when we have 2 or 3 users connect to the CC App and download the equivalent of the old Design Standard Package (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Acrobat and Bridge).
With 1 person downloading, it creates a significant load on the network. With more than one person, it maxes out. It even has a negative impact when running the minor application updates at this point.
Very disturbing... Is anyone else seeing anything like this?

If I was just one person, downloading once, of course downloading and installing as fast as possible would be great- in fact, personally, I've been singing the praises of CC because of this.
But when I am responsible for 150 people, who represent less than 1/3rd of my company overall, and attempting to download ~3GB of data for 3 people at once literally kills transfer rates for nearly everyone else on our network... Then yes, if it must take longer, then I want it to take longer.
Before I rant a little further, and provide some context, I'd like to admit that this may be our network. I don't know for sure.
So if anyone else is seeing performance like this, it would be nice to get some general evidence showing where the problem may lie.
RANT:
I want the download process to be refined, and even graceful. I want Adobe to not ignore examples that exist in the real world from companies that understand this kind of download interaction. When I pull a game off of Steam, probably the very best cloud-based software distribution example available, I don't kick my roommates (or even my office mates) OFF of the internet almost entirely.
Dollars to donuts, I could set up 5 iMacs in my office, install the Steam Client, and tell it to download Borderlands 2, which, if I recall correctly, is about a 2.5GB game. I'll bet that it will finish rather quickly- probably 20-30 minutes with our connection here- for EACH machine, RUNNING SIMULTANEOUSLY. Everyone else will be able to continue to utilize the network at their own pace, with no iterruption.
Why is this not the case for the Creative Cloud?
If it's not the fault of our network... I will only accept one answer: It's new, and Adobe is still learning how to handle this. I've already granted that for the few small bugs I've seen in the CC app, and the fact that the Files functionality is not available, nor are Fonts.
END RANT.

Solaris Environment Manager maxs out memory.

We have a forte system in production, running on two Solaris 2.6 boxes. Each
has its own environment and they are connected. Our environments are called
"Data Center" and "Call Center". Our Forte memory settings are fairly
standard. We start at 20Mb and max out at 64Mb. We also have Forte keepalive
enabled, with the Forte recommended values. We are running Forte 3.0.L.3 and
using Oracle 8.0.5 for our database (as if it mattered). Each environment
has 1 or 2 NT Server boxes in it, and the clients are all NT4 using a model
node. Our Solaris machines have the patch installed that fixes the problem
that Peggy Adrian posted about earlier in the year.
Three times now in the past week, we have suddenly had the environment
manager for the data center suddenly start chewing up memory. When the data
center manager gets to about 64Mb, the data center environment manager
starts to do the same thing. Soon after, both environments die a hideous
death, and we have go in and start the node managers again.
Please note that we always export our environments to a ".edf" file and
bootstrap the environment manager (removing the environment repository)
whenever we install a new copy of the Forte applications, or whenever our
node manager dies (which seems far more frequent that I would like).
Interestingly, the environment repository hadn't grown any after the
environment manager "runs up the curtain and joins the choir invisibule".
If anyone can throw some light on this, and point us in the direction to
look to solve this problem it would be much appreciated.
Nick.

Hi,
@ Sunny: Thanks for response, the referred note was already checked and parameters are in sync as per note.
@Mohit: SAP wouldn't proceed till create database if Oracle software was not installed. thanks for the response.
@Markus: Thanks I agree with you, but I have doubt in this area. Isn't it like project.max-shm-memory was new parameter we need to set in local zone rather using shmsys:shminfo_shmmax in /etc/system. Do we need to still maintain this parameter in /etc/system in global zone.
As per SUN doc below parameter was obsolete from Solaris 10.
The following parameters are obsolete.
■ shmsys:shminfo_shmmni
■ shmsys:shminfo_shmmax
As per your suggestion, do we need to set below parameters in that case, please clarify.
Parameter                           Replaced by Resource Control      Recommended Value
semsys:seminfo_semmni   project.max-sem-ids                      100
semsys:seminfo_semmsl   process.max-sem-nsems               256
shmsys:shminfo_shmmax project.max-shm-memory             4294967295
shmsys:shminfo_shmmni   project.max-shm-ids                       100
Also   findings of /etc/release
more /etc/release
Solaris 10 10/08 s10s_u6wos_07b SPARC
Regards,
Sitarama.

I am a dj and my macbook pro 13inch 500g hard drive is almost maxed out. i want to upgrade to a 1tb HDD. what is my best option?

i am a dj and my macbook pro 13inch 500g hard drive is almost maxed out. i want to upgrade to a 1tb HDD. what is my best option?

Depending on the year of the MBP, the hard drive may not be considered a user replaceable item...but you can check the available 1 TB drives at good sources such as OWC, http://www.macsales.com they are great to deal with and have on-line videos showing how to do most installation tasks.

250gb tm drive - maxes out at 7 backups?

Just curious if these ratios sound right, or if there is a preference I don't have set up correctly. I have time machine set to back up my entire internal hard drive rather than select folders like "my documents." I did this so I could restore the whole system using the leopard disk in the event of a catastrophic failure.
I'm not getting many backups before maxing out my 250gb drive. I have an internal drive with 78 gigs of material. I have had my time machine backup drive plugged in each day this week. The time machine backups currently have one backup from 01/14, one backup from 01/15, and 5 from today 01/17. My 250 gig time machine now only has only 36 gigs free. I understand that time machine makes one complete backup and then incremental backups of any changed files (via virtual links). I guess it's doing this because if I had 7 complete file for file backups it would total about 550 gigs, but there haven't been that many changes to my system between backups... Doesn't seem right. Can I really only expect about 7 backups on a 250gig hard drive? Also, is there any way to specify how often it backs up. If I can only expect 7 backups it would be nice to have it do it every other day, rather than using them all in an afternoon... Something doesn't seem right.
Thanks for any insight.

I've had similar issues. I have a 120GB drive backing up 60GB of my 80GB internal drive. I checked my Console and found this error:
Jan 19 19:26:42 eMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1774]: Backup requested by automatic scheduler
Jan 19 19:26:42 eMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1774]: Starting standard backup
Jan 19 19:26:43 eMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1774]: Backing up to: /Volumes/FireWireDrive/Backups.backupdb
Jan 19 19:26:44 eMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1774]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume eMac
Jan 19 19:26:44 eMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1774]: Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonEventDBUntrustable|
Jan 19 19:38:31 eMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1774]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 7.51 GB requested (including padding), 45.38 GB available
Jan 19 19:38:37 eMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1774]: Error: (-8088) copying /Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Frameworks/DotMacKit.framework/Versions/A/Dot MacKit to /Volumes/FireWireDrive/Backups.backupdb/eMac/2008-01-04-200348.inProgress/00CF5 18D-1629-4880-AA45-17D61F3184BF/eMac/Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Frameworks /DotMacKit.framework/Versions/A
Jan 19 19:48:31 eMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1774]: Copied 52 files (45 KB) from volume eMac.
Jan 19 19:48:32 eMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1774]: Backup canceled.
Can anyone explain what's happening here? Thank you.

I have not been able to use iTunes for several months. Every time I open iTunes, it freezes by computer such that there is about a minutes between each action. I am running iTunes 11 on Mac OS 10.6.8 and have a computer with maxed out memory.

I have not been able to use iTunes for several months. Every time I open iTunes, it freezes by computer such that there is about a minutes between each action. I am running iTunes 11 on Mac OS 10.6.8 and have a computer with maxed out memory. Help! I can't access my iTunes content.

I have not been able to use iTunes for several months. Every time I open iTunes, it freezes by computer such that there is about a minutes between each action. I am running iTunes 11 on Mac OS 10.6.8 and have a computer with maxed out memory. Help! I can't access my iTunes content.

How do I get my iTunes (both purchased and cd's) into the cloud as I cannot use match my iMac and MacBook are too old to use the right OS and maxed out RAM memory upgrades, but have iPhone 4S and now 64gb iPad and libraries on desktops plus iPod!!

So very excited bought iPad and new speakers today! Want to get all my music sorted as across iMac (G5), MacBook os 10.6 (maxed out ram and memory) and old iPod. Saw Match would be an option but can't use due to old OS so I can get the raw music library files but then what do I do to get all in one place? Any help appreciated.

A good route would be to attach a USB drive to the macbook. You can use the drive to assemble a copy of all of your music from your various devices. iTunes on the macbook can be used to create a new library, located on the USB drive, into which you can import all of your music.
Two major benefits:
1. From here you can run iTunes Match across your entire music collection; and
2. You will have created a full local backup of all of your music on the USB drive.
Once complete you will be able to access the music from any iDevice capable of running iTunes Match, Do remember as you add music it is important to maintain a local backup in order to keep your music safe.

I have I phone 5 and I can't open iCloud after deleting me old one and tried to open a new one it didn't let me because it said it maxed out

I have my phone is I phone5 and I had an account iCloud but I deleted along time ago and I have no idea what was my email address or user name or password , and tried to open a new one on my phone it won't let me because it said it maxed out and u can open iCloud one time, I need to open a new account so I can safe my information,

I've never seen an error discribing "maxed out". Please type in the exact error message you are seeing so I can maybe assist you further.

HT1689 i have my daughters iphone 3, i want to use it as an i-pod, but it keeps receiving messages from some her friends is there a way to stop this from happening, please help, my phone is maxed out and would really like the storage for music, thanks

i have my daughters iphone 3, i want to use it as an i-pod, but it keeps receiving messages from some her friends is there a way to stop this from happening, please help, my phone is maxed out and would really like the storage for music, thanks

It sounds like it still has her information on it, so it might be efficient to navigate to Settings, then General, then Reset, then Erase All Content and Settings. You can then set up the phone again, using your information. This way the phone will be yours, officially, and her data and information will be removed.

Maxed out MBA vs Standard MBP

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