538.9 million tonnes. That’s the global rice production forecast for the 2024/25 season…
MAE SAM LAEB, Thailand, January 21 – I was in a powered longboat, skimming like a stone over the silty brown veneer of the Salawin River; one hand gripping the side of the boat, the other holding my camera at the ready. The freezing of USAID had just been announced, and I was in rebel territory racing upstream to safe harbour.
Disembarking, my backpack was heavier than usual. A litre of the Salawin slushed around inside, drowning my iPad Pro and taking with it the drafts and illustrations for the latest instalments of my Mixing With Headphones series and my Microphones series, and the outlines for a new tutorial series about field recording – one of the motivations for making this journey.
Repeated attempts at flushing and draining had removed a lot of silt, but after a week of drying and trying I resorted to crying. If the Salawin didn’t drown my iPad Pro then my obsessive flushing did, and nothing was going to save it – not even the 538.9 million tonnes of rice forecast for the 2024/25 season…
RECENTLY DECEASED & iMORTAL
The drowned iPad Pro, now known as ‘The Recently Deceased’, was a 2017 model with a 10.5-inch display, powered by Apple’s A10 Fusion SoC coupled with 4GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. With the right apps and dongles it handled all of my daily computing needs – writing and illustrating magazine articles, mixing and mastering music, processing photos, editing videos and, of course, accessing social media. The Salawin put an end to all of that…
Borrowing a loaner from the repair shop, I extracted the important files from The Recently Deceased’s last iCloud Backup and AirDropped them to ‘The iMortal’ – an early-2013 MacBook Pro that laughs in the face of built-in obsolescence. It’s the laptop The Recently Deceased supplanted in 2017, saving me $1500 USD and 2kg; you can read about that here. These days it’s primarily a conduit between ‘Memory Lane’ (a disorderly set of 10 4TB external drives) and Google Drive, but sometimes it springs into action as a lifesaver legacy DAW with useful audio apps, plug-ins and utilities that play well together and get the job done.
Time stopped in The iMortal’s universe many years ago, as did auto-updates. It’s a self-contained problem solver, and will continue to be for as long as there are wav files. Not surprisingly, it had problems opening the text and illustration files from the iPad’s iCloud Backup and prompted me to update the apps. We all know how that plays out: the latest app requires the latest OS, triggering a chain of events that turns a device into a doorstop because the software obsoletes the hardware.
The iMortal – with its aluminium enclosure, glass screen and no automatic updates – had remained in good working order for 12 years without costing a cent, and it was still going strong. I wasn’t going to brick it on the whim of an app.
THROWING MONEY
It was time for a new iPad. Straight out of the box and connected to the internet, all I’d have to do was enter my Apple ID, select ‘Transfer Apps & Data from iCloud Backup’ and be operational within an hour – without lifting another finger and without losing anything prior to the last backup.
Browsing Apple’s website took me through the latest range of iPads and their specs, and clicking the Buy button took me through each model’s options and prices. Believe it or not, replacing The Recently Deceased with an appropriately configured and future-proofed iPad from the 2025 range was going to cost over $2000 USD – scroll down to ‘An Appropriate Configuration’ to see how I arrived at that outrageous figure. After eight years of championing the iPad, there was no way I was going to spend that much money on another one simply to ensure future-proofing. After re-assessing my needs (scroll down to ‘2025 Needs Analysis’) I guiltily clicked over to the MacBook part of Apple’s website.
THE GRASS IS GREENER
Unlike the iPad section of Apple’s website, which felt like a stock clearance, the MacBook section was masterfully organised and tiered…
There are two different models – the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro. Each offers a choice of two display sizes and two (MacBook Air) or four (MacBook Pro) M4 chips. The differences between the chips are easy to understand to anyone familiar with the M-series terminology (as detailed in the companion article), as are the upgrade and customisation options. If the buyer has more to spend, the MacBooks have more to spend it on.
It looked and felt as if Apple’s product design team, marketing team and website development team had worked together to create a range of products that formed a linear progression from a technical point of view and a sales point of view, so that overlapping areas were solved with simple decisions: do you need more storage, more power, or both? For consumers literate with Apple Silicon terminology (see ‘M-Series Specs & Terms’ in the companion article), it was remarkably simple to determine if their initial preference and configuration was the right choice, if the model above was a better choice, or if the model below was a better choice. This applied throughout the MacBook range. Here’s an example…
Intelligent Marketing = Informed Purchasing
The table below shows six of the many possible MacBook configurations based on choices of the M4 chip, the amount of Unified Memory and the amount of Storage. Each configuration shown below overlaps and extends from the previous configuration, starting with the cheapest barebones MacBook Air and ending with the most expensive fully-optioned MacBook Pro.
Before delving into the table below, there are some important thing to understand about Apple Silicon and the M-series chips. Each chip contains multiple processors, or ‘cores’, all working simultaneously rather than sequentially. Because the processing is not sequential, clock speed is inconsequential; in fact, each core’s clock speed varies depending on its assigned task and how fast it needs to be done. ‘P cores’ are designed for performance; they run at faster clock speeds but have lower energy efficiency and therefore run hotter. ‘E cores’ are designed for energy efficiency; they run at slower clock speeds but have higher energy efficiency and therefore run cooler – they essentially take care of simple computations, freeing up the P cores for more complex processes. GPU cores are designed for Graphics Processing; as with P cores and E cores, their clock speeds are determined by how fast their individual processing needs to be done.
Because all of the M4 chips use the same types of cores with the same capabilities, the processing power and graphics capability of an M4 chip can be simplistically determined by the number and type of cores it contains. More P and E cores means more processing power, while more GPU cores means more graphics power. Math-intensive apps benefit from more P and E cores, while graphics-intensive apps benefit from more GPU cores.
The M-series chip liaises with macOS and the app to determine which cores get assigned to which app tasks, and how fast each core’s clock speed should be.
The Unified Memory is a single chunk of memory that the P, E and GPU cores all access directly (essentially, it combines the RAM and VRAM of traditional computers into a single chunk of memory, avoiding the need to transfer CPU results from RAM into VRAM for the GPU to display on screen), and ultimately determines how much data can be moved in and out of the CPU at any moment. Larger amounts of Unified Memory allow more data to be held ‘at the ready’ for the cores.
The M-series characteristics mentioned above are explained in more detail in the companion article (see ‘M-Series Specs & Terms).
Let’s get back to that table…
The blue column shows one configuration of the 13-inch MacBook Air (above) and one configuration of the 14-inch MacBook Pro (below). Each configuration has the same price point 0f $1599 USD, but each is suited for different purposes. Both use the same CPU with the same number of P, E and GPU cores, therefore both have the same amount of processing and graphics power. Both also have the same storage. The main difference between them, other than screen size, is the Unified Memory. Both have the same Memory Bandwidth of 120GB/S, but with 32GB of Unified Memory the MacBook Air can store more data ‘at the ready’ for the cores than the MacBook Pro. Considering that both machines use the same M4 chip, it is tempting to assume the MacBook Air is the better option. However, there’s another important consideration… When Apple designed the M1 MacBook Air (released in 2020) the preceding Intel-based MacBook Air’s internal cooling fan was removed. This makes the M-series MacBook Airs lighter, thinner, and more affordable, while also extending their daily battery life if used as Apple anticipated they’d be used. They’re absolutely silent at all times – which is great for audio work – but if the M4 chip is over-worked and gets too hot, it is throttled by macOS f0r self-protection, i.e. it is slowed down until it has cooled down. In comparison, the MacBook Pro’s internal fans allow its CPU to work harder for longer without overheating. If you were bouncing small sessions or rendering short videos for social media with lots of individual components that didn’t need a lot of heavy processing, the MacBook Air is the better choice because it can hold more files ‘at the ready’ for the cores. Conversely, longer sessions or longer videos that require a lot more processing might cause the MacBook Air to throttle and slow down; in those situations the MacBook Pro will definitely be faster. Same CPU, better cooling…
In the green column are two other configurations, both reaching the $2199 USD price point. In these examples the MacBook Pro is clearly more powerful with more P and GPU cores, but the MacBook Air’s lower initial cost allows considerably more storage and more Unified Memory to be installed at the same price point. Note, however, that the MacBook Pro offers more than twice the Memory Bandwidth (273GB/s vs 120GB/s) – meaning it can get files in and out of the cores approximately 2.3x faster than the MacBook Air. For someone doing simple edits and processing on lots of short sound/video snippets or photos, where file sizes are relatively small (which means less importance on fast Memory Bandwidth), but large storage and the ability to have lots of files ‘at the ready’ are the priority, the MacBook Air is the better choice. For someone with less need for storage, but doing heavier processing on larger files, the MacBook Pro with its extra cores, faster Memory Bandwidth and cooling fans is the better choice. Taking the MacBook Pro’s Unified Memory up to 32GB provides a benefit that is easy to compare and understand – given the same Unified Memory, the MacBook Pro will absolutely outperform the MacBook Air. But what about storage? That’s not something to buy from Apple unless you want or need the expensive convenience of having it all inside the box. If not, external storage is way cheaper. More about that later…
WHAT ABOUT ME, MOVING PICTURES & SOUNDS?
Other than writing and illustrating for AudioTechnology, my computing needs fall into the simpler ‘moving pictures and sounds’ category more than anything else. I mostly work in stereo audio, sometimes while also sorting/editing dozens of photos and video snippets with the aim of bringing all the good bits together into one chunk of related content: sound, pictures and/or video. All of this was within the capabilities of The Recently Deceased, an iPad Pro that dates back to 2017 and came with all the hassles of dealing with mass numbers of files in iOS. Therefore, these things should be easily handled by a 2025 MacBook Air and macOS – but which configuration would serve me best?
Realising that the ‘Buy’ page could be considered as a column in a spreadsheet, I opened a separate tab for each model’s ‘Buy’ page and started playing ‘what if?’ – comparing models, specs, options and prices, and using The Recently Deceased’s specs (where relevant) as a reference. I also compiled a list of each model’s pluses, minuses, and interesting points based on my 2025 needs (scroll down to ‘2025 Needs Analysis’) combined with insights and gotchas from user reviews along with any incentives Apple offered with upgrades (see ‘Incentives & Over-Capitalising’ in the companion article). The purchasing decision therefore became a rational and informed process of elimination: the objective black-and-white data was in the tabs ‘spreadsheet’, the subjective grey areas in between were in the Plus/Minus/Interesting list.
My goal was to land on the right balance of the three main M-series variables – Cores, Unified Memory and Storage – that rationally satisfied my 2025 needs and budget while avoiding buyer’s remorse.
I rolled this dice often in the time between the drowning of The Recently Deceased and the release of the M4-series MacBooks, and repeatedly landed on the barebones base model MacBook Air with 13-inch display, 16GB of Unified Memory and 256GB of storage. It was the cheapest and least powerful MacBook available, yet it was many times faster and more powerful than The Recently Deceased (eight years old) and The iMortal (12 years old). I’ve been doing good work on both of those machines for years (still am on The iMortal) moving images and sounds around and working on them, so the base model MacBook Air was definitely a big step up. It met all of my tech, mobility and recording needs, and was essentially as powerful as the appropriately configured iPad Pro (see ‘An Appropriate Configuration’). It had two less GPU cores (eight instead of 10), but, as an audio person, I was happy to trade those for the MacBook Air’s 16GB of Unified Memory (not available on any iPads) and its impedance-sensing headphone amplifier (also not available on any iPads). With the latest M-series chip and 16GB of Unified Memory, I figured the base model MacBook Air would outperform the appropriately configured iPad Pro from an audio perspective, while also being powerful enough and sufficiently future-proof for an independent audio pro like me.
AN OLD MANTRA
So I moved back to Mac, settling on the base model 13-inch MacBook Air with 256GB of storage – a decision completely at odds with the future-proofing “buy the fastest and most powerful I can afford” mantra I’ve lived by all of my life when buying computers. That old mantra is out of date in a world where clock speed is no longer a marketing metric (it’s not even mentioned in the Tech Specs), and where the software to support new hardware features is what ultimately obsoletes the older hardware.
Now that the cheapest MacBook Air is sufficient for the average audio person’s needs, a smarter approach is to buy what you can afford now and that you can afford to sell and replace next year. With new and faster models every year and a starting price of $999 USD for something powerful enough for typical audio work, the idea of spending thousands of dollars on a massively over-powered computer as a future-proofed investment is as primitive as pressing your hand against a wall and blowing ochre over it.
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I cannot see any of the M-series MacBooks being obsoleted by software any time in the near future, at least not until Apple declares them vintage or obsolete and/or deprecates them. So far, each new generation of the M-series chip does not contain anything significantly new that didn’t exist in the previous generation. Each new generation primarily contains more cores than before, and those cores run faster than before. Upgrading from one generation of the M-series chip to the next is essentially no different to getting a better display, extra ports, a more responsive keyboard, a cooler trackpad or a new enclosure colour. None of those things obsolete the preceding models, they just make the new model faster.
DO IT CLEAN
I embraced the MacBook Air’s limited internal storage of 256GB as a discipline. Why? The iMortal spends its days making sense of the contents of Memory Lane (40TB) and Google Drive (5TB), both filled to the brim with mostly redundant and/or incremental backups of projects that date back to the earliest cave paintings. I have no intention of adding to The iMortal’s workload, and having just 256GB of storage on the MacBook Air should help me break that ‘save it for later’ data hoarding habit – I can’t save something for later if I’ve got nowhere to save it! Finish it while it’s fresh, move on, and do it clean…
The new MacBook Air was my line in the sand between the old way and the new way. The less contact it has with The iMortal, the better. It started life with a clean slate, inheriting nothing from The iMortal or The Recently Deceased except content that was yet to be worked on – as mentioned at the start of this article.
After deleting the pre-installed fluff (Garage Band, etc.), installing the latest versions of my desired apps and plug-ins, and allowing for Mac OS, Apple Intelligence, iCloud Photos and so on, my MacBook Air has 183.47 GB of available storage as shown below.
buy the fastest and most powerful I can afford…
The projects I work on rarely require more than 100GB; even the bigger video projects consume less space if I’m disciplined from the start – which means not loading all the footage in at once and sorting it out later. That’s how Memory Lane was paved, and I don’t want to go down that path again. In my experience only a small fraction of the captured footage makes it into the final cut, so my MacBook Air workflow for video has changed from 1) copying everything over at once and then previewing, trimming and deleting what’s not wanted, to 2) importing one file at a time, previewing, trimming and deleting, and saving only what’s most likely to be used from that file, plus generous handles. Keeping it clean – although that workflow changed a little after I allowed iCloud Synchronisation (see ‘I, Cloudius’ in the companion article).
BACK ON THE DESKTOP
After eight years of championing the iPad it feels good to be using an all-in-one device that can stand on its own on the desk or on the lap (frees up both hands), has a usefully larger display, a built-in keyboard, a trackpad rather than a touch screen (so your finger tip doesn’t block your view of what you’re trying to touch), can drive high-impedance headphones, and has the familiar Finder desktop that’s more conducive to the folder-based workflows used in audio, photography and videography.
Fresh out of the box the word ‘Hello’ wrote itself across the display. It might as well have said “Welcome back…”
How does this base model MacBook Air function in an audio environment? Let’s start with storage, then move on to headphones, interfaces, ports, SD card reader and charging…
STORAGE
I paid $999 USD for the base model 13-inch MacBook Air with 256GB, but ended up with 1.28TB of storage for $100 USD more. How?
I’d considered the upgrade incentives on Apple’s website before purchasing. Here’s what they were offering:
For $100 USD more I could upgrade the M4 CPU and get those two extra GPU cores as mentioned earlier, but that excited me as much as a pocket of bad air in an underground chamber.
For $200 USD more I could upgrade to 24GB of Unified Memory and get the processor upgrade mentioned above, but I knew that 16GB of Unified Memory was all I needed.
For that same $200 USD I could instead upgrade to 512GB of storage and get the processor chip upgrade mentioned plus a choice of better chargers. (That configuration is the same as the next tier up in the MacBook Air offerings, which cost $1199 USD as expected.) The extra two GPU cores and the choice of a 35W dual charger or a 70W fast charger would certainly appeal to many, but I didn’t care for either. Besides, I was curious about the capabilities of the base model, and felt like I needed the discipline of its 256GB of internal storage. Having worked with creative technology for most of my life I know the value of limitations, and a quick glance at Memory Lane (all 40TB of it spread across 10 HDDs) reminded me of the necessity of limitations.
I’d walked out of the store with the base model MacBook Air (256GB storage, 16GB Unified Memory), a spare $100 USD, and the intention of Googling external SSDs.
For $94.99 USD I could get Crucial’s X9 Pro SSD with 1TB (i.e. 1024GB) capacity, which works out to 9.3 cents per GB. I’d end up with the MacBook Air’s 256GB internal storage and the Crucial’s 1024GB external storage, making a total storage of 1280GB (1.28TB) for $100 USD above the base model’s RRP. For the same $100 USD that could’ve got me two more GPU cores at the point of purchase, I got an additional 1TB of storage capability.
How much would that 1TB cost if bought as internal storage from Apple?
Upgrading the base model MacBook Air from 256GB to 1TB (i.e. 1024GB) adds $400 USD to the base model’s price for an additional 768GB of storage (1024 – 256 = 768). That works out to 52 cents per GB, which is far more expensive than Crucial’s 9.3 cents per GB, and I’d end up with a total of 1024GB (1TB) rather than 1280GB (1.28TB). That’s expensive storage, although it would be conveniently internal and wouldn’t use any ports. As an incentive, it also included the processor upgrade mentioned above and the choice of chargers – but for $400 USD? My inner Aussie said “yeah, nah…” [See ‘Memory Maths’ in the companion article.]
The way forward was clear: I now knew exactly where that extra $100 USD was going…
The way forward was clear…
Crucial X9 Pro 1TB SSD
The 1TB Crucial X9 Pro at 9.3 cents per GB was a no-brainer, especially when compared to 52 cents per GB for Apple’s 1TB of internal storage. I lose the M4 chip upgrade (two more GPU cores) and the charger upgrade that Apple throws in when buying additional storage, but, as mentioned earlier, I doubt I’d notice the difference between eight and 10 GPU cores anyway (except perhaps fast zooming in and out on Rx), and neither charger option worked for me anyway because I need more outputs (see ‘Anker Charger’ below).
The X9 Pro measures 6.5cm x 5cm (half the footprint of a credit card), is less than 1cm thick, and weighs about 40 grams. It’s housed in an anodised aluminium case with a soft rubber base, is IP55 water resistant and can withstand falls from 2m. At 10Gb/s (USB-C 3.2 Gen 2) it’s so fast that – for my audio purposes at least – it might as well be internal storage. I work directly off it and, at the end of every session, back up the session folder into the MacBook Air’s ‘Documents’ folder – knowing that iCloud Synchronisation will get busy backing it up from there onto iCloud.
I now have a base model MacBook Air system with 1280GB (1.28TB) of storage (256GB on board, 1024GB external) for a total cost of $1095 USD. If I’d stretched my budget and upgraded the MacBook Air’s internal storage to 512GB I would’ve had less than half of the storage I have now for more than twice the price ($95 USD for 1.28TB vs $200 USD for 512GB). By going external I saved over $100 USD on the 512GB upgrade and got more than twice the storage. I can see myself adding more X9 Pros over time, including one as a Time Machine backup drive for the MacBook Air.
HEADPHONES
On the right side is a 3.5mm headphone socket that’s ideal for mixing on the move. The MacBook Air’s in-built headphone socket is driven by Apple’s impedance-sensing headphone amplifier (as explained in the third instalment of my Mixing With Headphones’ series), so it can drive high impedance headphones such as Neumann’s 150 ohm NDH20s and 120 ohm NDH30s with ease. Neither The iMortal nor The Recently Deceased can/could drive those headphones reliably; at any useful working level each would deliver a compressed low frequency response that ducked the mids and highs on transients, resulting in some unpredictable EQ decisions. My solution for this problem on those devices was…
CEntrance DACport HD
The audiophile-grade CEntrance DACport USB headphone amplifier solved the ‘high impedance headphone’ problem long ago for both The iMortal and The Recently Deceased. It’s now permanently connected to The iMortal – a situation both The iMortal and the MacBook Air are happy with. The iMortal is not struggling to drive high impedance headphones, and the MacBook Air keeps it two USB-C ports.
I can move my NDH20s and NDH30s between The iMortal/CEntrance combo and the MacBook Air’s internal headphone socket with no problems. The CEntrance sounds marginally better, but the differences are very subtle tonality changes due to differences in the content of the THD (and perhaps also IMD) between Apple’s built-in headphone amplifier and the CEntrance. They’re the kind of differences that explain why two audio circuits can have sound different despite having the same standard specifications; they might affect your enjoyment of the music from an audiophile point of view, but they won’t affect your mixing or mastering decisions.
One significant advantage of the DACport HD is support for sampling rates up to 352.4k and also 384k DSD, while Apple’s impedance headphone amplifier supports sampling rates up to 96k. If you’re working in any of those higher sampling rates/formats, you’re probably doing serious audiophile work and should be using an external headphone amplifier anyway – regardless of what computer you’re using.
Ultimately, the MacBook Air’s impedance-sensing headphone amplifier does its job very well without using a USB-C port and without a dongle swinging out the side. If it’s all you’ve got, it’s all you’ll need. You can connect the CEntrance and get better quality and versatility at the expense of a USB-C port, but that depends on your headphones being good to reveal such differences and your hearing being good enough to notice them.
INTERFACES & FILE FORMATS
I’ve had no problems running a bus-powered Focusrite 2i2 interface or a Zoom F3 field recorder through the MacBook Air’s ports; but I’m living in stereo. In both cases the set-up was easy and straightforward. The Focusrite plugs straight in; plug-and-play, no problem. The Zoom requires a menu tweak to put it into USB interface mode, then it’s plug-and-play too. In an era of self-driving cars, it is beyond comprehension that Windows systems still need drivers. WTF?
Files that audio engineers consider ‘big’ (e.g. stereo interleaved 192k 32-bit float wav format) consume 1.536MB per second, and are insignificantly easy for a machine that can handle uncompressed 4K video footage (4.99GB per second). However, working with multi-channel immersive high resolution audio files, or long segments of 4K video format with synchronised sound/dialogue and processing, would be pushing the base model M4 MacBook Air towards its limits, possibly resulting in jittery cursor movement, heat throttling and slow rendering. Youtuber Evan Ranft has an informative video on this topic for those whose work with high resolution video formats. Which brings us to…
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DISPLAYS & PORTS
The 13-inch MacBook Air’s Liquid Retina display has a resolution 224 ppi with 500 Nits of brightness, a refresh rate of 60Hz, and a billion colours (still counting). It’s nothing to rave about by today’s standards, but as an upgrade it nudges The iMortal and The Recently Deceased a few centuries closer to Lascaux. I find myself re-doing previous colour corrections – especially those that rely on preserving subtle detail in shadows and highlights – enjoying the process and appreciating the difference. The displays on the M4 MacBook Pro and M4 iPad Pro are superior and would be more suited for people working heavily in image creation – unless you’re working with external displays, which the M4 MacBook Air accommodates nicely.
On the left are two Thunderbolt 4/USB4 ports (both up to 40Gb/s for Thunderbolt and USB4, neither likely to be a bottle-neck in any data transfer), and a MagSafe 3 charging port. The addition of the MagSafe 3 port means both of the Thunderbolt/USB4 ports remain available even when charging – a valid criticism of some earlier MacBook Air models. However, it’s still possible to charge the M4 MacBook Air through either of these ports in the absence of the MagSafe 3 charging cable, or if you’re using an external display that provides fast charging (a requirement of the Thunderbolt 4 specification).
These ports allow the M4 MacBook Air to connect two external displays with resolutions of 6K at 60Hz refresh rate, or 4K at 144Hz refresh rate. Alternatively, a single display can be connected offering 4K at 240Hz refresh rate, or 8K at 60Hz refresh rate – all without losing access to the keyboard, trackpad or on-board display. Many external displays also feature built-in hubs and expanders, so you don’t lose the port you’ve plugged into and will most likely gain more ports in the external display along with an SD card reader or similar.
Audio pros who need bigger, faster or higher resolution monitors should be looking further up the M4 range to the MacBook Pro, the Mac Mini, the Mac Studio or the Mac Pro.
NO SD CARD READER
A defining ‘feature’ of the MacBook Air series is that they do not have SD card readers. Despite the convenience of direct USB connection and wireless transfers, in my experience nothing beats an SD card reader for a consistently reliable folder-to-folder workflow. Apple offers a USB-C SD card reader dongle for those who need it or want it.
Let me repeat that last bit: “for those who need it or want it.”
Contrary to the hater narrative, not every computer owner wants or needs an SD card reader. Smart young Netizens sharing their iPhone pics between their devices don’t need one, and neither does anyone who does not capture content onto an SD card. So why include an SD card reader that many users will not need but will increase the device’s cost, weight and size (albeit marginally) and force the user to carry it everywhere despite never needing it? That’s built-in unnecessariness, which is just like built-in obsolescence but stupider and faster.
I don’t need an SD card reader because I can do direct USB-C cable transfers from my field recorder and my camera (I can also do wireless transfers from my camera), but it’s usually slower and fiddlier, and often burdened with proprietary and/or system apps (e.g. Apple’s annoying Image Capture) that exist to ‘manage’ it for me. I’d rather use an SD card reader where I can drag and drop all the the files at once, directly to exactly where I want them. It also frees up the recording device or camera for further use (assuming there are blank SD cards available), saves its battery power, and is invaluable for fast-paced switcheroos where the removed card needs to be transferred to storage immediately, then re-formatted and used again. An SD card reader is especially useful for large jobs where asset management (i.e. file transfer, sorting, naming and storing) should not be left for later.
A co-worker spotted me trawling third-party manufacturers: “Lookin’ for a card reader?” He slid a small box across my desk. It looked like a handgrip detached from its pistol; tactical AF. “I gotta reduce my carry-on before flying out. CreateMate. Google it. You can have it for a beer. No, actually, make that two…”
Pgytech CreateMate
This is a bus-powered high speed SD card reader and protective storage case that, for most users, will keep all of their SD cards together in one place – each firmly gripped in its own recess. It holds four normal SD cards, four micro SD cards, two SIM cards, a SIM card removal tool (international travellers rejoice!), two built-in high speed SD card readers (one SD, one microSD), a built-in USB-C cable, and it is IP54 weather-sealed. All up, it allows me to travel with 10 SD cards: eight in the CreateMate, and one in each device. My field recorder uses microSD cards, my camera uses SD cards. Four for each. Perfect!
Current cost? $39.95 USD, which is fractionally more than Apple’s $39 USD offering but offers two card readers, doesn’t need an adaptor for microSD cards, and provides all-in-one-place weather-proof storage. The benefits of this were confirmed while hurriedly trying to change cards in dim light; no more groping through a zippered compartment using my phone’s torch to identify the next card to use. A quick finger swipe across the CreateMate’s recessed cut-outs is like doing a roll-call for queued up SD cards: “this gap is for the card I’m replacing, and the card to the right is the blank and re-formatted replacement.”
The CreateMate’s built-in card readers are surprisingly fast for two reasons; firstly they offer transfer speeds of up to 312MB/s, and secondly because I don’t have to wait for both transfers to finish before changing the first finished card to start the next transfer. Although it only uses one USB-C port, its internal card readers appear as two separate volumes on the desktop, making it possible to simultaneously transfer from two SD cards to internal and/or external SSDs. It’s also possible to transfer files from one SD card to another, a feature I’ve found useful when I need to consolidate the contents of two or more SSDs to reclaim some useful space.
CHARGER
The MacBook Air comes with an Apple-styled USB-C charger that delivers at least 30W of power (depending on which configuration you choose), presumably into the MacBook Air using the supplied USB-C to MagSafe 3 cable. The 30W charger does not support fast charging, however. Using a higher powered charger (e.g. 70W or more) will fast charge the MacBook Air to 50% capacity in about 30 minutes, and Apple offers a 70W fast charger as an upgrade on the MacBook Air ‘Buy’ pages. Both chargers (30W and 70W) come with a single USB-C output, so they can only charge one device at a time. There is also a 35W dual charger option that should be sufficient to charge a MacBook Air and a phone at the same time. However…
On any given foray I’ll typically be charging three or four items at once – preferably overnight while I’m sleeping – so a charger with one or two USB-C ports is never going to be enough. In recent times I’d been packing a power strip and a handful of ‘one or two output’ chargers. It did the job, but there had to be a simpler, smaller and lighter solution…
Anker PowerPort Atom III
I found a low-profile solution from Anker called the PowerPort Atom III. It’s 8cm square and 15mm high (smaller than a sandwich with the crusts cut off), and uses GaN (Gallium Nitride) components to reduce weight and improve efficiency – it never gets hot. It offers one USB-C port and three USB-A ports, and provides 65W in total – up to 45W at the USB-C port, and up to 20W shared among the three USB-A ports. It’s not powerful enough to fast charge my MacBook Air, but with 18 hours of battery life I have yet to need a fast charge: charging overnight is all I ever do.
With the right cables the Atom III can charge my MacBook Air, my camera, my AirPods and my iPhone all in one go. Alternatively, in accordance with my mobility needs (see ‘2025 Needs Analysis’ below) it can charge my front and rear bicycle lights, my Flextail pocket-sized electric bike pump, and my Knog ‘Scout’ bike alarm that features Apple’s ‘Find My’ tech so I can track the location of my bike with my iPhone in case it falls victim to a snatch-and-run. Cool huh?
The Atom III comes with a longish power cable, about 1m, which is a bonus when spending the night in a bamboo hut, or on an overnight bus or in a sleeper carriage on a train; all situations where the power point is often high above the ground and rarely offers a firm grip on the plug’s pins – meaning traditional ‘wall wart’ designs invariably fall out and/or lose contact, and I wake up with uncharged devices. With the help of a marble-sized blob of Blu-Tack or similar putty (always handy) placed around the outside edges of the plug and then bonded to the wall receptacle, there’s little chance of the power plug falling out of the wall socket. The cable is simply not heavy enough to overcome the adhesion of the Blu-Tack.
COST
Ignoring the the inevitable shipping costs and/or import duty from on-line purchasing, if I were to buy the parts that make up the MacBook Air-based system described in this article at their published prices it would cost $1179 USD, as shown below (all prices rounded to the nearest dollar).
M4 MacBook Air: $999
Pgytech CreateMate: $40
Anker 543 PowerPort Atom III charger: $45
Crucial X9 Pro 1TB SSD: $95
Total: $1179 USD
For that I’ve got a totally new, up-to-date and future-proofed system that easily outperforms the devices it replaces (The iMortal, The Recently Deceased), has 1.28TB of storage (256GB on board, 1024GB external), can read two SD cards simultaneously, provides orderly weather-proof storage for eight cards, and charges four devices at once at a maximum of 65W (45W USB-C, 20W USB-A). It’s a great system, but what apps can it run?
Capability
The ‘Buy’ page for the base model MacBook Air (M4, 16GB Unified Memory, 256GB storage) offers Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro as pre-installed options. There are no caveats or warnings when they’re selected, and no automatic ‘minimum requirement’ upgrades appear for the base model’s M4 processor or 16GB of Unified Memory. Furthermore, shopping for Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve on the app store reveals the reassuring ‘Works on this MacBook Air’ status in the Compatibility indicator.
Protools’ minimum system requirement is the M2 MacBook Air (two generations ago). There was a caveat with the M4 models due to an incompatibility with PACE’s iLok but this has since been fixed with the latest version of PACE’s SDK, which has been integrated into the latest versions of the affected DAWs and plug-ins. It must be added that this problem had nothing to do with the MacBook Air’s ability to run Protools, it only interfered with its ability to use it.
As with any computing system, of course, the total track count (audio), clip count (video) and plug-in/processor count that can run simultaneously on this MacBook Air system ultimately depends on the power of the M-series chip (i.e. number of P and E cores), the amount of Unified Memory, the Memory Bandwidth, and the resolution of the files (sampling rate and word size, or image/video resolution).
As a real-world data point, reviewers have reported mixing up to 80 tracks of 48k 24-bit audio using a base model M4 MacBook Air upgraded with 24GB of Unified Memory (which means it also has the extra two GPU cores that are supplied as part of upgrading the Unified Memory). There was no indication given of how many plug-ins they were running on that mix, but the figures still provide a helpful indication of what a budget system based on the MacBook Air is capable of. Video creators should watch Youtuber Evan Ranft’s video where he pushes the base model MacBook Air to its video editing, processing and rendering limits…
A REAL WORLD TEST
The first project on this machine was a mastering job for Spotify release: an album of 10 songs, each about three minutes long, with stereo mixes and stems supplied by the clients in 88.2k 32-bit float format. The clients wanted to maintain a consistent tonality throughout the album, and had performed, recorded and mixed it that way – they weren’t looking for a ‘pop star’ mastering engineer who plasters their own trademark sound or creative vision over it. The job was mostly correcting tonal and dynamic issues, while also making it conform to the requirements of the release medium – just like mastering engineers used to do back in the days of vinyl, when nobody except sound engineers and record companies knew that mastering engineers existed.
Conveniently, the client’s desire for consistency meant avoiding a pastiche of different plug-ins on every track. I’m on a low budget so I only bought the Apple Silicon versions of the familiar plug-ins I would’ve reached for if doing this job on The iMortal. The project was mastered in Zynaptiq’s Triumph, primarily using Tone Boosters’ Equalizer Pro and Compressor v4 plug-ins for tonal and dynamics processing on stems and client mixes, and TDR’s Kotelnikov compressor and SlickEQ over the final output for the entire album. It was rather like the early days of my audio career where studios typically had a pair of Urei 1176s and an 1178 in the rack, along with one or two dbx compressors, and maybe a stereo parametric EQ. We made do with just that, and lots of great albums were made that way. To satisfy Spotify’s level requirements (-14LUFS, -1dBTP) I needed some peak limiting, some downwards compression, some upwards compression, some EQ, and the tiniest amount of feedback compression for that magic glue that binds it all together as a unified collection of mixes (i.e. an album) – and those plug-ins delivered.
That project’s folder currently contains everything the client uploaded including alternate mixes, stems and other redundancies that won’t be purged until the album is officially released (just in case!), plus my mastered versions of all 10 songs in 88.2k 32-bit float as per the client’s supplied format, along with 48k 24-bit wavs for video, 44.1k 24-bit wavs for Spotify, 44.1k 16-bit wavs for CD, and 320kbps mp3s for [whatever]. All of those variations of delivery formats were made in one move using Zynaptiq’s Myriad batch processor: load in the 88.2k 32-bit float masters, set up the desired processing chains (SRC and dithering) and destination folders, press ‘Run’ and let it go. Compared to doing this batch processing on The iMortal, which would’ve taken 10 to 15 minutes, the M4 MacBook Air knocked it over in what seemed like a minute or two. I was genuinely impressed; after pressing ‘Run’ I did the usual Walk Of Impatience around the room, checked the screen for a progress report to get an indication of how long it was going to take, but… it was done! The benefits of non-sequential processing…
For what it’s worth, the complete project consumes 29.58GB with no FLAC or other data compression, and takes 46 seconds to transfer from the Crucial X9Pro SSD to the MacBook Air’s internal storage, and 55 seconds to transfer back to the Crucial X9 Pro.
A NEW MANTRA
The old future-proofing mantra of ‘buy the fastest and most powerful computer you can afford’, intended to avoid obsolescence, is now itself obsolete. Considering Apple’s trade-in scheme (discussed below), and the knowledge that the software obsoletes the hardware, it makes more sense in 2025 to apply the ‘New Car Market’ mantra to computer purchasing: sell your current one when it’s a year old and still holds good value, and put that money towards the cost of the latest model. With Apple’s Time Machine for macOS devices and iCloud Backup for iOS devices, transferring to a new machine is fast and easy; you don’t waste a day digging up old passwords and registration codes, and teaching the new device all about yourself.
In adherence to the new mantra, I’ll be keeping this MacBook Air until Apple releases the M5 models. At that point I’ll do a Time Machine backup, erase the internal storage etc., go to an Apple Store that participates in Apple Trade In, and replace it with a brand new M5 MacBook Air. I’ll connect the new machine to this one’s Time Machine backup drive and it’ll automatically update itself within an hour or two. I’ll end up with a duplicate of this machine that’s faster, is future-proofed a year longer, and probably has some new features (better camera, etc.). If I repeat this process every year I’ll always be covered under the standard warranty so there’s no need to stress over the “should I or shouldn’t I?” Apple Care purchase.
A quick test on the Apple Trade In part of the Buy page using a borrowed base model M3 MacBook Air (the owner purchased it very early this year) in good condition says it would fetch $490 USD through Apple’s trade-in scheme – but that’s not a very old machine at the time of writing, and would probably have higher refurbishing value than recycling value for Apple. Nonetheless, that $490 USD trade in reduces the cost of upgrading to a base model M4 ($999 RRP) by almost half, making it considerably more affordable – while helping users stay on top of the latest M-series technology. In countries that don’t offer the Apple Trade In deal, the given price provides an indication of the minimum the older device could fetch on the used computer market. Considering the base model MacBook Airs have always been intended to sell at $999 USD, and considering that the trade-in or resale value of last year’s model remains worthwhile for a short time after the new model goes on sale (as we saw above), this ‘New Car Market’ mantra will allow me to remain on top of the latest Apple Silicon technology for considerably less than the new price every year – and it all remains under warranty.
As the saying goes, “Technology moves through society like a steamroller; if you’re not part of the machine, you’re part of the road”. Now that I’m part of the machine, I intend to stay on it…
COMPANION ARTICLE
While researching and discussing this article I realised that many audio engineers are faced with the same fundamental conundrum: not because their iPad Pros drowned in the Salawin River, but because they’re squeezing the last bits of performance out of vintage Intel-based Macs that were purchased on the now obsolete mantra of “buy the fastest and most powerful computer you can afford”.
Those Intel-based Macs are running out of time… macOS Tahoe (aka ‘macOS 26’) – which was announced at Apple’s WWDC in June 2025 and is expected to be released in September or October 2025 – will be the last OS to support Intel-based Macs. In usual Apple fashion we can expect some security updates for about two years afterwards, at which point all of the Intel-based Macs will meet Apple’s definition of ‘obsolete’ and therefore will be no longer supported.
It’s clearly time to upgrade, but the specs and terminologies around the Apple Silicon devices is new and unfamiliar. Also, these new machines are built for Apple Intelligence, which introduces new things that will affect your purchasing decisions. To clarify these things, I’ve written a companion piece that explains Apple Silicon terminology and how Apple Intelligence works, along with how to interpret Apple’s on-board memory prices, and a primer for using iCloud – including how I used iCloud to take my MacBook Air’s potential storage up to 3.328TB.
CONCLUSION
Within four generations of their M-series chips, Apple’s MacBooks have reached a point where even the base model MacBook Air is fast enough, powerful enough and has sufficient battery life for the average independent audio person. At the same time, bus-powered external SSDs have become remarkably smaller and faster, offering economical large storage capacity – rivalling the convenience and speed of Apple’s on-board storage while costing considerably less.
The texts below delve into more specifics, including why I didn’t stick with the iPad (see ‘An Appropriate Configuration’), the indicators I based my current needs on (see ‘2025 Needs Analysis’), and how in 2017 I accidentally thought my early-2013 MacBook Pro (aka The iMortal) was ready for the scrap heap (see ‘User Error’) – which is what triggered the move to the iPad Pro in the first place.
And finally, remember the new mantra for buying computers in a world of rapid technological developments: “If you’re not part of the machine, you’re part of the road”…
If you’re not part of the machine, you’re part of the road.
So what was an appropriately configured and future-proofed iPad going to cost me, assuming I start with the cheapest iPad available that offers 16GB of RAM? (All prices in USD, updated 14th July 2025 from Apple’s website.)
11-inch iPad Pro with 1TB storage: $1599
Wi-F + Cellular option: $200
Apple Pencil (USB-C model): $79
Magic Keyboard: $299
Total: $2175
I’d also have to include a USB-C hub expander with headphone socket or an external USB headphone amplifier (which would use up the iPad’s one USB-C port), pushing the price even higher. It’d be great to ditch all of my now useless Lightning dongles and replace them with a single USB-C hub expander that would allow external SSDs, audio interfaces, cameras, and SD cards to be connected simultaneously to the new iPad, but that would add more to the price. At $2175 USD my Inner Aussie was already saying “Yeah, nah…” or unprintable words to that effect.
The post Going Back To Mac appeared first on AudioTechnology.
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