Best Mac Laptop for Animation?

R

RexnoStove

New Member
In september I'll begin studying animation(2D and 3D), and have been looking up the ideal laptop model to upgrade to. Most of what I've researched doesn't include Macs, which is sort of a dealbreaker for me, because I need to be able to use Logic Pro as well. I would consider getting a PC and keeping my current Mac for Logic, but it's a MacBook Air, and already doesn't have the capacity to handle Logic pro smoothly. From what I've seen, I'm going to need something with a hefty amount of RAM, at least 2GB of GPU, and at least 2.4 GHz processing speed. (I'm not too familiar with some of these terms, so I don't really have a good picture of what these numbers mean, but it's what I've heard is best for animation.) Good storage is a plus, but not a huge concern of mine, since I already have an external hard drive.
Most of the websites I've looked at have either been a few years out of date, or have excluded Macs entirely. Is there a Mac model that would fit these criteria?
Or, on the flip side, is there any way to transfer Logic Pro to another Operating System?
 
RexnoStove said:
Thanks! That definitely seems like it would work. RAM is one of my biggest concerns, do you have any idea of its capabilities in that area?
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I would strongly advise against getting the current Macbook Pro 15 Inch. It is outdated with an old processor and is going to be updated shortly, either in WWDC June or in October this year. If you desperately want a Macbook, wait unless you want the outdated one.

I might suggest getting a top level Dell XPS 15 laptop, Skylake i7, 512gb ssd, 16gb ram, 4k touch screen. It runs windows 10, but you can (albeit illegitimately) install macOS on windows machines now. You can get it on the Microsoft Store, and it has a 15% discount (code gneroyxea) which reduces price from £1700 to £1400 - so £600 cheaper than the top level Macbook Pro.
 
jetpackb said:
I would strongly advise against getting the current Macbook Pro 15 Inch. It is outdated with an old processor and is going to be updated shortly, either in WWDC June or in October this year. If you desperately want a Macbook, wait unless you want the outdated one.

I might suggest getting a top level Dell XPS 15 laptop, Skylake i7, 512gb ssd, 16gb ram, 4k touch screen. It runs windows 10, but you can (albeit illegitimately) install macOS on windows machines now. You can get it on the Microsoft Store, and it has a 15% discount (code gneroyxea) which reduces price from £1700 to £1400 - so £600 cheaper than the top level Macbook Pro.
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Many thanks. That seems like a much better option. Would installing the mac OS work just as well as if it was installed on a Mac computer?
 
What software are you going to specifically use for the animation? You may be able to configure a cheaper model with more RAM to save some money.

As for installing OS X on a Dell - do you research before you do that. It often doesn't run too great on PCs and it can be picky about what components it works with.
 
RexnoStove said:
Many thanks. That seems like a much better option. Would installing the mac OS work just as well as if it was installed on a Mac computer?
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Unfortunately the mac OS won't run as well as it would on a normal Mac computer - for example on the XPS 15 there are reports of people saying that Mac OS cannot use the graphics card on the laptop - only the processor's integrated graphics. You'd be creating what is called a Hackintosh - it's not strictly allowed by Apple's T&Cs per se but they won't do anything about it.

It's really just a matter of weighing up costs - do you really need the full Mac OS experience? If you can cope with some of the little issues then I'd say go for a dell or similar - otherwise you would be looking at a significant price hike for a similar machine!
 
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