Macbook for Electronics Engineers

[Karamel]

Hi,

I am, nowadays, thingking to buy one of them, macbook, macbook air, macbook pro13" or 15".

I used to use macbook pro 15" 2015 which has i7 processor for one week. It was working very well and also working virtual windows almost better than windows computers.

I have no enough money to buy 15" macbook. Therefore, I am looking at second-hand computers and only macbook, macbook air, macbook pro13" models.

Mac computers are the best models for me but I am confusing with Altium.

I guess, there is no way Altium to install macOS. So, I must install it only virtual windows.

Is there anyone who are, now, using macbook, macbook air, macbook pro13" and also using Altium or altium level sofwares in virtual windows? Could you share your experiences?

[brucehoult]

I love my 2011 2.2 GHz (turbo 3.3, 6 MB L2 cache) quad core i7 17" MacBook Pro with 1920x1200 screen. Very sad they don't make them any more. I've upgraded it to 16 GB RAM and replaced the DVD drive with a SATA 512 GB SSD.

On Geekbench 3 it does 2777 single core 10210 multi core (https://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/345024) vs about 4500 and 14800 for the latest Retina MBP. Not that far off considering it's six years old, especially on multi core.

For the serious stuff I have a i7 6700K desktop which clocks in at 5200 single core 20290 multi core. Can really feel the difference there, though it might not make much difference for someone with a recent MBP.

I've not used Altium, but I do run a lot of Windows and Linux software in virtual machines (VMWare, Parallels, VirtualBox) on the MBP. It suffers with graphics-intensive stuff, but CPU-intensive is just fine.

Just normal UI things should be fine, including drawing and layouts. But judging by Dave's video showing how much Altium doing auto-routing is hit by screen capture software -- it must be programmed pretty stupidly for that to happen, but I'd expect you'll see the same kind of slowdown in any VM too.

[Karamel]

Your computer has i7 and it is macbook pro,

I am really wondering performances of macbook, macbook air or macbook pro 13" models because, I guess, I will not be able to buy macbook which has i7 model processor. 

[RGB255_0_0]

You wouldn't miss too much going with an i5 instead, or going with a 2015 model, probably the last of the decent Apple laptops.

[DavidDLC]

You can also make it dual boot Mac and Windows, this is another option for Virtual Windows.

David DLC.

[amitchell]

As said above dual boot AKA Apple BootCamp is what you want to use if you need to run windows with any applications that are intensive.

I am using my 2015 rMBP right now with windows 10, I actually haven't booted into OSX for months.

[brucehoult]

Your computer has i7 and it is macbook pro,

I am really wondering performances of macbook, macbook air or macbook pro 13" models because, I guess, I will not be able to buy macbook which has i7 model processor. 

Yes, but it's six years old, so would be pretty cheap used.

In fact I did buy this one used, near the start of 2014, for about NZ$2000 / US$1500.

Here's one the same as mine going for NZ$1499 "Buy Now": http://www.trademe.co.nz/computers/laptops/laptops/apple/auction-1284278268.htm

That's cheaper than the cheapest MacBook Air new now, $1000 less than the cheapest 13" MBP now.

Sadly, I don't know anything about the used market in Turkey (or Russia, for that matter), which is why I'm referring to the market back home in NZ.

[JPortici]

dual boot with bootcamp is by far the best option. parallel tools can also be used. Virtual box? not so much, usb driver is terrible.
general comment, windows is disappointing to use on a mac (because you are still expecting to use it like a mac... basically the touchpad!)

[Karamel]

dual boot with bootcamp is by far the best option. parallel tools can also be used. Virtual box? not so much, usb driver is terrible.
general comment, windows is disappointing to use on a mac (because you are still expecting to use it like a mac... basically the touchpad!)

I am not prefer to use windows but there is no chance altium in MacOS.

What do you think about macbook air and windows with using bootcamp?

[RGB255_0_0]

dual boot with bootcamp is by far the best option. parallel tools can also be used. Virtual box? not so much, usb driver is terrible.
general comment, windows is disappointing to use on a mac (because you are still expecting to use it like a mac... basically the touchpad!)

I am not prefer to use windows but there is no chance altium in MacOS.

What do you think about macbook air and windows with using bootcamp?

Fine. To help alleviate the lack of Apple support for the trackpad under Windows, check out Trackpad++.

[kaz911]

MacBooks are great for EE's. It can be used to teach you how to solder and how not to build computers (at least the recent 4-5 years of MBP's)

Get a ThinkPad..

I use both MBP and ThinkPads daily. Working on VM's are a PITA especially with graphics software unless you just boot it directly into windows.

My old 17" MBP has been a workhorse with no issues. My 2 MBP Retina's have been nightmares (One sold - one still here)

Apple service have been nice though and repaired everything that has gone wrong so now my remaining MBP Retina - only has ONE or two original parts left - the bottom part of the casing and maybe the speakers. EVERYTHING else has been replaced. 

First battery expanded. Since that is glued in - Apple changed top alu, keyboard & mousepad. They also replaced Main board since it looked like it had some damage from the battery expansion.

Then repaired machine comes home. I plug it in - and after about 15 minutes it blows the power supply - just before christmas holidays.... Machine still worked on another power supply - but every time it went into screen sleep mode - the machine just shut down - not as in sleep shutdown but just like complete power off - but with no warnings and no post boot warnings. Off again to Apple - and this time it seems like the Screen had an issue. So again new MB AND brand new screen - AND replacement PSU. Now only SD card reader is slightly iffy - but I do not want to waste another WEEK waiting for "Genius" bar appointment + 1 hour travel + 0.5-1 hour in store wait time (*2 for collection as well) - and the risk something else goes wrong when they try to repair it.

Staff in the Genius Bar was mostly nice (2 of 3 wore good - one was bad and tried to teach me how USB works....)- but they know absolutely nothing about how computers work. They know how to plug in the test sticks and run tests and ask some questions from a script.

But the big plus point was - all the above work was done POST warranty - so Apple took battery expansion seriously - and "sponsored" the repair. But I think if I had been in NY and given the computer to Louis Rossmann - it would probably have worked better and wasted less of my time.

ThinkPad P70 - Street price 2/3's of the MBP price incl. 3 year onsite warranty. Had an issue with hard drive. 18 hours later the tech was there with a new SSD harddrive. Performed a swap - asked if I wanted him to try move any salvageable data - and I declined - then gave me a USB stick with Win 10 latest build boot media. Great and fast service. Apart from Win10 being a PITA you can't really fault the hardware compared with Apples. Yes newer ThinkPads are not quite the tanks they used to be - but still miles better to service yourself.  I have normally recycled my old ThinkPads down the family line - and they just keep working. Yes screens go dim over time - but are cheap and easy to replace. So I think I get about 10-12 years of useful life out off a ThinkPad.

[senso]

And why would you buy a Mac to just run Windows on it?
Yes, it as a bigger battery and its all aluminium so it can get scratched easily and can also double as a space heater because the heatsinks in a mac a joke..

My workhorse for the job is an "old" Toshiba P50, i7-4700MQ(so I can even upgrade to a 4900 if I ever need to), 16GB of RAM, one Crucial BX200 480GB SSD, swaped the original lcd for a WF6 mate with epic colour reproduction, and running Windows 8.1 because I hate the forced updates on Win10, all in all it cost me less than 600€ to get the used laptop, replace the lcd, repasted it with liquid ultra, modded the BIOS so it wont throttle the CPU and currently using two displays, windows+ubuntu in vm ware, I have cpu and ram to spare to use vmware(with 6GB of RAM and 4 cores), as well as Psoc 4 IDE, Atmel Studio, Altium, Autodesk Fusion and various python and nodejs scripts running on the ubuntu side.
The keyboard even as backlight lol.
The only thing that its lacking is that I only have 3h of battery, but I dont really need that much battery, so meh in that point.

You can get some Dell M4xxxx battlestation from ebay for around 600-800€, clean it, throw in an SSD and you have a beast of a pc to use and abuse, of course you wont gain points in the Starbucks, but if you want a pc to work....

[Karamel]

And why would you buy a Mac to just run Windows on it?
Yes, it as a bigger battery and its all aluminium so it can get scratched easily and can also double as a space heater because the heatsinks in a mac a joke..

My workhorse for the job is an "old" Toshiba P50, i7-4700MQ(so I can even upgrade to a 4900 if I ever need to), 16GB of RAM, one Crucial BX200 480GB SSD, swaped the original lcd for a WF6 mate with epic colour reproduction, and running Windows 8.1 because I hate the forced updates on Win10, all in all it cost me less than 600€ to get the used laptop, replace the lcd, repasted it with liquid ultra, modded the BIOS so it wont throttle the CPU and currently using two displays, windows+ubuntu in vm ware, I have cpu and ram to spare to use vmware(with 6GB of RAM and 4 cores), as well as Psoc 4 IDE, Atmel Studio, Altium, Autodesk Fusion and various python and nodejs scripts running on the ubuntu side.
The keyboard even as backlight lol.
The only thing that its lacking is that I only have 3h of battery, but I dont really need that much battery, so meh in that point.

You can get some Dell M4xxxx battlestation from ebay for around 600-800€, clean it, throw in an SSD and you have a beast of a pc to use and abuse, of course you wont gain points in the Starbucks, but if you want a pc to work....

Because, I need to work windows for just Altium. Other softwares are okay. Please, dont suggest any windows computer. I am only wondering performances of mac computers.

[Karamel]

And why would you buy a Mac to just run Windows on it?
Yes, it as a bigger battery and its all aluminium so it can get scratched easily and can also double as a space heater because the heatsinks in a mac a joke..

My workhorse for the job is an "old" Toshiba P50, i7-4700MQ(so I can even upgrade to a 4900 if I ever need to), 16GB of RAM, one Crucial BX200 480GB SSD, swaped the original lcd for a WF6 mate with epic colour reproduction, and running Windows 8.1 because I hate the forced updates on Win10, all in all it cost me less than 600€ to get the used laptop, replace the lcd, repasted it with liquid ultra, modded the BIOS so it wont throttle the CPU and currently using two displays, windows+ubuntu in vm ware, I have cpu and ram to spare to use vmware(with 6GB of RAM and 4 cores), as well as Psoc 4 IDE, Atmel Studio, Altium, Autodesk Fusion and various python and nodejs scripts running on the ubuntu side.
The keyboard even as backlight lol.
The only thing that its lacking is that I only have 3h of battery, but I dont really need that much battery, so meh in that point.

You can get some Dell M4xxxx battlestation from ebay for around 600-800€, clean it, throw in an SSD and you have a beast of a pc to use and abuse, of course you wont gain points in the Starbucks, but if you want a pc to work....

Because, I need to work windows for just Altium. Other softwares are okay in macOS. Please, dont suggest any windows computer. I am only wondering performances of mac computers.

[kaz911]

Running Altium on a single small screen is not going to be easy. Altium is really designed for multi screen operation and it likes space..

You can probably get some things done on a 13" but I would not recommend it at all. But if you are really into Mac - then get the old i5 or i7 17" MBP and hook an iPad or similar up with Duet Display so you have 2 displays. Then you can do a few things even running in Virtual Machines - but beware of all the issues that might pop up.

I would not go below 15" and not below I5 w/SSD - maybe 4-6 years old. But anything from late 2011 and up to 2015 have more or less same performance. Then you need to get Parallels or VMWare Fusion license + a Windows license. So on top - minimum 8GB memory with 4-5 GB dedicated for Windows and Windows virtual graphics driver. But those are all minimums.

I would not try AIR or anything that size for Altium or CircuitStudio or similar.

[grouchobyte]

I use Macs almost exclusively for EE work. I gave up on PCs about 10 years ago.
I am not a hobbiest and have been doing consulting full time for at least 10 years and have been in the field for almost 40 years, long before computers were used like they are today.

I understand that many people on this forum will see my preference to use MACs as excessively costly or unecessary and I can respect where they are coming from.

That said, it is clear that many  CAD programs and EE tools need a PC to be effective and dont really work well on a MAC natively or even on a VM running windows. However, if you have enough resources to share and dont need gaming performance, you can certainly use a MAC with zero compromise.

Of course, all of this comes at a cost and if you have the money, ,.......it is a no brainer.

I mostly do performance analog design and there is absolutely nothing I cant do with a MAC or a VM with windows or other OS's

I have multiple iMac 5ks, macbook pros, etc and they are all maxed out with the hottest hardware (big ssds, 16-32gb of ram, highest res displays, USB3, fast graphics, etc)

For example, my  13 inch 2016 macbook pro has a  a dual core I7- 3 Ghz processor, 512gb ssd, 16 gb of ram, usb 3 ports and is running 10.10 Yosemite and Windows 7 and 10 under VMware Fusion 8.5

I use various windows apps like Altium Designer v14 that is absolutely fluid stable and snappy. The retina display is crisp but the screen is small, so I only tweak library parts or make design edits on it or use it on the road because the screen is in fact small for that. So for the most part I do my altium designs on the iMac. Other stuff just works and I use the mac side for surfing, communications, etc. Only hard core windows stuff is used in the VM. Only one of my mac boxes, can dual  boot into windows and that machine is the fastest pc I have ever used.

Other windows apps run perfectly like LT spice ( even the function keys map over correctly). There are a whole host of other things that run on the VM and I have never had a single issue I could not resolve

With MACs ......Backups, portability and killer hardware is what you get.....and I make a very good living from relying on it.

[DavidDLC]

First thing I did with my MacBook was to re-install a fresh copy of the OS, and then install the windows partition.

I'm happy with that movement I did, the MacBook works pretty well.

I mainly use Mac mode and once in a while Windows, in my case for my old Eagle license and Visual Studio.


David

[SingedFingers]

Thinkpad here, and an HP Z620 desktop.

Tried MacBooks. Always let you down. No one likes to say that because there is an irrational attachment to shiny shit. It's still shit. The moment you didn't buy enough RAM, it's shit.

[hendorog]

I've got an older macbook (2012ish) which I've used as my primary machine since then, but am now migrating to a Lenovo T460s.

Macbook pros were:
* Retina screen
* Very good battery life for the first few years
* Close the lid to standby, open the lid to start work again almost instantly
* Trackpad is truely awesome
* Performance was reasonable

Macbook cons were:
* Expandability
* Missing Home/End/Insert/Delete/PgUp/PgDown makes using Windows and linux apps more difficult than it needs to be.

The missing keys on the keyboard was the killer in the end. It just got too damn annoying working out and remembering which key combo did what for the various environments.

[SingedFingers]

That absolutely killed me. I spent a lot of the time switching between Parallels VMs and MacOS as TBH I spend a big chunk of my time in Visual Studio and the rest of the time inside a terminal talking to unix boxes and the keyboard was all over the place.

TBH you can't drive a mac from just they keyboard either like you can with Windows and Linux. The keyboard is far faster and more precise. This slowed me down terribly. Plus all the stupid keyboard combinations in MacOS: squashed bug, shift, option and some key so far away from the rest of your fingers you break your wrists trying to hit it. You need these hands:

[Ampera]

Grab a regular intel PC laptop and make it a hackintosh.

[technix]

For hardware, you will want to go for the quad-core i7 with HT which is available only on the 15-inch models. And max out the RAM. EE tasks can take quite a tax on those.

On the software side of things, keep in mind that macOS is fundamentally UNIX. You will want to grab Xcode (free) regardless whether you want to actually use it or not, since without it the usual ./configure && make && sudo make install sequence won't work. Eclipse and MPLAB X will work if you want to play with ARM or PIC micro. For board designing EAGLE 7.6 still works.

As of basic UNIX utilities there is sadly no X. There is no harm upgrading the GNU Bash to 4.3 (Apple shipped with bash 3.2 which is the last GPLv2 release) and grab Ubuntu's .profile and .bashrc files. You can safely overwrite /bin/bash with bash 4.3 and replace /bin/sh with a symlink pointing to bash. The basic utilities provided in GNU coreutils too, just patch ln to ignore the -H flag which Xcode build process will use.