Originally Posted by Mike Halloran
Quote
imho if apple wanted to slay the pc market...
offer a 250 buck m1 or m2 mini pc barebones...user adds their own memory etc etc..

A tricked out Mini M4 Pro is $2,800 with 2 TB storage. Absolutely overkill for anything that one wants to do with audio. A standard M4 Mini with 1TB onboard runs $1,000 and handles most needs. No monitor included but a 24" iMac with a 5K screen costs $1, 700. No one makes a modular PC that can touch those+ anywhere near the price. Oh, the Mac runs cool to the touch.

Exactly- The above config is pretty much all anyone needs.
For BIAB and Logic (at least for those of us using less than 200 midi tracks) its more than enough.
I use DaVinci Resolve and it gets the job done.
Google Earth Pro, QGIS and ArcGIS. No problem.
The only issue I have is stitching together UAV photogrammetry.
That's a pretty hardware intensive operation.
The solution to that is offload it to the many services that have popped up and will soon beat the price down where its not much of an issue.

For 99.9999999% of computer users (who do a LOT less than the above) there is no need for even this much hardware.
I've got an M2 mini 32GB with 4TB i bought a 2-3 years ago from AAPL refurb. Its all I need for a while.

biab2024(Mac) Latest Build
Mac OS Sequoia 15.0.1
Apple M2 pro 32GB Ram
Logic Pro 11