Buying advice needed !! for audio/music production.

[carpentryplus25]

One more thing do you think there’s a way to prepare mac os bootable without owning a mac?

Thanks,

HT

You have a couple options. One, find a friend with a Mac that will allow you to use it long enough to make the USB installer. Secondly, use haswell or earlier hardware and install Snow leopard from retail disk on to the haswell or earlier hardware with iboot and then make the USB installer to install on your post Haswell hardware. Seems a need for later versions of iBoot for starting from scratch.

 

[trs96]

You have a couple options. One, find a friend with a Mac that will allow you to use it long enough to make the USB installer. Secondly, use haswell or earlier hardware and install Snow leopard from retail disk on to the haswell or earlier hardware with iboot and then make the USB installer to install on your post Haswell hardware. Seems a need for later versions of iBoot for starting from scratch.

That's correct, iBoot doesn't work with anything post Broadwell. The easiest solution is to borrow, rent or buy a 2010 or newer Mac with at least Lion 10.7.5 to be able to download Sierra from the Mac App Store. Getting it anywhere else on the internet leads to a permanent boot/ban from this community. Not worth it in my opinion. There's so much good support and info here, why would anyone go anywhere else ?

There are plenty of used Mid / Late 2010 Macbook Airs and Mac Minis for sale on Ebay and other sites. They just need to have the minimum 2 GB of ram and have at least Lion installed. After using it you can either keep it as a backup machine or resell it. You can also rent a Mac, use Google.

• MacBook Air: Late 2010 or newer
• Mac Mini: Mid 2010 or newer

Even the base model 2014 Mini works as it comes with 4GB ram and Yosemite installed. It sells for $399 new or even less used and refurbished. Foolproof way to go.

http://www.macmall.com/p/8924793?dpno=13312163&source=zwb12166

 

[carpentryplus25]

That's correct, iBoot doesn't work with anything post Broadwell. The easiest solution is to borrow, rent or buy a 2010 or newer Mac with at least Lion 10.7.5 to be able to download Sierra from the Mac App Store. Getting it anywhere else on the internet leads to a permanent boot/ban from this community. Not worth it in my opinion. There's so much good support and info here, why would anyone go anywhere else ?

There are plenty of used Mid / Late 2010 Macbook Airs and Mac Minis for sale on Ebay and other sites. They just need to have the minimum 2 GB of ram and have at least Lion installed. After using it you can either keep it as a backup machine or resell it. You can also rent a Mac, use Google.

• MacBook Air: Late 2010 or newer
• Mac Mini: Mid 2010 or newer

Even the base model 2014 Mini works as it comes with 4GB ram and Yosemite installed. It sells for $399 new or even less used and refurbished. Foolproof way to go.

http://www.macmall.com/p/8924793?dpno=13312163&source=zwb12166

Yeah there literally are tons of affordable macs around. I recently picked up the latest MacBook Air. Not very happy with the newer line of MacBooks. In my opinion the newer MacBooks have even less tech in them than years ago with the removal of all the ports. Until USB C becomes a wide spread industry standard it’s just an adapter hog IMO.

Now it would be nice to have updated iboot versions

 

[HTashjian]

Thanks everybody for the great support, I will post an update once I choose the final hardware decision and I will manage to borrow a mac from a friend to prepare the bootable OS.

HT